Collected Poems by Alan; Sillitoe Read Free Book Online Page A

takes away.
    Blocks of flats blot out the moon.
    People live with happiness and work;
    I left my love too soon, too soon,
    So wait for me, it won’t seem long.
    She put sugar in my coffee
    Lit my cigarette
    Fed my eyes with the glow of lost desire
    Wept when I walked away.
    Write to me: it won’t seem long.
    Hull down: tanks are waiting.
    I hear them coming through the dust.

FEBRUARY POEMS
    Forests have turned into desert
    Powdering the soul to ash,
    But sand sends out new blossoms
    Till flowers and trees grow strong again.
    In the desert that was once a forest
    Where eyes see only dust and fire,
    Tears dry even as one drinks
    On water freely flowing.
    Sandgrains fly up nostrils
    Turn cool in their protecting flesh,
    Salting blood to make a forest
    Before the soul can perish.
    A brittle seed feeds on the deepest sandgrain
    Where the sweated liquid of despair
    Makes a forest from the driest desert.
    ***
    Through a gap in snowlace curtains
    Winter turns to fire and sun:
    Heat makes the earth a board to spread on
    Dust drummed solid by a white sun descending.
    Needle-tips tattoo cat-scars on the sky,
    Drum-beating letters burn: no escape
    From the flat white iron of the sun,
    No fauna living but serpent skeletons
    Bleached so clean the weakest breath
    Can blow such bones as dust.
    The white-hot circle blacks out life:
    Lie flat and stroke the earth
    Before rain comes and rivers overflow.
    ***
    Hope, a longing for something new,
    Crushes the beetle of the past.
    When hope takes hold its ruthlessness
    Feeds on the purest fuel of injustice,
    And sharpens the spike for action.
    ***
    Whatever you want – bites the fingers.
    Be careful what you want:
    Wait for the chill river to separate the limits of desire,
    For icy banks to break the watercourse
    And sweep all venom clean.
    ***
    Let go, feet tear ladder-rungs
    Losing views of pepper dunes
    Beyond ampersand trees
    In the withered arm of the horizon.
    Between the toll of heartsick
    Into hole and hiding
    The eye of winter’s snake-sun
    Needles into the heart
    Paralyzing both hands to let go.
    ***
    Life begins when love’s game is ended.
    Live, and death starts biting:
    The game robs you of life.
    A week of rain, and the house is an island,
    A mudtrack after months of drought
    Leads to the paved road.
    A smell of spring freshens the brain,
    And water slops at the bank as I wade through.
    No black sky can finish off the never-ending game,
    Or engines drown the memory of peace.
    ***
    February forty times has arrowed towards spring,
    None left behind,
    Swirling fish that never vanish,
    Colourless or rainbow
    Twisting after strange journeys,
    Paralyzing vast aquariums.
    February is the tunnel’s end
    A zodiac into soaking loam
    When I watch the stars
    To say a loud goodbye of welcome to.
    ***
    Mimosa’s dead stench follows like a shadow
    Never consumed by the sun
    Or swilled by rain,
    Rots like memories that went with it.
    ***
    Be free, and endure happiness –
    Summer like a dream from the grave
    Rebuilds the heart.
    Winter will bring an elegiac falling of the snow
    And nurse the purest blossoms –
    And green-eyed August
    Spread the odour of a wheatfield’s death.
    Choices bite however the performance.
    Scattered seed can bring up crops and flowers
    To rub out happiness or suffering.
    ***
    Midnight comes at any hour.
    Eagles out of sunlight bring it,
    Shadows on the fields.
    The sun throws broken eagles
    Back against the stars.
    The moon eats and grows fat.
    The curtain opens to an empty sky.

LOVERS SLEEP
    Flesh to flesh: there are two hearts between us
    Mine on one side, yours on the other
    Through which all thoughts must pass
    Mine intercepting those from you
    Yours beating strongly (I feel it doing so)
    Taking my thoughts into the labyrinth of yours
    From sleep of me to sleep of you
    Till flesh and heart join in the deepest cave.

THE WEIGHT OF SUMMER
    Summer’s iron is on the trees
    A new weight to bear
    Leap-year sap rising through