I am agog for foam. Tumultuous come
with teeming sweetness to the bitter shore
tidelong unrinsed and midday parched and numb
with expectation. If the bright sky bore
with endless utterance of a single blue
unphrased, its restless immobility
infects the soul, which must decline into
an anguished and exact sterility
and waste away: then how much more the sea
trembling with alteration must perfect
our loneliness by its hostility.
opening lines of 3
Those impatient thighs will be bruised soon enough.
Sniff the sweet narcotic distilled by coupled
skins.
9
He will shrink, his manhood leave him, slough selfaware
the last skin of the flayed: despair.
He will nurse his terror carefully, uncertain
even of death's solace
impotent to outpace
dispersion of the soul, disruption of the brain.
last lines of "10: Chorus of Furies"
Nothing
substance utters or time
stills and restrains
joins design and
supple measure deftly
as thought's intricate polyphonic
score dovetails with the tread
sensuous things
keep in our consciousness.
opening lines of 15
we have the sea to stare at,
its treason, capaciousness, tedium
last lines of 22
They say 'Adios!' shyly but look back
more than once, knowing our thoughts
and sharing our
desires and lack of faith in desire.
last lines of "30: The Orotava Road"
Days now
less bitter than
rind of wild gourd.
Cool breezes. Lips
moistened, there are words.
last lines of 33
from the Second Book of Odes
Must [the girls]
also stop their ears to your tomcat
wailing, a promise your body cannot keep?
4
The breeze she wears
lifts and falls back.
. . .
giggles, ceramic
huddle of notes
10
Basil Bunting's Complete Poems is available from Amazon.co.uk.
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