from Speeches at the Barriers
1.
Say that a ballad
wrapped in a ballad
a play of force and play
of forces
falling out sentences
(hollow where I can shelter)
falling out over
and gone
Dark ballad and dark crossing
old woman prowling
Genial telling her story
ideal city of immaculate beauty
invincible children
threshing felicity
For we are language Lost
in language
Wind sweeps over the wheat
mist-mask on woods
belling hounds drowse
Iseult of Ireland
Iseult of the snow-white hand
Iseult seaward gazing
(pale secret fair)
allegorical Tristram
his knights are at war
Sleet whips the page
flying leaves and fugitive
Earth of ancient ballad
earth as thought of the sea
water's edge to say goodbye
2.
Right or ruth
rent
to the winds shall be thrown
words being wired or web
What (pine-cone wheat-ear
sea-shell) what
volumes of secrets to teach
Socrates
Banks of wild bees in story
sing in no wood so on
Cornstalk and cornsheaf
prodigal benevolence
wealth washed up by the sea
What I find
signal seen by my eye
This winter falls froward
forever
sound and suggestion speared
open
Free will in blind duel
sees in secret houses in sand
each day's last purpose
each day's firm progress
schoolgirls sleeping
schoolboys sleeping and stemmed
I will dream you
Draw you
dawn and horses of the sun
dawn galloped in greek before flame
fugitive dialogue of masterwork
3.
sabbath and sweet spices
seaward so far and far
The woods seem to thicken
Merry men in Arden
(foresters feared foresters)
forage cold earth bescratcht
noise and noise pursuing power
Temper and order
The leashed stars kindle thin
perpendicular
Clear space of blackness
between us
(grey leaves grey gusts)
Dust people hover
Iceberg setting of universal
Impending
(The enemy is always riding by)
figural shadowing of invisible
Wassail
tatterdemailion revel
houses containing vision
houses of recognition
trim father nodding to trim mother
remembered name in Quiet
remembered precepts
4
Twenty lines of
boughs breaking into hindering
Boreas
the thin thaw wanders off
Presence
October drawing to its long
late edge
Understanding of time endlessly
sliding
(trees hung with false dreams)
endlessly running on
Distant forget
Tiny words of substance cross
the darkness
Who are they
(others between the trees)
falling into lines of human
habitation
Tread softly my misgiving heart
To chart all
Verisimilitude
Throw my body at the mark
Parents among savages
Their house was garlanded with dead
theologies
(fierceness of the young)
Then to move forward into unknown
Crumbling compulsion of syllables
Glass face
caressing the athwart night
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