W. S. Graham

Sheila, we speak here on the fly Leaf of a book which was myself A good few graves ago. Now I am maintained by other Words for better or for worse To whisper my hello. The seasons turn. Threshold on thresh Hold forms continually and falls Under grief’s lonely hammer. What did you say? I thought between These fly leaf words I heard you speak Out of your Second Summer. The summer chimes and turns its blue Dragon-flying eyes to see We two are not afraid. Hello, Sheila, I can hear Your breath on the other side of the word And see you turn your head.

Lying asleep walking Last night I met my father Who seemed pleased to see me. He wanted to speak. I saw His mouth saying something But the dream had no sound. We were surrounded by Laid-up paddle steamers In The Old Quay in Greenock. I smelt the tar and the ropes. It seemed that I was standing Beside the big iron cannon The tugs used to tie up to When I was a boy. I turned To see Dad standing just Across the causeway under That one lamp they keep on. He recognised me immediately. I could see that. He was The handsome, same age With his good brows as when He would take me on Sundays Saying we’ll go for a walk. Dad, what am I doing here? What is it I am doing now? Are you proud of me? Going away, I knew You wanted to tell me something. You stopped and almost turned back To say something. My father, I try to be the best In you you give me always. Lying asleep turning Round in the quay-lit dark It was my father standing As real as life. I smelt The quay’s tar and the ropes. I think he wanted to speak. But the dream had no sound. I think I must have loved him.

Do not allow me to sink, I said To a top floating ribbon of kelp. As I was lifted on each wave And made to slide into the vale I wanted not to drown. I wanted To make it all right with my dear, To tell my cat I’ll be away, To have them all destroyed, the poems Which were not objects enough on their own Even entertainment value. I wanted Through my saltwater breath to leave A bubble or two in its abstract sphere On the surface of their delicious minds. • Outside the window of the world The midges dance above a bush Making a complex music holding A language for which there is no key. That they are dancing there helps us To communicate even in the negative. • Time’s not funny enough to dash My hopes. I go in wide open To deal with its little team of tenses To try to win myself a stopped Place for an instant while I think. • I have left my place to come to speak To you. Now from this other place Inhabited by the very beast I brace myself to speak with good Tone that will carry. I love you. How does that sound? I was only testing. • Who murmurs me their secret name? Is it you? If you could do that You certainly would be better than me. Who I am, the name I hunt After has so far escaped me. The grammarsow or the waving rook Surely must think of me as somebody. • Ben Narnain was a love of mine, Going up beside the Soordook Burn And bracken and bog-myrtle. The water Ouzel dipped at the pools. The twite The mountain linnet caught the eye. From the top I saw the sword of the long Loch lying in its scabbard of hills. • Ideosyncracies of the way We speak eventually become Currency and only by Art Skip the expanded chest of rhetoric To speak nearly from one to another. • Younger my brash prison of joy Seemed to do me well enough. Now made modern with its new Benefits of experience I can hardly catch a glimpse Of that young sun and tree-top. My cell’s window has risen too high. • Is who’s listening who I guess It is? My dear it is so long Since I held your heart near. I wanted just to speak but now Hearing your little ear I know So well near me I am put off. Anyhow I was only going to try To assail some aspect of Reality. • The blemish is this, I think, I could I would have if I had known I really could but me knowing It maybe too well was not sure What it was I could and the words Were all against me and would not help. • Listening through the microscopes of power I heard a rebec under an olive Sing to me that certainly My wife would leave me and go down To live on the prose plains again. • This is a book. It is blue. Those are pages. They are black and white. That is a famous man. The worms Do not know his name or color. • I am here very much at four A.M. Am I in a deeper night Than you whose eyeballs observe terrible Encounters under your dream’s hill? I am only still up out of sleep Trying to burnish an implement With my mind’s elbow grease to pack In English and send off to you For you to put on the mantlepiece.

Unmet at Euston in a dream Of London under Turner’s steam Misting the iron gantries, I Found myself running away From Scotland into the golden city. I ran down Gray’s Inn Road and ran Till I was under a black bridge. This was me at nineteen Late at night arriving between The buildings of the City of London. And the I (O I have fallen down) Fell in my dream beside the Bank Of England’s wall to be, me With my money belt of Northern ice. I found Eliot and he said yes And sprang into a Holmes cab. Boswell passed me in the fog Going to visit Whistler who Was with John Donne who had just seen Paul Potts shouting on Soho Green. Midnight. I hear the moon Light chiming on St Paul’s. The City is empty. Night Watchmen are drinking their tea, The Fire had burnt out. The Plague’s pits had closed And gone into literature. Between the big buildings I sat like a flea crouched In the stopped works of a watch.

Listen. Put on morning. Waken into falling light. A man’s imagining Suddenly may inherit The handclapping centuries Of his one minute on earth. And hear the virgin juries Talk with his own breath To the corner boys of his street. And hear the Black Maria Searching the town at night. And hear the playropes caa The sister Mary in. And hear Willie and Davie Among bracken of Narnain Sing in a mist heavy With myrtle and listeners. And hear the higher town Weep a petition of fears At the poorhouse close upon The public heartbeat. And hear the children tig And run with my own feet Into the netting drag Of a suiciding principle. Listen. Put on lightbreak. Waken into miracle. The audience lies awake Under the tenements Under the sugar docks Under the printed moments. The centuries turn their locks And open under the hill Their inherited books and doors All gathered to distil Like happy berry pickers One voice to talk to us. Yes listen. It carries away The second and the years Till the heart’s in a jacket of snow And the head’s in a helmet white And the song sleeps to be wakened By the morning ear bright. Listen. Put on morning. Waken into falling light.

What are you going to do With what is left of yourself Now among the rustling Of your maybe best years? This is not an auto-elegy With me pouring my heart Out into where you Differently stand or sit On the Epidaurus steps. What shall I say to myself Having put myself down On to a public page? Where am I going now? And where are you going Tricked into reading Words of my later life? Let me pretend you are Roughly of my age. Are you a boy or a girl? And what has happened to you? Look at the chirping various Leaves of Mr Graham’s Spanking summer. Where are You at? I know my face Has changed. My hair has blanched Into a wrong disguise Sitting on top of my head. Beside each other perched On the Epidaurus steps. Where am I going to go? Shall I rise to follow The thin sound of the goats Tinkling their bells?

1 Gently disintegrate me Said nothing at all. Is there still time to say Said I myself lying In a bower of bramble Into which I have fallen. Look through my eyes up At blue with not anything We could have ever arranged Slowly taking place. Above the spires of the fox Gloves and above the bracken Tops with their young heads Recognising the wind, The armies of the empty Blue press me further Into Zennor Hill. If I half-close my eyes The spiked light leaps in And I am here as near Happy as I will get In the sailing afternoon. 2 Enter a cloud. Between The head of Zennor and Gurnard’s Head the long Marine horizon makes A blue wall or is it A distant table-top Of the far-off simple sea. Enter a cloud. O cloud, I see you entering from Your west gathering yourself Together into a white Headlong. And now you move And stream out of the Gurnard, The west corner of my eye. Enter a cloud. The cloud’s Changing shape is crossing Slowly only an inch Above the line of the sea. Now nearly equidistant Between Zennor and Gurnard’s Head, an elongated White anvil is sailing Not wanting to be a symbol. 3 Said nothing at all. And proceeds with no idea Of destination along The sea bearing changing Messages. Jean in London, Lifting a cup, looking Abstractedly out through Her Hampstead glass will never Be caught by your new shape Above the chimneys. Jean, Jean, do you not see This cloud has been thought of And written on Zennor Hill. 4 The cloud is going beyond What I can see or make. Over up-country maybe Albert Strick stops and waves Caught in the middle of teeling Broccoli for the winter. The cloud is not there yet. From Gurnard's Head to Zennor Head the level line Crosses my eyes lying On buzzing Zennor Hill. The cloud is only a wisp And gone behind the Head. It is funny I got the sea's Horizontal slightly surrealist. Now when I raise myself Out of the bracken I see The long empty blue Between the fishing Gurnard And Zennor. It was a cloud The language at my time's Disposal made use of. 5 Thank you. And for your applause. It has been a pleasure. I Have never enjoyed speaking more. May I also thank the real ones Who have made this possible. First, the cloud itself. And now Gurnard's Head and Zennor Head. Also recognise How I have been helped By Jean and Madron's Albert Strick (He is a real man.) And good words like brambles, Bower, spiked, fox, anvil, teeling. The bees you heard are from A hive owned by my friend Garfield down there below In the house by Zennor Church. The good blue sun is pressing Me into Zennor Hill. Gently disintegrate me Said nothing at all.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations 1 This is only a note This is only a note / To say Echoes the title of William Carlos Williams’s poem, “ This Is Just To Say ” To say This is only a note / To say Echoes the title of William Carlos Williams’s poem, “ This Is Just To Say ” how sorry I am You died You died Bryan Wynter was a friend of Graham’s, and landscape painter (1915-1975). The poem takes both the form of an elegy and a direct address to the deceased Wynter, in the form of a letter (that is, an epistolary poem). . You will realize What a position it puts Me in. I couldn’t really Have died for you if so I were inclined. The carn carn /Foxglove “The Carn” was the name of Wynter’s cottage in the town of Zennor. Carn is an alternate spelling of cairn, a heap of stones used as a landmark or tombstone. A foxglove is a colorful perennial flower, with cup-shaped buds. Foxglove carn /Foxglove “The Carn” was the name of Wynter’s cottage in the town of Zennor. Carn is an alternate spelling of cairn, a heap of stones used as a landmark or tombstone. A foxglove is a colorful perennial flower, with cup-shaped buds. here on the wall Outside your first house Leans with me standing In the Zennor wind Zennor wind A village in Cornwall, on the southwestern coast England, prone to strong winds . Anyhow how are things? Are you still somewhere With your long legs long legs In Graham’s poem “Wynter and the Grammarsow,” he terms Wynter “Sir Longlegged” (line 3). And twitching smile under twitching smile under / Your blue hat Critic Fiona Green notes that these lines “resurrect the closing frame of “Lycidas”: “At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue” (line 192). Milton’s “ Lycidas ” is one of the most famous elegies in the English language. Your blue hat twitching smile under / Your blue hat Critic Fiona Green notes that these lines “resurrect the closing frame of “Lycidas”: “At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue” (line 192). Milton’s “ Lycidas ” is one of the most famous elegies in the English language. walking Across a place? Or am I greedy to make you up Again out of memory? Are you there at all? I would like to think You were all right And not worried about Monica Monica Bryan Wynter’s second wife (née Harman), whom he married in 1959 and the children And not unhappy or bored. 2 Speaking to you and not Knowing if you are there Is not too difficult. My words are used to that. Do you want anything? Where shall I send something? Rice-wine, meanders meanders A type of artwork. One of Wynter’s works at the Tate Gallery in London is titled “Meander I”. In Graham’s poem “Wynter and the Grammarsow,” he calls Wynter “Scholar King / Of rare meanders” (lines 18-19). , paintings By your contemporaries? Or shall I send a kind Of news of no time Leaning against the wall Outside your old house. The house and the whole moor moor In addition to the definition of uncultivated land, a possible play on the verb, meaning to anchor Is flying in the mist. 3 I am up. I’ve washed The front of my face And here I stand looking Out over the top Half of my bedroom window. There almost as far As I can see I see St Buryan’s church tower. St Buryan’s church tower St. Buryan’s is a village in Cornwall. Noted by Sarah Ann Matson as “a greater height than any other church in Cornwall” (St. George and the Dragon[1893]). An inch to the left, behind That dark rise of woods, Is where you used to lurk. 4 This is only a note To say I am aware You are not here. I find It difficult to go Beside Housman’s star Housman’s star / Lit fences In A.E. Housman’s poem “ A Shropshire Lad 52 ” the last stanza reads: “There, by the starlit fences, / The wanderer halts and hears / My soul that lingers sighing / About the glimmering weirs.” Also, Graham wrote similar lines in an earlier poem, “Wynter and the Grammarsow”: “Walker beside the star / Lit fences of Housman (lines 25-26). Lit fences Housman’s star / Lit fences In A.E. Housman’s poem “ A Shropshire Lad 52 ” the last stanza reads: “There, by the starlit fences, / The wanderer halts and hears / My soul that lingers sighing / About the glimmering weirs.” Also, Graham wrote similar lines in an earlier poem, “Wynter and the Grammarsow”: “Walker beside the star / Lit fences of Housman (lines 25-26). without you. And nobody will laugh At my jokes like you. 5 Bryan, I would be obliged If you would scout things out For me. Although I am not Just ready to start out. I am trying to be better I am trying to be better, Matthew Francis annotates this line in New Collected Poems(2004): “ ‘Try to be better’, or ‘TTTB’, was a motto of Graham’s” , Which will make you smile Under your blue hat. I know I make a symbol Of the foxglove Foxglove A foxglove is a colorful perennial flower, with cup-shaped buds. on the wall. It is because it knows you.

1 What does it matter if the words I choose, in the order I choose them in, Go out into a silence I know Nothing about, there to be let In and entertained and charmed Out of their master’s orders? And yet I would like to see where they go And how without me they behave. 2 Speaking is difficult and one tries To be exact and yet not to Exact the prime intention to death. On the other hand the appearance of things Must not be made to mean another Thing. It is a kind of triumph To see them and to put them down As what they are. The inadequacy Of the living, animal language drives Us all to metaphor and an attempt To organize the spaces we think We have made occur between the words. 3 The bad word and the bad word and The word which glamours me with some Quick face it pulls to make me let It leave me to go across In roughly your direction, hates To go out maybe so completely On another silence not its own. 4 Before I know it they are out Afloat in the head which freezes them. Then I suppose I take the best Away and leave the others arranged Like floating bergs to sink a convoy. 5 One word says to its mate O I do not think we go together Are we doing any good here Why do we find ourselves put down? The mate pleased to be spoken to Looks up from the line below And says well that doubtful god Who has us here is far from sure How we on our own tickle the chin Of the prince or the dame that lets us in. 6 The dark companion is a star Very present like a dark poem Far and unreadable just out At the edge of this poem floating. It is not more or less a dark Companion poem to the poem. 7 Language is expensive if We want to strut, busked out Showing our best on silence. Good Morning. That is a bonny doing Of verbs you wear with the celandine Catching the same sun as mine. You wear your dress like a prince but A country’s prince beyond my ken. Through the chinks in your lyric coat My ear catches a royal glimpse Of fuzzed flesh, unworded body. Was there something you wanted to say? I myself dress up in what I can Afford on the broadway. Underneath My overcoat of the time’s slang I am fashionable enough wearing The grave-clothes of my generous masters. 8 And what are you supposed to say I asked a new word but it kept mum. I had secretly admired always What I thought it was here for. But I was wrong when I looked it up Between the painted boards. It said Something it was never very likely I could fit in to a poem in my life. 9 The good word said I am not pressed For time. I have all the foxglove day And all my user’s days to give You my attention. Shines the red Fox in the digitalis grove. Choose me choose me. Guess which Word I am here calling myself The best. If you can’t fit me in To lying down here among the fox Glove towers of the moment, say I am yours the more you use me. Tomorrow Same place same time give me a ring. 10 Backwards the poem’s just as good. We human angels as we read Read back as we gobble the words up. Allowing the poem to represent A recognizable landscape Sprouting green up or letting green With all its weight of love hang To gravity’s sweet affection, Arse-versa it is the same object, Even although the last word seems To have sung first, or the breakfast lark Sings up from the bottom of the sea. 11 The poem is not a string of knots Tied for a meaning of another time And county, unreadable, found By chance. The poem is not a henge Or Easter Island emerged Longnose Or a tally used by early unknown Peoples. The words we breathe and puff Are our utensils down the dream Into the manhole. Replace the cover. 12 The words are mine. The thoughts are all Yours as they occur behind The bat of your vast unseen eyes. These words are as you see them put Down on the dead-still page. They have No ability above their station. Their station on silence is exact. What you do with them is nobody’s business. 13 Running across the language lightly This morning in the hangingover Whistling light from the window, I Was tripped and caught into the whole Formal scheme which Art is. I had only meant to enjoy Dallying between the imaginary And imaginary’s opposite With a thought or two up my sleeve. 14 Is the word? Yes Yes. But I hear A sound without words from another Person I can’t see at my elbow. A sigh to be proud of. You? Me? 15 Having to construct the silence first To speak out on I realize The silence even itself floats At my ear-side with a character I have not met before. Hello Hello I shout but that silence Floats steady, will not be marked By an off-hand shout. For some reason It refuses to be broken now By what I thought was worth saying. If I wait a while, if I look out At the heavy greedy rooks on the wall It will disperse. Now I construct A new silence I hope to break.