Collected Poems

17 Note on the text 20 Source texts from Living in America (1965) 23 The Traveller 24 The Women 24 To My Daughter in a Red Coat 25 Living in America 26 Harvard 26 Fairy Tale 27 In Winter 28 Love 29 The Garden of Intellect 30 Dreaming of Immortality in a Thatched Hut 30 Two Quatrains 31 Still Life in Utah 31 Nightmare in North Carolina 32 Nuns 32 Ann Arbor (A Profile) 34 In March 34 After Her Death 35 Apology 35 The Dear Ladies of Cincinnati 37 Opera Piece 37 Sierra Nevada 39 The Grey Land from Reversals (1970) 43 ‘Birth’ 44 Reversals 44 Aubade 45 Sous-entendu 45 On Not Being Able to Look at the Moon 46 Two Love Poems 47 In the House 49 The Spirit Is Too Blunt an Instrument 49 Stabilities 50 The Victory 50 The Suburb 51 The Loss 52 New York 52 The Watchers 53 The Takeover 54 The Unhappened 55 Morning 55 One Sunday 56 England 58 Fen People 58 In Middle England 60 The Return 60 The Mother 61 A River 62 American Rhetoric for Scotland from Travelling Behind Glass: Selected Poems (1974) 67 Siskin 68 Generations 69 At Thirteen 70 Coming Back to Cambridge 72 Theme with Variations 73 Five Poems of Innocence and Experience 73 The Crush 73 The Marriage 73 The Affair 73 The Demolition 75 Old Scholars 76 Travelling Behind Glass 82 On the Edge of the Island Correspondences (1974) 83 Correspondences: A Family History in Letters from Enough of Green (1977) 155 To Write It 155 The Sun Appears in November 156 North Sea off Carnoustie 157 The Exhibition 158 East Coast 158 Fire and the Tide 158 Summer 159 The Bench 159 Boating Pool at Night 159 Winter Flowers 159 The Lighthouse 160 Night Wind, Dundee 160 Aberdeen 161 The Mudtower 162 Path 162 With My Sons at Boarhills 164 By the Boat House, Oxford 164 Ruin 165 Posted 165 Wanted 166 Drought 166 Ragwort 166 The Minister 167 The Doctor 168 Enough of Green 169 A Summer Place 170 People Around 171 Early Rain 171 Respectable House 172 Meniscus 172 Resurrection 173 The Sirens Are Virtuous 175 In the Orchard 175 Cain 176 Temporarily in Oxford 177 The Price 177 Thales and Li Po 178 After the End of It from Minute by Glass Minute (1982) 181 If I Could Paint Essences 182 Buzzard and Alder 182 Burnished (A Riddle) 183 Swifts 184 The Three 185 The Garden 186 Himalayan Balsam 187 At Kilpeck Church 189 Walking Early by the Wye 190 After the Fall 190 Whose Goat? 191 Giving Rabbit to My Cat Bonnie 192 The Fish Are All Sick 193 Pennine 193 Ah Babel 194 From the Men of Letters 195 Small Philosophical Poem 196 He and It (A Pathetic Fantasy) 197 The Figure in the Carpet 198 About Crying 198 Poem for a Daughter 199 The Holly and the Ivy 200 Transparencies 202 Lockkeeper’s Island 204 Earth Station 205 The Man in the Wind 206 Sonnets for Five Seasons 206 This House 206 Complaint 207 Between 207 Statis 208 The Circle from The Fiction-Makers (1985) 211 From an Unfinished Poem 211 The Fiction-Makers 212 Making Poetry 213 Waving to Elizabeth 214 Re-reading Jane 215 The Blue Pool 216 Shale 217 A Dream of Stones 218 Where the Animals Go 219 Musician’s Widow 219 Gannets Diving 220 Ailanthus with Ghosts 221 Two Poems for Frances Horovitz 221 Red Rock Fault 222 Willow Song 224 Demolition 225 A Prayer to Live with Real People 226 Forgotten of the Foot 228 Signs 229 In the Tunnel of Summers 230 Gales 230 Spring Song 231 On Watching a Cold Woman Wade into a Cold Sea 232 Household Gods 233 November 233 Claude Glass 234 Epitaph for a Good Mouser 234 Divorcing 234 Hands 236 Dreaming of the Dead from Winter Time (1986) 239 Jarrow 241 From the Primrose Path 242 This 243 A Love Sequence 244 The Morden Angel 245 Naming the Flowers from The Other House (1990) 249 In the Nursery 249 The Other House 251 Talking Sense to My Senses 251 Elegy 253 What I Miss 253 Inverkirkaig 254 Icon 255 Journal Entry: Impromptu in C Minor 257 North Easter: April, 1986 258 Night Walking with Shadows 259 Night Thoughts and False Confessions 260 And even then 260 Call them Poppies 261 ‘All Canal Boat Cruises Start Here 262 Inquit Deus 263 From the Motorway 264 Stone Fig 265 Cramond 266 Celebrity 267 Eros 268 Three Poems for Sylvia Plath 268 Nightmares, Daymoths 269 Letter to Sylvia Plath 272 Hot Wind, Hard Rain 272 Seven Poems after Francis Bacon 272 1 Study for a Portrait on a Folding Bed 273 2 Study of a Dog 274 3 Three Figures and Portrait 274 4 Seated Figure 275 5 Portrait of a Lady 276 6 Triptych 276 7 Study for a Portrait of Van Gogh 277 Journal Entry: Ward’s Island 279 Little Paul and the Sea 280 Calendar from Four and a Half Dancing Men (1993) 283 Salter’s Gate 284 From My Study 290 Cold 291 Brueghel’s Snow 292 Four and a Half Dancing Men 293 Washing the Clocks 294 Negatives 296 The Professor’s Tale 297 Hans Memling’s Sibylla Sambetha (1480) 297 Politesse 299 A Quest 300 Trinity at Low Tide 301 Visits to the Cemetery of the Long Alive 301 Hadrian’s 301 A Sepia Garden 304 Bloody Bloody 306 Black Hole 307 Lost 307 A Tricksy June 308 To witness pain is a different form of pain 309 Binoculars in Ardudwy 310 When the camel is dust it goes through the needle’s eye 311 Painting It In 312 Late 313 Terrorist 314 Two Poems for John Cole and One for Annabel Cole 314 Dinghy 315 Cambrian 316 After You Left from The Collected Poems 1955-1995 (1996) 318 Occasional verses 318 The Parson and the Romany 319 Ballad of the Made Maid from Granny Scarecrow (2000) I 323 Vertigo 323 Innocence and Experience 324 The White Room 325 A Surprise on the First Day of School 326 Going Back 328 John Keats, 1821–1950 329 Arioso Dolente 331 ‘Love Stories and a Bed of Sand’ II 332 Moonrise 332 Clydie is dead! 334 Incident 334 Suicide 335 Skills 336 An Angel 338 Granny Scarecrow 339 Freeing Lizzie 341 Phoenicurus phoenicurus 342 Pity the Birds 343 Comet 344 The Wrekin 346 False Flowers 347 Kosovo Surprised by Mozart 348 Leaving 349 Old Wife’s Tale 349 On Going Deaf 350 A Luxury 352 Oysters 353 To witness pain is a different form of pain 353 The Theologian’s Confession 354 Whistler’s Gentleman by the Sea III 355 A Parable for Norman 357 Poem for Harry Fainlight 358 Invocation and Interruption 360 A Present 361 The Name of the Worm 363 The Miracle of Camp 60 366 A Ballad for Apothecaries 370 Postscriptum from A Report from the Border (2003) 373 Who’s Joking with the Photographer? 374 The Writer in the Corner 375 Washing My Hair 376 Two Poems for Nerys Johnson 376 Portrait of the Artist in an Orthopaedic Halo Crowned with Flowers 376 Passing Her House 378 Red Hot Sex 379 Haunted 380 Passifloraceae 380 A Marriage 381 Hearing with My Fingers 382 At the Grave of Ezra Pound 383 Skin Deep 384 Cashpoint Charlie 385 A Hot Night in New York 385 New York Is Crying 387 A Cradle of Fist 388 Clovenhoof ’s-bane 388 A Report from the Border 389 Branch Line 390 A Tourists’ Guide to the Fens 391 Carol of the Birds 392 To Phoebe 393 Questionable 393 Prophylactic Sonnets 395 The Inn Some Poems from Cwm Nantcol 396 The Wind, the Sun and the Moon 396 The Unaccommodated 397 Under Moelfre 398 Why Take Against Mythology? (1) 398 Why Take Against Mythology? (2) 399 Attacking the Waterfall 400 Spring Poem 401 Without Me 402 May Bluebells, Coed Aber Artro 403 Green Mountain, Black Mountain from Poems 1955-2005 (2005) 412 A Riddle for Peter Scupham 412 In the Weather of Deciduous Souls 413 An Impenitent Ghost 413 Fool’s Gold 414 17.14 Out of Newcastle 415 It looks so simple from a distance… 416 Four Grim Fairy Tales 416 1 Rapunzel 416 2 Sleeping Beauty 417 3 Was Cinderella Ever Happy? 417 4 If Wishes Were Fishes 418 Christmas Comfort and the Green Man 421 Toy 419 As I Lay Sleeping 420 Killing Spiders 420 Melon meaning melon 421 Toy 422 Variations on a Line by Peter Redgrove from Stone Milk (2007) 424 Prelude from Piers Plowman 425 A Lament for the Makers 447 Near the End of a Day 448 Stone Milk 449 Before Eden 451 The Enigma 452 Waving Goodbye 452 Orcop 453 Inheriting My Grandmother’s Nightmare 454 An Even Shorter History of Nearly Everything 456 Jet Lag 456 City Lights 456 Beach Kites 458 The Blackbird at Pwllymarch from Astonishment (2012) I 461 The Loom 462 Constable Clouds and a Kestrel’s Feather 463 Bird in Hand 464 Teaching My Sons to Swim in Walden Pond 467 Night Thoughts 468 Paper 470 On Line 472 An Exchange in the Time Bank II Sonnets and Variations 473 It’s astonishing 473 Doppler 474 After the Funeral 474 Elegy: In Coherent Light 475 The Miracle of the Bees and the Foxgloves 475 The Master and His Cast 476 Not a Hook, Not a Shelf, Maybe a Song? 476 How it is 477 The Voice 477 Caring More Than Caring 478 Carols in King’s III Ardudwy 479 ‘Wind from the North…’ 480 Night Snow 480 Thaw 481 Spring Diary 481 Arrival Dream 481 Snow Squalls 481 North Easter 482 A Clearer Memory 482 Then like a present 483 On Harlech Beach 484 Drench 484 On Reflection 485 October Song 485 Goat Cull in Cwm Nancol 486 Roses in December IV 487 Photographing Change 488 In the Museum of Floating Bodies and Flammable Souls 488 All Those Attempts in the Changing Room 490 Tulips 492 The Password 493 Five Poems in Memory of a Marriage 493 A Match 493 After Words 493 Hotel New Year 494 Epitaph for a Hedonist 494 A Visit 496 Demeter and Her Daughter 500 Spring Again 500 Notes from Completing the Circle (2020) 507 Preface 511 Saying the World I 512 Anaesthesia 512 Poppy Day 514 Sandi Russell Sings 515 Defeating the Gloom Monster 517 A Dream of Guilt 518 Improvisation 519 Completing the Circle 520 Ann Arbor Days 521 The Day 522 Choose to be a Rainbow II 523 How Poems Arrive 524 Dover Beach Reconsidered 525 The Bully Thrush 526 Winter Idyll from My Back Window 527 Goodbye & Cheers 527 Shared 528 Voice Over 528 Candles 529 A Compensation of Sorts 530 After Wittgenstein 531 Now We Are 80 534 An Old Poet’s View from the Departure Platform III 535 As the Past Passes 535 The Gift Bowl 538 Pronunciation 543 At 85 544 Notes Appendices 546 Index of titles and first lines 557 Selected bibliography 559 Biographical note