Strange Amalgam
The strange amalgam of a summer night,
lewd and fanciful on one bright wheel,
clouds mingling in suspicious dance go
heavy with plainsong to the dying hill.
High in the meadow the summer is young
singing with enchantresses under the window
but look at the night it is a far below cliff
we hand from it swinging by an elbow.
And lives are spent in this device
wheeling below the fretful hours
doves labour, loves twist,
smashing and sweating among the flowers.
Who was it sang of the pine boughs soft
of the muted eye, and the clinging mouth,
of the certain satisfaction of unknown bays,
wild, wild, on the heaving cloth.
Well, it wasn’t me and it wasn’t you.
It was the skimming summer squalling,
Longing, like the grey old sea to wetten
Our drying and usually dying calling.
Strange the weather of it, and the moon.
Why does it sway like that in the tree,
why does it clap on the lips of you
what is the vision you have of me?