D.M. THOMAS: And my last poem, a short one,
which Peter is again going to help me with,
is called "To Louisa in the Lane."
Thomas Hardy, the great English novelist and poet,
at the end of his life to six months before he died, and he
was about 70, wrote his last love poem
which was to a farm girl he'd seen once when he was about 20.
He passed her in a lane.
She was called Louisa.
And they passed, her head down, he trembling with desire,
but unable to show it.
He just murmured, good morning.
And that was the end of the affair.
But his last love poem comes back to her.
It's a long way from the Kama Sutra
with all its complex techniques of love.
And it occurred to me that perhaps the Kama Sutra is not
the last word of human love.
I read a description of them passing.
And interwoven with this are phrases
of ritual lovemaking from the Kama Sutra, which
Peter is going to read.
"To Louisa in the Lane".
"When Hardy and Louisa in the lane--"
REDGROVE: "the jump of the hare, says the Kama Sutra."
THOMAS: "Passed, it mattered not that never again--
REDGROVE: "The peacock's foot, says the Kama Sutra--"
THOMAS: "would he see her white muslin aching by--"
REDGROVE: "the Congress of the deer, says the Kama Sutra."
THOMAS: "A moment can dominate memory."
REDGROVE: "The line of jewels, says the Kama Sutra."
THOMAS: "Good evening, he stammered.
Their only word."
REDGROVE: "The Congress of the cat, says the Kama Sutra."
THOMAS: "It is doubtful if poor Louisa heard."
REDGROVE: "The broken cloud, says the Kama Sutra--"
THOMAS: "As she hurried on with head downcast."
REDGROVE: "The tiger's nail, says the Kama Sutra."
THOMAS: "But when Thomas Hardy breathed his last--"
REDGROVE: "A leaf of the lotus, says the Kama Sutra."
THOMAS: "After 50 more years of passions, and throws--"
REDGROVE: "The rubbing of the boar, says the Kama Sutra."
THOMAS: "The wheel ruts and the thorned hedgerows."
REDGROVE: "The coral and the jewel, says the Kama Sutra."
THOMAS: "And Louisa, long in a Stinsford grave--"
REDGROVE: "The mounting of the horse, says the Kama Sutra--"
THOMAS: "Was the last he remembered of human love."
REDGROVE: "The line of points, says the Kama Sutra."
[APPLAUSE]