This is the first thing
Sinking like sediment through the day
Huge awareness, elbowing vacancy,
Out of the afternoon leans the indescribable woman:
Give me a thrill, says the reader,
But that's not sufficient, unless
For I call the tune in this racket:
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs:
For Sally Amis
Tightly-folded bud,
But if it shouldn't, then
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
But they were fucked up in their turn
Man hands on misery to man.
'This is the first thing'
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood. 'Sinking like sediment through the day'
To leave it clearer, onto the floor of the flask
(Vast summer vessel) settles a bitter carpet –
Horror of life.
Empty inside and out, replaces day.
(Like a fuse an impulse busily disintegrates
Right back to its root.)
'Embrace me, and I shall be beautiful' –
'Be beautiful, and I will embrace you' –
We argue for hours. Fiction and the Reading Public
Give me a kick;
I don't care how you succeed, or
What subject you pick.
Choose something you know all about
That'll sound like real life:
Your childhood, your Dad pegging out,
How you sleep with your wife.
You make me feel good –
Whatever you're 'trying to express'
Let it be understood
That 'somehow' God plaits up the threads,
Makes 'all for the best',
That we may lie quiet in our beds
And not be 'depressed'.
I pay your screw,
Write reviews and the bull on the jacket –
So stop looking blue
And start serving up your sensations
Before it's too late;
Just please me for two generations –
You'll be 'truly great'. Wants
However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flagstaff –
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites,
The costly aversion of the eyes from death –
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs. Born Yesterday
I have wished you something
None of the others would:
Not the usual stuff
About being beautiful,
Or running off a spring
Of innocence and love –
They will all wish you that,
And should it prove possible,
Well, you're a lucky girl.
May you be ordinary;
Have, like other women,
An average of talents:
Not ugly, not good-looking,
Nothing uncustomary
To pull you off your balance,
That, unworkable itself,
Stops all the rest from working.
In fact, may you be dull –
If that is what a skilled,
Vigilant, flexible,
Unemphasised, enthralled
Catching of happiness is called. This Be The Verse
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Edited by Anthony Thwaite
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