WEBVTT

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I've tried in
fairly recent years

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to write a number of poems in
very tight rhyme and meter,

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attempting to
recapture a tone which

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I think has been lost since
the late Victorian period.

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A number of poets,
Tennyson, most notably,

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but some smaller ones,
like Ernest Dowson,

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could get a very musical
effect through a high polish

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in the rhyme and meter, which
produced a dreamlike effect,

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in a way rather like
a dreamlike effect you

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get in certain
surrealist paintings.

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So the extreme precision
of the drawing,

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I'm thinking
particularly of Dali.

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And I wanted to
capture this again

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in a sequence of poems
of my own, three of which

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were about the 1939 - 1945 war.

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I was seven years old
when the war began.

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And a number of instance
in it have stayed with me

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and have had a fairly traumatic
effect on certain themes

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in my poems.

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I'll read you one
called "The Land Mine."

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A land mine was a kind of bomb
which was dropped by parachute

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and exploded on the
ground sometime later

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and was extremely destructive.

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One of these dropped at
the bottom of my garden

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and destroyed my house, as I
sleep in it with my parents.

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And in this poem,
I use this incident

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in a rather servile way.

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I imagine some to whom this
happened having a dream,

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and dreaming that the
bomb caused the garden

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to come into the house.

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I think this idea was
suggested by seeing

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flowers growing on bomb sites.

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And they always seem to do
this extremely luxuriantly,

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for some reason.

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"The Landmine"

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It fell when I was sleeping.

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In my dream, it brought
the garden to the house

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and let it in.

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I heard no parrot
scream or lion roar,

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but there were flowers and water
flowing where the cellared moss

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was all before.

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And air moved as
in bars of cedar,

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with a scented breath
of smoke and fire.

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I rubbed scales from my eyes
and wiped with brushed stone

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in my hair, half-woke in fear.

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I saw my father kneel on glass
that scarred the ground. .

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And there were flies
thick on that water,

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weeds around his heel
where he was playing.

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And I knew that night had
cataracted through the wall

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and loosed fine doors whose
hinges had been tight and made

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each window weep, the last
tears that clawed my hands.

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I climb through holes.

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My hall where I had lain
asleep with stoppered ears

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was all in ruins, planted
thick with grime of war.

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I walked as if in
greaves through fire,

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lay down in gutters choked
with lime, and spoke for help.

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Alas, those birds that dived
in light above me in the leaves

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were birds of prey and
paid no heed to words.

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Now I was walking,
wearing on my brow what

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moved before through fireless
coal and held my father's head.

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I touch it now and
feel my dream girl.

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And no song that flying birds
can make or burrowing mole

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will bring my garden
back or break new ground.

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The war is over and
the mine has gone

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that filled the air
with whinnying fire.

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And no more nights
will I lie waiting

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on cold metal or cold stone to
freeze before it comes again.

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That day of ire, if it shall
come, will find me on my knees.

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