The Complete Poems of George Whalley 9780773599703

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THE COMPLETE POEMS OF GE ORG E WHALLEY

Whalley at his desk (courtesy of Queen’s University Archives, a arch v28 p 444)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF G E ORG E WHA L L E Y

EDITED BY MICHAEL JOHN DISANTO

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2016 Poems are reproduced by permission of the Whalley estate. isbn 978-0-7735-4803-9 (cloth) isbn 978-0-7735-9970-3 (epdf) isbn 978-0-7735-9971-0 (epub) Legal deposit third quarter 2016 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of funding received from Algoma University. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Whalley, George, 1915–1983 [Poems] The complete poems of George Whalley / edited by Michael John DiSanto. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. isbn 978-0-7735-4803-9 (hardback). – isbn 978-0-7735-9970-3 (pdf). – isbn 978-0-7735-9971-0 (epub) I. DiSanto, Michael John, 1975–, editor II. Title. III. Title: Poems. ps8545.h24 2016

c811'.54

c2016-902797-x c2016-902798-8

For Katharine, Christopher, and Emily

In memory of Elizabeth Whalley, 1916–2013

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Contents

xv xix xxi li

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction Editorial Procedures The Complete Poems of George Whalley

3 4 5 5 6 7 8 8 9 11 12 13 13 15 16 16 17 19 19 20 21 22

Ode to a College Sausage Homer at Dawn Louisburg The Chase Derelict Dog Watch Fragment Transcendence Hymn to the Moon 20th Century Dedication Testament of Youth (A Sonnet) Vision Desertion Desire In Examination And so it will go on till time is dead Darkness – and the wild, maniac rush Of the hilly road’s adventurous bend The Limitations of Academic Philosophy Modelled upon a German Prayer To Canada

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23 23 26 36 37 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 53 54 55 56 56 57 58 59 59 60 62 62 63 63 64 64 65 66 67 67

Contents

A Smile and a Nod Dove Cottage Unvisited Battle Pattern Behind the Victory Domestic Manifesto Wheat By the River Commandos Embarking Initial Assault – Sicily Aftermath, July 1943 Pilgrim Heart, Turn Homeward The Sound of Bare Feet One night in the darkness Homecoming London after Leave Sitting the Night Out The Messenger The Moon The Devils’ Day Out English Winter W.K.E. Beech Wood Minster Lovell There was no way of telling Portrait You must have found within yourself Das Lebewohl, die Abwesenheit, das Wiedersehen For Elizabeth Now we are both alone and isolate Renunciation Sleep Christmas Eve Winter North Atlantic If Winter Comes This Is Your Music Returning to Sea London, 1944

Contents

68 69 69 73 73 74 75 75 76 77 77 81 82 83 83 84 85 85 85 85 86 87 88 88 89 90 90 91 93 94 95 96 97 97 98 98 99

Q.A.M. It was to be expected he would be young World’s End Metamorphosis The Way Back Storm Seeing Ducks Asleep On Rejoining an Old Ship Strength and peace have come After Santayana Normandy Landing St. James’s Park Normandy 1944 Apple Orchard, Normandy 1944 Epithalamion How the Time Passes Prothalamion The serene ring of the horizon His love did not strike and blind me When this southbound ship comes in The great ship, reeling and rearing With a Sapphire Ring A Girl in Love Peter Emergency Operation Fragment Proud wings from a snow-swept pine forest Canadian Spring We Who Are Left End of Foreign Service Leave Victory in Europe Ships’ sirens cry with ragged melancholy All these I give you, the gentle cunning For the Sweeties April Shower Poetics Punctually to obey, unquestioning

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100 101 102 103 103 105 105 106 107 107 109 110 110 110 111 112 113 114 114 115 116 118 118 119 119 120 121 121 122 123 124 124 124 128 131 133 134

Contents

Variation upon a Seventeenth Century Theme Counterpoint Pray Silence This is how it was the first time Gunboat Sortie Candlelight works such a miracle Alan Gateling Dad Covenant with Death Five Years Landscape with Rain: Schwarzwald Music has two lives Music goes out at the fingers Four Freedoms Dunster Cabot Strait It never seems to be summer in a ship Pick-up Morning Watch Thalamion Toro J.W. Anniversary Rotterdam Action Stations Prayer for the Living Sicilian Vignette Take out of my heart Discharged: Services No Longer Required Rondo Exegi Monumentum One of your letters held the germ of a poem Seascape Letter from Lagos Dieppe Meditation on Tower Hill To R.G.

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135 135 136 136 136 137 137 140 141 142 143 144 144 145 145 145 146 146 147 148 148 150 150 151 153 154 154 155 155 156 156 156 157 157 158 159 159

Walker After it’s all over, whatever the crisis Adam Lyric In black, with a white Chief Undertow Death by Drowning Clerk in Underground The Silver Cord Priest among the Dandelions Anima Poetae (after Coleridge) Annapolis Nightfall I wonder what it’s like Night brings back the ships Today, he thought, the office won’t be fun Wedlock Is So Esy and So Clene Beaky, aetat 77 Hooded Eagle Those who have no love of life die After Giordano Bruno National Anathema Alchemical Retort: Recipe for a National Flag Ubi Thesaurus Ibi Cor Her cheeks were plump and rosy What was not said and never can now be said Go littel boke, go littel my tragedy Three Years After There are other centres than cities and governments Barrenness comes on my pen The sea may pick my bones Grim and sulky beauty When what you wanted has not been had Poem Death of a Bird The stark clarity of starlight This is the self-created tragedy of the world

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161 162 163 165 165 166 167 168 168 169 169 169 170 170 171 171 172 173 174 174 178 178 180 180 180 182 183 183 184 184 184 184 185 185 185 186 186

Contents

Christmas Eve Hatasis Super Flumina Hodie tibi, cras mihi The spear and thrust of bud and blossom Biology Exhibitions Utopia 1948 The high whirr of and wings and shadow When the books are balanced Penelope of the white hands and the bright eyes How shall I break this chaotic shell of silence Suddenly the veil of self-pity lifted and I felt How pitifully transitory, small, imperfect seems We must go Dawn comes in inexorable beauty The flower unfolds Night Flight Runaway Me, driven through minefields, with a quartering Elegy If it must be an affair of drowning, let it be This death was cruel certainly Gyro How shall I say, having come this far Lazarus Ploughed and harrowed with cries of drowning Raising a hand to my forehead Spindrift of spindle-shank children Though inland, though far The rest may rest as best they lost Wheel dove, wheel eagle, gyre skylark When we were younger and loving I do not know these men I would come to a point in timelessness Myth, that ganglion of symbols Veronica There’s nothing for it but drop an anchor there

Contents

188 190 190 191 192 193 195 195 196 196 198 199 200 203 203 204 204 205 205 207 207 208 209 211 212 213 213 215 215 216 216 217 219 220 220 221 222

When we set out, there was little gear to muster And this befell and that happened You are here, auburn-headed and slender Admonishment Dionysiac How very odd to miss the bus Not at bidding nor commanding O World, O Word But where in all this world is Eden? Where is any garden? Affair of Honour Memorial A Minor Poet Is Visited by the Muse Calligrapher Twenty years ago – on the bridge The Sage A House Divided After a certain age all of us, good and bad, are grief-stricken How shall I say I love thee Pig Saint Francis’ cloak praises Flowering of an Ancient Reticence I came into life and now am leaving it Autumn Was Never So Late I washed my hair As a smiling 50-year old Absence Turn the key on this room Cosmogony Like an abandoned railway station when A seagull in a lilac tree Song My heart is not here in the pages O All Shall Be Well In winter sunlight on the open street To Mr W.H. All Happiness Woburn Square

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Contents

223 223 224 225 226 226 227

Southampton Row The full moon lost behind cloud This silver turned yellow The voice of the wind making snow Thaw-water and thaw-wind I wore a khaki shirt and red tie There’s a wise woman who knows

229 262 287 288 290 292

Textual Notes Explanatory Notes Appendix 1: Contents of Poems 1939–1944 Appendix 2: Contents of No Man an Island Appendix 3: Pages That End with the Last Line of a Stanza Index of Titles and First Lines

Acknowledgments

Elizabeth Whalley twice welcomed me into her home in Southwold, Suffolk. She was very generous with her time and in sharing her memories with me. She gave me a space, physical and intellectual, in which to work. With the assistance of her daughter Emily Whalley, she allowed me to read her husband’s private papers. I regret that this book was not completed before her death in February 2013. The Whalley children and their families have been generous and helpful. Katharine and William Clark allowed me to visit with them and gave me copies of private correspondence and other papers. Christopher Whalley spoke with me about his father and encouraged me in my work. Emily Whalley and Nicholas Pratt have been helpful during my visits to Southwold. Emily made copies of her father’s poetry papers, composition records, and other materials that allowed me to launch on this endeavour. For permitting me to see private documents, letters, photographs, and books, and for making copies of those items I needed to study in detail, I thank Janet Speight, Michael Whalley, and Tiemo Brand. Heather Jackson, who has acted informally as literary executor at Elizabeth Whalley’s request, has repeatedly given me important guidance. The archivists in Queen’s University Archives have made me feel at home during my several visits to study the materials in the George Whalley Fonds. Their assistance and advice have been invaluable. I am grateful to Paul Banfield, Heather Home, Jeremy Heil, and Deirdre Bryden. Rick Stapleton and the staff in the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections at McMaster University have been generous with their time and space. Anna Grant in the Bishop’s University Archives helped me track down Whalley’s earliest publications in The Mitre. The

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staff at Library and Archives Canada has been helpful in answering my questions, making my visit to Ottawa productive, and providing copies of papers for me to study. R. Drew Griffith and Michael Cummings in the Department of Classics, Queen’s University, assisted with the translations of Latin and Greek. Alana Fletcher and Jennifer Hardwick completed much work in Queen’s University Archives that materially contributed to this edition. Courtney Mathison, Samantha Koshowski, and Kathleen Oliver, during internships funded by the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, assisted in proofreading and preparing this book. Stacey Devlin and Emily Andersen, research assistants at Algoma University, have contributed in numerous ways. There are many people who have directly and indirectly influenced my thoughts about George Whalley and the making of this book. I thank them here. Hanna has loved and supported me. Above all, she has been patient when my attention drifted back to this work at times it ought to have been elsewhere. Elaina called me to play, draw and paint, read and write, perhaps sensing that I needed a distraction before I knew it. This book was made while listening to her laugh and sing. Brian Crick gave me the idea to read and think about Whalley, first when I was an undergraduate student at Brock University and then again more than a decade later. My conversations with him have given me direction both when I knew I needed it and when I didn’t. While I studied at Dalhousie University, John Baxter kept Whalley’s ideas alive in my mind. John Ferns and Don Adams gave me their copies of Whalley’s essays and books when I was making a start on this work. They also read a typescript of the poems and gave me comments to help make it better. Ian Robinson helped me to correct some inaccuracies and suggested additions in the endnotes. John Salciccioli assisted in the initial work undertaken in Queen’s University Archives that allowed me to get underway. Robin Isard and Rick Scott, in the Wishart Library at Algoma University built the website at http://georgewhalley.ca. Robin built the database that underpins all of my current work. Anne Beaupre and Carol Wright, in the Wishart Library, have filled my interlibrary loan requests with great efficiency.

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Zailig Pollock, through his published work but, more importantly, through the conversations and correspondence I’ve had with him, has given me important advice and the example of his good humour. Christopher Doody helped me to obtain copies of materials at Library and Archives Canada. The poems and the quotations from Whalley’s public and private papers are published by permission of the Whalley Estate. Materials in archives are reproduced by permission of Queen’s University Archives, Library and Archives Canada (mg31 d95, vol. 14, file 9), and the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University Library. The poems “I wore a khaki shirt and red tie” and “There’s a wise woman who knows” are reprinted by permission of Bob Hilderley of Quarry Press. The work on this edition has been funded by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, Editing Modernism in Canada, and Algoma University.

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Abbreviations

cpm gwr kwcp lac m ms qq qua ts weps wept

Canadian Poetry Magazine George Whalley: Remembrances, edited by Michael Moore (Kingston, on: Quarry Press 1989) Katharine Whalley Clark Papers, McBride, bc Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa The Mitre (Bishop’s University) Whalley Estate manuscript Queen’s Quarterly Queen’s University Archives, Kingston, on Whalley Estate typescript Whalley Estate Papers, Southwold, England Whalley Estate Papers, Toronto

Abbreviations of George Whalley’s Published Works, Manuscripts, Typescripts, and Diaries 39–45ts 43–44ts bb cc cpgw diii div

“Poems 1939–1945,” ts, 27 May 1945, loc #1032c, box 16, file 33, qua “Poems 1939–1944,” wept “Blue Book,” ms, weps “A Critique of Criticism: Prolegomena to the Study of Poetic Process,” master’s thesis, Bishop’s University, 1948 The Collected Poems of George Whalley, edited by George Johnston (Kingston, on: Quarry Press 1986) Diary III, 1935, weps Diary IV, 1936–1938, weps

xx

Abbreviations

dv dix ljh nmai nmaits ocg pp

p39–44 slh

weopts

Diary V, 1938, weps Diary IX, 1946, weps The Legend of John Hornby (Toronto: Macmillan 1962) No Man an Island (Toronto: Clarke & Irwin 1948) No Man an Island, ts, n.d., loc #1032c, box 16, file 30, qua Introduction to “The Old Crane of Gort: Selected Essays 1947–1972,” ts, n.d. loc #5043, box 1, file 2, qua Poetic Process: An Essay in Poetics (New York: Meridian Books 1967). First published, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1953 Poems 1939–1944 (Toronto: Ryerson Press 1946) Innocence of Intent: Studies in Literature and the Humanities, edited and introduced by Brian Crick and John Ferns (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1985) “World’s End and Other Poems,” ts, n.d., loc #1032c, box 16, file 35, qua

Introduction

I find it an exciting adventure to write a verse, because, working on a principle that an idea shapes itself, I never quite know how it will end. George Whalley1

George Whalley (25 July 1915–27 May 1983) was an eminent Canadian man of letters: scholar, poet, naval officer and secret intelligence agent during World War II, leading expert on the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, cbc scriptwriter and broadcaster, musician, biographer, and translator.2 His published work reveals a mind of remarkable critical intelligence sensitively attuned to the tragic in art and life. Glimpses into his life are found in the rare autobiographical reflections in some of his essays and in the accounts written by his family, friends, acquaintances, and students.3 He wrote a great number of personal and professional letters, and a large quantitiy of them are extant. Seeing all of these sources together with his unpublished writings, military records, and other materials, one begins to grasp the rhythms of his life, current of his thoughts, and depth of his feelings. He was a thoughtful and well-spoken man, yet for all his gifts of speech he was anything but loquacious. His eloquence was countered by his privacy and reticence.4 Whalley was, as Michael Ondaatje has said, “a halfstranger to most of those around him” (gwr 121). Despite having “become a legend in his own lifetime,” as he once wrote of John Hornby – another man known for his silences – Whalley will be a stranger to some who read this collection (ljh 5). To begin, a brief overview of his life is in order. Evidence of his exceptional achievements is found at every

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stage of his life, from his boyhood to his university studies, his military service to his academic career. Here I have chosen to focus on events with an eye to the poems in this book. Descended from a line of Anglican ministers – his father became the dean of Nova Scotia – Whalley was from the time he was a child deeply immersed in the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. He admired and respected both books his whole life. From the age of seven, he attended St Alban’s School in Brockville, Ontario, where he excelled. By the time he was thirteen, he was the junior athletic champion, the librarian, and the editor of the school paper. A year later he wrote the junior matriculation exams for McGill University, including perfect papers in algebra and geometry. He was adventurous, swimming across the St Lawrence River when he was twelve and often sailing with his brothers.5 A fascination with ships and the sea remained with him to the end of his life. It strongly coloured his deep appreciation for books of exploration, the poems of ships by Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Masefield, and E.J. Pratt, and the early novels of the sea by Joseph Conrad. Beginning with his earliest published poems, written while he was an undergraduate, he repeatedly returns to this theme. Having already begun “to learn Latin at about seven and Greek a couple of years later,” Whalley studied classics at Bishop’s University, and all of that “training provided a confident craftsmanship in handling language” that became a foundation for his lifetime of thought regarding language as an instrument of inquiry, both shaping and shaped by the individuals who use it.6 He was active in a number of extracurricular activities, displaying a boundless energy. While he played on the intermediate rugby team that won the Quebec intercollegiate championship, he was also the organist in the university chapel. After graduating in 1935, he taught for a year at Rothesay College School in New Brunswick, and left when he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship. This honour fulfilled a dream held by his father, who had nearly won the scholarship some years before. For the next three years Whalley attended Oriel College, Oxford. Initially he studied “Greats” but switched to theology in the second year after he was seriously injured in a car crash. His athleticism once again proved itself, this time in rowing. Reflections on teammates, practices, and competitions pervade his diary from that period. He became Oriel College’s

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captain of boats and rowed in Oriel’s record-breaking coxwainless IV in the Henley rowing regatta of 1938. A love of exploration and nature led him to pursue opportunities to join geographic and scientific expeditions. It is also worth noting, especially in light of his later decision to volunteer to go to war in 1940, that he made a walking tour of Germany in the fall of 1937 and witnessed a Hitler Youth meeting. While in England, Whalley was often at St Nicholas House, 22 Tower Hill, London, in the company of the Reverend George Moore, a man who had worked closely with Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout movement.7 With Moore and the Lord Mayor’s Own Scouts, 1st City of London, Whalley continued his work in the Scout movement that had begun many years before. When he returned to Canada, he went back to Rothesay College for a year and then enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve on 1 July 1940. He was almost immediately seconded to the Royal Navy. Much of Whalley’s wartime experience remains clouded in secrecy. He was not permitted to keep diaries, though he did record a few events.8 Some details emerge from his military records.9 Others can be inferred from the many poems he wrote about the war. From the summer of 1940 until March 1941, he trained ashore at hms King Alfred and hms Dolphin and at sea aboard hms Cutty Sark. He was assigned with the rank of sub-lieutenant to hms Tartar and at the end of May 1941 participated in the pursuit and sinking of the German battleship Bismarck. That battle is represented in the magnificent seven-part poem “Battle Pattern” and a few smaller pieces. One day later, on 28 May 1941, the Tartar and its sister ship, the hms Mashona, were repeatedly attacked by German bombers. The Mashona was stricken. Whalley leaped into the water to save three seamen who had escaped from the sinking ship. He rescued one of the three, for one man was already dead and another died before Whalley could pull him back to the Tartar. For his bravery he was awarded a Royal Humane Society Bronze Medal. By July 1941 the commanding officer of the Tartar recognized Whalley’s superior abilities and had him transferred to the Admiralty in London. He was promoted to lieutenant. After two months of selecting personnel for technical training, he was sent to the Naval Intelligence Division. From September 1941 to March 1943 he had several assignments, some of which are known. He planned

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and implemented cross-channel intelligence operations to Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France using motor gunboats to land and retrieve agents. “Gunboat Sortie” tells of one such mission. Whalley tested existing surfboats and developed new boat designs for use in secret intelligence operations and wrote a book for the Admiralty reporting the findings. (He also saved two men from drowning in the surf during the tests.) He invented an acoustic beacon, code-named the fh830, which was deployed by submarines to mark landing points for Operation Husky – the Sicily landings – and minesweeper routes in Operation Overlord – the Normandy landings.10 Following this assignment, Whalley served until July 1943 in the Mediterranean on the staff of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey. “Commandos Embarking,” “Initial Assault – Sicily,” and a few other pieces are connected with this time. He trained personnel to use the fh830 and its receiver device. For the next nine months into the spring of 1944, he was assigned to the Admiralty ddod(i) – Deputy Director Operations Division (irregular) – and also worked part-time in the dmwd – Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development. He travelled to Washington in 1943 and 1944 “to correlate surf-landing predictions with long-range weather-forecasting” and was engaged in “production work on wavesuppression gear” in preparation for the Allied invasion of Normandy. During the invasion he was off the coast of France aboard the hms Ceres as the assistant to the executive officer, recording his impressions of unfolding events in the diary-like “Normandy Landing.” For much of the time from October 1944 to April 1945 he was involved in officer training courses. While living in London, Whalley met Elizabeth Watts, who was working in the Admiralty office responsible for designing and bestowing honours. Both had rooms in Chelsea’s historic Cheyne Walk, George at 94 and Elizabeth at 97. They married on 25 July 1944, Whalley’s twentyninth birthday.11 They would have three children over the next decade: Katharine (b. 1947) Christopher (b. 1949), and Emily (b. 1953). After his promotion to lieutenant commander, Whalley returned to Canada and from April 1945 to August 1945 was the first lieutenant of the hmcs Chaudière and then of the hmcs Saskatchewan. In July he received an unexpected offer from Bishop’s University of a lecturer’s position in the English Department, though he did not have a degree in English. His

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education in literature did not come from a university alone but was extended by his extensive reading during the war. His diaries and notebooks are full of passages he transcribed from Chaucer, Marlowe, Milton, Shakespeare, Blake, Emily Brontë, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Hardy, Conrad, Lawrence, and Yeats, among many others. At Bishop’s, Whalley earned a master’s degree in English by completing a thesis entitled “A Critique of Criticism: Prolegomena to the Study of Poetic Process” in 1948. Though appeals are made to Alfred North Whitehead and other philosophers throughout, the inspiration for Whalley’s argument may have come from reading T.S. Eliot’s essays, to which he often refers. Eliot declares that “literary criticism should be completed by criticism from a definite ethical and theological standpoint.”12 Taking the hint, Whalley substitutes metaphysics and proceeds to build from there. Five years later he completed Poetic Process: An Essay in Poetics, a revised and expanded version of the thesis. Central to the book are some ideas Whalley continued to develop into his mature thought of the 1970s, such as “art is discovered and realizes itself in the making” (xviii); the “poet is transfigured by his art” (xxii); and “art claims to start from a peculiarly powerful kind of knowing; art claims to engage the whole person and to make the person whole” (10). He also first articulates his view of criticism as a getting-to-know, a heuristic process in which literature is an instrument of inquiry (xxi). Arrangements were made for Whalley to pursue his doctorate on Coleridge at the University of Toronto, but Bishop’s University was unable to find a suitable candidate to step in during his leave. A year later he went to King’s College, London, and though he received assurances sufficient to expect he was welcome to return to Bishop’s, a change in the administration meant the loss of his position. Queen’s University reaped the benefits: after completing his dissertation in 1950, Whalley joined the faculty and was integral to the life of the institution and the Kingston community for the next thirty years. He was a member of the congregation at St George’s Cathedral and often played its pipe organ with joy, though he did not regularly attend in later years after he and Elizabeth moved to a house in Hartington north of Kingston. His critical and biographical study Coleridge and Sara Hutchinson and the Asra Poems was published in 1955, a year before he retired from the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve with the rank of commander.

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Whalley was a talented amateur pianist, having learned to play and sight-read music in childhood. He loved music.13 Throughout his letters and diaries one reads the names of the composers and the works he listened to and played. In 1939 he had met with Sir Hugh Allen about studying at the Royal College of Music in London and was to take lessons from Bernard Naylor. After World War II he made inquiries at University of Toronto about possibly pursuing a career as a concert pianist, but the disruptions of the war had stiffened his technique. He continued to play; students who visited his house in the 1970s recall him sight-reading Bach’s Goldberg Variations and other pieces. He was the president of the Kingston Symphony for seven years starting in 1963. He brought the celebrated Vaghy Quartet to Queen’s University in 1968. From 1947 to 1971, Whalley often contributed to radio by giving talks on poetry, adapting books for broadcast, and narrating various pieces.14 One of his earliest works is “Death in the Barren Ground,” the first published expression of his interest in Edgar Christian – whose diary he read in 1938 soon after it was published in England with the title Unflinching – and in John Hornby. The success of the radio drama inspired him to write The Legend of John Hornby (1962). In the 1960s he worked closely with the cbc radio producer John Reeves. Among their many collaborations are at least two works that were groundbreaking in the period: If This Is a Man (1965), an adaptation of Primo Levi’s harrowing account of his experience in a concentration camp, and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1966), an adaptation of the narrative and photographic account of the daily lives of sharecroppers in the American South by James Agee and Walker Evans. At the end of the 1960s, Whalley’s time was taken up with editing Coleridge’s Marginalia for the Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge under the general editorship of Kathleen Coburn. By June 1969 his translation of Aristotle’s Poetics was all but complete, and though he shared copies with his students, it was not published in his lifetime.15 His temporary separation from Elizabeth in the early 1970s was a difficult period, and his first fight against stomach cancer, from which he never fully recovered, slowed him down at the end of the decade. To concentrate on finishing the Marginalia, he relinquished the responsibility for editing Coleridge’s poetry to James Mays and postponed his plans to write a definitive intellectual biography of Coleridge. In 1980, as he retired from

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the university, both the first volume of the Marginalia and Death in the Barren Ground: The Diary of Edgar Christian were published. But his illnesses and untimely death left his desire to write an autobiography unfulfilled. Collections of his essays and poems, like the translation of Aristotle, were completed by others who admired him. And yet in the 1970s, when he was in his late fifties and early sixties, Whalley wrote a series of public talks and essays, among them “Picking Up the Thread” and “Literature: An Instrument of Inquiry,” that belong to a tradition in the English essay reaching back to Samuel Johnson. Whalley rediscovered – and in his own distinct style, made anew – a way of knowing language and literature that moved against the current of the times. At the time of writing the introduction to Poetic Process, he already knew “that in studying poetic activities system and technique must be renounced; the method, the line of approach, wants to be heuristic, an alert way of open-minded seeking which does not prejudge either the nature of the materials or the final issue; an attitude of discovering, a rigorous and delicate sense of relevance” (xxi). This conviction became in his later writings the firm foundation of his criticism of language, literature, education, and life. An unwavering sense of the integrity of the individual in persons and in works of literature (the latter encompassed in his use of the word poetry) informs his arguments that balance the life of the language with the lives of the people who realize their being in it. “Words have lives of their own,” and “yet behind every utterance there is a person. It is not simply the words that mean; it is a person who means” (slh 82).16 Whalley thus answers the positions of his structuralist and poststructuralist contemporaries implicitly in articulating the place of poetry and the humanities in the modern world. Through his deft perceptions of the value of literature in relation to life, he enjoins others to learn respect for language as an instrument to inquire with; to enjoy things that they know have no ulterior use, to respect what they cannot hope to understand, to value those things that are strangely unlike themselves or remote from their (often unexamined) view of life. For it is salutary to find in works that we could not conceivably have made ourselves the substance of our own nature, and to find in such commanding presences and exhilarating liberation – if only momentary – from the oppressive circularity of our

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own personal limitations, the squalor of our desires, the stifling selfpreoccupation that we are often told is the necessary condition of modern man. Literature has this effect because by its very nature it is the opposite of an escape: imagination is a realising-process, making the world real, making us real. (slh 199) Whalley’s distinctive speech and eloquent prose are rich evidence of the maxim that “the style is the man himself.”17

When Whalley began writing verse is yet unknown. He wrote at least 250 poems and published seventy-five. His earliest known publication was in April 1933, when he was a seventeen-year-old undergraduate student at Bishop’s. An unknown amount of his early work is lost because he burned it. On 20 January 1939 he wrote in his diary, “This evening a great weeding out and destruction of old verses – most of it incredibly bad. One or two of the later ones seem worth keeping and the old one from a point of interest” (div 188). There is no indication that he ever repeated the conflagration. He completed many poems in the 1940s, though he published less than he wrote, and among them are some fine pieces about the Second World War.18 In the three decades that followed, he finished fewer poems, but the documentary record of his writing process, deliberate and exacting, is extensive. The last piece he published appeared in January 1967, during the final year of his first term as the chair of the Department of English at Queen’s University. He continued to write poems but not to publish; the latest extant manuscript is dated 9 March 1982, fifteen months before his death. He wrote verse for half a century, and though some of it is excellent, especially the pieces that “have a sincerity in their simplicity, the honesty of a man who has […] felt deeply and observed with quiet care,” his poetry is relatively unknown.19 The two collections he published were completed while he was at Bishop’s just after the war. In 1946 eighteen poems were published in Poems 1939–1944, the 116th volume of the Ryerson chapbook series. In 1948 a larger collection, No Man an Island, containing forty-two poems (ten of which appeared in the previous book) was published by Clarke, Irwin, and Company. The title is taken from John Donne’s “Devotion

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XVII.” The book is divided into three sections, each headed with an epigraph by Chaucer, T.S. Eliot, and André Gide, respectively. No other collection appeared in his lifetime. The verses he published in the 1950s and 1960s are scattered in periodicals, small books, and anthologies. In the 1970s, George Johnston, Whalley’s friend for more than a decade, encouraged him to assemble a new collection. After a visit to Ottawa to receive an honourary degree from Carleton University, a celebration of Whalley’s many accomplishments that Johnston did much to arrange, Whalley tells Johnston that he has begun “to put together a little volume of uncollected poems.”20 With the demands on his time arising from chairing the Department of English for a second term and bringing the volumes of Coleridge’s Marginalia to press, the work did not proceed quickly. It was certainly interrupted in early 1979 by Whalley’s first struggle with cancer and the long recovery from the surgery that prolonged his life. He did not abandon the idea. In a letter he tells his daughter Katharine that Gary Geddes, who had that year founded Quadrant Editions at Concordia University, “has asked me if I have a ms for him and I haven’t answered yet even though Michael Ondaatje phoned on his behalf to urge me to get a move on.”21 Two weeks later he asks Johnston whether to send a manuscript or look for a different publisher.22 The collection of poems remained unfinished when he lost his second struggle with cancer. Shortly after Whalley’s death, Johnston began assembling his friend’s poems to honour the man he considered foremost a poet. The Collected Poems of George Whalley, published by Quarry Press in 1986, contains all of the pieces in Whalley’s two postwar books and some of those that appeared elsewhere. It also includes eighteen poems taken from Whalley’s private papers. The book was praised by a number of reviewers who recognized the value of Whalley’s work. David Lewis calls Whalley “one of Canada’s most distinguished poets” and sees in the “unassuming” character of his achievement a lesson for “contemporary poets” to “concentrate rather on the quality of what they publish than the quantity” (730, 731). John Baxter argues “the poems are an important contribution to Canadian literature that should be more widely known,” but since then the poems have not been reprinted and are not often included in anthologies.23

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Whalley was aware of and sensitive to the neglect of his poems. In the previously unpublished “How very odd to miss the bus,” he reflects on the place of his poems in Canadian literature. The single extant manuscript of that poem is undated. It was likely written when he was fortythree,24 after he saw that he was excluded from the 1958 edition of The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, edited by Ralph Gustafson.25 The poem appears to have been composed in one sitting: there is but one correction in the whole. Irritation and self-deprecation are woven into what is both a critical self-assessment and a damning evaluation of the academic and cultural world of which he was a part and yet from which he stood apart. Whalley sees himself as Bluntly excluded from collections Of poets not more competent but younger Whose poems comprise selections From wit too recent for my hunger. (ll. 5–8)26 He thinks his poems are different in kind for three reasons. First, he is “not schooled in the correct / Graduate school that makes a thing of / Making its poems from its poetry” (ll. 14–16). Unlike the work of those who did not go to war, his writing is inflected by his war experience, which makes it harder for him to force a way into the “pigeonhole” (l. 4) of contemporary Canadian poetry: It’s better perhaps not to have seen War or loved in war or after Or ever to have pitied man’s obscene Brutality deep as the sea and hollow as laughter. (ll. 17–20) As a result of his experience, his poems “disclose unimaginable fields / Of thought and feeling a little outside the books” (ll. 23–4) – unimaginable, that is, to those whose sense of life is derived from books. His writing does not reproduce the expected conventions. “Being naïve” (l. 14), he has missed the bus, and as a result his “accent is not the dialogue of the tribe, / well-known for learned books not published yet” (ll. 25–6). He imagines one of his critics acknowledging, grudgingly, that he is “A poet – yes, of a sort, but of course / his poet’s sense is seen more clearly

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/ Not in his verse but in his prose” (ll. 27–9), and then adds, as if in an aside, “But not the prose he prizes” (l. 30). He closes by raising questions about who he is and how he is known: “A poet? No. A scholar – too light-hearted. / A teacher? Too evasive by a mile” (ll. 39–40). That only leaves “a name” (l. 40), presumably the one at the centre of the then already growing legend of which he was certainly aware, that attributed to him various feats like racing in the Monaco Grand Prix, defying the orders of admirals and captains to save drowning German sailors, and being a source for the character of James Bond. Written a few years later, the poem “My heart is not here in the pages” may be read as a counterpart to “How very odd to miss the bus” – lacking the latter’s anger, instead raising questions about the relationship between a man and his writings. It is a warning to “youthful sages” (l. 3) that echoes, albeit with a gentleness lacking in “The Tables Turned,” Wordsworth’s idea that “Our meddling intellect / Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things; / – We murder to dissect” (ll. 26–8).27 Saying that there is for him “work that is not set out / for youth to mark with red / pencil” (ll. 14–16), Whalley dissociates himself from the analytical methodologies prevalent in modern intellectual movements: Do not ask me to go with tweezers, scalpel and knife; to find in the vision the thing that men call beauty for want of expressing their wonder; to strive with the mind and the hand till the essence will breathe and live in a philosophical phrase which no critic can assail, in a universal formula good till the world’s end. (ll. 34–44) These poems deserve some attention because Whalley very rarely reflects in this way on his relationship with the academic and literary establishment. He usually refrained from commenting on the various schools of thought coming into being in his time in the university, though in the introduction to “The Old Crane of Gort: Selected Essays 1947−1972,” a

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collection of his essays he proposed to publish in the 1970s, he did write, “It may be that certain material forces and some imperial longings have since the thirties nudged literary criticism towards being aggressive, combative, schematic, scientific, authoritarian; perhaps the apotheosis of ‘scientific’ method and the cult of ‘research’ in universities has tended quietly to canonize whatever in criticism looked like ‘definitive findings’ or ‘conclusions’ or instruments of power or manipulative keys to the mysteries. If that is so, I do not wish to change much with the times” (ocg 2–3). Whalley’s poetry has not been given a place in Canadian literature alongside the works of his contemporaries. He was sceptical of the experimentation in verse and also distrusted the emerging Canadian nationalism of mid-century. That he did not participate in these developments partly explains the lack of attention his poetry has received. Tellingly, at a poetry reading during which he spoke after his former student D.G. Jones, Whalley differentiated their styles by suggesting the audience was about to hear the “Beethoven after the Bartok or the Sweelink after the Stravinsky […] medieval sonorities after the sharp ironies of youth.”28 He did not object to modern experimentation tout court – he greatly admired Bartok’s piano concertos and string quartets – but he knew his poems harmonized with the earlier English modernism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries instead of the later modernism of his Canadian contemporaries. In the opening of the introduction to The Collected Poems of George Whalley, Johnston declares “for many of us [Whalley] was first and last a poet” (1). In his review of the book, Baxter says “it is easy to sympathize with this remark” and, noting that Whalley “used the term ‘poet’, as well as ‘poem’ and ‘poetry,’ in a generously inclusive sense,” he recognizes “there may be an ultimate justice in claiming him as a poet, first and last” (496). Though Baxter acknowledges at the end of the review that Whalley did not “regard prose as the antithesis of poetry” and that his poetry “is in many ways prose-like” (510), he allows “it is useful to distinguish the poet from the critic, and the publication of The Collected Poems makes it easier to draw the distinction” (496). Reading a collection of Whalley’s poems makes it more rather than less difficult to draw distinctions. Contrary to the suggestion of one reviewer, the verses are not “adjunctive” to his life.29 Familiar elements of Whalley’s prose style are

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present in his verse, and ideas he grappled with appear in his verse before and alongside his published essays. To imagine there is a Whalley the poet and a Whalley the scholar is misleading. Instead, one can take up the thread found in Christopher Whalley’s remembrance of his father: “The qualities of acuity and discipline which exemplified his work ran through everything he did. He was integrated to the extent that he operated from a single worthy core, and all his efforts contributed to evolving that core. […] His long attention to thought and language had produced a remarkable proficiency which was very central, and the quality of expression which it maintained was consistent” (gwr 187–8). For Whalley, speaking and writing are in harmony. The best passages in his verse are akin to the best passages in his prose, and common threads run through both. The simplicity and clarity in language and thought – the lack of sophistication, over-elaboration, and ornamentation – is consistent. The extant recordings of Whalley and the testimonies of those who knew him substantiate his son’s claims regarding the lack of difference in Whalley’s speaking and writing.30 This characteristic is reminiscent of Samuel Johnson, a man whose integrity and singleness his contemporaries noted. When Whalley returned to Canada and began his brief repeat sojourn at Bishop’s, he entered into an intense period of composition – drafting new and refining recently written poems in preparation for Poems 1939–1944 (1946) and No Man an Island (1948); publishing his first works of literary criticism for periodicals, “The Poet and his Reader” (1947), “The Mariner and the Albatross” (1947), and “The Metaphysical Revival” (1948); and writing a master’s thesis, “A Critique of Criticism” (1948), which was transformed into Poetic Process: An Essay in Poetics (1953).31 The artistic and critical works are intertwined chronologically: one can easily imagine Whalley typing a final draft of “Battle Pattern” in the morning and turning to “The Mariner and the Albatross” in the afternoon. And yet the writing in the verse is arguably more akin to his mature style than is his prose of this period. “The Poet and his Reader” and “The Metaphysical Revival” revisit and rework ideas he found in T.S. Eliot’s essays, and his prose is generally Eliotic (the latter takes its start from Eliot’s 1921 essay “The Metaphysical Revival”). In this period Whalley, much like F.R. Leavis up to and including the 1940s, was under the

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sway of Eliot.32 He used a passage from Eliot’s “The Dry Salvages,” the third part of Four Quartets, as an epigraph to the second part of No Man an Island. (It is a poem of water and the sea, but Whalley does not call Eliot a great poet of the sea like Coleridge, Hopkins, and Pratt.) Though Coleridge and Whitehead are the foundations of “A Critique of Criticism” and Poetic Process – which is not to dismiss the importance in those two works of Henri Bergson, Dorothy Emmet, Carl Jung, Søren Kierkegaard, Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Maritain, Herbert Read, Ranier Marie Rilke, and Paul Valéry – Whalley makes repeated appeals to Eliot in the former and rehearses his doctrines of catalysis and the objective correlative in the latter. His move away from Eliot in later years is understandable; in making a start, it is common that an author “writes in the style of others looking for his own.”33 Judging by the style of “A Critique of Criticism” and Poetic Process, Whalley was tempted to develop a philosophical prose during this time. In chapter 5 of the latter, after examining Eliot’s metaphor of catalysis from “Tradition and the Individual Talent,”34 Whalley outdoes Eliot by constructing a metaphor for poetry drawn from recent discoveries in quantum physics (pp 89–92). This passage is characteristic of the way he sometimes sees poetry in Poetic Process: I suggested that a poem springs from a paradeigmatic event, that a poem is in some sense the resolution of an event of reality. A germ, a catalyst, a quantum of “poetic energy” intrudes into consciousness; the associative function of memory which we call imagination is stimulated, and orients itself in a particular manner. The activity that proceeds between the paradeigmatic event and the finished poem I have called symbolic extrication. And by this term I mean to imply, not simply the critical activity by which a poem is guided finally to completion, but also the activity which makes a poem necessary at all. Symbolic extrication is the activity by which the poet extricates himself from an intolerable reality (the paradeigmatic event) by transferring his feeling for that reality to a system of symbols. The poem is not merely a by-product of that withdrawing movement by the necessary condition of it. (pp 104–5)

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In later years Whalley for the most part moves away from these ideas. That he does not develop this style of thought is an implicit criticism of it. Poetic Process contains many of his characteristic ideas. He repeatedly articulates his view of criticism as a getting-to-know. He already thinks of art as a process of making, which anticipates his translation of Aristotle’s Poetics. He understands the limits of science and sees literature as embodying a form of knowing that is irreplaceable. His incisive review of Northrop Frye’s influential Anatomy of Criticism, which articulates a criticism of Frye’s style and methods before the book achieved its full fame, shows he has already learned much to make him a fine critic.35 But he realized, consciously or unconsciously, that the predominant style of the book wasn’t his own. After Poetic Process he neither appeals to Whitehead nor reveals an intention to pursue metaphysics. There is no question that in the superb essays of the 1970s he knew what he had of his own to say. Reading the critical prose and the poems of the period together, one registers a significant difference in the rhythms and styles. (Whalley’s epistolary prose consistently remains close to the rhythms of speech in this period and throughout his life.) But if the poems are read alongside his later prose, one sees there are many ways in which the quality of the verse has affinities with the essay style he developed in the 1960s and 1970s. In making the early poems, Whalley discovered something important regarding rhythms in writing and speaking. That insight led to the development of his mature prose style. In the mid-to-late 1940s, through his earliest work on Coleridge and the adventure of writing his poetry, Whalley came to see that the familiar dichotomy between poetry and prose distorted the true relation between the two. A faint shadow of Nietzsche may be detected when Whalley writes, “The distinctions between romantic and classical, between realist and idealist […] can be valuable distinctions if carefully handled within their defined reference. But from certain points of view those distinctions merge and disappear” (cc 24). In 1946 he already knew that “the distinction between poems and not-poems cuts across the technical distinction between poetry and prose” (cc 193), and he carried the thought into Poetic Process: “Coleridge justly

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observed that the antithesis of poetry is science. By this I take him to mean that the scientific mind is the antithesis of the poetic mind. The antithesis to a poem, however, is not prose simply, but technical or scientific prose. The complete range of prose includes every conceivable shade of intension and feeling: at one extreme that ‘other harmony’ which (without being ‘purple’) legitimately claims the status of poetry; at the other extreme the prose of scientific exposition and description” (119). This way of thinking informs Whalley’s later ideas regarding the poetry found in the prose of a novel and the sentence structures found in verse. “Although ‘syntax’ is usually taken to mean simple ‘sentencestructure’ we need to extend it because our concern is with ‘sentencestructure in poems,’” and this leads to the recognition, as he suggests, that “syntax in good poetry […] is dramatic, gestures forth what it is saying in the way it is meant by the poet and ‘seen’ by him. Often a poet is unraveling what is not known at the outset; syntax is often a vivid dramatization of the process of discovery.”36 Focusing on the dramatic gesturing forth embedded in syntax is one step towards dissolving the prose and verse antithesis. In making a case for Jane Austen as a poet, one who “is supremely a writer of prose,” Whalley calls attention to “her craftsmanship in language” (slh 146, 147). “The word ‘poetry’ refers basically to a state of language” – for Whalley, “a condition qualitatively discernible but not analytically definable […] a state of language that is noticeably lucid, vivid, nervous, inventive, economical, often translucent, capable of swift movement” (slh 148). Perhaps above all, poetry “is informed – or declares itself – by the inventive rhythms of a mind unfolding what cannot be known except in the uttering of it” (slh 148). With this understanding, one sees why he thinks of Yeats and Austen as kindred writers, the former with his “unmatched sense of the integrity of language – significant words rhythmically disposed, passionate hieratic utterance keyed to the inventive rhythms of the speaking voice” and the latter with her “incorruptible sense of the integrity of prose, the translucent rhythms of the speaking voice in the other harmony, the peculiar signature of breath and intelligence that identifies a personal speaking and the state of mind that from moment to moment informs the voice” (slh 147). A passage from the section “D plus 70 off Arromanches” in “Normandy Landing,” represented here as prose, reproduces the sound of a

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speaking voice: “Yes. We were in danger sometimes and then we were afraid. But those things don’t last long. And even on that first morning, though we were relieved to be unhurt, surprised it should be so easy, we were disappointed, once the tension relaxed, and a little resentful as though someone had had a joke at our expense” (ll. 90–6). There are passages in The Legend of John Hornby and “Birthright to the Sea: Some poems of E.J. Pratt” (1976) that Whalley might have refashioned into verse if it suited the development of the ideas. Of the site of the cabin where Hornby, Christian, and Adlard starved to death, Whalley knows “for a time the patterns would remain, but by an indistinguishable slowness changing: the cabin, abandoned by the winter, then by the spring, then by the last of the frost, slowly and by infinitesimal processes falling apart with no living creature concerned to hold it together; the two shrunken forms outside in their neat but tattered rags, of no interest even to scavenging animals; the two loaded rifles leaning outside against the door frame; the canoe hauled up on the bank, well above high water, a quarter of a mile below the cabin in the meadow grass” (ljh 316). His intimacy with the sea makes him a sensitive reader of Pratt’s verse, and several passages in the essay are highly charged: “And, like a groundswell lifting unseen in the dark, there was in any village one probability to be lived with: that one night, one dawn, it would be known for certain that some man – husband, son, brother – would never come again to lift the latch of the door; and perhaps, by grace, those who loved him would never see what indignity the sea can work upon the body of a drowned man” (slh 178). The rhythms of speech are driving the style. Whalley knew the importance of this element in his writing. In the introduction to “The Old Crane of Gort,” he comments, “More than half the essays collected here were written to be spoken; the others were written to be printed,” and then, with a hint of making a playful challenge, “I am not sure that a reader would in all cases be able to say which was which” (ocg 3). This is to suggest, contrary to Johnston’s claim that “what he did not do after the War years was write poetry, except irregularly” (cpgw 3), Whalley did not stop writing poetry, not as he understood it. He wrote less in the form of verse, but inscribed the poetry in his prose in developing a mature style to fully realize his criticism. In the same introduction he “affirm[s] that a critic (as David Jones says of a poet) can work only with what he knows best and loves most; for the possi-

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bility of criticism turns upon a poise and restraint not much less delicate than what makes the good writing of a poem possible” (ocg 3). In a letter to his friend Arnold Banfill, an early reader of his poems who encouraged him to write, Whalley gives a clue to his process of writing. Of Yeats he says, “When I read his life I found that his methods of working were not greatly different to mine. Nothing arrived complete. He worked and polished and chipped away, often starting from a prose draft, until every inessential had refined away” (1 May 1945). Years later Whalley’s eldest daughter Katharine was writing her master’s thesis on Yeats’s poetry, and Whalley read a draft of it. A paragraph in the letter he wrote in response offers another rare insight into Whalley’s poetic process: More often than not, when I am writing something I have a germinal idea that I can scarcely formulate. The first draft (and more often than not, two or three later drafts) fishes out the germ and places it among the materials that will nourish it into the light. The purpose (I think) is not to arrive at a formulation of the “germ” but to let the germ come to life and grow – to declare itself through the life it makes for itself. What the germ declares is not itself, but the life implicit in it, in the way that an acorn is no substitute for an oak tree; and the end of the process is not so much something seen as an activity of seeing, dominated no doubt by the germinal idea, in which all the materials, the large structure, the texture, and the tune are essential rather than ancillary.37 This account leaves out the early prose drafts he made when he was younger and likely reflects his later writing process. For a number of poems written in the 1950s and 1960s, there is ample evidence of Whalley’s habits of writing and revising in the extant manuscripts and typescripts. But in these, the process of writing begins and ends in verse. More rarely did Whalley leave evidence of the ways in which he began writing prose before shaping it into verse. The account of the Bismarck action he composed in a letter of 11 June 1941 that he copied and circulated to friends and family was written very close in time to the earliest date he records for drafting some parts of “Battle Pattern.”38 This early draft is lost. The earliest extant draft of the poem is 26 May 1945, almost exactly

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four years to the day after the event. The length of time does not diminish the importance of Whalley first writing about the event in prose. There are other examples. The poem “W.K.E.” began with a diary entry and a letter written to his mother on 12 January 1941, was revisited in prose and reworked into verse in another diary entry dated 23 September 1943, and then was refined on and around 3 November 1943.39 These observations are reinforced by a recollection of Whalley’s daughter Emily that “he said written words should sound as if they were spoken. A piece of writing should be like someone talking to you. Now, whenever I read his writing, I can clearly hear the ring of my father’s voice” (gwr 176). Listening to Whalley read his poems in recordings is illuminating. One learns the rhythms of his voice in relation to the style of his writing. And then hearing the “Autobiographical Fragment” and Whalley’s interview with Elizabeth Hay reinforces the truth regarding the continuities in his thinking, speaking, and writing.40

A significant new element in Poetic Process, which does not appear in “A Critique of Criticism,” is an argument made for the importance of feeling against ways of thinking that devalue it as subordinate to and properly conquered by reason. This position is intertwined with the notion that poetic process is a knowing of reality at least as valuable as the knowing that results from the scientific method. Though no one will mistake Whalley for D.H. Lawrence, the ideas are comparable to Lawrence’s revaluations of thinking and feeling in his essays of the midto-late 1920s. When Whalley says, “I am puzzled by the self-gratulatory onanism exhibited in some of the literature of this century, and, behind the unquestionable originality and brilliance of some of its achievements, by the inconsequence and emptiness of the world it reveals” (pp xxxv), he echoes Lawrence’s identification of “a vicious circle of analysis and impotent criticism, or else a vicious circle of false and easy sympathy, sentimentalities. The sentimentalism and the niggling analysis, often selfanalysis, of most of our modern literature, is a sign of self-abuse. It is the manifestation of masturbation”41 (“Pornography” 260). Whalley’s ideas of individual integrity, wholeness, and the imagination are primarily descended from Coleridge, but one hears echoes of Lawrence’s arguments about the “whole imagination,” “real imaginative awareness,” and

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“any creative act occupies the whole consciousness” in the late essay “Introduction to These Paintings.”42 A fundamental distrust of ideas, central to the works of Conrad and Eliot, is a key aspect of Whalley’s view of poetry as knowledge. One recalls Eliot’s admiration of Henry James, whose “critical genius comes out most tellingly in his mastery over, his baffling escape from, Ideas; a mastery and an escape which are perhaps the last test of a superior intelligence. He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it.”43 The scepticism toward ideas in Conrad’s novels is memorably captured by Marlow’s outburst in Lord Jim: “Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the backdoor of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!”44 After receiving some criticism from the editor R.W.W. Robertson on the typescript he sent to Clark, Irwin, Whalley addresses the relationship between feeling and restraint in his verses: “That you should speak of control and constraint (?restraint) is encouraging: at least it suggests that there is something to control and restrain. I feel that the omission of such poems as I suggest would raise the level of intensity of the collection and prevent the restrained emotion from being missed as emotion […] Poetry is so much an indirect language […] that (it seems to me) understatement and restraint are capable of producing more powerful effect than a photographic, journalistic, superlative style.” Later in the letter he adds, “I am not sure that the degree of restraint is a reliable test. ‘Intensity’ or ‘Incandescence’ is the criterion I have tried to apply in judging my own work. I feel that, given powerful emotion as the starting point of a poem, the intensity will be heightened as the restraint is increased, provided the restraint does not hide or destroy the emotion.”45 Though in Poetic Process Whalley rejects “emotion” as an inadequate and misleading word not synonymous with feeling, the passage accurately captures the importance of restraint in his best writing, regardless of whether it is in verse or prose. Sometime before 1 July 1945, Whalley asked Pratt, the poet whose work he admired, to read “Bismarck.”46 Two weeks later Whalley mailed “a typescript of Battle Pattern (the Bismarck action poem).”47 Towards the end of the month Pratt wrote praising the poem and also made a list of eleven suggestions.48 Most are minor, but the last one focused on the Sub Lieu-

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tenant: Pratt says his presence ought to be expanded throughout the poem. After thanking Pratt for his “critical remarks,” Whalley responds specifically to “the matter of the Sub Lieutenant, and whether he should be ‘expanded’ to give greater psychological unity to the whole. You suggest that ‘possibly he wasn’t part of the whole sequence in your own mind.’ There can, I presume, be no doubt as to the identity of the Sub Lieutenant. That is what makes him such an awkward person to handle. I don’t know whether I can explain in cold blood the underlying feeling that, in an experience such as I am trying to describe, the individual not only loses his individuality in the ship but is also unimportant except so far as he reflects or can interpret the thought and suffering of the whole ship. It was for this reason that I treated the Sub so briefly. I did not want his personality to emerge: I wanted it to be a mirror.”49 The “second time” is a reference to the last section of “Battle Pattern” in the typescript Whalley mailed to Pratt. The “Finale” published in No Man an Island is completely different from this earlier ending of the poem. It opens with “A young Sub Lieutenant is sitting in his cabin” with the “June sunlight” outside and hearing the sound of music from across the harbor. And then, He rises and closes the cabin door and puts a record on the gramophone. Instantly a Bach chorale Ich ruf ’ zu dir played by full orchestra floods through the cabin, drowning all but the sunlight. Between the two dazzling shafts of the sun he sits on the bunk, hunched forward, elbows on knees, watching with blind eyes the slow fall and rise of the sun-motes; listening, listening until there is only music and sunlight and peace.

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Slowly his head drops forward into his hands and his shoulders shake with sobbing.50 The replacement of the section is an example of Whalley’s judgment that runs parallel to the comment, “understatement and restraint are capable of producing more powerful effect than a photographic, journalistic, superlative style,” that he made in the letter to Robertson written months after his exchange with Pratt. A remark he made years later – “sentimental writing calls up emotion that is not controlled by the writing itself ” (slh 91) – indicates that the lessons he learned in making judgments about his own poems made him perpetually wary of undisciplined thinking and feeling. A passage in Whalley’s diary written in June 1943 records a moment in Libya when he noticed in the mess hall “all talk of drinks, shelling, bombing – to avoid effort of thought” (dvii 12). Deliberately or not, the men make distractions to avoid the reality of their situation because thinking of it will be too hard, too painful. As Whalley remarks in his later essays, techniques and methodologies taught to facilitate the reading of poems produce many distractions to avoid real encounters with the words. The heuristic activity of knowing that he describes is somewhat analogous to the work of a detective who must discover not only what he is looking for but also how to go about finding it: “the business of searching out something that is at once familiar and unknown, according to rules of search that are determined largely by the quarry, not by the hunter; and, as the quarry is uncatchable (though knowable), the process will establish an intimate bond between the hunter and the hunted until it is not certain which is the quarry and which the hunter” (slh 224). In Whalley’s view, our encounters with poetry comprise a similar rhythm of familiarity and uncertainty, an understanding that is inscribed in the poems themselves. In the life of his poems, the tendency is for people to come together searching for something familiar, something half-remembered and see there only a question, a stranger’s half question. (“The Way Back,” ll. 7–10)

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Often in Whalley’s poetry there is an implicit expectation of responses that are a mixture of familiarities, memories, strangenesses, and questions, responses that may be predominantly comprised of halves rather than wholes. In one of his later works, “Autumn Was Never So Late,” Whalley asks, “Is this remembering or forgetting?” (l. 33). The verses in this collection, early and late, turn repeatedly to the tensions between knowing and not knowing, telling and not telling, revealing and concealing. They circle around aloneness, loneliness, and solitude. As early as 1936, Whalley is sounding the familiar note, “our loneliness was less in that we shared it each with each” (“Desertion,” l. 1). The idea that “there is no way to silence / the poignant voices of memory” (“Das Lebewohl, die Abwesenheit, das Wiedersehen,” ll. 16−17) can be joined with what appears to be a desire seeking its fulfillment: “all will be forgotten / because we never can bring ourselves to say / exactly what passed there” (“World’s End,” ll. 96–8). Passages such as these echo familiar ones from Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Conrad’s novels: the act of telling that does not lead to relief, but only another attempt to tell again the same; the movement towards forgetting that only reinforces the intractability of the memory; the avoidance of knowing that causes knowledge to haunt the mind and to pursue it to the brink of madness and beyond. In “We Who Are Left,” Whalley recalls Lord Jim’s phrase “nothing can touch me” (130) – one that prefigures the simultaneous consummation of his dreams and his death at the end of Conrad’s novel: Perhaps it is well now with the men the war has killed; now that they are free and nothing can touch them. (ll. 1–4) A characteristic rhythm is the ebb and flow of the tide that conceals and reveals the broken tanks along the shore in “Dieppe.” The derelicts will be covered only for a time, just as the telling the story to the wedding guest will relieve the Mariner of his burden for an uncertain period, and the recounting of Jim’s story to his audience is but one of Marlow’s many attempts to make sense of an inscrutable life.

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At least for a period in the 1940s, Whalley believed in “the poet’s integral solitude” (dix 29). In Poetic Process, likely drawing on his own experience (though he does not acknowledge it), he sees the existence of artists as one of “infinite loneliness” (xxx) and “more hazardous, more solitary, more desolating” (xxxiv). The epigraph to the second chapter, “Artists on Art,” taken from Kierkegaard, opens with “What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings” (pp 11). The antithetical phrases “innocence of intent” (slh 217) and “destructive desire” (ocg 2) signify important ideas in a dialogue implicit throughout Whalley’s criticism that resonates in relation to these views. It is passion that makes “the theme of integration and reconciliation” important to him (pp 21). Both the criticism and the art are preoccupied with “the problem of reconciling the secret and unique inner self with the world in which it is placed” and “the problem of reconciling the longing and impulse towards joy with the acute suffering which lies at the heart of the artist’s making” (pp 21). These notions inform Whalley’s arguments regarding Joyce and Yeats in Poetic Process, and of writers generally in his later writings, that “Art for them was not an escape from life and reality, but a discovery and clarification of both” (pp 24). The idea of the poet’s solitude informs the poem “There was no way of telling,” where the movement is from isolation to love and back to desolation. At first, I found my whole being Wounded and entangled With a cruel perplexity Of thorny elements, Beyond my ingenuity To break or simplify. (ll. 14–19) Then love intervenes, but “Having seen myself / I move like a ghost / In utter desolation” (ll. 30–2). The figure here suffers from a solitude analogous to that endured by Lazarus in the poems “Wheat” and “Lazarus.” It is a kind of “forlorn disorder,” as Whalley says elsewhere, that forces a person “to readjust himself to civilisation after prolonged loneliness, privation, solitude, hardship,” which is made worse because “there [is]

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nobody to penetrate the desolation of his solitary existence” (ljh 249). The questions in “Calligrapher,” a poem reflecting on the act of writing, are never far from Whalley’s thoughts: Shall I say this? declaring That we grow old in the wind and rain; that home is a place we return to and always have to leave; That we suffer alone always, and come upon death alone And delight often, And tread down sorrow as best we can alone So that the heart may flower and all desire in the end be chastened? (ll. 53–8) When Whalley makes use of the famous phrase from Julian of Norwich, he places “the most passionate silences” in the middle: And all shall be well and all Manner of thing – in the cool meadows of repose And in the most passionate silences of the heart – Shall be well. (“All Shall Be Well,” ll. 12–15) Readers must become attuned to the elusiveness that grows out of Whalley’s restraint and reticence, even when he appears to be unguarded and disclosing thoughts and feelings that were unspoken in his daily interactions with others. Whatever they reveal, in their dramatic gesturing forth of Whalley’s “discovery and clarification” of life and reality, these poems are not life and do not fill up the silences for which he has been remembered (pp 24). To the end of his life, Whalley “still exercised his own restraint, eluded inquiry, disclosed only a little of himself, withdrawing finally with a gesture of silence” (ljh 3).

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Michael John DiSanto Notes

1 George Whalley, letter to Arnold Banfill, ms, 1 May 1945, loc #5043, box 3, file 1, qua. 2 An extensive bibliography, a timeline of Whalley’s life, and a small selection of writings, audio recordings, and photographs are available at http://george whalley.ca. 3 See George Whalley: Remembrances. Kathleen Coburn records her first meeting with Whalley in October 1946 in her autobiography, In Pursuit of Coleridge (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin 1977), 88–9. 4 Susan Dick comments that Whalley had “a reticence in personal matters that seemed partly the result of shyness and, even more, of a deep sense of the integrity of the other person. He wished not to intrude on the space he felt people had around him. This could make him a difficult person to get to know; it also made him an extraordinary friend once those ‘enclosures of reticence’ (to borrow a phrase from Joyce) could be removed” (gwr 134). 5 Collin Cuttel writes of Whalley’s adventurousness and mentions the swim (gwr 43). 6 George Whalley, “Autobiographical Fragment,” 21 March 1977, audio recording, http://georgewhalley.ca/gwp/node/1802. 7 A photo of Whalley with George Moore is available at http://georgewhal ley.ca/gwp/node/29. 8 He told his brother Peter, “I wasn’t able to keep a diary, and had to write very cagily in letters” during the war (letter to Peter Whalley, 23 November 1980, loc #2350.3, box 1, file 6, qua. 9 Department of Veteran Affairs, “Biography Form: George Whalley,” 4 July 1953, weps. The details in this paragraph are drawn and paraphrased from page 4 of the form, completed when Whalley was the commander of the hmcs Cataraqui in Kingston. 10 Nigel Warington Smyth reveals some details about this secret work and how Whalley saved him and Commander Ted Davies from drowning (gwr 89–92). 11 A wedding day photo is available at http://georgewhalley.ca/gwp/node/45. Several other photos taken during the war are in the website gallery. 12 T.S. Eliot, “Religion and Literature,” Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, edited by Frank Kermode (London: Faber & Faber 1975), 97. 13 Emily Whalley writes of her father’s passion for music (gwr 173–4, 177–8). 14 Michael Ondaatje recalls, “Among my favourites was his inspired adaptation

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16 17 18

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20 21 22 23

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of [James] Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and his program on Primo Levi – I sat down for ten minutes and found myself three hours later not having moved” (gwr 121). Aristotle’s Poetics, translated and with a commentary by George Whalley, edited by John Baxter and Patrick Atherton (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press 1997). Unless otherwise noted, all italics are in the original texts. Whalley quotes the famous saying of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, in “Jane Austen: Poet” (slh 167). David Lewis argues that Whalley’s “war poems display a mature range and scope that is unrivalled by any of the other second-world-war poets with whom he clearly deserves equal mention. A judicious selection of the best work of Keith Douglas, Randall Jarrell, and George Whalley could provide a lively antidote to the common critical cliché that in contrast to WWI the second world war produced no important poetry” (review of The Collected Poems of George Whalley, Queen’s Quarterly 94 (1987): 732. Earle Birney, review of Poems 1939–1944 by George Whalley, Canadian Poetry Magazine 10, no. 1 (1946). Ellipses not found in the original texts are enclosed in square brackets […]. George Whalley, letter to George Johnston, 24 August 1977, George Johnston fonds, mg 31 D95, Correspondence Series, vol. 14, file 9, lac. George Whalley, letter to Katharine Whalley, 3 January 1981, kwcp. George Whalley, letter to George Johnston, 18 January 1981, George Johnston fonds, mg 31 D95, Correspondence Series, vol. 14, file 9, lac. John Baxter, “Fugitive Reality: The Poetry of George Whalley,” review of The Collected Poems of George Whalley, Dalhousie Review 68, no. 4 (1988): 496. According to the survey in Making It Real: The Canonization of EnglishCanadian Literature (Concord: Anansi 1995), 145, completed by Robert Lecker, Whalley’s verses were included in anthologies once in the 1960s and three times in the 1970s. They were not included in anthologies in the next two decades. However, David Kent did include “Lazarus” and “Prayer for the Living” in Christian Poetry in Canada (Toronto: ECW Press, 1989). More recently, Brian Trehearne printed “Dieppe,” “Normandy 1944,” and “Finale” from “Battle Pattern” in Canadian Poetry 1920–1960 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 2010). In the second line of the poem, Whalley initially writes his age as “43,” before inscribing the word “one” over the 3. Ralph Gustafson, ed., The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse (London: Penguin

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27 28

29 30 31

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1958). Gustafson, a Canadian poet and academic who graduated from Bishop’s and Oxford a few years ahead of Whalley, was a professor at Bishop’s from 1963 to 1979. Whalley and Gustafson knew one another and met as recently as the Canadian Writers’ Conference held at Queen’s, 28–31 July 1955. Gustafson included selections from Louis Dudek, Raymond Souster, Eli Mandel, Phyllis Webb, D.G, Jones, Jay Macpherson, and Leonard Cohen, all of them younger than Whalley. William Wordsworth, The Major Works, edited by Stephen Gill (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000), 130–1. George Whalley, “George Whalley and D. Jones (poetry reading), sound recording, loc #5043, SR 788a, qua. The reading was held at Queen’s University in the Agnes Etherington Art Centre on 10 March 1966. Dermot McCarthy, “Past Engagements,” review of The Collected Poems of George Whalley, Essays in Canadian Writing 37 (1989): 79. Rick Johnson (gwr 149) and Fred Colwell (gwr 127) are among those who write of his characteristic speech. “The Poet and his Reader,” Queen’s Quarterly 54 (1947): 202–13; “The Mariner and the Albatross,” University of Toronto Quarterly 16 (1947): 381–98; “The Metaphysical Revival,” Yale Review 37 (1948): 434–46. See Brian Crick and Michael DiSanto, “D.H. Lawrence: ‘An Opportunity and a Test’: The Leavis-Eliot Controversy Revisited,” Cambridge Quarterly 38 (2009): 130–46. Norman Mailer, Pieces and Pontifications (Boston: Little, Brown 1982), 7. T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, 37– 44. See the second paragraph of the second section of Eliot’s essay (41). George Whalley, “Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism,” review of Anatomy of Criticism by Northrop Frye, Tamarack Review 8 (1958): 92–101. George Whalley, letter to Katharine Whalley, ts, 21 July 1971, kwcp. George Whalley, letter to Katharine Whalley, ts, 28 July 1970, kwcp. This passage from the letter recalls the fifth chapter of Poetic Process and its discussion of origins in the process of making poetry and echoes its appeal to Henry James’s idea of germs for writing. Whalley quotes James’s account from the preface to The Spoils of Poynton at length on page 86. The letter is reproduced in “The Sinking of the Bismarck,” Atlantic Monthly 206 (1960): 60–4. Letter to Dorothy Whalley, ms, 12 January 1941, loc #5043, box 2, file 41, qua;

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diary entry for 12 January 1941, div, 61; diary entry for 26 September 1943, dvii, 29–30; ms dated 3 November 1943, weps. Both recordings are published online: “Autobiographical Fragment,” http:// georgewhalley.ca/gwp/node/1802, and the interview with Elizabeth Hay, http:// georgewhalley.ca/gwp/node/1791. D.H. Lawrence, “Pornography and Obscenity,” in Selected Criticism, edited by Brian Crick and Michael DiSanto (Bishopstone, uk: Brynmill Press 2009), 249–68. D.H. Lawrence, “Introduction to These Paintings,” Selected Criticism, 275, 276, 293. T.S. Eliot, “From Henry James,” Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, 151. Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim: A Tale, edited by J.H. Stape and Ernest W. Sullivan II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012), 38–9. George Whalley, letter to R.W.W. Robertson, ts, 6 May 1946, Clark, Irwin & Company Fonds, First Accrual, box 44, file 18, Whalley, George, 1918–, No Man an Island, #44. McMaster University Archives, Hamilton, on. E.J. Pratt, letter to George Whalley, 1 July 1945, ms, weps. The date is on the letter Pratt wrote in response to the one he received from Whalley, which was delayed in delivery because Pratt was in Halifax rather than Toronto. George Whalley, letter to E.J. Pratt, ms, 14 July 1945, weps. E.J. Pratt, letter to George Whalley, 27 July 1945, ms, weps. George Whalley, letter to E.J. Pratt, ts, 6 August 1945, weps. George Whalley, “Battle Pattern,” ts, loc #1032c, box 16, file 27, qua.

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Editorial Procedures

Sources The poems collected in this edition are drawn from several sources: Poems 1939–1944; No Man an Island; poems published in Whalley’s lifetime and previously uncollected; and poems in The Collected Poems of George Whalley that do not appear elsewhere. All of the pieces published in periodicals and edited collections, from 1933 to 1967, are included here. Nineteen previously unpublished poems first appeared in the Johnston edition. Two of these, “Now That the Dark” and “Cliveden,” are not reproduced in the present collection. The former is an early version of “English Winter” in No Man an Island, while the latter is an early version of “Affair of Honour,” which was published in A.J.M. Smith’s anthology Modern Canadian Verse: In English and French. A bibliography of the poems printed in periodicals and books is available online at http://georgewhalley.ca. The majority of the pieces are published here for the first time. They have been chosen primarily with a focus on their quality as poems. Many are comparable to and in some cases better than ones already published; “Letter from Lagos” and “Five Years” are examples. The large number of unpublished poems from the 1940s both reinforce the view of Whalley’s talents as a war poet and show his interests in matters from that time not represented in his two collections. A second consideration here is to reveal that Whalley worked with a greater range of themes over a longer length of time than his published oeuvre suggests. Partly this is a biographical matter, because the poems are written out of experiences that marked particular periods in his life. This is not to suggest that the poems are merely autobiographical – above all, Whalley knew that poems have lives of their own apart from the writer. This collection

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makes a case for reassessing the significance of Whalley’s poems, especially in Canadian literature of the mid-twentieth century. The previously unpublished works have been gathered from the files in Queen’s University Archives, the Whalley Estate papers, and a typescript that Elizabeth Whalley gave to her daughter Katharine, which is now in the possession of Katharine’s son, Tiemo Brand. The sources are specified in the notes. When a poem is printed from one of Whalley’s diaries, there are no other extant sources. A description of the sources is published online. Some pieces of writing that might be viewed as poetic have not been reproduced in this book. At times Whalley recorded memories or scribbled perceptions in a manner that in appearance might be seen as verse. These passages are, unusually for him, punctuated with many long dashes. Whether or not any are meant to be poems is unclear. They are not comparable in finish to the most brief of the poems or those that exist in a single manuscript. A few very short pieces, usually of two or three lines, have not been included. Whether they are intended to be poems or thoughts scribbled down in passing is not clear. Caution has guided my judgment. “There’s a wise woman who knows” shares some phrases with lines in “There’s nothing for it but drop an anchor there” (ll. 5–6). This inclines me to believe the former is an early draft of the latter because of similar patterns of evidence seen in “Lazarus” and other pieces. In the absence of textual evidence, however, I have followed Johnston in printing the poem.

Copy-Texts The copy-texts are: (a) for published poems, the latest version published in Whalley’s lifetime; (b) for unpublished poems, the latest extant version; (c) for poems that appear nowhere else, The Collected Poems of George Whalley. For the ten poems that appeared in both Poems 1939– 1944 and No Man an Island, the later version is reproduced, though the differences are not substantial. For the previously unpublished poems with two or more extant manuscript and/or typescript pages, I have used the latest extant draft, believing this to be the final form of the poem or the state closest to it. Usually

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a date Whalley inscribed on a page indicates the version last completed. When a date is lacking (and this case is the exception), I have compared the extant pages to establish which version incorporates the latest revisions. A full accounting of the extant copies can be found on the Whalley website.

Chronology The poems are arranged chronologically, with the exception of “I wore a khaki shirt and red tie” and “There’s a wise woman who knows,” which are placed at the end of this edition. There are no extant manuscripts or typescripts for them. Rather than speculate, I have chosen to indicate that the dates for these poems are not established, nor can I with certainty assign a circa date. Where Whalley did not record composition dates but there is a publication date, I have used the latter to place a poem chronologically. All of the evidence I have seen indicates that the first publication of a poem followed closely after Whalley completed it. When only circa dates can be established, the poems are placed at the end of the year of latest possible composition. I arrived at these dates by comparing the extant manuscripts and typescripts for a poem lacking dates against those having dates. I focused on Whalley’s penmanship and the qualities of certain letters, his use of characteristic symbols, the pen type (e.g., fountain or otherwise), and the colour of the ink and paper. Courtney Mathison independently made the same examination and in all but two instances confirmed my findings. Where we differed, her reasons were persuasive, and I changed the dates in assent. One or two dates are printed after each poem. The date on the left is the earliest known date of composition. The date on the right is for published poems the year of publication, and for unpublished poems the latest known date of revision. When only one date is available, it is placed on the left. All question marks before the dates are Whalley’s. All circa dates (e.g., ca. 1953–54) are mine. For the poems with multiple sections written at different times, the dates for the composition of each section are included in the endnotes when available. Overall, the chronological order allows us to see the development of Whalley’s writing, but with “Louisburg” and “Battle Pattern” the place of the poems is deceiving. The final version of “Louisburg” is much shorter than the version from 1934.

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Much of “Battle Pattern,” judging from the available evidence, was composed between the summer of 1945 and the summer of 1946. The composition and revision dates, along with the locations, of many of the early poems up to 1947 are recorded in two lists Whalley made, now in the Whalley Estate papers. Where he did not record a location, I have added one only when I can with certainty establish where he was by comparing the dates in the manuscripts and typescripts with the dates in his letters or other papers. A description of the two lists is available online.

Additional Materials Some additional materials are available online at http://georgewhalley.ca and are described briefly below. Audio Recordings Two analogue recordings of Whalley reading his poems have been digitized and published online. One set of readings is on a cassette tape from the Whalley Estate. The readings of “A Minor Poet Is Visited by the Muse,” “Canadian Spring,” “Initial Assault – Sicily,” and “Wheat” were recorded in 1975 in London. The other recording is on a reel-to-reel tape in Queen’s University Archives. It was made at an event in the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University on 10 March 1966 where Whalley and one of his former students, D.G. Jones, read their poems. Tom Marshall was the master of ceremonies. Audio files are available of both the complete reading with all of Whalley’s comments on the poems and the individual poems. That evening Whalley read in order: “Night Flight,” “Elegy,” “Lazarus,” “Affair of Honour,” “Dionysiac,” “A Minor Poet Is Visited by the Muse,” “Pig,” and “Calligrapher.” The transcriptions for all of the poems as Whalley read them are published with the audio recordings. Digital Edition of Manuscripts and Typescripts A selection of Whalley’s poetry manuscripts and typescripts, along with some relevant letters to friends, family, publishers, and others, have been digitally scanned and will be published on the website. The titles in the edition include “A Minor Poet Is Visited by the Muse,” “Battle Pattern,”

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“Calligrapher,” “Dionysiac,” “Elegy,” “Lazarus,” “Letter from Lagos,” “Night Flight,” and “Pig.” All extant manuscript and typescript pages for these poems will be included. The range of available materials differs significantly among the poems, from the one manuscript and eight typescript pages for “A Minor Poet Is Visited by the Muse” to the twentyone manuscript and thirty-three typescript pages for “Lazarus.” All of the pages have been transcribed. A dynamic interface allows readers to make side-by-side comparisons of different digital images and/or transcriptions and to contemplate Whalley’s process of composition. Editorial notes, written by Alana Fletcher, of between two thousand and three thousand words for each poem provide a concise overview of the chronology of composition of the extant papers. Digital copies of the first editions of Poems 1939–1944 and No Man an Island allow readers to examine the original arrangement and printing of the poems. Whalley’s letters to Ryerson Press and Clarke, Irwin regarding the publication of Poems 1939–1944 and No Man an Island are also available.

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THE COMPLETE POEMS OF GE ORG E WHALLEY

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Ode to a College Sausage With most humble apologies to the memory of John Keats, from whose works much of this is shamelessly appropriated. Quod scelus latet?

Virgil.

I Thou still unfathomed Bag of Mystery, Thou foster-child of villainy and crime; Grisly historian, who canst best imply A hideous tale more bloody than our rhyme! What felony-begotten fable shrouds thy shape, Of homeless mongrels, or of mice, or both, In shady dells of Francis’ babbling stream? What men or gods are these? What mortals loth? What uproar mad? What struggle to escape? What nightmare now uprist within life’s dream. II Inhaled effluvia can oft be sweet, But those unsmelled are sweeter far, I trow. Therefore, concoction foul, with thy putrescent meat Begone! Excruciating tortures rack me now. Thou’rt served on charger cold – I need not prove Thou ne’er art warm – and yet to be endured! From me all sense of taste is wrung, No human passions more within me move.

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To contemplate thy mystic form’s ensured A burning forehead and a parching tongue. III Oh Jove! May ne’er it be my hapless fate In some sad moment of amnesia To swallow one of these and e’en thus sate Mine inborn twilight suicidal mania. Ah then! what ghastly throes of wretched anguish Would thrust my feebled mind o’er saneness’ brink Into eternal restful depths of sleep: There never as in weary life I’d languish, Nor dread thee, Menace of the Morn, I think, Nor chant in wailful choir for eggs – then weep.

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April 1933

Homer at Dawn E’en like a sea-surge lashed by the Northwind, rolling up and crashing on the strand of the loud-roaring sea Four o’clock. The sun is rising with white mist and bird-song, the dawn breeze coldly stirring the leaves on dew-dripping trees. E’en like a sea-surge lashed by the Northwind lashed by the Northwind lashed by the Northwind 28 May 1934

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Louisburg Suddenly the heron wakened from his dreaming, turned his beaked head to scan the sea, the ruins and the grey sky. His fierce eye was black, melancholy, profound. He stretched out his slate-blue awkward majestic wings and the pool was ruffled as he flew up, feet trailing. Of you, broken, levelled, vanished; of all your shattered and silent dead; only this solitary abides.

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How fallen, fallen. October 1934

28 October 1945

The Chase The chase was hot. He dodged and sprang and tripped, Leapt up again, and on and on and on Among that weird green grove where ray of sun Had never seemed to penetrate. It gripped His fancy. Into a solid wall of green

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He plunged – ran, gulping: dived into a heap Of green, and buried, listened to the leap Of thumping heart – despite his sobbing keen Of ear and eye, but stone-still as in death. The pursuers checked and set a circle round. He was outside it. As they searched the ground He heard their happy voices, gasping breath,

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The laugh; saw colour in the cheeks, the gleam Of eyes – a vision of beauty glimpsed – the dream. 11 November 1935

Derelict The “Gloria” lies upon her side, Her bulwarks all awash in the tide; Starfish and jellyfish live inside. No more at sea will she proudly ride; For a raging fire has done its best And the wreckers’ hands have managed the rest. Her plates are rusted and eaten through, Her wood-work’s bleached and rotted too, Her compass is gone, her mast sawn through; She leaves no more food for the gull and the mew. At the turn of the tide her rudder swings round And her keel settles deeper into the ground. No more does the binnacle shine to the glow Of the wheelman’s pipe, while down below The jolly crew sleep ’neath the foc’s’le head The sleep of the weary, the sleep of the dead…. Her rigging creaks and her foremast head Swings on through the stars till the morning sky’s red. No more does the foc’s’le door swing as the light Of a lantern flame blurs in a swirl of white…. Watch enters blowing his fingers with all of his might, “It’s blowing like hell,” he says, “God, what a night!” And the snow swirls again and her waist is aseethe When the watch goes out cursing, his pipe in his teeth.

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The foc’s’le deserted, the galley fire’s dead, Silent the chant of the man with the lead. No more does the howling wind fall on her beam, Or the loud-hissing wake-bubbles sparkle and gleam, Or the broken waves slap in the rushing slipstream, Or the clipper-bow churn the green waves into cream.

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She who was once the proud queen of the deep Lies in the mud in her last lonely sleep. Her anchors are gone, they’ll be catted no more, She’ll not slant to the breeze, for she lies there ashore. December 1934

Dog Watch As I walk the city streets in the grey of breaking dawn, When air is clear and all the folks asleep, There is melancholy there where was glory that is gone; My heart is sad and all my soul would weep. For I feel the canvas throb and the clipper running free And the music of the waves is in my soul. I can smell the salty spray when the fo’c’sle takes the sea As she strains ahead toward the Southern Pole. Far dearer then to me are the perils of the deep Than the heartaches of this solitary town. There life is fine and free, and death is but a sleep In a clout of sail a hundred fathoms down. February 1935

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Fragment I walk upon the ocean’s floor ’Mid bones of men picked clean by sharks; And I am old and weak and hoar.… The only light is starfish-sparks. I drink the marvels of the deep. I think how Life, like blood, is red; How Death is dumb, an empty sleep. And I am dead!

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February 1935

Transcendence Infused in all the beauty Of Life, of love, of Nature, The touch that will mature, The ecstasy of harmony, The fire, the breath, the sympathy That makes of life a thing Of beauty past all knowing, That is God – all Life; Not of warring hosts and strife, Not power immeasurably far, But Beauty where we are; The spark that transforms mud To statuary, throbbing blood In glorious limbs, vitality, A glimpse of immortality. God is Beauty, Beauty; Not slave-like devotion to duty. Beauty is life, it is all, The soul of lord and thrall.

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What that is good can then be said to be Aught but a facet of that Beauty’s purity? O God, Thou ever-present touch of Life, Thou Beauty indescribable to Man, Thou Beauty where all ugliness is rife, Thou Beauty that no mind can hope to scan!

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Thou tingest, by Thy lightest touch of finger, The clashing discord with a glow of harmony, Resolvest it to throbbing chords that linger, Softly, softly surging through Eternity. Thou sett’st a blowing rose on every pine When sun’s rim dips below the shadowing earth; Thou mak’st of Life an old, old glowing wine That warms the heart with lilting song and mirth. O God, Thou art the windlike soul of Freedom, The Freedom that transforms, infuses grace, The Beauty that charms shipwreck into sea-dream: Strike us not with blindness, But grant us constant gazing on Thy face.

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April 1935

Hymn to the Moon O Moon, with tinted crown, sailing a sea of immeasurable blue, Spasmodically obscured by tattered rags of cloud, That bringest madness to the weak, as sure as death from yew, Thou Potency mysterious, we hymn Thee with the croud. Wail strings, wail, With quavering note! Hymn ye the frail

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Barque of madness’ mote, Sailing the mackerel sky With oft occulted eye, Heaping leaping tides While God alone abides, Controller of the surge, Inevitable Urge! O Thou alone canst sway The deep with unseen ray. Show Thy baleful light To mad-sane Man. Stir with gruesome fright, Ye devotees of Pan, The steel-cold frosty blue Of Mystery ever new, The virgin huntress queen, With shaft of silver beam, Sovereign holding sway O’er realms despised by day…. O Queen, O bastard light, Shine grim, shine stark, shine bright! And when with shadow deep The sun doth cross Thy path, When Thou dost bitter weep That Lord of Day be wrath, This grieves Thee not alone. Thou also dost make moan In pangs of virgin birth. Thy throes are watched on Earth. Dread seizes Man and tingles. We beat the brassy cymbals. We seek to fright the cloud To blare of trumpet loud That Sun on Thee doth rain.

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O to our bronze refrain Shine tearless forth again! Thou glory of all lovers, fair yet corpse-like, pock-marked, cold, What curse of Gods has marred Thy silvery face? O Virgin, harbinger of madness, Thou, most infinitely old, With token awful, exquisite, do Thou our worship grace.

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June 1935

20th Century “Sophistication” (long disrobed of sense, And scantily clothed with shabby rags of taste Perverted and distorted in the haste Of fawning, grasping, scrambling for pence) Has struck false harmony in souls: And when a harmony, because in treble, lame – The discord of the bass unstruck for shame. Man, God’s Image stranded on filth’s shoals! This struggle for a specious age in youth Has tainted all our laughter to the grim As hollow as hysteric’s laugh, as thin As guilded words that shroud the horrid truth. No solemn Seven Ages is our climb, But empty, cackling, high-pitched pantomime. 4 November 1935

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Dedication O Father, grant that when my work is done There may live on a lively part of me – Yet not of me, but of God’s only son, (Who lived and died and lives triumphantly) – A trailing glory of that essence which pervades, Which beautifies and fires, yet never fades. How passing strange that there should be enshrined Within this feeble flesh, this clinging clay, This built of ashes and of dust, This fabric prey to deathless moth and rust, This house not made with hands that each new day May see in ruins, or in radiancy outlined – That though this mystic compound of the weak, The blind and grasping self, the shameless shame, There shines some aura of the perfect and divine – In this chance mingling of water and of salt That there should be an atom to exalt A dust-and-ashes mortal, to define In such imperfect substance God’s own name! Yet through these lips of clay we hear Him speak. When I have passed I hope they shall not know Whence came the light, the radiancy, the glow. It is not I. For when my self I tame I am a lantern, merely, for the flame, And most translucent am I when I die, When I am most unlike my self, not I. 23 November 1935

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Testament of Youth (A Sonnet) “You’re very young. You’ll soon get over that.” Glib words too often mumbled from a chair By two-legged paunches, sleek and round and fair, Too sleepy in their self-contented fat. Because you failed or never dared to try, Because you’ve gained the things you touch – by luck, Because you grovel, noses in the muck, Your highest aspiration is a sigh. It’s young men’s blood that stained the fields with red; It’s young men’s courage that has built the race. Whenever Age has quickened in its pace It is that young men’s spirit is not dead.

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You seek for nothing more than Chance can give – And Death can take away. We seek to live! December 1935

Vision Warm lantern-light bathed the dream With gold. A splash of cold Moon-silver lurked in a rain-pool. Through all, the song of the stream, Its tumblings frost, its surface fluctuant silver, graveful, cool. And out beyond on the moonlit plain And the moonlit hill Under the stars, still, still, They ran, young, adventurous, free, Joyous as robins after rain. These, thrilling with life, unconsciously radiant of beauty,

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These are the theme of the brook, These are the soul of the dream. These I have loved, and shall love till I die. The moonlit water, the moonlit hill, the sky Speak, sing of a glory Eternally dying That lingers in perfectness a minute, an hour, Then fades as a flower, Changed terribly. But I have seen it, that ultimate whiteness, A few glowing moments in this glowing life. I count it a thing of worth That my eyes have not been always blind, That they have given birth Within my mind To some few visions. In a breath of time I shall see another moon Shine on far other lands; And strange brooks shall vaunt their song To other ears. But I shall know, when days are spun into years Changed terribly, That eyes that I loved see what I loved, That ears still catch the haunting melody The brook sings In the moonlight’s strange transforming – That the vision lives. 31 March 1936

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Desertion Our loneliness was less in that we shared it each with each; For often were arcana breathed, With ultimate whiteness wreathed By rambling roadways and upon the sounding beach. I thought, “I see a radiance in this man That others have not shone. I feel the plan More clearly etched, sculpted of disappointments frost And shed with light which other men have lost.” So, lingering, poised upon a wheeling crag against the sky The grandeur of God’s work had caught our breath. “To die Were but a dawning,” so we bravely said; “The dawning across the deep is for the dead!”

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And you, who had always stood for all we held was best Failed in the crucial testing time, Quailed, and the little self sublime 15 Shadowed our highest hopes and shattered all the rest. “Flaunt now your own pursuit! It is the end. Bow now your neck. Call me not friend – The faith is broken. Turn now to your sleeping. Wings are but mortal. Life’s plough makes death’s reaping. 20 Friend that I loved, die in my heart in the light of the dawning. Now is but loneliness, emptiness, hopelessness. Fearing and fawning Killed what we loved,” I said; “And love is dead, is dead…” 25 Sudden I turned to the glass, brutal and hatefully cold: Cried out; for I saw my soul, thin and ugly and old. ca. early 1936

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Desire Fill my life with fire and my heart with a song; Give me the wings of the morning, the power of the eagle, the wheels of the chariots of dawn. Fill my soul with joy, and the courage to carry along With a smile and a tune on the lips, and a throng Of radiant memories, whitely transmuted, hushed, tenderly frozen in mourning. 5 Then I shall live, life that I love, shall live. ca. early 1936

In Examination Scribbling they write, gleaning from staggering minds, Spinning out gobbets of fact undigested, to find Dolmens, gerundives and Bismarck, Neanderthal men and their lives, And the aorist optative passive ἀποδέχομαι. Gleaning they write, idly and painfully slow – “What can it matter to me and to Philip to know That dolmens are gerunds, and Bismarck had several Neanderthal women for wives?” Scrambling we live, noses well to the ground, Addling turmoiled brains with penny and pound, And dolmens, gerundives and Bismarck, Neanderthal men and their lives, And the aorist optative passive of ἀποδέχομαι. 17 April 1936

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And so it will go on till time is dead And so it will go on till time is dead. The hollows on the stairs and in the halls Will wear more deep under the countless treadings Of young feet. They will laugh and dream and plan And when one dream pales in reality Quietly take up another, no less brilliant And much less possible. And there will burn That fire, that same undying fire, that few (Only the ones who love and dream and hope With them) can say they glimpse. Then there will be New faces, and new names not thought by mothers, And superficially the jokes and fun Will change, while in their essence just the same The quintessential gaiety of youth. And so it will go on till time is dead. And I have seen this fire, have always felt Its steady glow; have dreamed and hoped and loved With them, and always marvelled that I should. In this short space that some few paltry days Shall end (except in memory) wherein I strove with them, shoulder to brown shoulder, Working to fulfil the dream of boyhood, They and I have felt the brown damp breeze Of autumn, heard its wild lament; the sting Of snow; seen the blue shadows, and the moon Transforming the cold solitude of whiteness; By a fire in the moon-lit frost six took The first step along the trail towards their dream. Then the sun revising lonely-combed the snow And the wind was no more wind, but breeze Scent-laden and exuberant. And now Birds make their sad ecstatic song among The freshness and the greenness of the Spring.

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So, side by side, laughing, planning, loving We have traversed the short trail. And now The sunset…. My wish is not that hearts should leap, or tongues Spin glowing eulogies if anyone Should chance to speak my name. But rather That some nameless urge, unrecognized Should stir in their minds, an urge to never die, To keep alive the flame, to never cease In face of all discouragement, to seek And ultimately find the highest joy Of the losing of the Self to help one’s friends, The self-forgetting love for every task Which is no task because it is adventure; To live their lives as priests at the high altar Of Undying Youth. The ritual they know – But have they seen the Vision? It is not mine to stir the widening rings Of lucid influence in the shallow calm Of prejudice and selfishness and lust. Would God but choose me as a stone To cast with brilliant aimlessness away Into the water of some boyish mind…. But now I leave them, loving them none the less. The School goes on – and worn patches on the stairs Wear deeper…. 5 June 1936

George Whalley

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Darkness – and the wild, maniac rush Darkness – and the wild, maniac rush Of a wind unbridled, unrelenting, cold; The rise, the weltering poise, the crest, the hush Of wave upon high ghost-wave. We felt old, And frozen marrow-deep with sprays careering Off the dim, plunging bows; dazed by the green That snarled to windward. The fog came, sheering Across the landfall. Sun might have been And calm seas, but not in this life. This was gibbering fury, wanton rage, Accumulated lust let loose, a leaping Savage, seething, strange, chaotic strife.

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The anchor went across the side, a page Of a log-book turned, and she lay sleeping. 19 August 1936

Of the hilly road’s adventurous bend Of the hilly road’s adventurous bend, And splendid courage in strange places; Of dreamless sleep and laughing faces, At the camp-fire at the trail’s end… Of old yarns spun by the light-hearted, The gull’s-wing curve of a leaning sail; Of the sea mist, and the shouting gale… Of these our log. These seas we have charted. ca. fall 1936

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The Limitations of Academic Philosophy The fire is low and the cold breath that steals in before the dawn creeps on the darkness. And we sit here, we two, eyes red-rimmed, scribbling hurriedly while the three-hours’ tea congeals in the cups in dark stain-rings. “There’s no life left in the fire, Mark. Let’s get some sleep. Plato begins to pall at dawn. These sophistic gossamers won’t even hold the dew: they make a poor cloak against the cold.” That other night, on Michael’s birthday, we brought in beer and sat in a tentacled gloom of smoke and firelight, a circle of eager faces. We knitted constitutions and philosophies and refutations of economic theories and debates in Parliament and very funny, very sordid stories. The fire was warm then and we knitted briskly. But somehow the finished article was a compact fabric, heavy and impregnable like chain-mail, strong but ugly. We did well to solve our problems by shifting the demand-curve to the right. But outside in the quad there was a limpid stillness

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and fresh cold moonlight flooded the crumbling stonework, yawning with shadow under the arches.

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There must be other threads, spun of wind and sunshine. We must weave in the clear eyes, the glad expectant voice and quick unbitter laughter, and the deep wild stir of love. Then we shall not feel the cold breath that steals in with the dawn when the fire is low. 25 January 1937

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Modelled upon a German Prayer Dear Father, look down from on high And pitying hear thy people’s cry. Make me dumb that I may be A willing tool in Hitler’s hand. Make me deaf that I may know Truth that is not truth through fear. Make me blind that I may see The glories of the Fatherland. Blind, deaf, dumb, my soul shall bless A life of empty happiness. 10 September 1937

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To Canada My soul has a deep longing for thee, My country: For the woods and the still lakes Where the lone loon cries, For the great rivers, and the hills Glacier-moulded, For the frost and the biting wind With snow in it. My mind has often crossed the sea, And looked upon thee lovingly, My country; As the bee kisses the pollen, As the dew comes down Into a fleece of wool, As the clouds creep up the valleys Hiding the hill-tops, As a child gazes into a mother’s eyes. May I help to make thee great, My country. Thou hast great need. 15 October 1937

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A Smile and a Nod Death, at our first casual meeting, smiled at me and turned away. He had a very pleasing grace. I was not glad to see him go. Now, when we meet, we nod and take our several ways without imposing upon our chance acquaintanceship. I am content it should be so.

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1946

Dove Cottage Unvisited or Ode Not to a Sky-lark theme: Dove Cottage? Never heard of it. variation the first: Sure, pal. I’ve seen Venice and the Empire State and rode a mule from Montpelier to Timbuctoo. I’ve seen England’s king and the Taj Mahal in moonlight. I read a book once (Don’t get me wrong, pard, that was at school) with poems about waterfalls and shates and daffodils. Reckon the name was

(Loquitur Americanus)

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Wordsworth – or was it Edward Arlington Robinson? Anyway, this guy lived in a shack in some part of England where they got their hills (Say, you should see our Pike’s Peak, highest in the U.S.A., or the Grand Canyon if ya like holes). Yeah, I was there once, but the beer was so good I never saw the inside of this Dove Cottage joint.

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variation the second: Come death Softly Silently 30 Soothe the fevered brow, smooth the twisted soul, bank the fires of acrid remorse waft poor sad soul beyond squirrel-cage and set it ultimately free from the evil eye, transcending the sight unseen. 35 Strew cypress, pluck yew, cull aspidistras let me languish in silent suffering like a well-bred animal. Those who lead the bull by the nose, meaning Death Those who leave orange-peels on hill-tops, meaning Death Those who devour mushrooms for breakfast, meaning

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Death are become unsubstantial one with the cuckoo-cry, the bank balance, the umbrella. A dove sat in a willow-tree willow-tree, willow-tree knitting a large brown sock with a reinforced heel and a finely tapered toe.

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Why should it end thus not with a bang but a snivel. The universe could have suddenly unwound and left us clutching a feverish if slightly battered daffodil (which is the bliss of solitude) 55 lost in eternal, ineffable, inscrutable, impalpable wonderment to enter the portal, to darken the door, to cross the threshold of the cottage of the gentle bard, of the lakesinger. 60 But the escapement of the universe was sadly all too sound (made in Switzerland) we darkened no threshold, entered no lintel, traversed no door-stone. Come death Softly Silently Twist the knife if you wish it renders the wound incurable and besides I like it. ca. 8–19 September 1938

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Battle Pattern 1 Closing to Engage Second degree of readiness. From time to time throughout the night the Sub Lieutenant walked about the ship and made his report to the bridge. But what he saw was not remarkable. At magazine and shellroom hatches in the destroyer’s Wardroom flat the after supply party, waiting for the alarm, 5 sleep through the last of the middle watch. There is no human sound, but only ship-noises and sea-tones: creakings that steal along the wood like live things and scamper away, hush and wash and thump of the seas along the ship’s side, 10 rumbling crunch of the screws, urgent thrilling resonance and surge of the turbines. One light, swinging to the ship’s going, shines through the slats of the pantry door in bright bars that finger slowly back and forward 15 over the still figures shapeless with exhaustion, over outflung arms, updrawn legs, heads pillowed on the bare deck with weary negligence. There is no movement except in the ship’s hurrying and in the responsive bars of light that finger 20 hesitantly forward over the motionless bodies, and creep back in a dark dreamlike tension, quiet, beautiful and ominous. Stripped for immediate action the forward messdecks are a dishevelled gloom wherein the lifelines rigged from bulkhead to screendoor 25 conjure the blind groping that will follow a direct hit. Each sea that periodically mounts to the fo’csle strikes a compact and stunning blow;

The Complete Poems

and as the ship’s trembling quietens from the shock the scraping crunch of waves at the bows reasserts itself as a ground bass of speed. The afterwash of the wave, sloshing down the ammunition ports, films out over the treacherous deck insinuating into the shallow dreamless sleep of seamen huddled out of the water’s way. Seven figures in wet duffel coats, feet thrust out to secure the bench they sit on, hunch forward over an electric fire. They sway in loose unconscious unison with the ship’s rhythmic plunging. In the dim light their faces are featureless, unindividual. Their talk is quiet, tentative, retrospective, listless as the smoke curling up to the moist deckhead from their damp foul-tasting cigarettes. At a time like this it’s better not to think too much about the immediate future. So they talk of home and other ships and other shipmates and a last leave and days before the war. But their talk has long silences in it, none being able to keep his thought from wandering back to the quick future. And anyway they’re only talking and smoking to thwart the soft weariness dragging at their eyes. With a will that shrinks from this ultimate encounter with the power of sleep they claw their way through the dripping hours until the insidious chill of the dawn steals the slender comfort from the fire. Now there are no words left and their spirits are cold as the water washing about their boots. Their only comfort is they haven’t been at the guns or on the bridge all night. And the dawn is grey with rain spreading the night’s misery into the morning with intermittent shafts. Presently the nimbus lifts

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and mauve shadows of broken cumulus hurry over the bright sea after the tag-end of the storm. And the wind flirts the blue-green pyramids of waves, stippling their surfaces with feather-texture, scoring the hollows with lead-white foam. And filaments of spray indolently fumble over the fo’csle, over the foremost guns and the bridge, and set a small rainbow at the ship’s flying foot. The destroyer, lipping and snuffling whiteness at the hawsepipes, lunges forward, lifts, plunges deeper, lifts in a tense trembling climax of struggle against the synchronism of the sea, until a green wave explodes on her falling fo’csle. She stumbles, shudders free, and lifts up her head, her clean flanks creaming. Enemy in sight. Against the colour of the fresh-made morning the battle ensigns are dazzling and extravagant.

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2 The Enemy Throughout the action a picture forms in the mind, instant as a gunflash, obliterating thought like a whiff of flame. The May dawn, grey with rainsquall, found the men in the doomed ship 90 empty and gaunt with sleeplessness and the long cold vigil at the guns. The headlong hurrying through the twilight Arctic fog, Southwards with fate and vengeance on their quarter till they shook the pursuit, detached their cruiser and set course

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Eastward with a hope they were too numb to savour – all is a troubled nightmare-broken sleep, monotone of days that felt like one long night without a dawn, too intense to bear remembering, so that the mind rejects it, all but the acrid taste it leaves. At some moment the fact of doom had importuned its way into their minds like the sun insistently plucking at a late sleeper’s eyes: and the knowledge passed from eye to eye without a word. But doom cannot be lightly harboured in the mind. You must accept it or drive it out, and either way it is too enormous to touch you closely without bringing madness or deep calm. They were calm, their eyes and minds, suddenly selective, refusing what was not convenient; so that the aircraft attacking up the last of the light had never been real despite the gunfire. Now as the ship like a hamstrung stag drags herself Northward, away from harbour, away from hope, there is no bitterness in her for unfulfilled wild promises and an inexplicable fate. Bitterness can outstay the farthest limit of hope; but when the eyes of the mind have looked on doom, accepting or rejecting the unequivocal, there is no room even for bitterness, no place for longing, self-pity or regret. They settle at their action stations with the quietness born out of the knowledge of finality.

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If they were lucky, their last night was too full of misery to let them think what forces concentrated groping for them in the darkness, waiting for the light, waiting with patient relish for the morning kill.

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The flames flower red-orange from the ring of guns, the yellow cordite-smoke drifts clear of the ships, and down-wind you hear the rumble and torn-silk of the shells feeling for the viscera to destroy. The white stupendous shell-splashes mount slowly as a moment in catastrophe, hang and drift out in a clinging mist. A rose-coloured wound glows in the armourplate where a shell strikes. This is doom dull, blinding, incredible. Even though they interpose the passionless beauty of the guns these men are no less fragile in face of steel and fire, battle and doom than Hood’s men were.

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Down the wind the silk tearing of the shells matches the bright pageantry of destruction. And the picture persists, obliterating thought like a bright whiff of holocaustic flame. 3 Air Attack Two destroyers, homewardbound at low speed, short of fuel, 150 far from the soberly exultant battle fleet, were found by a group of avenging German aircraft. The attack started when breakfast was hot on the galleystoves; but that meal was spoiled when the cooks ran to action stations. The Captain places his spatulate fingers lightly on the azimuth ring, as though the gentle precision of his fingers alone could ensure the ship’s survival.

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His eyes grow cold with the desolation of decision; but his fingers move with a curious delicate relish as though he had always known it would be like this.

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4 Meditation Spurred by what hope or hunger, distracted by what lust come we to the fatal end of our graal-quest. The sweet brimming cup pressed to the burning lips has the terrible delight of a lover’s first kiss. In this cup are mingled love and fear and courage, gracefulness and beauty, hate and ugliness. Vinegar or wine, hemlock or hyssop, blood and water mingled? Only the dark lees know. In humble extremity drink we this cup of dread and delight, of burning bitterness. Blind seeds of hope, of love and ugliness, beauty, hate and courage have come to cruel harvest

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in one forsaken cry and the arms outstretched, in darkness and cockcrow: the sea made Golgotha.

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5 Sea Burial It is late afternoon. The rainsquall has passed; but while it lasted it brought down the visibility and stopped for a while the bombing that made the survivors on the messdecks pensive and inward-looking, smoking many cigarettes. Fifteen minutes ago the Sub., a little pale from his interrupted work in the tiller flat, reported to the bridge. So now would be a good time. A Commander quietly leaves the bridge. He was one with merry ways; but now his eyes have a distant hungry lost silence in them. You look at his borrowed grey trousers and the monkey-jacket too big for him and know why his eyes look the way they do. The iron-deck abreast the torpedo tubes still glistens with rain; and low cloud scurries smokily above the masthead. A line of men ragged as the clouds, girded in blankets, barefoot or shod with other men’s boots, pick their way aft. They are silent and their eyes are downcast. Neither the white surge of water at the ship’s side nor the roar of exhaust fans nor the blackened faces of the gunners at the multiple touches them with wonder or comfort or irony. And some there be which have no memorial, who are perished as though they had never been. We therefore commit their bodies to the deep, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing.

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Concerning them that fall asleep: They rest from their labours, looking for the resurrection of the body. Behold I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

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Why do we also stand in jeopardy every hour? Behold I tell you a mystery: if there is no resurrection of the dead, if the dead are not raised at all, if in this life only we have hoped, we are of all men most pitiable.

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Why do we also stand in jeopardy every hour? The men straggle forward, picking their way against the motion of the ship. The sky clears. The alarm bells ring. Aircraft approaching. The sound is like a white-hot needle plunged upward through the skull.

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Blessed are the dead; for since by man came death why do we also stand in jeopardy? 6 Landfall For four listless hours since the bombing stopped there has been no sound on the bridge except the subdued sighing boom of the folded bow-wave, the busy clucking of the log-repeat, the gyro’s quiet hunting, a helm-order and its muffled echo in the voice-pipe. It is night

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and each man is groping in the darkness to integrate what the day’s attack has cast adrift from the hinges of consciousness and order. Ears pulse and tingle with the inexpungible physical imprint of the crushing gun-note. Eyelids are a dragging leaden torture of sleeplessness, mouths have the bitter taste of sleeplessness; but none dares sleep till he has ravelled up what the bombs have pulled apart. The low darker smudge that might have been another stratum of cloud along the skyline shapes out of the darkness. Dawn, with cold translucence, brings to imperceptible birth before our quivering eyes the land, the land quintessentially solid, comfortable, unconcerned. As the light transmutes the land into Irish meadows green as lawns the voices on the bridge begin to speak. Husky, rough and low-pitched with fatigue they come from a great distance, disembodied, concealing the pattern of trembling thought that moves behind the eyes. Sleep lies visible over the dawning land. But there is no sleep for us until exhaustion crushes us down into the deep dark. For the light will slowly withdraw from the land the warm blanket of sleep; and others will find no comfort in this dawn but, unbelieving, will turn again to sleep hoping to wake from a dream within a dream.

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7 Finale There is not elegy enough in all the winds and waves of the world to sing the ships, to sing the seamen to their rest, down

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through the slow shimmering drift of crepuscule, sinking through emerald green, through opal dimness to darkness. Not all laving of all the world’s oceans, loving moonwash of warm tropic seas can ever heal the hearts smashed to fragments of desolated darkness. Sink now, life ended, down through the haunts of trumpetfish and shark and spermwhale, down to the still siltless floor of the ocean where no light sifts or spills through the liquid driftings of darkness, where no eye sees the delicate dark-wrought flowers that open to no moon. With you is scattered what treasure to puzzle the eager submarine historian when the sea gives up her dead: the hammered, turned, polished, riveted sleekness and sweet beauty of gun, plate, turbine, screw, shell, torpedo, anchor-fluke and studded cable (symbol of what hope, what faith?), instruments of electronic daintiness blind inert unfunctional in ignorance; perplexing fragments of ingenious skill that bear no trace of their powerlessness to shield the germ of life against the sudden steel, the slow drowsy agony of drowning. No pity or memory ever ruffled the iron implacable will of ocean. Yet in its throat is merciful secrecy, when hope is gone. When life is a wafer dissolved on the lips of the sea the desolation of waiting hearts may heal in ignorance of the haunting dread of fear, the numb hunger, and terror – dull tensions that never uncoiled in the cool crystals of words. In the vast silence of the tideless sea-floor, fathoms deep, in the birthless womb of ocean,

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let the jagged steel, and broken pitiful beauty born of the smooth loins of women sleep where the diatom and coral sleep. 4 June 1941

1948

Behind the Victory It is well to recall the warmth of friendship and admiration silently given and felt across the wardroom table by men who were tired to the ghost, hungry and dirty and dazed at the end of a day of horror and blinding ugliness. But also I remember the grey and drowsy struggle with ocean’s tentacled cold, fighting the strong desire to slip, like the other two, into the gentle warmth and voluptuous emptiness of everlasting sleep. There’s a hurt that will not heal while admiration and friendship silently sensed and given across the wardroom table preserve the twilight vision of men who preferred to die, of wounds revealed in the sea, and brown wide sightless eyes. 21 November 1942

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Domestic Manifesto Nothing less than a war will ever again induce me to live with twenty others in an old and resonant house while the need is heavy upon me to play an occasional fugue, sonata or bagatelle when the day’s work is done. I refuse to be polite. I propose to speak my mind. Let’s all be selfish together; then we know where we stand. Righteous indignation comes easily to most. But few will examine the major premise for their conviction: that indignation by nature is rooted in righteousness. There are several kinds of offenders; but worst of all are those who foster a morbid passion for going to bed at eight. When the war is finally over I pray I may never see another furious face (meticulously dishevelled) appear at my ten o’clock door and utter the mild request that precious silence should not be wantonly destroyed. I don’t mind being considerate but prefer the idea to be mine.

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I’d like to establish a custom that one day out of seven be specially set aside for kindness to musicians; a temporary obeyance of woman’s impregnable right to demand consideration without incurring the duty of mutual long-suffering. Laymen lightly accept the undeniable power of causing music to cease on the slightest provocation. But, are viewers armed with hammers at an exhibition of sculpture? Even at Burlington House patrons, on entering, are relieved of their umbrellas. I view this matter sadly so I’m pinning this verse on the wall. In addition to my pen I’ve a sleek and shining pistol loaded with eight bullets: and the bullets are made of lead. 7 December 1942

George Whalley

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Wheat Under an April sun a field of Egyptian wheat stands in a still phalanx, slender, straight, motionless, Nile-rooted in richness. It harbours a depth of hot golden drowsy shadow, vibrant with the living impulse of the sun. And after the horizon has broken the sun’s spears and the green growing has merged into the earth’s vague shadow the slender wheat glows with a radiant golden spell throughout the abrupt twilight until the whole world of mummy and pyramid is sunk in warm darkness under the frosty stars. When Lazarus awoke and stripped off the graveclothes his hunger and aloneness looked out at his eyes as he moved among his fellows, alien and unfamiliar. Why should the dead trample the sun-bleached golden treasure of tall slight Nile-wheat under an April sun? 11 May 1943

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By the River Under the seawall the rivertide plucked softly in the darkness. The bridge, black against the night, breasted the urgent water with a low sound. A duck, unseen on the foreshore, started and woke, quacked in anger at lost balance, was still and slept again. Against the stormdark water and the thin cloud-wrack your upturned face was a dim oval and your eyes were peace. The cold breeze stirred your hair and brought your fragrance to me; and the gentle butterfly of your breath brushed my cheek. We seemed as we stood so to be out of death’s way, sealed in the pale nymph-sheath from which the dragonfly of everlastingness would presently burst and stretch out in the sun crumpled and nacreous wings. And the moon rose full with an inconceivable slowness behind bare trees. Since when I have watched three full moons rising: one across snowy ranges of towering cumulus;

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one outlining harshly a ridge of savage hills rooted in desert sand; and now across a still harbour, the white town terraced in quietness. Three moons since we tasted eternity in darkness.

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But O the slowness, the dead slowness of the time passing; and the aloneness. 14 June 1943

1948

Commandos Embarking Along the shore of the Great Bitter Lake a Commando Company marches at night on a road new-built since Alamein. There is no light for them, there is no word spoken by them through the chilly velvet-softness of the dark; but their iron-shod boots on the hard road have the ringing persistence of a cracked bell and the hurrying rattle of shingle scurrying down a beach in the wake of the surf.

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The ringing dwindles and vanishes into the husky whispering of boots crushing the soft sand. On many a night, when the wind has died and the whirling sand-devils cease their restless roaming under the Ataqa Mountains,

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we have heard the ringing of boots dwindle and change to a lost whisper. But this is the last time, this is the last time they’ll march to the landing-craft. June 1943

George Whalley

20 1948

Initial Assault – Sicily The name that somebody put at some unremembered time on a focus of camel tracks or a headland or a beach has no inherent power except to tantalize the fringes of memory; until it is selected as a bomb-aimer’s target, or the dark craft of invasion steal in there from the night sea, and the cicadas’ song is silenced in vineyard and olivegrove by the clinking approach of tanks. And Canea, Mersa Matruh, El Aouina, Murro di Porco, Sidi Rezegh and Luqa are stranded on the beach of memory beyond the pluck of the springtide’s tendrils and the cool soothing fingers of time. 9 July 1943

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Aftermath, July 1943 Under this waning moon Tunis is steeped in breathless heat and silence. Can it have been last night that Malta lay in patient tenseness under the red outrageous tracery of flak; and all the air was drenched with the thump and chatter and bell-roar of the guns? And only a week ago Augusta’s narrow streets were empty and desolate; and in the quivering heat and silence between the seaward salvos a loose shutter creaked forsakenly in the cathedral square? Under this waning moon the night is a taut cord stretched across Sicily between the dusk fires and the dawn bombing. But here the moonlight pervades the peace of a sleeping city; and a dog trots past with brisk inconsequence making the silence brittle with the clitter of his nails; and two cocks crow antiphonally at the moon and a false dawn.

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In the silent heat of this placid white town your memory comes to me from beside an imagined river across the dark sea like an obscure fragrance of sandalwood. 20 July 1943

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Pilgrim Heart, Turn Homeward Pilgrim heart, turn homeward. What your quest will win could only wound you deeper. Avola cannot tell the manner of his dying among the olive trees. Landing at dawn he marched along a broad straight road through a triumphal arch (built by another’s leader for a victory never won) into a small village, sun-drowsy and white. This was all so strange and needle-sharp to him he might well have guessed its crucial brilliancy. As the forenoon advanced they worked through lemongroves and darker green of olives toward the bare summit. Already the fighting was soiling the morning there.

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Perhaps he was musing on blossoming magnolias or the prospect of Etna or letters coming from home: whatever it was, he never reached the barren upland. Pilgrim heart, turn homeward. There is no relation between the loving ways of a man among his own and the manner of his dying among the olive trees. July 1943

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The Sound of Bare Feet The sound of bare feet padding over a stone floor in a Maltese house recalls the soft whispering of many bare feet moving over Norman flagstones; and sunburned boys approaching the dawn sacrament. We have turned our backs on the still beech-wood. The laughter died there and only the barefoot paths recorded our happiness briefly under the sky. Each in his own way has sacrificed the clear

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immediate vision and hope to war’s diffuse absorption. And the dawn sacrament no more sets our feet over Norman flagstones upon the ways of peace. 18 August 1943

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One night in the darkness One night in the darkness You slipped out of my arms And stood away from me, Very rigid and still – Defiant, like a person Who marches in the face Of reasonable prudence To make an overwhelming Act of self-sacrifice. You said “I will not make Any single demand Upon you, nor expect Anything after the usual Pattern of women’s hopes. Possessiveness is like A sickle in the act of reaping, A small grasping movement, Miserly and destructive. I will sweep no sickle Nor gather the ripe harvest, Nor shut you absorbed away From rich diversity.”

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Then you stood silent a moment And the stern look of resolution In your eyes slowly softened To loving perplexity; As though you had suddenly wakened To find yourself standing In a place austere and lonely. You uttered a small cry And ran into my arms And nestled there, pitifully Forlorn and desolate. I tried to comfort you As I would a frightened child With caresses and low sounds. But my heart cried with pain At the sharp understanding That your unselfishness, For all its truth and wisdom, Was wider than human nature, Harder than human life. For by your nature, being woman, You have enfolded and fostered My heart with living tendrils To cut which is death To both of us.

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19 August 1943

Homecoming Two years have made this house my home. But now, returning from unimagined distance and time, I find a house familiar but empty. And there is no savour in the food, no softness to my bed, no comfort even in the music.

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To pass now along the river, to approach and open the wrought-iron gate, to look up and see your window dark (for even in the blackout I can tell) is an agony and no homecoming. And the smile of welcome has died on the lips. And all the little matters treasured away these many days to speak softly to you in the dark remain unspoken. 22 August 1943

George Whalley

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London after Leave The best thing you can say for London is the way the trees, with quiet subtlety of wit and generosity, prepare to startle our dulled minds with their extravagant loveliness in Spring. Yet nowhere in this mighty city is there a single hilltop dark with oaks where we can spread our coats at sunset and look westward, watching the last light die along the hills and in each other’s face, while behind us grows the promise of the moon. So it was last night under the trees. We listened to an owl, wakened by the darkness, clear his throat gruffly with a tentative exercise; we heard contented cattle moving below us in a twilight water-meadow, and sleepy crickets linking the dusk to the memory

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of noon-day with hesitant crisp notes; so that the bombers mustering overhead had no power to touch us or to destroy the peace.

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1948

Sitting the Night Out Why do we sit the night out so, hour after hour, until the threat of the dawn and tomorrow’s duty sends us to reluctant beds? It is beyond reason and discretion to importune the night and tempt the day to rob the following night of all its treasure. Yet we are accomplished robbers of our sleep, hardened though not conscienceless, resolving to mend our ways but paving a broad road to sleeplessness by mutual condonation. Not marking overmuch the hours as they slip past us beside the river or in the silent house we talk with guarded eagerness or no words come, till unaccountably, at no particular hour, peace comes into the eyes and into us steals deep quietude. I think that’s what we wait for when we are cunning as sophists to sit the night out so. 29 August 1943

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The Messenger Dust stained and weary he pushed himself along, Every effort drew a breath which sounded like a sighing song Designed to drown in agony, the sound of his heart, which gave a pound At every step the traveller took upon his weary way. He’d come from a castle far in the east Where the night before at a feast That had not stopped before the morning light His Over-Lord the Baron had pledged himself to fight Against the common enemy of peace and friendship and security.

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He’d come all the way at his Over-Lord’s bidding A serf – yet a free man could not be more willing. He’d run o’er mountains and valleys and plains, He ran on through towns just stopped to ask the names And to have a drink at the waters brink.

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And now he’d pause in the forest glade And wonder at its cool and placid beauty Hiding colourful birds and squirrels Under its feathery shade.

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His journey’s end was not far distant Eighteen miles to the east it lay But as the night was falling fast, He knew he’d have to rest at last. It would but take him half of one more day. That night he rested in the forest glade In that great vast dining hall Which God alone had made, He lay him down and slept the clock right round And while he slept there past him by Two clowns who seeing his sleeping figure lying

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Went at once and robbed him crying, “A knave what does he with the scroll of kings And what does he know of such courtly things.”

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The messenger awoke midst The singing of the birds And the sighing of the wind Among the trees. He stumbled to his feet And having been restored By that gracious mother sleep He drank and bathed his forehead In the brook. He wandered idly down its banks Remembering his boyhood pranks He came upon a pool amidst the green And stripped and plunged his body, into the icy stream. His body glowed with warmth When at last he climbed the rocks and dried Then suddenly he realised at last The script was gone – ’twas like an icy blast Upon his youthful soul For he – the messenger was not yet twentyfive But a serf had had not the joy A Freeman had in being alive. He strode back to the glade A picture of impotent wrath A frown upon his temples played A serf yet majestic more in rage Than any king of any age. He turned and striding up the glade He found a jokers cap upon the ground

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And following footprints trampled round The place where he had lain upon the ground. Through the glade their way across his they led As mile and mile he sped His muscles rippling as he ran A marvellous figure of a man. At every town he stopped and asked Whether this way two jokers had passed Some answered yes Some answered nay Some pointed left Some told him right. He paused and pondered oft At what they meant And when at last he found the way He was told it through a canyon lay (And that narrow and steep it cut through sandstone rock With tufted grass on every hillock). And when to the tortuous valley he came He found that it perfectly fitted its name Its steep and craggy walls Gave little place For rook to rest The path was narrow And had not space for five armed men to walk abreast. As he entered the canyon A whistle rang loud From one of the boulders That stood in his road An instant after the clarion blast Ten men darted out ever so fast From many a nook and corner they only knew themselves And fell upon the messenger.

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While the very clowns who’d robbed him Watched although he knew it not Blow for blow he gave and took He was unarmed save for a dagger But he stabbed and wounded half his foes Before it snapped and left him Alone in the throes Of a terrible struggle. His three remaining enemies Near had him in their grasp When at a word they loosed their hold and left him Surrounded by the dead and dying But they (and the clowns) were too late They were in turn surrounded But this time by men in uniforms of black and red The colours of the prince to whom The Baron’s message was addressed.

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2–4 October 1943

The Moon Oblivious of wind and rain and the matter of man Lofty, disdainful, up in the sky The moon looked down on the earth with half an eye. The earth had changed but little in the past ten thousand years. Man and his petty wars Had not so much as changed The fair countenance of this globe Which still wore albeit patched The robe that it wore when Adam was hatched. 4 October 1943

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The Devils’ Day Out Question

Answer

Would it really be good If the elves in the wood Could do as they would And the devils in hell Were let loose as well.

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All the world would be thunder and lightning They’d take paintbrush and pot Of white paint quite a lot They’d say “really these mountains need whitening The equator needs lightening 10 The whole world needs tightening Everybody’s too sober and good.” They’d throw tables and chairs Through the windows in pairs Giving everyone scares They’d poke their long claws Through windows and doors And break all the laws Of the Realm. They’d think it great fun To eat ice penny buns Coated with devilment sugar They’d dance round the trees Where they go on their sprees (Or if in the sea) On some coral They’d have devilish fun Shooting wasps with a gun Which they’d pickle in spices and vinegar.

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They’d stay up all night With a glow-worm for light And they’d have fiery fights with each other And when they’d done all the damage They could very well manage They’d go back to hell one by one With a watch by the gate To see no one was late For they’d all have a date With their girls.

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5 October 1943

English Winter This is a winter land, of rain and glistening streets and the soft persistent slash of rain at the window-glass. The leaves have dropped down under the rain and the wind’s melancholy industry; and through the bare trees the rain drifts and slants in grey wisps from a grey sky. The leafless branches are silent athwart the wind, stripped of their summer warmth of passionate restlessness, their feeling ebbed and numb, motionless with misery. 24 October 1943

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W.K.E. It is his hands that I remember: scholarly hands with the firm delicacy of a musician’s. When he held a book his fingers savoured the texture of paper and binding. It seemed as though he knew by touch the mysterious artistry of the letter perfectly formed, the perfect balance of a page; and when you watched his strong sensitive fingers you shared the depth of his delight. You cannot imagine hands so spiritual and gentle turned to the uses of war. It is not to be wondered at that in the first autumn before the bitter fighting startled the desert solitude a random bomb killed him. 3 November 1943

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Beech Wood Glowing rust-red bracken warmed the colourless sunlight slanting across the glade. Over the burnt gold of their fallen leaves mossed-silver beeches spun like a web their intricate twig-shadow. Far away the gaunt autumn wind had soothed

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the pine-needles to a silken hush; and overhead the sky was the colour of your summer frock the morning you came to greet me in a Dorset village street, with the sun glowing in your hair, and your eyes bright with the slow shy smile of welcome. 13 November 1943

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25 July 1945

Minster Lovell The lane climbed gently, threading its way amongst a handful of lichened Cotswold cottages. Their roofs, curved with the peaceful dilapidation of mossy thatch, thrust steep gables upward with a grace as natural as the bare elms standing against pale lemon of winter sky, pale buff of winter cloud. When the early sun was stealing the stiff magic of frost from the grass, and when the mist came with the first dark, and the starlight was pale after the moon, always the cottages stood sedately in line, silent and patient, like comfortable shopkeepers waiting for a procession. This was Minster Lovell: Wychwood sleeping, and Windrush; a sense of peace and fragrant darkness, and firelight casting a spell upon a mood of fugitive reality and the sharp insistent clearness of a dream. 13 November 1943

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There was no way of telling There was no way of telling Why that vague shadow Stalked me persistently Through the dark winter And the daffodils of Spring. Sometimes under the stars Of the desert night it seemed To be my own shadow I bitterly wrestled with; But it took no clear shape So that I could see The nature of the threat Until, when it vanished, I found my whole being Wounded and entangled With a cruel perplexity Of thorny elements, Beyond my ingenuity To break or simplify. Now suddenly in the white Flame of your love for me And mine for you the blinding Complex of irrelevance Has crumbled into nothing. And only there is left The single sharp thorn Of truth; and lying naked Against it I am consumed With a throbbing agony. Having seen myself I move like a ghost In utter desolation. 15 November 1943

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Portrait Even behind his gaiety there lurked a darkness which she feared because he had accepted it. The fact of his unhappy solitary nature gave her love an almost self-destructive singleness of heart to fight his inner enemy. And when the cold silence of desolation fell more often like a cloak about his shoulders she never grew embittered or lost faith allowing her heart to break. But the last gust of laughter died and silence enfolded him in a grey waste of languid disenchantment. Now that he is dead, the hard core of inner conflict unresolved and the quiet insistent voices of unrest unstilled, her loneliness is shafted by the sharp pain of perplexity that so much love right to the end should fail to bring him peace. 16 November 1943

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6 May 1946

You must have found within yourself You must have found within yourself some store of happiness and peace. For three days now your eyes have shone with a radiance of quiet content and tranquil consciousness of strength won from the fearless trust with which you placed in my hands the power to work catastrophe or benison. Your faith remains inviolate; and all the cost and all the giving

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leaves the treasure of your heart completed not impoverished. 19 November 1943

29 October 1945

Das Lebewohl, die Abwesenheit, das Wiedersehen 1 The Parting If you should weep, or curse me with scorn or hate it might make a wound to let the suffering out. But you are dry-eyed, calm, silent, distant, tight-lipped, courageous. And I am frightened. 2 Winter Night Refusing to think you turn away your mind; but you see out of the eye’s corner and know with cruel vividness as a violin string feels the anguished bite of the bow. The amber navigation light on the bridge, the dark smooth sweep of the river, the small intimate path between the gate and the door are sharp remembrances. There is no way to silence the poignant voices of memory. And after nightfall you don’t burn candles any more. But you catch yourself listening for footfalls in the garden, footfalls on the stairs;

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and sometimes you hear them and your heart beats quickly but the door does not open and again there is silence. Then you know that I shall not come, that you will not feel my arms crush out your suffering. From your open window you gaze numbly into the winter night; knowing and refusing to know, though you feel the cold knowing through every fibre of your flesh, though you feel the sharp actual thrust of the sword in your heart so that your very marrow cries although your eyes are tearless staring on the stars. There was a summer night when the moon cast shadows of sunflowers against the wall of the house. The cry of an owl or a curlew would bring me to madness.

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3 The Return There was this difference: when the prodigal son came home his father saw him a long way off and watched him slowly crossing the sunlit fields. It was at night that I came back to you. You were beside me before I could be sure. We stood for a long time silent and still in the dark. And presently I put out my hand and touched you and still you did not move and made no sound. And then I kissed you, my throat aching with tears, and I could only say “Forgive me. You

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were everywhere and I could find no peace. Now I have found you. Now I have come home.” 4 December 1943

George Whalley

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For Elizabeth Because you brought me to the hard sweet torment of creation, these are for a warm mantle of comfort against the silences. 5 December 1943

1948

Now we are both alone and isolate Now we are both alone and isolate, your presence, unevolved, not fashioned forth in image, is my constant company: something loved, remembered and made sharp by the bleak agony of silence. You move undimmed and undeterred through every dark refuge and pathway of my conscious will; you come to me in sleep, and I awake to anguish of daylight, anguish of solitude. You are moving in candlelight with gay inconsequence, and your lips are curved with a secret little inward-looking smile that softens your eyes to the gravity of ultimate quietness; and I am calm.

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But then your eyes grow dark with tears, misty with suffering; and I am broken. 9 December 1943

3 September 1946

Renunciation Since there is no anger in you, no remorse, no bitterness, there is no destructive force can crush our laughter or our hope. We will draw creative power and fresh delight from the still pools of peace, and tranquil unremembered memories, and thankfulness. 12 December 1943

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Sleep Weary beyond the comforting of tears, close your eyelids, dark with suffering; and with my fingers I will delicately assuage your forehead’s fever, your passion of restlessness. Your pale lips relax in a little smile as sleep flows through you like a mysterious drug; imperceptible darkness creeping forward from the bloom of the furthest trembling fringe of consciousness; the slow blind stealth of tendrils swaying and feeling out and overpowering one by one each outpost of sensation till, like an Inca temple swamped by the patient implacability of jungle vines,

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the inmost citadel is overwhelmed by the stillness and silence of oblivion.

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Sleep now, my darling, dreamlessly, and deeper than the fathomless Pacific waters. You are weary beyond the comforting of tears; and there is in you great need of the charms of poppy and sandalwood and spikenard.

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1946

Christmas Eve While your lips are parted in a smile that makes your eyes sparkle, I must kiss you and capture laughter enough to keep me going As far as Rickmansworth and Christmas morning.

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25 July 1945

Winter North Atlantic As I watch the grey seas and the featureless North Atlantic sky and hear the mournful crying of the wind I know that Farncombe and Chideock, Minster Lovell and the warm homely candlelight of Cheyne Walk and the starry dreaming of your eyes

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will not be springs of peace nor wells of happiness, but weavils of the mind, pitiless to gnaw the tissues of delight until I have drained the cup of expiatory suffering and am brought utterly low, stripped of the threads of hope and comfort in the cold nakedness of atonement.

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If Winter Comes O will the Spring come in again with slender daffodils and the timid green of opening leaves and the sweet smell of grass? O will I ever walk again in the first of the dark over a beach where the surf roars in and the sand is still warm with the sun? O will I ever dream again when the broad daylight is dim with the enchantment of your voice and the gay lilt of your laugh? O will I ever pass again through dew-wet meadows and find you where the oak trees are black against the stars?

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Now again is the new year and I am desolate. O will I ever live again and love with a whole heart? 31 December 1943

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20 25 July 1945

This Is Your Music There was no other way than music of saying what had to be said. And the music seized and possessed me, crushing all my own utterance so that the sadness and delight, longing and despair and the calm anguish of resignation speak through me unbidden. Cloud tumbling on cloud of harmony, pattern of inner voices, discord suspended, resolving into peace and pathos, flame shining from a dark lantern: this is my prayer, my act of humility and sacrifice: mysterious idiom, burning paradox of truth slenderly engraved in the fugitive impermanence of sound that lingers glowing an instant and dies, and dying is given to unassailable

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silence in the heart beyond the touch of time or thought. Listen, beloved, and remember, as long as there is music and fingers to make it, this is your music. This is my sacrifice.

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1948

Returning to Sea Orion laughs at your window where Cygnus hovered before; and the dawn is quenching the thin sickle of the moon. Now the unchanging sea will be my grey home. But the time will pass and the Spring will come. 23 December 1943

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London, 1944 I imagine you, at the sound of the deep-throated air-raid sirens, waking by your open window, looking at your watch and, like a seasoned campaigner, composing yourself to sleep with one ear lifting for the close gunfire. You lie still until you hear the shell-splinters falling like summer hail on the roof-slates and the pavements, and the whining roar of a bomber jinking in the searchlights. You draw the curtains, instantly shutting out

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the sheetlightning of the gunflashes and the searchlights’ blue reflected glow. You dress and join the others down below in the hallway. Knowing no need for jocularity you are calm, more calm than the men, and feel no urge to be doing something just because something’s doing. By nature courage belongs to womenkind: they take it for granted, being their daily bread, and don’t have to whistle to keep their spirits up. The gunfire grows perfunctory, rouses again, and drifts to the North-West, grumbling. The lights wheel their blue ungainly shafts and die along their length with a faint afterglow. Then the sirens, like an ill-trained choir, raggedly begin their long glissando settling on the monotone of “raiders past.” Outside your window while you turn to sleep the night is suddenly quiet, suddenly dark. If there must be bombers over London I hope it won’t be otherwise than this. 22 January 1944

George Whalley

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Q.A.M. Distinct from the many noises of a six o’clock winter London is the sound of your step approaching across the dark courtyard. In the few clear seconds it takes you to traverse the pool

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of light under the archway the winter is dispelled by a thought of daffodils: for there is something joyous, aloof, timid and strong in your head’s proud attitude and the calm regard of your eyes.

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1948

It was to be expected he would be young It was to be expected he would be young And that the pistol would be rusted in its holster. There was nothing remarkable in the way The picture of his wife, stuck in his cigarette case, Was faded to invisibility. But what Had become of the parachute harness That he should float face down, his hair Stirring like dark seaweed in that glassy Water sleeping under the hot sun. This was a holiday sea in peacetime weather And the bitterest irony was his name of Bird. ? 21 February 1944

World’s End A London Incident 1 Not the firebright river nor the surge of bursting flames recoiling against the night but some blind impulse sent us out. We knew,

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as swallows know the time for heading North, that we must go, that we would surely come to an appointed place at a destined hour. 2 We climbed through a shattered windowframe into a little room pathetically cluttered with broken furniture. Some men were indistinctly outlined for a moment in cones of torchlight struggling with the smoke. Then slowly, between the cracked and tottering walls, a shadowy brotherhood was formed out of the awestruck urgent voices, the boy’s voice, an undertone of gentleness, a man comforting the boy by name, the common sympathy in a common danger. One by one you came to know the men by voice, by sense, by silhouette: the large and inarticulate men who worked in silence: others who waited watching, knowing well there was no space for more to work, dimly knowing their only help could be to wait, and being patient would not go away, not till they knew, not till they could be sure. One was a Welshman, one a sailor on leave; this was the second sleepless night for one; another was tall and gaunt and never spoke; the doctor’s voice was deep with weariness; a fireman’s erudite profanity struck a strange contrast to the red silk scarf knotted Cockney-fashion at his throat. Their voices, when they spoke, came quietly so that you had to lean towards a man to catch the words directly spoken – words weaving across the warp of long-spun time an intimacy casual and profound. Strong men trembled with exhaustion. Hours

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shaped like eternity passed singly on. The slow ebb of reaction trickled out into numbed lassitude. The brotherhood, dissolving as though at some unspoken word, took the silent apologetic leave of nameless shadows passing into the dark. 3 “Had you ever,” the fireman said, “observed the way the dying seem to travel back – or is it forward? – in a natural arc towards the innocence before the Fall?” That was some hours ago when all was well. The words insist: “Had you ever observed?” In such a rapid journey fourteen years is no great distance. First he had been a youth verging on manhood; now he is a child sleeping away perplexity and pain. 4 This is a cold and lonely phase of waiting in dull-eyed hopelessness. Even the slender comfort of darkness has been snatched away by the white cruelty of acetylene so that the setting, shrinking back, has lost its enormous mystery. Nothing is hidden, nothing can be imagined. An old navvy carrying a lantern climbed through the window, picked his way across the room as though he had forgotten the reason for his coming, and stood irrelevant and incongruous gazing on the sleeping figure. The light’s accent froze his deeply scarred and wrinkled face into an image of puzzled sorrow. And so he brooded many minutes and forgot the lantern and burned his shabby overcoat. But “No,” he said distractedly, not looking up,

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and presently stumbled blindly to the window as though the weight of his thought would break his heart. 5 Now there is only waiting. A hooded figure sitting motionless in a sheepskin coat fosters the low persistent flutter of life. All sense of urgency has passed. We are no more concerned with delicate irrevocable calculations, neither with fire, nor with the crooked fingers of water groping in darkness for the vital centre. The sirens howl again. The waiting figures stir and shiver; for nothing is impossible. In the stillness the grey dawn is shifting the emphasis to the shattered windowframe. But there’s no help can come from the gathering light and it’s only a matter of waiting, waiting only because the end is certain and preordained. We presumed to hope and now are humbled. That is the way of hope. So much of it is groundless and proud – far beyond all reason. Perhaps that pride can be forgiven us now that our hope is dead and we are humbled. For we know how it will be. The surgeon’s work can only end in the anonymity of a grey blanket. And all will be forgotten because we never can bring ourselves to say exactly what passed there in the smoke-filled dark. 24 February 1944

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Metamorphosis You hate me as an officer with cold impersonal eyes. I must wear the old tweed jacket and the dark red woollen tie. 13 March 1944

25 July 1945

The Way Back Somehow our delicate sympathy of mind no longer lights for us the way to each other. We look long and deeply into each other’s eyes searching for something familiar, something half-remembered and see there only a question, a stranger’s half-question. Then we remember dimly and tremulously strive to find our way back through the softness of lips, through stillness and the gently spoken word and the golden lustre of sun-bleached hair. 24 March 1944

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Storm The storm sweeps over the dark estuary, stings the window with a hissing whiplash, subsides in a whimper of exhaustion to gather new strength for onslaught. You are sad, wondering why I do not speak, wondering what I’m thinking that makes me gaze through the fire, restless, absent. My head is filled with the dark storm-wings, and the beak and claws of the storm have ripped away all sense of pity and gentleness.

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As though by accident, the estuary appears nacreous for an instant under the scudding moon; a beauty made casually out of storm like happiness, delight and love. And you are calm, perhaps because a storm to you is only a sudden vision glimpsed in the frost of lightning, or the infinitesimal sculpture of a snowdrift modelled as Praxiteles never dreamed. Or is it merely the feeling of warmth and harbour and home when the storm’s outside the door and you are not?

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But I know that the wind’s sobbing at the window latch and the chimney corner is only a woman’s trick to beguile me into the night. 2 April 1944

1948

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Seeing Ducks Asleep Seeing ducks asleep on dewy grass I know that if in the gathering dusk I climbed the winding long shallow steps and passed under the low archway and felt the little cobbles of the courtyard under my feet the latch would lie smoothly in the cup of my hand; and opening the door I should come upon you sitting at peace in a long dream in the soft firelight – I could write till the end of time and never tell exactly the colour of your eyes or the sweet curve of your lips. 13 April 1944

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On Rejoining an Old Ship Womanlike in more than your slender gracefulness you reach out to my heart and whisper “Remember. Remember.” You have no need to taunt me, winning a cheap triumph. A woman loved and loving, you have found the calm

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of long patience, the quiet assurance of your faith.

George Whalley

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And with a woman’s gentle tenderness you whisper unreproachingly, “I knew you would come back.” 14 April 1944

25 July 1945

Strength and peace have come Strength and peace have come out of our winter suffering; and we are made one person by faith and sympathy. Impervious to distance you come so vividly near me that I need to restrain my hand from reaching out to touch you. Yet with clear certainty I know my heart enfolds you as closely as ever my arms have learned to hold you to me. Even if I go to the uttermost parts of the sea we can never be touched by anguish or desolation. 16 April 1944

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After Santayana Since, by time’s unblinking law, what has once been done can never be revoked or brought to nothing our damnation is eternal: but memory is impregnable. 18 April 1944

5 25 July 1945

Normandy Landing A Diary D minus 42 In harbour, Devonport Ever since the clear crisp dawn the breeze and the sun have slowly circled like lovers facing each other in a dance. Now the sun westers cloudlessly, the breeze drops to a breath and the mist will gather in the still twilight. Out of red Devon soil springs the tremulous Easter resurrection of the grass; and out towards the sea and the sea-cliffs, beside the proud gold of gorse stands the whitethorn’s chastity. Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live. But out of this corruption, the winter, this setting sun,

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cometh incorruption in whitethorn and Easter grass. In this strange and fatal Spring our steel invading impulse alienates ourselves from life. Having no part with the new leaves or the arched grace of a wheeling gull, we see the grass and hear a robin’s liquid song, nostalgically. The lamb, the chaffinch and the whitethorn are for all time, deathless, unimpure. We see and hear. And we remember. But there is no atonement.

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D minus 1 In harbour, Falmouth Now that the ship is sealed there won’t be any more letters and no more telephone calls. There’s nothing more can be done. Your part will be waiting and there won’t be any news – not for a little while. I’d like to see you once more and kiss you just once again but there’s nothing I could tell you would spare you the pain of waiting or stop you wondering. I have my own ideas of how this party will be but I’d rather not tell you now in case I should be wrong. And besides, the ship is sealed –

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and maybe it’s just as well. It would do you little good to know what I think and feel.

D Day As you quickly cross the noisy noontime square your sunbright head has a gay tranquil poise. Inside the Abbey you are still for a moment, feeling the loftiness against the dull undertone of traffic and the bright whispers of sightseers. Rapt in your thought you pass along the ambulatory, past the cloister door, across the transept, into the small and seeming-half-forgotten chapel of St. Faith. There there is silence. Over the altar burns a single flame, fluttering the shadows. There is a faint scent of raffia, scent of candlewax evocative of the dark winter mornings.

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D plus 30 Off Vierville Here the dawn is coming saffron and cool behind the horizon, iridescing the sea with silken colours. No bird breaks the stillness, no cloud drifts, and everywhere in the ships is sleeping-silence. Last night over the beaches red tracer lazily climbed the darkness fingering for aircraft. Then the night closed in again. And just before the dawn an airman’s body was lifted into the ship. Otherwise nothing. But now the light is coming.

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Another time, in such a morning watch, I would have imagined the dawnlight growing out of the full moon over London river, stealing gentle and cool through your open window to enrich the last glow of your sleep. But you will not be sleeping there this morning. The light will creep through wrecked and deserted streets and wink morosely in the shattered glass. And you will not feel this subtle miracle; but, opening your door, will come upon the daylight fullgrown out of an unseen dawn.

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D plus 60 Off St. Vaast A limp white ensign against an oily sea symbolizes the apparent idleness of the ships from which you couldn’t believe that there was springing the carcinoma of conquest out of the sea towards the heart of France.

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D plus 70 Off Arromanches Yes. We were in danger sometimes 90 and then we were afraid. But those things don’t last long. And even on that first morning, though we were relieved to be unhurt, surprised it should be so easy, we were disappointed, once the tension relaxed, and a little resentful 95 as though someone had had a joke at our expense. Most of the time we’ve fought, not the enemy, but listless monotony and restlessness.

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I might have guessed it if I hadn’t thought otherwise; but how were you to know? We shall come home with no stories, no proud tales, only with somewhat tighter lips and finer lines at the eyes’ corners; having passed through a subtler danger, trial more incisive than the creeping night-stealth of death or danger of steel howling white-hot out of the sky. It was right of you to pray for us then: but not for our bodies’ sake; they will come home untouched.

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We are the undistinguished. Time is our enemy. 22–25 April 1944

1948

St. James’s Park What business had the Spring invading December when we had no reason to hope for other than winter solstice? The yellow cold fog, that hung in the dripping trees and shed a damp misery over the shivering ducks, made for us, as we walked, a dim intimate place shut out from the world, cut off from time.

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And our steps slowed and stopped and we looked in each other’s eyes and saw the Spring there and our lips came together. 23 April 1944

George Whalley

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Normandy 1944 Forget about what’s on the beaches. Tide, wind and the blind muffling drift of sand will care for that. Deeper inland, here where the apples taste only the rumours of gales, the wounds are subtler. One obliterating sweep of a bulldozer crushes for all time a sunken lane which never knew harsher uses than murmur of lovers in mothlight. What do we care for the splintered stillness of a Norman tower, soiled (had it not been destroyed) by iron-shod boots and spotter’s glasses and the predatory snap of a sniper’s rifle? What to us is the gnarled and immemorial apple orchard under whose trees we heap up ammunition, dig fox-holes and write V-letters home? The tanks have made destructive harvesting of fields patiently waiting for the scythe. The bearded pale gold wheat and the poppies know the sudden limp impersonality of violent death. In Bayeux, while the guns thunder round Caen preparing the final assault, the houses, as though bemused, stare with blind eyes at the tanks clattering over the cobbles and the crowning impertinent insult of the jeeps. And there’s no wandering with a market basket, no passing the time with gossip at a corner. The silent villagers’ eyes are dull, bewildered with wondering how the refugees are faring.

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Whether we do it or the enemy, this second death in no wise rights the first. Perhaps we need this blindness, need this hangman’s smiling complacency, because we know the Army of Liberation strips the country girl and, laughing, sets her to walk her native streets naked and humbled in the lewd eye of the world. 9 July 1944

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Apple Orchard, Normandy 1944 It takes great faith to plant an appletree and watch in quietness the yearly miracle and wait for the harvest, wait for your children’s harvest. Olive trees are slower in growing than children, slower than appletrees to bring to harvest. Yet was there a second Thermopylae. 10 July 1944

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Epithalamion There is no comfort now except when you come to me in the small still memory of your lips’ fresh sweetness and the warm sound of your voice and the fragrance of your body and the cool gentle touch of your fingertips. And I dream of the time when I shall come to you

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silently and tenderly as white thistledown drifting in drugged sunlight. And the ecstasy of your lips will burn in my mind a deep forgetfulness of the time quickly passing and the long loneliness and the summer slipping away and the sun going south.

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Then it may be autumn but with us the bees will be drowsily plundering the white appleblossom. 10 July 1944

1946

How the Time Passes To know how my time passes here imagine any limitless opacity of interstellar night and silent emptiness; and close your eyes and in your mind take seven such, and seven, and seven. That’s how the time is; that’s the space that separates me from my heaven. 10 July 1944

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Prothalamion That’s it, seagull. Wheel round the ship and cry in your most melancholy plaintive style under a grey sky on a leaden heavy day. You can’t darken the sunshine in my heart. 28 July 1944

The serene ring of the horizon The serene ring of the horizon and the moon’s hard disc and the sun’s round radiance draw me close to you. 4 August 1944

His love did not strike and blind me His love did not strike and blind me With the dark sweep of an eagle’s wing; There was more of the slow gentle sinking Into the white profound softness of a swallow’s nest. ? 4 August 1944

When this southbound ship comes in When this southbound ship comes in, An unknown ship, sailing in my imagining From an unknown port with an unknown passenger – When – when. O when will I see her above the horizon?

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But all my life, and the love of a lifetime, all my hopes Are bound with the sailing and arrival of that ship. Often and often already her form has miraged Into my mind’s eye deceitfully. And now my hopes are empty – empty and cold. Something says in me “The time for her sailing has slipped away; If ever she comes I’ll see her with no delights.” It will be too late then; and nothing will matter. Nothing.

George Whalley

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5 August 1944

The great ship, reeling and rearing The great ship, reeling and rearing, Pausing, slowly descending and crashing The whiteness to leeward, Her blunt bow sullenly sheering The frenzied, tumultuous lashing Of gale-heaped seas – She it was brought me across The great glorious waters. She it was traced in the arch of the sky At night, in the high-pitched shouting Of rigging, traced with her mast-heads Strange cabalist curves. In the grey of the landfall morning A lonely, courageous trawler Was butting the cruel, long breakers, Her bridge a smother of sprays, White to fore-deck Green in the waist.

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This was the dream, A wild adventurous dream With her sweet face and graceful soft figure Set in the frame of the sea’s fury. It all ended In the cold brown murk Of a morning on London’s river. There are deep bells now And a graceful spire Points to a grey sky. I watch a sea Of strange faces Passing. But she has gone with the dream, And she was the soul of it, The beauty, the laughter.

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ca. 1944

With a Sapphire Ring There’s all the blue in this of the Mediterranean night, and the night-sky of Chideock and the heather-sweet ecstasy of Dunster sunlight. There’s blue, too, for the colour you once forgot my eyes were; and blue for the sea, the lover that steals me from your arms.

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And yellow gold – that’s precious: saying by how much more you are to be desired than gold, than much fine gold. This is a slender band, real and unimperious, binding what cannot be touched: the treasure of the heart.

George Whalley

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A Girl in Love A girl in love is like the soft rain, gentle and of a delicate loveliness. And also about her there is a wistful sadness now that the shy grace and the eyes’ soft secret have stolen through her and touched her consciousness leaving her desolate within her dream. But the sun cannot touch her neither can the winds assail the delight and terror of the naked inconsolable heart. 14 March 1945

Peter All of him compact and powerful, his eyes and the corners of his lips shaped to quick laughter. His short stubby fingers as in a trance

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prepare the colours on the palette, and firmly sweep the brush across the rough canvas. “I don’t know where I’ll be – North Atlantic or Burma. I hope it’s a big ship after that last little filthy coasting packet. These few short days at home are all the war can give: the brief tranquil glimpses of laughter, colour and music; and the sea in between.” The grip of his hand hurt mine. He turned quickly away and as he walked jauntily into the fine snow his fingers were strangely busy with the collar of his coat. 4 April 1945

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Emergency Operation Under the anaesthetic the pupils of the child’s eyes sharpened to needle-points, focusing the whole of his life and the struggle for his life. A Sister, a nurse and a sailor watched, feeling the swift intensity of the surgeon’s work. But the shallow breathing quickened, the carotid pulse fluttering under the Sister’s fingers. And slowly the irises relaxed

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spreading across the pupils with the sudden final darkness. The nurse reached out her hand and closed the eyelids into the manner of sleep, and absently stroked the soiled soft cheek of the child and gazed at something beyond her sight. The sailor trembled and looked away, afraid to meet the mother in her eyes. 9 April 1945

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Fragment The dead are lonely. Only the living know how lonely the dead can be. ca. 9 April 1945

1946

Proud wings from a snow-swept pine forest Proud wings from a snow-swept pine forest lie broken under the pitiless sun in the still blue holiday Mediterranean. An engraved cigarette case and photographs faded by the sea water speak of childless white arms uplifted in the questioning supplication of the broken heart, the stupefied mind. ca. 9 April 1945

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Canadian Spring 1 There it is – the singing of frogs. I knew I’d recognize at once the warm high chirping, birdlike, drowsy and urgent. He told me I should hear them so: on a still night with a touch of frost tingling the air so that the stars in a black sky are single, brilliant and lonely, flashing undimmed down to the blacker horizon. This frost, quivering with the singing of frogs, is the breathless messenger of the sudden Spring. I have seen the mayflowers, as he told me, thrusting their spears through ash-grey winter leaves to blossom delicately white in shady places; and gummy chestnut buds bursting to release the crumpled leaves that hang like little green bats sleeping a long sleep in the sun. And soon the appletrees will blossom through the valley like pink-white cloud, half-flower, half-dream. But O it is a hard beauty, incised with steel in sunlit granite; a cruel beauty without distance or profundity. And so he said it would be. So it is. If I call to him now to listen to the frogs he’ll come and take me tenderly in his arms; and I won’t dare to open my eyes for fear I’ll see his face against the sky and fancy the river behind me, shivering with stars, and the house pale behind him; and myself dreaming of candlelight behind the darkened windows, and the colour of fire on books and a round table polished to limpid stillness.

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2 There was an April night when he came to me with his arms tumbled full of flowers: his hair was bleached by the sun and his eyes had the sea in them.

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That March the crocuses had come with a new meaning; and the Spring came timidly, the tiny leaves mistily waiting for the sun.

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But the time was slow and heavy after the daffodils, after he’d gone away. Then he came home, and the summer was a bright tapestry of rich grass, and roses smothering a thatched cottage: and Cornish gorse in flame and Somerset heather in flower and crooked peaceful hedges and the passionate song of larks and flashes of sun-hot sky wherein the spun cirrus shaped with slow growth into wild feathers.

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Do I remember well that words came more gently then; that there wasn’t this glint of ice in birdsong and voices? That was another life a whole world different.

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That was another earth a cold wide ocean distant. 3 O take me in your arms and fashion some stillness out of my heart’s crying for remembered daffodils. 30 April 1945

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We Who Are Left Perhaps it is well now with the men the war has killed; now that they are free and nothing can touch them. No more for them the madness of sandstorm, the misery at sea or flight’s monotony: no more the listless waiting for old letters or the sudden brilliance of brief ecstasy. Perhaps it is well for them no more to be troubled by agony of starlight or dawn or a new Spring. Old, old and grey the pattern of suffering: the men waiting, the women waiting and the time passing.

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But death still crushes, and time makes no less bitter the long incredible anguish of questioning childless arms. 2 May 1945

1948

End of Foreign Service Leave Eyes with the same directness as his father’s; the same gentle lips, a little sad as though a smile had just faded from them; the same sensitive hands linked to his mind as closely as a thought, apt to any delicate gentleness or skillful force; the same intangible lilt to the voice that is most like a sudden brightening of the eyes: this is all that remains to me of his father beyond what my heart remembers and fears to touch too often lest the touching darken it. I had not thought his coming home could touch the stronghold of my peace. I had forgotten. And now it is to do all over again, the long familiar befriending of suffering, now that he takes with him all that remains to me, beyond remembering, of him I loved – the hands, the lips, the eyes, the lilt of the voice. The music has ceased. His step is on the stair. And now it is to do all over again. 7 May 1945

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Victory in Europe A cold wind and the melancholy cry of ships’ sirens mingle requiem with today’s conditional thankfulness. “Some talk of Alexander” and some others merely remember a distant time when we gave serious thought to the phases of the moon; when there were fires in the East and Paul’s dome stood black against the copper smoke, and the City “had a glory round about it with fires” (as Pepys saw it nearly 300 years ago). Some remember, but some prefer to forget; for no memory, desire or aching need can ever unmake the casualty lists. When the blackout first shut down, the sky came back to London, and the stars came back. The casual skyline of roofs and chimneys served as an esoteric fingerpost. “You walk along King’s Road until you come to a big elaborate wrought-iron pub-sign. You can always see it against the sky. Turn right there and I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll be waiting.” It is well, now, that the white lights should blaze from Richmond to Gravesend, from Watford to Chislehurst. But the old London, the dark defiant city, has vanished like tatters of siren-wail smoke-torn in the wind. The old fear, familiar and featureless as an old friend, has been eclipsed; and lesser miseries will pass with danger, as word of peace spreads swifter than a darkened midnight train rushing across a moonwashed lightless country.

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But with it also has passed the enchanted beauty, ephemeral and lovely as almond blossom, sweet against the bitterness of waste. 7 May 1945

1948

Ships’ sirens cry with ragged melancholy Ships’ sirens cry with ragged melancholy through the pouring rain. And it is over, another war is ended and another world. Land of hope and glory – a land that slept a sleep disturbed by bombing 5 through the burning August nights with an unloaded pistol under the pillow, and watched the white vapour-trails in wonder, those early days of the Battle of Britain, and thought of poison-gas. Perhaps it was only a sense of humour allowed portly men seriously to consider 10 repelling an armoured enemy with pikes, and then there were the tense hours waiting for the first news of London under bombing, and the long howl of the sirens stirred the guts like a rusty iron spoon and became familiar and dreadful. London in the dark, footsteps ringing in empty Piccadilly 15 at 9 o’clock at night, and the houses black against the sky waiting in sullen silence along dark streets. The underground will not again reek with its pathetic human harbourers, not the shelters ring with defiant anguished singing. And distantly we watched 20 from the cold misery of the sea, heard the bombers go over watched the gunfire, the bomb-flashes and imagined, each in his own way, what worlds of suffering were in the statement “Devonport is catching it tonight.” It will never be the same again, as the taut thrill 25

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of dodging in a cheeky taxi through the dark and the Luftwaffe’s worst. 7 May 1945

All these I give you, the gentle cunning All these I give you, the gentle cunning of my hands, the humming-bird of my mind, the strength of my body poured forth in the night in our love into the darkness and mystery of your loins when you are a pale ghost of loveliness warm and gentle and passionate and submissive.

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For the Sweeties because they have been very good Fragrance of sandalwood and the soft curve of your throat recall the laughter and kisses mingled here where such indescribable loveliness nestles like sleep between two ecstasies. O shy and dainty as twin young does feeding among the lilies reckon me as a bundle of myrrh lest I should ever crave to be stayed with flagons or comforted with apples while night still holds her creative mystery. 9 May 1945

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April Shower At Hyde Park Corner a shower came down with the sudden ferocity of a kitten; and the sun smiled on its spent rage and the pavements shone like blue enamel. And instantly a rainbow leaped out of the middle of Piccadilly springing over St. James’s Palace into the heart of Westminster. But, of all the people passing there, their heads bowed down with winter thoughts, none looked up; and nobody found a pot of gold by the Cenotaph. 19 May 1945

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Poetics Not even Aristotle ever conceived of a tragedy that took six years in acting. But I imagine he would approve the ingredients: choice at the pistol-point between two sowings, each with a predeterminately fatal harvesting. His morose old spirit must watch with a connoisseur’s interest the denouement.

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And surely he applauds the multitudinous catharsis of pity and terror.

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21 June 1945

Punctually to obey, unquestioning Punctually to obey, unquestioning with cheerful alacrity; to hold the King’s Rule and Admiralty Instructions more sacred than Moses’ Ten commandments; to work till there is no more work, and then to work for a bare wage in the gaunt face of death, in the uttermost parts of the sea, up to and beyond the limits of human strength; and when the end comes to trust that in this world or some other, the Service will care for its own and somehow vindicate the unreasoning sacrifice. This is what we joined for. This is the Royal Navy. 26 May 1945

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Variation upon a Seventeenth Century Theme Ocean-stained and weather-weary, gaunt as a picked bone, quiet as a woman after travail, proud, alone, my captain’s ship has rounded the headland gliding into harbour, only her gay silk pendants denying the colour of her labour. A rich barge is bringing him in, the silver pipes are screaming, and laughing children are running with flowers. But I stand dreaming. There must be trumpets and churchbells in tumbling polyphony and the sobbing lilt of fiddle-tunes to drown the agony of surf fretting the patient land and wind lamenting the night and slow time like a blind moth troubling the candlelight.

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Seabird and bird of the foreshore, sandpiper and plover, grey tern and cormorant comfort his lover. O he will bring me a scarlet cloak and silk as grey as the rain and fur as black as a winter night and a diamond bright as pain:

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but all I want is the gentle home and harbour of his arms, and magic beauty to conjure him away from the sea’s charms forever; so that his grey eyes may sleep, being free of the pale dreamed bewitching naked body of the grey sea. 27 May 1945

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Counterpoint The music we made in the darkest most bomb-harassed evenings was only another thread of melody in the long multiple counterpoint that spans the centuries in gentle but unyielding defiance of ugliness. Hunger for sanity gave the music a fire transcending the danger or the eighteenth century ballroom or the vision of the players. A flute and two pianos, a violin or oboe, and often voices for singing: these were secret weapons unreckoned when the enemy sent bombers over London. And if the tender sound of woodwinds or strings,

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or the ghost of Beethoven composing against the gunfire proved too slight cover we could always take recourse in tin hats and stirrup pumps. But anyway the bombers, for all their trying, failed to drive down the music into black silence. 28 May 1945

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Pray Silence “Pray silence for the bridegroom;” for he is unenthusiastic and impatient and somehow he must appear both jovial and self-possessed. “Ladies and gentlemen,” and as an afterthought, “my friends. I don’t know why one gathers all one’s friends and many others besides when one is married. Because, although in anticipation many may wish to come, few there are who afterwards do not regret their coming. Those who have made unfortunate marriages find a gentle sense of irony assailing their composure. Then there are those who prefer not to be reminded of the marriages which might have but didn’t take place; and some among them who feel nostalgia (to say the least of it) or bitter disapprobation at the particular disposal of this particular pair. Some there are, by reputation and even in fact, whose marriages are happy; but there are other ways in which they can be recalled to a due thankfulness for the proper estate of matrimony. So, one way and another, a wedding is a sombre matter –

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except for the ‘happy couple’ who, by one of those wise and convenient arrangements of Nature, are in no fit state to register feelings less diffuse than ecstasy. Wherefore, rather than labour an already perilous subject, I suggest that you address yourselves to the only matter worthy, this afternoon, of your consideration: the drink. It was very nice of all of you to come. We both thank you from the bottoms of our hearts.”

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This is how it was the first time This is how it was the first time and I couldn’t let myself kiss you again for a very long time knowing that no ecstasy is repetitious.

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Gunboat Sortie A few nights after Christmas we made the cold crossing against a rapidly freshening wind. Before the full dark came, Jupiter, Sirius and Betelgeux appeared, then Saturn below the delicate Pleiades. The salt inflamed our eyes. The wind plucking peremptorily at the eyelids stunned us. The waves were brutal ponderances crushing with slow energy against the boat.

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As the moon rose quenching the sharp stars we picked our way through the rocks that rise in abrupt dark pinnacles out of deep water. No light to guide, no monitory bell; but the waves whitened each lurking rock to a pale menace of foam. Suddenly we sighted the black tower of Triagoz against the luminous sky, and the low looming shadow of France. Midnight. We stole up the hostile bay until we could see the village, a homely cluster of darkened cottages comfortably sleeping around a slender spire on a dark hillside. Through the surging rush and snap of the seas there comes to us from the shore a single birdcry, desolate and wild as a loon calling the rain across a mirror-lake in the dusk. Sensed but not seen, tormented but unchecked by tumble of seas, the ground swell rolls singly under, lifting the boat; mute manifestos of the primal fact until the shoal water trips it, ripping the rind of its monstrous inscrutability, curls its crest in a smooth sinuous burst rippling into thunder. The moon in the surf looks like the beam of a searchlight sweeping the coast. Two hours pass. Our sense of danger is sharp and clear as the village spire against the sky. Then the job is done and we shape course for home, with a full gale on the quarter and a full moon setting us uplight to the enemy. Into us flows an exhilarating peace born of the wind and moonlight, and the grey valleys between the phosphorescent crests, and the thought of England ahead below the stars.

George Whalley

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The cold misery of the coming and our fear are purged and forgotten in our reverie.

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Pirate shouts, “Look at them. Six of the bastards, fine to port.” We alter course towards them. “Here it comes.” And red and green and yellow tracers crawl towards us lazily looking like lights on a children’s Christmas tree.

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1948

Candlelight works such a miracle Candlelight works such a miracle with the involute flowing curves and pale patina of your girl’s body. 15 June 1945

Alan Gateling These days everyone’s so goddam tough you don’t expect a full-grown man to lay much store by a small kid’s bike: not if it’s somebody else’s kid’s. But the other morning just before noon, when Alan Gateling walked across the road from his shop to the machinist’s, carrying in his hands the bent frame of a boy’s bicycle, you could tell by the way he held it that it wasn’t just another job worth 50¢ to a kid who worked a paper-route, but something for

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his hands to fashion, a matrix to accept his quiet will and the strength of his fingers and the keen way of his eyes. I guess Michelangelo had that way with his hands and eyes when he carried a fresh piece of marble into his studio. But Al would swear like hell if you told him that. 16 June 1945

George Whalley

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Dad It took an old account book to show me of how small elements, as the world reckons such matters, his life was built. But I cannot understand about his death that suddenly I have come to understand so much that was not clear when he was alive 5 and yet it is sad that his death removes him so far away that we cannot speak to him and ask him about some things and most of all to tell him of our love for him and all the delight in little pleasures he taught by his example. But there are some things he would never tell us 10 even if he could speak now – about his courting and his love and his marriage and how it was having three sons and a daughter grow up and how we hurt him and why and when and why he was ever alone and never the sadness 15 left his eyes nor the gentleness his lips nor the loving skilful way of his hands. 16 June 1945

15 July 1946

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Covenant with Death These men have been too long alone; these have looked too constantly on death; these have lost their lovers, lost themselves; these are afraid, bitter, desolate, angry. Beside this, place the indestructible loyalty and patience of the women who waited unquestioning and alone with their fear neatly bundled away in their hearts. The Swan still flies along the Milky Way and under his wing the cold blue majesty of Vega defies the sterile black of space; and the moon draws the tides that muffle with sand the wreckage on the beaches; and the Sahara wind drives the sand to bury the tanks. 19 June 1945

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Five Years In five years I have known the ways of the sea and the ways of the men at sea, have seen men wounded and dying, and men killed outright, and the whole pitiful sordor and indignity of violent death. I have seen men in the water after the ship has sunk; 5 and our own aircraft shot down by our own guns and the bodies of airmen and soldiers drowned in the sea. I have seen men who preferred not to hope, and men too long alone, men whose eyes have looked too constantly on danger, and men afraid, bitter, desolate, angry. 10

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The chemistry of fear has also been revealed to me, the primaeval shrinking process constricting each last gland and ganglion with a simple self-embracing mechanism. And this is comforting when you see how courage is a shy and desolating matter.

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I have seen a city in flames, tumbling to annihilation; and therein the torn bodies of pretty girls and of old women in pitiful black stockings, and bodies of strong men and of small children pinned in the rubble or drowned in the shelters.

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I have seen invasion and the lewd colour of invasion, the colour of lust and at the same time quaint attempts at feeling and looking the character of invaders. I have seen distant lands and distant waters and the harsh clean desert and the comradeship there. 25 Under my eyes love has moved swiftly, leaving the hollowness; and love has grown slowly and brought riches; but either way there are the mothers and fathers who have lost unexpectedly grown-up daughters and sons; men who have lost brides, and girls their lovers, and men whose girls have gone to other men in the absence: These I have seen too.

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Also I have watched the indestructible loyalty and patience of women waiting unquestioning with their fear neatly bundled away in their hearts; and the courage of women whose ecstasy was an eternity 35 bursting the format of a few hours’ leave, women, who with their men, knew the doom that would overtake them and contrived not to remember.

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Five years away and little enough done. Only to have seen would be to acquire predatory and parasitic wealth; but knowing has filled my heart with the dark riches of suffering. 19 June 1945

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24 June 1945

Landscape with Rain: Schwarzwald At the fifth dawn the pattern recurred; rain falling incessantly on the patient trees in a steady hushing liquid monotone. Down from the grey dark nimbus, tatters of mist drop low to cap the hills, creep up the valley and hang in the trees like smoke. The grey light struggles, trapped between the earth and cloud; and sounds are sharpened and crystallized by the soft drumming of water on the leaves. A bird bursts into song, stops, listens; chastened twitters for a moment and is still. The cracked interval of a diminished sixth announces the hours by the Gothic townhall clock. Late in the afternoon a group of boys walk up the valley singing a unison song whose words are robbed of meaning by the rain. At dusk a weary slackening, and then recovery to bring the night down early. And with the dark, central as the heart’s ticking is the hush hush hush of the pitiless rain.

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I awoke in the dark, cold with alarm, tense and still as an unbowed fiddlestring; listening, listening. Then I heard it. Throbbing silence. The patient trees have overlasted the rain. 20 June 1945

28 October 1945

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Music has two lives Music has two lives – the feeling and meaning that came out of the composer’s mind, and the music’s evocation. 20 June 1945

Music goes out at the fingers Music goes out at the fingers and song comes from the lips and enters into the ears and love goes with the music and lips and fingers from the eyes and comes in at the lips and the ears and as long there’s music to sound under the fingers’ caress and lips to kiss and speak my telling of our love will never be brought to silence.

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Four Freedoms To be calm in the grip of fear, to be silent under suffering, to be still after ecstasy, to look back only with thankfulness without regret or bitterness for the time past and the swift passing of time: this is why we went away.

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And these are the four freedoms, the way of the implacable stars: calm and silence and stillness emerging out of fear and suffering and ecstasy; and thanksgiving out of sacrifice.

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Dunster The heat-shimmer rising from the heather distorts the green path that wanders upward, indolent as the heat, across the distant hillside. Coolness lies in the memory of the flowered fields winking with morning dew; coolness in the thought of new tall grass and shaded fragrance by the evening brook. But here there is only sun in a sky pale with heat; and the shimmer over the heather; and the sun is drawing the secret out of the thyme. Two horsemen suddenly breast the skyline. Over the top of the heather we peer at them, secret and defiant. The riders stand pensive a moment against the sky, as though they felt us near them. Then they turn and are gone, unmindful as the heather from which the print of our bodies will spring with the first touch of the rain. But Exmoor cannot forget that its body was pressed by our bodies. Exmoor will tell whoever may pass this way that, on the morning of Spring, on a morning of war, two were young and knew that every

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moment of time is a seed from which may spring a sudden incomprehensible delight. As long as skylarks tumble their song over the shimmering Exmoor heather the imprint of our love will never die out of this place. 25 June 1945

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1948

Cabot Strait No lasting furrow here, no waving silk of corn, no gathering gold together under an August moon. Never does the Spring come with a wild delicate wonder to warm the seasonless inscrutable face of the sea. Nor is it ever summer; though rain strikes warm on the face and lightning flows in sudden freshets down the sky. The rain stops; and the night brings from a great distance over the dark sea the fragrance of the land: scent of pine-needles, soft as the whisper of wind in them; scent of grasses rooted deep in the black mould;

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sunheavy musk of wild flowers and ripe wheat and the dark cool sweetness of green leaves. But this tender reaching out of the land to touch us is changed by the sterile sea into exotic strangeness. At sea home is always locked up close in the heart; a warm intimate secret, nourishing the dark. And nowhere except at home, out of the sea’s bitter way, can summer be other than freedom from winter. 13 July 1945

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It never seems to be summer in a ship It never seems to be summer in a ship. The sun may beat on the decks, rain fall warm in the face, thunder and lightning flash but we think “It’s fine – it’s raining – it’s a line squall” but never a summer thunder storm breaking after intense sultry heat. Fragrance of land. Pine needles. Probably it’s because we are always thinking of home really and it’s only at home that summer means more than absence of winter. 13 July 1945

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Pick-up Look, Mary, do you mind standing in for another girl you’ve never met and never will? You’re pretty and gay and feminine but you don’t mean a thing to me nor I to you but I’ll pretend you’re the one I love and you can pretend whatever you like to be. It’s been a long time and I am frightened and if I cannot be with somebody feminine and work some gentleness I might forget then this other girl will know – she always knows – the tenderness of me as though I were beside her caressing her.

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Morning Watch 1 Dawn The Hyades like a distant flight of geese neglect the menace of Betelgeux and Orion’s sharp sword. The bright morning star with the sickle-moon for hook is drawing up the dawn like Leviathan out of the sea, and a solitary cloud, supine and patient, awaits complacently the morning catch of gold.

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2 Dolphins After a lonely night at soundings the dolphins surface with the light, as if they knew how friendly and fresh the dawn is. Or it may be they enjoy piecing together the brief glimpses photographically impressed upon their eyes as they arch out of the calm sea (mate close beside her mate, a little behind, achieving in curve a parallel perfection). The slender glossy flukes of their tails flash and the sleek bodies, black, blacker than night, gleaming swift, catch the sun and fling it back like flakes and flecks of diamonds. To our delight they stay with us until they’ve seen all that they came to see of us and the rising sun. They slip into the water for the last time. With a sudden smooth release of effortless beauty and economical power they’re gone, at forty knots, about their own obscure particular fishy work of the day. The scars of the dolphins’ going drop astern and we are left on course with our sombre thoughts. 5 August 1945

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Thalamion Beyond all loving and seeing beyond even the deep still knowing that comes when the outlines are dimmed and the thresholds fused in black ecstasy there will always remain

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inviolate and unpossessed the small inner shrine of your person, too precious to approach too costly to encompass too vital to annihilate.

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Now I have seen it approached the mystery of the essential you and am struck blind by its indestructible beauty.

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7 August 1945

Toro This field his realm; of lush grass and dainty summer flowers. Here with the slightly bored complacency of generally accepted majesty he ruled. And for his delight a doting Jersey heifer was provided. The instant he saw us in his field, and you in your yellow frock, he dropped his head and trotted towards us roaring hoarsely as he gathered speed. We took ourselves quickly over the fence again. He stopped, sniffing short-sightedly in our direction. We shouted “Toro, E Toro,” taunting him with the echo of the bullring. He lifted his head, sighted your yellow frock again, roared, and came towards us running, head down, black shoulders supplely rippling. The cows in the next field, seeing him far away, had scampered as though by accident down to his fence. As soon as they saw him coming, they ran giggling back, which is some girls’ idea of fun.

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He pulled up short at the fence, lashing his tail at more than the flies. But there was no overlooking the deep strength of his massive chest and black forequarters, the square nobility of his head, the fine taper of his buckwheat-honey-coloured flanks. Perhaps there was more of sad reproof than anger in his eye; but how to interpret this fierce bellowing and the way his hooves impulsively pawed the dust up to his belly? Observing the slender wire of the fence we withdrew as though we never had meant to cross his field. He fell quiet, satisfied. Beside him his heifer peacefully munched the grass, glancing up at him from time to time admiringly through languid girlish lashes. Coming home in the sultry evening we called to him in a soft voice. He walked slowly towards us, roared a greeting, put down his head to scratch and squeaked the fence with his stumpy horns. There was a sadness in his half-averted eyes. Affectionately nuzzling at your yellow frock (did he now think it was made of buttercups?) he slowly pushed the fence half-over. We left in decorous haste; and looking back, saw the heifer standing close beside him. He didn’t look up at our call of “Toro”, but went on sniffing with dainty nostalgia the long-stemmed lapis lazuli of mallow, ruling with sad ferocity his heifer and his flowered inviolate field. 7 August 1945

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J.W. That your hair was dark auburn, even at night; that you were given to playing upon the lute and harpsichord and singing, to my accompaniment, the songs of John Dowland and Peter Warlock is no more to me now than Dowland’s death or Warlock’s suicide. But a tune recalled your face and the colour of your hair, and a matter of Easter snowdrops and laughter on Helvellyn.

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And suddenly I knew that our timid incoherent love gave your singing and laughter their quality; and made me behave to you like a shy schoolboy so that you shouldn’t know and I shouldn’t know.

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Anniversary Today I will not sing of red orchids and heather for they are clear in my heart with remembering. Nor of your brown eyes nor the soft curve of your breasts

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for you are with me and my eyes can feast on you. ca. 4–8 August 1945

Rotterdam The Germans bombed Rotterdam at noon when the sun was shining. There were no defences to stop them and 10,000 people were killed. That day I remembered the quiet way of her streets and the cicada-sleepiness of breathless summer sunlight, and a small boy gravely walking along in a sky-blue cloak that dropped to his pensive heels and hooded his golden head. 13 August 1945

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3 September 1945

Action Stations The Sub Lieutenant, half asleep, found himself running forward against the guns’ crews running aft. As he ran he straightened his cap and blinked his eyes at the sun and stumbled to the slow arbitrary roll of the heavy quartering sea. At the break of the fo’csle he looked back and saw four aircraft coming up astern. 5 For the instant before the guns opened fire, he heard the rising roared whine of an aircraft diving,

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then the gunfire blotched the sky with dirty thistledown. He saw the bombs tumble out of the aircraft’s belly at 5000 feet, flutter, twist, waver, hang uncertainly, and plunge to disappearance. A long moment. 10 A silken whistle pierced the gunfire. The ship, under full helm, was lying over. He hung on. The guns ceased firing, as though waiting to see what would happen next. The whistle approached personally and ended in a crunched swishing gurgle, a dull explosion, the 15 white water flung up, dazzling floriation, into the sunlight, a muffled hollow blow like a great hammer on the ship’s side. He felt himself contract with the simple self-embracing mechanism which is fear. The breathless weakness focussed into a listening calm, so that the other three bombs of the stick seemed to be a long time in coming. Two hours later when he made his way aft the decks were running with water from the bomb bursts, the blackened shell cases were heaped around the guns, and the next attack was mustering behind the clouds. 10 September 1945

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23 April 1946

Prayer for the Living Destroying that we be not destroyed, following darkness into darkness we know not what we do. Unhating, we work through the passionless precision of instruments: and leave in our wake the silence of the great cities, the broken quiet of those who go down to lipless silence. What wounds we leave we know not, what self-inflicted wounds we know not,

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following darkness into darkness, destroying that we be not destroyed.

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Forgive us. For we know not what we do. 16 September 1945

1948

Sicilian Vignette These guns could have worked disaster in our assault. So the blood of sleepy Italians is splashed on a whitewashed wall. Their boots are under their beds. Their helmets hang by the door. And the careful letters from home are scattered on the floor. 16 September 1945

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1948

Take out of my heart Take out of my heart the sharp knife of music. I can bear the agony of what the music says. But not the evocation. 16 September 1945

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Discharged: Services No Longer Required (September 1945) Now it’s all over, and we can fling our caps in the air. Farewell to the corrugate sea, goodbye to the uncushioned chair. The motorcycle demon, the pundit bald and faint, the frightfully sorry seaman, the maniac, student and saint each in his own little way can return to his own little niche, the wearing of the grey, the dropping of the stitch. Each may grow out his hair and smoke an eccentric pipe, play on the oboe or lyre, eat pate, winkles or tripe. In hats of a purple tint we are fit to be seen as we are; but we’ll always remember to hint how salty and bearded we were,

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what mountains of seas (and of papers) oppressed us asleep and awake, with what debonair heart we capered through danger, weavils and tape. Nostalgia will pluck at the heartstrings, the sea will call, and the gin; but it’s better to toy with vague longings than stand a cold Middle again.

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Three cheers while we smooth out the wavy, three cheers while we scrub out the green. Huzzah for the bowler and pinstripes for now we are fit to be seen.

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Rondo In time is no da capo. Our hands can never Meet with a lover’s touch while we seek a thread Of fugitive fugal melody, nor our souls Blur in burning fusion of single music Transcending consummation. What was left Unsaid and never now can be said returns In the black appassionato, words lying Lonely in the long night and the cold dawn. So I would see you: so I would have you play, Your dark hair lost in the resonant plane Of the black piano’s sine-curve mirror. Know now the agony of the kiss refused, Of love withheld, leaving you free for a freedom You squandered instantly. Only remains A flash of laughter, vision of dark hair gleaming And tumbled, the head tilted back, lips Hungry and wild as a drouth-flower. Only remains The voice on the stairs, remembered laughter, fingers, Dim eyes and their long longing. In time There is no da capo. Only the music lives. 11 November 1945

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Exegi Monumentum “It’s made of stainless steel It’s got my name on it See? Pretty, isn’t it. He said – O I feel so silly telling you this but he’s ever so cultured – he said ‘Time cannot rust your name out of my heart. I’ve raised a monument more lasting than bronze.’” Silence. She chewed her gum a while, looked out the window, then bent her languid eyes to True Love Magazine. 15 November 1945

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19 November 1946

One of your letters held the germ of a poem One of your letters held the germ of a poem and the memory of your graceful aloof loveliness made another. So write again soon. 29 November 1945

Seascape 1940–1941 At sea in harbour on leave, the few terse notes in pencil or ink: an afterthought a glance ahead, the ephemerides of life at sea in harbour on leave. And memory fills the white spaces between the words lines thoughts entries.

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Came up the ladder to the darkened bridge at midnight, waited for night-sight, said “quid novi?”: a soft chuckle recalls the lugubrious expression veiling the merriment of Nigel’s grey quick eyes. “For this relief much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold and I am sick at heart.” Wilky Shorty Flash Uckers Richard Henry Tiny Spider Tom Bambino crowd in with their own inflexion laugh the gesture of a hand; and Doc morosely rolling ticklers in the forenoon watch. Letters came at last with news from home distant unreal news from a former life (when shall we ever get home? when shall we ever again make music? when can we ever be still?) and news of death, the mounting casualties: Bill killed in Egypt, Jimmy in London, Gordon lost at sea, and Smoky in Libya. All these noted, detached unimpassioned. Remember not to write. And parcels came with cake and books and socks. One of the black woollen mittens blew overside in a dirty night of storm off Eileen Trodday. (A fine night for ducks; but where the hell is The Chickens?) Submarines: Thunderbolt ex-Thetis, Tuna, Trident, Triumph, Cachalot and a lucky anchoring in Brodick Bay. Left Paddington with Andrew; station deserted; then it came on to bomb. A walk with Andrew along Loch Eck on a winter afternoon of sudden drenching rain and sudden rainbows; talked about London, Winchester, and painting. Damaged ships came up the Clyde today slowly, the red ensigns at half-mast.

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Empire Dorado anchored in Rothesay Bay: and all day long she lay in still water, none of her people moving about her decks. Late afternoon: we steamed among capes and bays of fog. Ahead were black cumulus towers like mountains only bigger; and heavy blocks of dark diagonal rain. Shut-in feeling like running-in under a height of land. And so we steamed through fog till the light drained out. Lofoten: a Corporal speaks. “Look what I’ve got. A ruddy general. ’Ere, Albert, turn around and show yer pretty self to the gentlemen.”

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The sudden benison of music: Bach Coriolan Prokofiev the 8th. And smoky voices crossed by tracer and boredom. “I do adjudge the said ... to sixty days detention.” Ice on the gundeck. The weedy stoker shivers and looks as blue as his dungarees. The long Northern nights. Cold alone heartsick miserable, you speak to a lookout and it isn’t your voice that speaks. A book in your bunk after the watch is over; but still you listen sensitively alive, even in sleeping, to every change in speed course sound. Today we had a bath. Of course I was last but God it was good, the hot water and the soap. Here went a ship: a dead man clinging to a raft, splintered debris, brown scabby scum of burned-out fuel oil. That by the way. 8000-tonner still burning from the bombing, wounded rolling idly in an oily sea;

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grey cold afternoon. The eighty-four survivors forlorn and silent in the boats. (why do survivors smell the way they do?) The captain’s arm raised but no word; he seems to calculate some sad decision. The shadow of the ship was ultramarine, her flanks were cherry red and the waves spat and steamed against her sides in languid futility. December 10th, at 1645 the chart table hit me unaccountably. Mull o’ Kintyre and Ailsa Craig (“there’s nothing there, m’lad, but rats and seag’lls”) Holy Island Cumbraes Rothesay Toward Holy Loch. A bloody day of fog and evil temper, the bridge was all sharp angles that seemed to strike trip hurt with personal intent. Then all-night anchor-watches under Lundy, the fishing vessels huddled from the gale.

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Belloc’s Cautionary Tales delight throughout. Cape Wrath: sky dove and rose like the colour of dawn over snow. High mackerel suddenly disintegrated and dropped away; but the bars still persisted like mothfretted tatters of wool. Antares seen through glasses varies between dusky red and luminous green: the Glow-worm. In the port waist we lined up the blindfold prisoners. One fainted: thought he was going to be shot. Pieter, the black Norwegian sheep-dog, ran quickly along the line sniffing at each, found his master, jumped up, pawed and yelped. The man, his head held high as though he were blind,

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put a hand down and patted Pieter’s head. The dog whimpered, was still, turned and walked away. We kept him, but he died within the week. It should have been good, but the silence of open country pressed like a throbbing ache against the brain and the chuckling of the brook outside the window only served to crystallize the silence. Too short a leave to ravel this thread of quietness back through labyrinthine ways to a yellow teapot jolly and round, the crisp bite of an axe in the autumn of Munich, the soft pad of a spaniel’s feet ranging the restless calm of an empty house.

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With a full moon we sailed up the Clyde through still water. The east was pale lemon. A purple bloom furred the edge of the sky. Then the sun came to sharpen and darken the hills where the snow lay. The fields were thick with frost, cold harvest. After a week of storm and no sun a welling sense of peace in this quiet dawn.

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Here is no pattern, here no tissue of meaning: but guttering candle-flames of memory that leap, and steady a moment, and evanesce in the dark rooms of unremembered time. 9 December 1945

Letter from Lagos I think they burn our letters in Pointe Noire. So you hadn’t heard how we lay off there for a night, wallowing helpless in the swell.

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At last a destroyer came and towed us in to a hidden roadstead; there we had to stay, rolling at anchor, for seven weeks that might have been as many years, for every moment was hopeful waiting. That does something to the time that Einstein and his brood might well give thought to. One run ashore; but two of the men got drunk and started fighting. An armed guard brought them aboard, and that was the last leave. We lay at anchor, throbbing and pulsing with the heat, blindly fighting rust and mildew and murder in the dripping heat. “Well, if we can’t get ashore,” we said, “one look at that sweating stinking village was enough.” (The brooding jungle, spirit of obscene fecundity, waiting with loathsome patience to creep back and devour the pitiful squalor.) But the jungle seemed to have got at the shoreside men for no help came, no help at all. And the jungle reached out to the anchorage, a stealthy gloom, primaeval and insidious, stifling, possessive. We tried to stop hoping, tried to forget about home, tried to forget about coolness, about the village. But at night the throb of the drums came to the ship and the talk was silenced. “Christ! to get out of this hell, to get to sea, out of the sight of the jungle, out of the sound of the drums.” We passed the time by catching the sharks that spoiled the swimming, by carving fish and camels out of box-ends. After a fortnight all my paints were gone. I used enamel from the bosun’s store, painted on scraps of heavy canvas for serious work;

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and every day made caricatures to rouse some laughter in the saloon. It wasn’t long before the painting stopped; but the caricatures had to be made – they seemed to keep us sane. Seven weeks is fifty days, and days are long when you can’t sleep much for the heat. Then our tow came. Words cascaded from our long tight-lipped silence. Cabin-doors stood open; the saloon was loud with talk; nobody noticed the heat; we almost forgot to curse the steward. “Second, get out your sextant and shoot us a star. We’re bloody well homeward bound.” But the jungle’s spell was stronger than we thought. The tow fouled our wires. The cable clattered out again and there rode the ship in the merciless heat, under the glaring stars and the sudden rain. There were few words spoken. The cabin doors slammed, the steward stayed well out of sight. And the pulse of the drums came throbbing back. When we finally cleared the anchorage, heard the chuckle of water along the hull, it was like being a boy again. But the joy was sucked out of the cup and we couldn’t be sure it was true this time. Well, here we are at Lagos. A flying-boat comes in twice a week with mails. We know when it’s due, watch for the silver fleck, listen for engine pulse, watch with delight the white delicate feather of spray as it skims, touching gently, gently as though it knew how precious its cargo, how much of life in its belly.

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We took bicycles over to Apapa, or swam from a white beach in the scorching sun. All day the bumboats are ’longside, loaded with cocoanuts, sugar cane, guavas, bananas, pineapples: tempting, but they always make us sick. So we watch the fishermen poised on the gunwales of dugouts, casting their handnets: a fluent curve, scalloped like a dancer’s skirt; the bright anguish of fish in the canoes. The first week was fine: fruit and movies and swimming. And then it comes back – the heat, the wet heat and the swift torrential rain, everything sweating, the mildew forming almost under your eyes. We all think of Canada and Christmas. Sometimes we even talk of it. “If we’re lucky, if repairs go well, if a cargo’s waiting, if only the signals get through, if we get home for Christmas we’ll be lucky.” We sailed in war, were crippled by war; and now it’s peace, and we’ve been thinking of time and waste. Letters don’t come and we wonder why; and twice a week is an agony of hope and disappointment, knowing how long and empty the next spell of waiting is. We laugh sometimes: it makes the time go. But then the laughter stops, the talk ebbs; and there washes into the silence a memory of drums. 9 December 1945

Dieppe Ebbed now the cold fear that turns the will to water, fear of waiting ebbed, and fierce joy of assault,

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and killing; the fine defiance, the shout on the lips, the zipwhine of bullets and shells; the leading, the delight of high endeavour certain of quick victory. Nothing was clear then but sharp feelings of fear and joy; and they are seared so deeply into the soul that any could see them, even now that they have ebbed. The dull smack, dull thud, dull dark dropping down under wounds. And now he sits in a cobbled square above the seawall; head in hands, alone, shaken, cold, utterly desolate: the ships gone, the friends ebbed homeward. Was it ever fun to be young, to attack (face blackened), to lead, to kill? All ebbed out to the cold trembling dread of a small boy climbing a dark stair. The tide, turned from ebb, is flooding, washing about the tracks and turrets of the tanks that never cleared the shingle: burned out, broken, awry; startled, questioning yet,

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as somehow the living no longer have power or desire to question.

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1948

Meditation on Tower Hill All day long, from dawn, the drays thundered the Tower Hill cobble-stones. At 5 the silence would suddenly fall over the City, leaving the spires to sleep. Then the children would come. Sharp though the memory, that was before they carried me off to the mountains, where my body was healed, my eyes and lungs feasting upon the Alps until the snow-sharp peaks were part of my being. Now I sit alone in an empty house. No merry hum of laughing children: only the surge of silence from the empty devastated places. Even the names, recalled by instinct with the cobbled roar, are obliterated with their alleys, streets, churches: haunting names like Crutched Friars, The Minories, St. Mary Axe, All Hallows, a joy upon the lips like children’s names. Delicious the names, delicious the thought of coming home. But I find myself a Rip Van Winkle, blinking around my old remembered haunts, the places gone or naked or forgotten, myself perplexed and saddened, and unknown. Grim old devastated London, city of Chaucer, Jonson, Milton, Pepys:

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fire and plague have laid you low before, and now you are laid low by a new plague. London, from which is departed all that once I loved, I shall not live to see you rise to new phoenix-birth among your rubble. Whatsoever I made was fashioned in love, created in the white-flamed passion of giving, made though it was with living souls, was not made on this world’s pattern of possession. And all such things must go, some time, leaving their maker lonely, as I am now: alone in a silent, desolate and beloved city. 25 December 1945

George Whalley

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26 June 1946

To R.G. Look, Chum. You’d have done better to dip your hands in the blood of which outpouring you write with such complacency; feel heart, arteries, inmost ganglion contract with the cold bomb-screamed fear: than sit in New York fitting imagined wings, imagined death into pretty brittle obscure conceits, homeless as New York denizens. Slanting, slanting, slanting across sun, water, sky; phallophil, tidy, bitterly mocking the insincerity you chose.

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And choosing with it the hollow acclamation, throttled to peak revs and took off for Flight into Darkness.

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“The bomber’s Wheels unroll the local land, And words are casually said.” December 1945

Walker When they are needed such men emerge with the intellect of genius and fire of the fanatic and there is a Drakian light-heartedness in their self-devotion, self-destruction, and you saw it as he raised the tbs microphone to his lips and the great killer, taker of Leviathan, made his rendezvous with death. 26 January 1946

After it’s all over, whatever the crisis After it’s all over, whatever the crisis, Sirius still flashes in a sky frosty with stars. At first it seems a profound irony and slowly it becomes profound peace. 1 February 1946

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Adam Was woman; and the flame suddenly leaped Darkening the sun, stilling the quick birdsong. The arc of a blinding sword and the crying Of Eve driven desolate but unalone from Paradise Cut through the heart, searching The quiet lost centre of peace. 6 March 1946

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13–17 April 1946

Lyric Loving, the heart cries in exquisite agony: and the pen follows the heart, singing the rose, the moon, and the nightingale. The coin turns and the hurt heart sings by denial the thorned rose, the sickle moon, the agony of exquisite sobbing birdnotes singing the rose, the moon, and the nightingale. 7 March 1946

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6 May 1946

In black, with a white In black, with a white ruffle at the throat framing a face tentatively remembered. The lips smile and I remember tentatively

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but no name remembered, no words, no kiss. 22 March 1946

Chief We stood on the iron-deck by the tubes, looking out at the drowning men. I was explaining why a lifebelt wouldn’t help. And there was a sense of desperate urgency; yet time was a heavy weight pinning us down like children in a nightmare. I heard my voice speaking, and Chief repeating over and over: “If only I were young enough. If only I were young enough. If only I were young.” Six months later his ship was sunk off Bear Island on the Murmansk run. I suppose he was in the engine room. It’s just as well. The water would be cold. 15 April 1946

Undertow 1 The frail beetle of consciousness Creeps into action and reality, Sending its opalescent shadow Forward to impend and inform

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25 April 1946

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A bleak future with the vivid past: The candle casting the shadow of the pen. 2 Most of the rooms of time are dark. We find them dark and leave them in darkness. We carry a taper, naked wisp Of vulnerable flame to weave the shadows With fragrance of fire till the spun darkness Leaps into whole darkness. No light to guide us forward, No way back, except a shuddering Flash of memory, instant gutter Of vulnerable flame, less than pungent Smudge of tallow-wick, leap of shuddering Silence evoking the shuttering Rooms of darkness, rooms of light. For some few rooms are lighted for our coming, With alarming echoes of an unannounced Home-coming to a strange house Empty, familiar, desolate, warm, With heaven as near and present as the warm Names forgotten and unpronounced. We come and go in silence. If these were the rooms of space and not of time We might remain, home-come, welcome, at peace. But time will not permit, being the long Warp to the weft of space, the forward shift That makes of the same place in a different time A different place, we being different grown. The shadow stalks ahead flaunting the fatal Candle to the blind moth of lost desire. Regret, turn back, pile up the sense of loss,

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Assess the shadow and light with a miser’s thumb And bitterness precipitates the heart In salt intransigence of fantasy. Here in our transit of the rooms of time, Moving in darkness, moving in silence, We watch the echoing shadow Stride in fantastic perspective. Below the leap and weave of the flame We catch the faint throb and wash Of time ebbing out From flood-silence to stillness. 3 Night is over the beach. The sea Changing its tune from lilt to mumble Channers and sobs below the sand: Voice of passionless lust seducing To slow death in the humming tide. Grey-salt breeze from the ocean, drown Or draw to the sun with frost linked hooks The sobbing lust of the withered voice That rips the tidewarp, tears the labile Seaweft tissue of memory. Pain curls up into breaking crests Of foam-tipped darkness, shuttering Centripetal circles of black flame Lick and ebb to ripple and melt In an undertow of monotonous ache. Weather the headlands of suffering. Explore the green lagoons of silence, Reef-shut lakes where water like mercury

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Lies unruffled, under eclipse, Where no wave laps, no ripple lisps.

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Yet there at median in sound, At nods where no vibration is, The pulse throbs under the quietness. And moondrawn time with the dark flame plumage Renounces the shutters of pain and knowledge. 4 Darkness is coming down on the treasures of time. Moments and years, enriched by the patient refinement Of eyesight nostril fingertip whorl of the ear, Scatter in a drowsy helix of shattered memory. The thresholds of consciousness rise like barriers. The scarred nerve-ends seal to numbness; not even An East wind with rain in its teeth can set them Throbbing to flower in the flameburst of pain. Silence falls like frost. The pen is still. Enchantment has gone from the sun. The stars have set. 15 April 1946

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1 February 1948

Death by Drowning The dark was coming, but the sand was warm under the feet, the beach deserted; and in the water dark. Cold too, but specially dark. “Don’t swim out so far. The undertow.” You were surprised. I’d spoiled the fun. And as we dressed we laughed and the memory faded.

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Pirate helpless and the breakers crashing on our heads, stunning, stifling and the beach getting no nearer. Calling “Nigel. Nigel” but he didn’t come. We saw him being dragged up the beach and understood why he had not come. A man running, waving his coat and shouting, but nothing happening. The cold relentless pluck of the undertow endlessly plucking. We touch the bottom, are swept out again. The breakers crashing on our heads. “Only a little further, Pirate.” He knows I lie; and so do I. But we’re both wrong and we crash on the sand, finished. The onlookers stand back as though afraid of us. We don’t move and neither do they. We scramble to our feet and fall again. And then they come. And one man curses us for being bloody fools. The night has fallen over the beach. The sea sobs and thunders and channers on the sand. The fear ebbs and a prayer comes. God, preserve us from the unseen undertow, from the slow death in the humming tide.

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15 April 1946

Clerk in Underground The train started with a grinding clatter and the little man with the anxious face uttered a semi-human cry. His eyes were furtive with pain. His knuckles whitened and grew shiny as he clutched to him his brown attache case, straw of reality drifting in a sea of pain. 5 In ecstasy of horror, his eyes closed, his lips moved as though in prayer and he rocked slowly back and forward, clutching to his chest his brown attache case.

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His eyes opened slowly as the train stopped. He jumped to his feet, elbowed his way to the door; and once his feet touched the platform he drew himself up and started to walk briskly and with purpose. Then the train started with a grating jolt. He stopped like a shot bird. His shoulders seemed to crumple, his head dropped forward; and long after the silence had washed back into the station he stood frozen, broken, pathetic. He seemed to notice the silence, drew his hand over his face from forehead to chin, straightened his hat, squared his shoulders back, and walked through the exit with his head held high. In his eyes was a strange fire that may have been happiness.

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When you come home and hang up your bowler hat, stand the umbrella in your suburban hall, can it be that you leave the city behind? Can it be that love comes over the threshold? 17 April 1946

18 April 1946

The Silver Cord In time is stillness; but in time is change, and growing old and wise, learning to look in the face of time that the light die not in the constant eyes. We want no stillness, except it be the silence of rich disquietude, of April’s amazing mystery and love’s oblique beatitude.

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We want no wisdom beyond delight, surprised by ecstasy’s indrawn breath when the hungry sea and the dark night go down with the eyes to quiet death. 25 April 1946

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1948

Priest among the Dandelions One morning the frost-smoke hangs in the trees riming the twigs to lacework. And so the leaves come suddenly, and suddenly the grass. Then I think of Brother Kenelm’s hat: straw hat, relic of less holy days, much too small, but cool for gardening. And now I cut the grass, my cassock swirling, Brother Kenelm’s hat upon my head. This I have dreamed of through the winter months: hot sun and smell of sweet crushed grass, mechanical cicada of the mower, the golden heads (short-lived anyway) falling, oozing the sticky milk from severed stems. This I have longed for with unholy dread: the pagan ritual of fecundity. My beauty is gone for very trouble, all my days are gone like a shadow, withered like grass my heart and I; so that I turn from my bread uneating now that the Spring is come again. Thou shalt abide, thy years not failing. Yet do I remember the time and strangely muse on all thy works: their rich and numbing mystery

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and the way the turning year brings back the Spring to mock my chastity. 17 May 1946

George Whalley

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March 1947

Anima Poetae (after Coleridge) Because my life is short; because my hands Can reach out only a score or two of inches Beyond my body; because my poverty Keeps my hands empty when my heart aches To empty them: I drive down the terror Of my infirmities, take up the pen that Chaucer wrote with, take the language Shakespeare fashioned to loveliness, and write a book.

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13 July 1946

Annapolis Nightfall The seafog, ghosting in with the evening flood, Darkens the land before the sun has gone And sets lights burning in the squat beetle of a mill That flings its sawdust into the dusk like a winter Gale heaping the sand by a bleached groyne.

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Out in the yard an old man dreaming to seaward Smells in the fog the moaning misery Of rip-tide, salt stubborn canvas, burning ropes, And the grey claws of a lee-shore smothered in surf. Like a man renouncing his youth, the rooted houses Feel the salt in their timbers, the bone-deep ache In the scent of fog and clang of a sea-bell tolling

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Now that no adze or axe rings bright among The derelict quays and ways at the foot of the tide. 12 July 1946

Autumn 1947

I wonder what it’s like I wonder what it’s like when the man who has spent a life of glossing dies and meets the man whose work he spent his whole life glossing.

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? 15 August 1946

Night brings back the ships Night brings back the ships and the men that man them in a comfortable fellowship so that even Crackers whose ship went off Normandy (oyster mine or glider bomb) is there with me and we laugh together. 29 August 1946

Today, he thought, the office won’t be fun Today, he thought, the office won’t be fun not with thirty grand burning my pocket-book. He glanced at his shoes, gave the nigger a quarter, put a penny in the weighing machine

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and read his fortune printed on a card. Then he went out and jumped under a train. 26 September 1946

George Whalley

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19 November 1946

Wedlock Is So Esy and So Clene I might have guessed from something in her eyes Of deep knowledge suddenly gained, Something of terror fondled, faced and quenched In the swift white anguish of delight. Something of reckless horizon dreamed, Dreaded, won, regretted burns in The deep fearless quiet of her eyes. 24 October 1946

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19 November 1946

Beaky, aetat 77 No tread of hours, no nibbling of seconds, no sweep and march and vista of the years discourages the quills of tight-packed perfect feather, nor scatters the flamey pigments in pattern less precise. Spring and autumn moulting snaps beauty’s fingers in the face of time. At seventy-seven you still put forth new feathers like an April tree, fresh, glistening, green, to match dim unremembered Amazon. 3 November 1946

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Hooded Eagle All the height and depth of the sky is blue in this moonlight, the moon not yet full orbed, a sky of such profound depth of blue that there, in Malta, unconsciously I stretched my arms out to worship God in the moon; and in my trance worshipped not the moon only but the blue depths of the sky. Thirty years have passed since then; and still I lift up my eyes to the blue sky, to seek there what I had lost on earth: the eyes of imagination and failing that just comfort, but nothing has ever appeared there, but the blue sky and the glorious moon; nothing comforts else, nothing answers. And so we die, becoming one of a grove of night-flowers that see not nor are seen beyond the moon. How perishable things are, how imperishable thoughts. Renew, as I do now, the state of bodily affection, the mood, the sense of vision, and all comes crowding back, the trains of forgotten thoughts rise from their living catacombs. I have moistened the bread of affliction with the water of adversity. Had I been Achilles, had I known the eagle to be an eagle, I should not be at this pass now. I imagined myself a discoverer, thought to have struck a light for this world full of snails of intellect who see only by their feelers; thought to have lighted a beacon, and find now a candle extinguished. Candle-light and the voice of the Greta and the cock crowing. The voice seems to grow like a flower upon the water just below the bridge. The moon is gone now behind the barred clouds, the brilliance gone, the moon gone, the cock-crowing has ceased. But the Greta sounds on for ever only I hear the ticking of my watch secure in the penplace,

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and the lower note of the noise of the fire, perpetual, inaudible, the low voice of quiet change doing by little and little its work of destruction. Why do I make a book? Because my hands extend but a few inches from my body, because my poverty keeps those hands empty when my heart aches to empty them, because my life is short.

George Whalley

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Those who have no love of life die Those who have no love of life die Or if they don’t they go on living And that is worse. 7 January 1947

After Giordano Bruno Let others lust to bind to naked shoulders Daedalus’ wings, to fly with the clouds’ strength And seek the buffeting impulse of the winds – Hunger to be hurled, like Pegasus, beyond The hollow confines of the flaming world. For we have known the gift of Genius And gaze undaunted on our shadowy fate Lest, being blind to light of the sun, or deaf To Nature’s universal voices, we Receive the gifts of God ungraciously.

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We do not care at what low price fools rate us Nor mind how mad we look in the eyes of the world. We soar on stronger wings: we penetrate Beyond the cloudy pathways of the winds By power of vision – that is enough for us.

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Following us the multitudes will rise, Climbing the path that leads from each man’s heart. No auguries by fire or bird or cloud, No necromancers’ forecasts show the way, But Genius bestowed out of the treasure of God.

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Not the bright quality of polished wit, Nor vivid mind nor reason can betray us; But only the shifty trickster’s arrogance, A blind, unbalanced, groundless confidence In self-created seed of miracles.

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Away with grammar-masters’ thick-lipped verses – Elegant doggerel polished by rule of thumb. Away with petty critics, petty pundits, Who crowd the spacious margins with their notes And greet the unseen reader with a gloss.

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Wings are not for mortals. Let the sun Go naked, unadorned by any cloud. Vision of truth! quested, found, revealed, Take me – though none may follow where I go. If I am wise with Nature by God’s bounty That is enough indeed, more than enough. 29 January 1947

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National Anathema My country ’tis of thee Sweet land of Canady God save the King England can’t tell us how We know the answers now Alone we bow to compromise And self-assertion.

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ca. 9–11 February 1947

Alchemical Retort: Recipe for a National Flag If a country lacks individuality and feels that she should be what she obviously isn’t, knows that what she is isn’t what she might be, and yet is certain that whether she is ready or not something had better be done at once to show the world that she is not colonial – not even in respect of the atom or the universe: Take the juice of two national majorities; add the whites of three reds; whip to a firm consistency with any convenient platform; garnish with maple leaves and serve the conscription wrapped in a hidden tax. Express then the resultant in naturalistic symbols unknown to any college of heralds or school of symbolists (because one must be very careful not to be derivative or conventional which is colonialism). The symbol thus produced will then be altogether original. And around it a young nation, vigorous and self-assured, (though there be no clear direction in the vigour and small grounds for the assurance)

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will speedily crystallise a character to express the fundamental and urgent significance of the symbol. The flag, representing no race, no creed, no past lived, no future dreamed 25 (beyond the future projection of itself into the matrix of the nation) will direct the aspirations of the previously cautious and servile colonial to citizenship of a space whose certainties and dimensions can only be determined 30 by the tensor calculus. 11 February 1947

3 April 1947

Ubi Thesaurus Ibi Cor Mummy, I don’t think Man can have made the Universe. Propel yourself for a moment out of your armchair and away from the latest copy of the Reader’s Digest to some imagined point (say Mu) in space beyond the farthest spiral nebula until the galaxy and star-cities assume integral conspicuity. Then come back through the pathways of the stars, past the horse’s head near Zeta Orionis, through Cygnus’ lacy nebulosity. Tread the black silence at the speed of radio waves till ruby-emerald flash of Algenib splits into separate splinters of flaming light, each its own self-star, solitary vortex tracing a curved track of chromatic speed silently through unregenerate space. Come down a comet’s orbit towards the sun past the hushed inhuman wanderers; break through the screen of asteroids and spin

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across the lifeless oceans of the moon. Then come where the Baltic amber lies unsought, where diamonds and rubies sleep in the still mines. The universe is very wonderful, is it not? So let us humbly take our hats off to the learned propagandist. Let us worship the ingenious disinterest of the advertiser. Close your eyes and hold your breath till bright dyspeptic spots of self-deception zoom across the eyeballs. Don’t stop to think or you might not buy a pink enamelled bath in sixty easy payments, or a car with twenty-three new places for an ashtray. Now that we’ve all got education and culture we all reside (not live) in homes (not houses) situated where it is the fashion to be situated. “You like the place? Yes, charming: and so dustproof. Books? Well, no. They clutter the place, and besides I prefer life. We do, however, have the Encyclopaedia Britannica on microfilm (14th edition with 3,547 illustrations in glorious colour). I always mean to read the thing – one summer perhaps. Don’t worry about the furniture: it’s ultradurable. Blood and cigarette burns come off with a damp cloth and its 93% more sittable-in. Admittedly it won’t resist much hydrochloric acid and it does evaporate three years and fifty days after processed installation by the company’s technicians – but otherwise the sales potential would drop and surely that could never be allowed in a democracy.”

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(Let the following verses be chanted To one of Schonberg’s melodious little tunes) This is the life, the life I love In which my nightmares all come true. This is the life whereby I prove A wisdom Athens never knew. O turn the little thermostat And start the air-conditioning. It’s fun to be a bureaucrat And bully Labour in the Spring.

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O pass the potted taste around And call another Gallop Poll To prove how splendid and profound Is Murphy’s patent Thought-control. Surely the past was never true – The future a neurotic myth. The present is a colloid glue To piece together glamour with. 23 February 1947

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1947

Her cheeks were plump and rosy Her cheeks were plump and rosy The lustre of her hair So golden and ambrosy That I could only stare. Her lips were speaking to me: They sadly needed kissing. Her eyes were dancing gaily. But something big was missing.

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O not for me her laughter And not for me her gold. For she is plump and seventeen And I am lean and old.

George Whalley

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25 February 1947

What was not said and never can now be said What was not said and never can now be said Comes back, seen clearly as it never was then. The longing and the wounds of tide not taken at flood Lie in the long night, lonely and cruel, crying For the word spoken, the touch of the hungry lips. But surely it must have been clear – and it wasn’t Not until in a flash of tears held back The whole perspective of restraint, of love withheld Is seen in a blinding sunlit vista – Slipped away into the past, forsaken and Inaccessible (irrecoverable).

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11 March 1947

Go littel boke, go littel my tragedy Go littel boke, go littel my tragedy Wrought in ecstasy and uttered in despair Fashioned in hope, and made to be Symbol of faith and future, light of fruition. Seeds of bitterness, blind and unaware, Come to growth smother the completion These poems, slow as aloes in growing, Are bitter as aloes now in knowing. 12 March 1947

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Three Years After The subdued voice, steeled to a hard bravado, translating the syllables of tenderness haltingly from German into English, splinters the texture of yearning to grey fragments of ice falling across the cosy evening. “Your last letter was only four days coming; but mine took much too long. I’m sorry for that – Almost a week without a word, and every day I write. Number them, then we’ll know. Don’t write so modestly. I want to know just what you’re doing in the new campaign. I think of you as a hero – which you are. But lately I’ve been frightened, especially by the many letters coming from Poland marked Address Unknown. I know that I can wait though I’ll almost be a virgin when you come.” Much else of feminine inconsequence but solid as the warm dull throb of the heart. Rifled from a crumpled anonymity the letter enfolds the curious inward-turning vengeance of a man who outlived death by inches – a man with life in his hand and peace in his pocket, whose sleep is a focus of unremembered horror. 3 April 1947

There are other centres than cities and governments There are other centres than cities and governments Central as the heart’s tick and the blood’s pulse. Just as World’s End is the end of the world And also a pub in the King’s Road. 7 April 1947

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Barrenness comes on my pen Barrenness comes on my pen And terror fills my nights Crowding the moon and sunlight – 8 April 1947

The sea may pick my bones The sea may pick my bones As white as sun-dried salt on a sailor’s face in a dirty morning watch Yet the sea draws me back umbilically And so with the crabbed linked and hooked atoms of thought and scholarship.

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11 April 1947

Grim and sulky beauty Grim and sulky beauty With virgin shoulders of Egregious and evanescent Loveliness; why can your eyes Not show delight, the warm Conscience of your virgin Beauty, while it is beauty While virgin. Time will be Quick to harden the line of the lips Fix the fire out of the eyes Make the shoulders and breasts Fit to suggest, concealed. Now you can reveal the Perfection of your nakedness.

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Show it in thankfulness And humility. Cannot warmth Come to the eyes when the Shoulders are warm and curved With beauty beyond marble Texture beyond warm satin?

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3 May 1947

When what you wanted has not been had When what you wanted has not been had and is gone When what was hoped has turned to dust When lust for life is cold and lust for death is cold What then?

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2 June 1947

Poem Sometimes in a bus or on the street The whole salt vista of human suffering Is glimpsed suddenly in the evanescent Curve of a throat, or the wide eyes and nostrils, Or haunting a face glad but desolate; And out of the mood of time, the echo of word, Of laughter lost and its savour sharply returning Grows the morbid pearl, secret as the sea’s Primaeval salt in the blood, urging the pen To trace the hieroglyphs of suffering, Monolithic loss and joy like thistledown. When the pain of consciousness is a black flame

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In the wound of vision, the pen is never enough To carve the hot shapes of life from the cold Implacable stone of death: is never enough To heal the heart and keep it in quietness. 6 June 1947

George Whalley

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24 July 1947

Death of a Bird A bird is fragile warmth, translucent brilliance, Swift stillness poised on perplexing wings. Yet the robin, tufted and freckled for tentative flight, Grows cold and small in my hand, is shamelessly still. The high scolding of the parent birds rebukes The casual miracle of feathers to bestir; But the eyes are fast lidded and shuttered. Fear, not the spaniel’s teeth, has killed Instantly in spring sunshine. The crude imposture of clay Crumples the neck and feathers. The earth from long insentient custom learns Its habit of infinite passivity. No more now, than when the low sun Spilled prismatic colours over the snow, Can the blind earth, cold as starlight, Know what anguish was laid in a pitiless winter To wait for an unimaginable spring. 3 June 1947

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The stark clarity of starlight The stark clarity of starlight Crystallizes the granules of frost In the warm flesh of the earth Fashioning (as a lover sets spinning The tingling atoms of desire) A tactile matrix for the snow. But snow, that comes with the light will be Pointillate excruciance Of the cold ecstasy of calculated cruelty The icy sting of a sharp Submicroscopic knife, Not gentle, not sperm-plastic, Sterile, sterilizing, and no embryo. Will grow with fearful parasitic Mystery from the cell’s autonomy. The light is coming, but so is the snow. And the sun is a misty blue of tears In a grey sky submerged in the Shifting distortion of tears When the heart breaks And knows no hope of spring Can survive in the shattered fragments Submitted to the barbed ferocity Of the gentle drifting snow – 24 November 1947

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7 December 1947

This is the self-created tragedy of the world This is the self-created tragedy of the world, The double knife, not healing not utterly killing. Being fallen and free, we lie in a tense field, Torn by the poles of creation and destruction. To this we are pinned, fixed like Ixion, ripped

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By the bald-necked vultures of our necessity Of freedom. This is not merely dilemma, neutral Choice between this and this, and the quiet mind Either way: but importunate paradox, pulsed Agony, systole and diastole of a rhythm Deeper than that of autumn dying into winter, Or spring the hyacinth stirring in the womb of winter. This is not groundswell merely, nor tidal undertow, Measured against the moon’s phases or the risings of Sirius; But a rhythm measured in another continuum, Passing through whole phases in an instant, Half-phases in years. Each time the lovers’ lips Meet in acrid delight, the synaptic Trigger strips the rhythm of desire, The surge of tragedy that knows no resolution But patience, which is suffering. For Sirius is not only alpha Orionis, But also the Dog-Star; and some sidereal day He may turn desolate wolf or jackal And prowl round the desert of our life and dig us up. And the sea is not only the womb of life, The image of eternity, the savour we crave; But also inscrutable destroyer, the pitiless, A cruelty more brutal than beasts, being human In wistfulness of gull-cry, fog-dusk, Salmon-dun of dawn horizon, But terrible in anger and mad altogether Having no memory. And the moon, the gentle one, The lovers’ benison, draws the sea To her bidding in a rhythm of menstrual pain, The gnawing below the hurricane, Below the polished calm, below The fanged rocks slathered with foam For the bellies of ships and the men in ships;

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And calls from the warm hearths of home, Even in a stinging frost, the dogs. Being free, being fallen, we may pray to God, To the moon, to the sea, to Sirius; but the prayer Will be answered beyond dream or hope. Release of tension, resolved tragedy, Is the death of conscience and consciousness; Not death of the body merely, but the blind pebble Spinning its rings of concentric destruction. And death of love is not quiet sleep But the blind brutal destroyer’s work. 8 December 1947

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1 February 1948

Christmas Eve Behold! The midnight blizzard, snow on snow, Maketh all things new. The old ways drifted and obscure, and a light Shineth in darkness. Into the darkness, From houses quiet with the sleep of children, From the outlying farms (the horse stamping in a cold barn) From the bright clatter of rum-punch and warmth Of talk made witty by wine, From wheresoever two or three are gathered together, These featureless and obscure, forge arms linked A new and tentative track through patience of snow Through darkness that comprehendeth not. There have been deaths this twelvemonth Taste of gall, finality of bitterness: Births too and one not in a manger nourished on Lust and retrospective hatred, glossed by social consent, Made decent by the church’s blessing. But death

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Has folded that up too like a vesture. And others we had not expected so garment-waxed. This golden girl, once sweeter than honey and the honey-comb, Adorned once in her youth like a bride out of the ivory palaces Is suddenly grown prosperous and plump Subtly shaped to the will of the flesh and the will of man. This other with elfin lips and a sad Mystery in the eyes, has forsaken the wisdom Of womb and blood for the brain’s logic Is firmly polite to mysteries and sees them no more in her mirror. Yet persists the old parochial rhythm Across the music, the liturgy of the Word: The social history of carefully polished boots, The feudal squareness of wrist supporting The clean but roughened hands of industrious democracy. The sober serge, the worsted and tweed that refuse To hang negligent upon shoulders shaped to the angular Rhythm of the hickory axe-helve.

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Hatasis Under glass (Do not touch the glass. Patrons must leave umbrellas in the cloak-room) You may see Hatasis, young Egyptian Princess, the young bloom of her cheeks turned Black, the texture of pottery, the toes exposed Showing that 4½ thousand years ago Toenails were worn in Egypt. The tremulous Nostrils, their breath flutter, excitement and love-widening Frozen, the nostrils cruelly distorted by the brain-hooks. This cannot have been a woman who knew the foetal Throb of Levantine sun, or waited pulsing with desire In the musky velvet darkness, rather a queer

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Museum piece, slightly macabre, but exotic Enough in time and space to keep your heart Out of your throat and your mind in its business pockets – Until you see her hair – Hatasis’ hair, auburn And soft, the sun burning below the dust, light As an evening breeze on the Nile. Her hair is her youth, The embalmers could not transmute and twist it But only in shame or terror wrap it (no doubt With some obscene jest) into the intricate Mummy swathes. This afternoon I saw Hatasis’ hair, in the winter Sunlight, coming towards me against the snow And the frost breeze of her hurrying lifting it lightly. A flash of white laughter and the rough edge Of the Eastern Townships accent dispersed the vision Of Egypt’s sun and the Nile sleepiness, and the glimpse Of her hair recalls the auburn virgin glory Of Hatasis, beloved of Isis, a ritual breath of life Among the heiratic owls and cats, gazelles and baby crocodiles.

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26 December 1947

Super Flumina By the waters of the St. Charles River we sat down And discussed the problems of law librarians And English cathedral architecture and Undergraduate poetry. But I wanted to weep because a willowy girl In blue rompers was mending her bicycle On the grass by the river, and her bare toes were Curled up with concentration. As for my harp, I might have left it hanging Across the river in one of founders’ trees,

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Because as she leaned forward and raised her head I glimpsed her eyes. I know she wasn’t looking at me; But it was a sharp vision, an omen Of some significance if only I could know How to interpret it. She who had led me away captive Required of me a song and melody In the heaviness of my captivity. But how could I sing

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In a strange land, to a strange girl Escorted by what looked like a football player, And a summer storm approaching in black Clouds and thunder? She looked up with a quizzical smile As though thunder were no more significant than I, And, pushing her bicycle, strode vigorously Over the bridge. The wind ripped the sheets of the rain. She can’t have sheltered. But while we hovered Under an arch, I imagined her laughing In wet clothes. After we were dry we talked of music, But her bare feet had disturbed me sadly And my mind was empty of music and melody. If I forget thee, O daughter of Harvard, If I ever forget thee, let my right hand Forget its cunning. 27 January 1948

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Hodie tibi, cras mihi An old Hempen Proverb He who watched some fatal four disorders Ramble and contend in the mould of Felix Randal Called himself time’s eunuch. Coleridge, The wings of the eagle of Kubla broken, brooded A desperate meditation on the body of this death. The veined and knotted agony of Donne’s Ecstasy for the flesh of women and Christ’s blood Could sing in middle patronage the unloved girl for whom Heaven is as near and present to her face As colours are, and objects, in a room Where darkness was before, when tapers come. And did that torment out of patience flower From poppy-seeds of doubt, despair, and sense Of heaven’s desertion? Did the risen desire cut rhythmic facets Of the terrible crystal to burn the walls of speech, Self-assured in agonizing solitude? Or were their nights haunted by subarachnid Scurrying of the mouse in the scooped hollow of the skull Searching the box of worm-seed, the tacky feet Of centipedes along the nerves, the beetle, The silent waves rolling to burst in dreamlight, The sounds, rhythms, colours, broken shards Of uninterpretable images? 3 February 1948

The spear and thrust of bud and blossom The spear and thrust of bud and blossom The agony of the womb, the incomprehensible, The bringing forth of mystery. 26 March 1948

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Biology Exhibitions No doubt your purpose was perfectly genuine To see the pickled shark, the sectioned eggs at various Stages from inscrutability to chick, The frozen lace of seaflowers skeletons, The pigeon opened, heart and liver labelled, To peer through binocular microscopes at flies Displaying Mendel’s genetic laws, observe The industrious silence of the silk-worm, spinning Swaddling clothes, trousseaux, grave-clothes, flags. But this is a matter for white coats, aseptic Attitudes, something of winter. And now that the birds Bedevil the spaniel, the frogs wait in the shadow Of budding pussy-willows, the tadpoles lucky Enough to escape the specimen-hunter’s net Get on with whatever tadpoles get on with in spring; Now in April the non-subjective mind Bursts in a flame of unrest, a flaunting Provocative tight-held bud of urgent Consciousness. A student sits On a stone step freeing his lungs Of lab-stench, gazes morosely Across the quad at the sensual swing Of the skirts, the defiant lift of breasts, The hair bright in the negligent sun. They come towards him, chatting with Concentrated uneasiness, eyes averted. The boy catches the scent of them passing Their coats brushing him on the steps, their voices Are part of the fragrantness, their movements Concealed with a stark provocation cry to him Of the unseen, unknowable, the sap in the blood.

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Their eyes do not meet, but their bodies cry With voluptuous torment, the hands are bursting To tactile knowing, possession of fearful Delight and pain and darkness – darkness. “Wasn’t it fun to see the shark. His eyes looked silly on a plate.” The brush makes St. Elmo’s fire In ritual sweeps through the liturgy Of hair, sun-lively, immortal. To peer through a microscope with both Eyes open is something – but why Does my body cry and press and surge And this languor of restless pain compress The image of real things to the sharp Vision at the wrong end of the telescope.

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Utopia 1948 And if the year come round again The lover’s year, lolling dreamily in a hay-cart, Moon drawn and star-impelled Lip-warm, laugh-gentle, finger-tender The Jews can have Palestine And Russia the British Isles For love comes in at a brush-stroke And that song will never end – 7 May 1948

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The high whirr of and wings and shadow The high whirr of and wings and shadow Of a humming-bird moving Across sunlight among lilac blossoms. 30 May 1948

When the books are balanced When the books are balanced And the will probated, the rent of The Body of this Death paid In full with appropriate duties, And the mourners disperse and forget And memory is bird-lime on an Ostentatious tome-stone And time a cracked note from a Gothic Bell melted in the fire of Attila’s conquest – Then will the yearning die – the love Longed for, lost, tremulously reaching Out – or is death an empty and deathless Round of the crumbled skull, an inner Bubble of black marble glass – polished Reflecting to infinity the tiny flame of Yearning, spark from the tooth of regret. 11 July 1948

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Penelope of the white hands and the bright eyes Penelope of the white hands and the bright eyes, Penelope of the dark hair and the fickle heart. Bedmate of Odysseus, unravelling the greedy Hopes of her suitors in the manless nights. 8 September 1948

How shall I break this chaotic shell of silence How shall I break this chaotic shell of silence How crack this carapace of apathy How suffer, how suffering die, and dying live Lifting the flaming coal of speech to the lips Uttering the cool labile monolith of vision? O sacred Head The kings and cuckolds have departed The bankers and coxcombs are gone. This emptiness has robbed the silence of vibrance Fretted the yolk and warp of peace, the creative centre From which uncomprehending the dark Notices of desire groping to fruition, the rhythms Of peace, seeds of gestation, womb warmth. 24 December 1948

Suddenly the veil of self-pity lifted and I felt Suddenly the veil of self-pity lifted and I felt A loneliness Gethsemaneal in which burned The passion of pity, horror of human loneliness. This is the only approach to Christ? 24 December 1948

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How pitifully transitory, small, imperfect seems How pitifully transitory, small, imperfect seems All the lifeblood poured out in verse, journalistic Or partisan, under strange devices, strange banners, And strange oaths, with fire, with hope, spurred By what love, what touch of loins, flesh And bud of breast of woman: to perish coldly Like the sleeping woman – black print – cold print.

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24 December 1948

We must go We must go Where water is and sunlight over the water, Where sleep comes in the benison of the sea, Salt-sharp murmur Steeped in memories of laughter And the little sound of leaves Caressing the sky with a delicate shimmer Secret as the print of ripples at the sand’s edge. We must go Where no hurt is, but peace only; Where healing comes in the dark In a warm mystery; Where no shadows are, no hauntings To trouble the night-sky But memory of laughter And the little sounds of leaves. Come to me, my darling, Where water is and no haunting In the eyes, when lips are still Under the healing lisp and leaf-whisper of water At the hollowed hull and the sand’s edge,

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When the springs of delight and peace Turn back on their source of quietness Where water is. 25–26 May 1949

Dawn comes in inexorable beauty Dawn comes in inexorable beauty Frost, field flowers, lamb’s wool cloud and mist like a kiss lying in the breasts of the hills, and the act endless as time’s weight unlifted ticklishness Runs its sweet course east-northeast towards the dawning light.

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13 June 1949

The flower unfolds The flower unfolds Offering to our woundrous gaze The virgin beauty of her scent and form And in each other’s eyes we see reflected The crimson softness that we call a rose The birth of ecstasy – and so we chose – The flower fades Brought to swifter death by us Who plucked the throbbing velvet bud In each other’s hands to feel the soft Cool petals of a miracle we shared. Death of a rose – is it we who dared? 16 June 1950

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Night Flight What hand trimmed these strident feathers for flight And rigged such flimsy gear – a matter of ear-shot, A catch of the breath – to freeze the crawling traffic So that we heard in an instant of threatening rain A random arrow of geese transfix the night? What fingers hooked the string and held it humming Fiddle-taut to the ear while surge of the shoulder Flexed the bow to a thought’s prophetic will? What cosmic archer with crow’s-foot eyes disposed Uncompassed wings to tread the darkness southward? The beaks cry defiance to solitude And the trackless sky, where no star flashes “Come”; only the tidal pitiless sun Impels them, beyond memory, towards An unforeknowable target of repose. Across the creaking burden of the chorus The leader’s striding the silence invokes their care, Cries out to this pitiful grace of bones And ragged feathers linked by hook and barb To a crazy Icarus-venture. Hooded eyes Peer unamazed at a highly improbable course Great-circled in octopus juice on the black air. For the leader’s unworded words strike on their ear-holes Familiar magic. These Atlas necks Are long-bows strained to a planet’s compulsion: These birds are archer and arrow, artists Annihilating will to discover purpose. These wingbones are structured against the gales Of Tierra del Fuego; these singing feathers Are tough enough for that sorrowful region where The Horn fractures his beak in the South Ice. But they will come to rest short of that passion For no divined reason, dropping down

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Weary some dawn by a lake where wild rice Whispers to water.

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1958

Runaway It’s strange, things being the way they are, That a sensible girl like Jane – and homely too, Plain as the bottom of a kettle And flat as an ironing-board – The very first day he showed his face in town Should run off with the Irishman. Last year and the year before It seemed that Jim’s Allan would get her, What with all his moony courting. Then when he got the new truck I thought that would fix it. But no. She snorted, and asked him did he want For her to ride behind the bars Like a heifer going to the station? Maybe she wants a chariot of fire So she takes off with the Irishman.

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You never know about a girl And least of all the homely ones. But I never thought I’d see a mouse Of a girl like Jane fall flat on her face For a crazy waster full of songs and whiskey. But those swaggering blue eyes of his Had a shameless way of swivelling round, Would make your spine tingle. But sometimes I calculate There’s girls have worn themselves to skeletons From snubbing strangers and being sensible. 22 December 1951

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Me, driven through minefields, with a quartering Me, driven through minefields, with a quartering Sea quenching the asdic, degaussed compass Swinging like a merry-go-round or hanging Limp as a sail glued to a false course – Me mourn, me mock, driven so So bemused, wildered by gear out of kilter And a drunken quartermaster tricking the wheel.

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6 January 1952

Elegy A host of disasters may overtake a bird On the wing, its body stricken in the middle air By nerve-wrack, collision, bullet. Of these I know Nothing, whatever the casual reporter Affirms or guesses of course and trajectory. This was a wholly different matter – a spaniel’s Velvet jaws arrested the heart in a breast Unruffled by toothprint. But dead nevertheless. A hedgesparrow, I fancy – some unremarkable Fustian bird, not of the soaring kind. No throttled spectacular earthward plunge, No spiring pinions frozen in spread-eagle, no Lustreless feathers drifting like spoons down, No light impact to snap the fragile bones. The trowelled earth, mother-neutral, accepts Whatever may be gathered – beak, bone, Claw, pinfeather, eye – lacking a simple Gesture of rejection. My fingers number Each interrupted capillary, every excruciate Nerve and filament barbed like eyes in the loin With spears of delight, needlepoints of terror.

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Who can order and preen these feathers for flying? Or arch these spindle-bones to stride the morning? Or glaze these eyes to stare the sun into pity? Or force this mouth, crammed with silence, to empty The light with its crying or people the desolate city? Honed to a cutting-edge on the whetstone of frost The pathways of air are deserted. No bird dare Thread his flight here for fear his wings Shiver like glass and scatter the snow with diamonds. But we are compelled to venture, coming on foot By a devious unmarked track to a place of stones Where glyptic records rehearse with adroit precision Their repetitious and inexpressible sorrow. And being gathered, our eyes correctly reverted Each from the other’s nakedness, let us Commit to silence a voice that never knew Crying unless the child cries out in the womb; Commit to darkness eyes that never suffered The first incredible shock of light; and having Committed this last and newest testament Turn – this is no festival for mothers – Turn to this other man, the one companion, Bowed with an effort of unprofessional grief. (Far down in the valley a bird rises Stiffly into the cruel stillness. A swift Jet of affection splinters the numbness – He should have flown South a long time ago.) And turning find this other man is gone, Gone underground, his tottering grief A frozen gesture of silence. So many dead, since and before and elsewhere, Behind the wire, under the olivetrees, At sea, and not a few in their beds. But here To my knowledge these two – plenty: A universe of dying. As for the rest,

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I do not know them; let them be mourned in the best Style. My song and sorrow are Exhausted and overburdened by a child Dead from her birth, and a generous voluble friend. Not far away, in ground unsanctified, A spaniel – clown bred in the bone, a circus Prodigy from birth – and a hedgesparrow. And now that I’ve started, the list spins out a little: A boy shot through the head for a partridge (A not uncommon error), a girl unmade To the hardy fashion of love, and an older maid Fearless in floodtime who ferried her new-baked bread Across the river of death. All these In their due seasons. Here is some bravery.

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No make of mourning Can bruise the bones of these Who in the end must suffer The ways of repose. Worn to a habit of silence The unrequited lover Is caught in a rip-tide Of gentleness; another Knowing no graceful hope Drowns in a deep pool Of accomplished innocence, And being made whole Goes forth to meet The naked terror of vision, The urgency of flight, The hard death of song. The black flutter of a skylark Rising from the corn

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Is a dying fall, no gage of His ecstasy of song.

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Even the sparrow’s motley Belies his intricate song, Conceals how by a mystery The voice becomes vision – How by a surgical Duplicity the vision Mounts to the throat and kindles A golden flame of song; How the amethyst beak Releasing the thread of breath Spills from the ruby throat The sapphires of death. Reverting from their bold Venture all come In a blaze of jewelled flame To the city of the sun. The shudder of cockcrow Is heard in the phoenix’ cry; Betrothal and betrayal Are equal, crucified –

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Hung like a broken crow In most cruel wise On the horns of the heart Or spear-points of eyes. The ritual silence Commands us endow The feathers of suffering With power to renew

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The virgin’s perplexity, A man’s broken oath, The clown’s wild sorrow, and A child’s small death. ? 6 January 1952

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If it must be an affair of drowning, let it be If it must be an affair of drowning, let it be A matter of the open sea, and deep water, and Comforting cold to numb the bright buds Of waning desire. Fish where they may the ships’ Trawls may pass as they will caressing Whatever is left caressable. But I Can laugh then with a shark’s grin Rather than tadpole’s snicker knowing In this place no haunting figure, no flanks Fruitful with unrest can tempt me out To the nettlebed of desire, the sour weedage Of despair, the flanks untouched, lips inviolate The dark unfathomed, the word unspoken.

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9 February 1952

This death was cruel certainly This death was cruel certainly But, lacking dignity, it turned Upon a point of dishonour why He should have taken her and learned Beyond conjecture all the deft Ways of her mind, comforting Ways of her hands, and only left A mockery of gentleness, a thing

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Wormed out to wily impotence After he’d probed her fertile dark To feed the seeds of his immense Impudent talent for lust. Mark How he spawned these children stamped With the base metal of his squalid Fancy. Fancy the weavils encamped In the mirrored grace of her pallid Face framed in her dark hair – But a child’s face turned to a window Looking forth on a morning where Only deliberate guile could shadow

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The sunlight. Not even he, Not even with his colossal pride, Could (living now) suffer to see What poisoned lance has pierced the side Not of her memory but of regard For genius quenched in a gust of passion And fathered forth in a just reward Of guilt fathering in a new fashion A lust destructive as the disease That tortured as it had right to do Incurable, tainting a fresh lease Of your body’s fruit, the fresh hue Of your mind’s strength, taut as a nerve, Poured into vivifying vessels To bud forth your splendid force Do 9 February 1952

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Gyro Admiral Pathfinder, guide of the fleet, wheel Of fated axis northward poised in the gimbals of choice. 22 May 1952

How shall I say, having come this far How shall I say, having come this far How it was to come here when there is farther yet to go. But in one evening I have seen a woman Throwing bread to birds from a tenement window, A strong man broken lying in a chaise longue waiting for death, 5 A young student very drunk talking aloud to himself With repetitive bravado of fuck, and fuck, And an eminent critic’s book ill-printed by a publishing house Which is directed by another eminent critic. There is a fair woman, girl no longer, her uterus 10 Torn with child bearing: waiting in an empty house For a miracle she never fully believed; And another who said she would die of love, and may have done Believed her facile gaiety and flair for finding new lovers. But how should I know, having escaped narrowly her destruction? 15 And another – dark, she fills me with terror. ca. 4 January–5 June 1952

Lazarus A simple command cuts his death to the bone. A stiff shadow, bound, moves out of the cave Blurred in drifting clouds of recognition. Dappled with hot shadow of olive-leaves, Gnarled with the ancient anguish of the vine,

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He stood stone-still, carved out of the indrawn Breath of morning, shriven, his neck arched back Like a frozen wave. Only the women move, Mary and Martha rocking to and fro Like bladderwrack in an indolent undertow. “Come home from the dead, Lazarus” – The women had keened away the three nights Never dreaming their salt and hopeless grief Could turn their prayer to bitter affirmation.

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Over the vibrant silver of the olivetrees, Across the vine-plants and shadow, the day Had curled in an arch of lapis lazuli. Crisp with menace and the dawning voices, The plumed sunlight coils its force and strikes A hammer-blow full on the creased eyelids, On eyeballs wrinkled by the gravebands, bruised By the brass pennies. Miraculous, the light Breaks open his eyes as though his skull had split On some relentless reef of lamentation. His head strains back, arching his neck to the impact. The hush of harvest on the taut skins of his ears, The memorable feel of his own body Bound still, the animal moanings of the women Insistent as the fricture of cicadas – Out of this undertow he claws his way To a bitter beach of consciousness. His eyes, unshrouded now, are windows looking Inward and outward. No eye dare meet them. Even the women edge their shame away Disavowing their knowledge and their prayer. The shrivelled heart may know The royal reprieve of greenness. But what imperial purpose, Infinitely gentle,

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Requires this hard penance Fathering an old crime On new innocence?

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The stiff spasms of his waking overset The calculus of grief and the cold Merciful mechanism of forgetting. His body’s musk and myrrh is tropical landfall, Languid repose transfixed by arrows of regret. Stricken by the two-edged sword of paradise, His neck arched back, he raises stone eyes To the blaze of a bitter vision – pity granting Life, withholding heaven. Nevertheless The fluttering hands of embalming sorrow Quicken like flowers inward, enfold and cherish A man-child, it may be, or the seeds of a woman’s Grief, or some more numbing, some more precious Mystery nourished of suffering – perhaps An alabaster box of spikenard.

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For the sword was made flesh And dwells among us. 6 September 1952

1957

Ploughed and harrowed with cries of drowning Ploughed and harrowed with cries of the drowning, Sown with seeds of desolation. And what strength There might be to build bones, crinkle the eye-corners, Fashion a man to ways of gale and breaker Was nipped in the bud of irresolute Contrivance of the heart, wombed up For the salt thrust, fire burst Of life. Tidal not tendril, rip not root, Moan of rigging for moan of rain in the crops

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And the parched heart, withered longing, A man-o’-war bird torn by the wind, flung Dazed on darkness, draggled for incorrigible flight.

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17 December 1952

Raising a hand to my forehead Raising a hand to my forehead I had my head in my palm Slender and fragile as a bird’s skull – But this head has not known the grace Or delight of a bird, this hand Holds not the skull of infinite jest Nor transient wisdom nor infinite timelessness. But a knotted shame, shameful perplexity, Perplexed delight clouded by grudging Resolution, resolve to love, to heal love’s wounds, Resolve laughed at and broken not by a gravedigger’s Spade or coarse lips but tumbled Aside by two thoughtless Bucolic lovers, tumbling their hair and laughter in the hay –

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Spindrift of spindle-shank children Spindrift of spindle-shank children Driven like birds before a stiff breeze Feathers inside out with the rough handling Bleak noses, boot-button eyes. Woolworth next the skin And Wordsworth under a shady elm 12 February 1953

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Though inland, though far Though inland, though far Where no bark or moan of the sea Nor fog whistle no siren calls her To stir old wounds. 6 March 1953

The rest may rest as best they lost The rest may rest as best they lost I have no calculus for such reckonings Beyond this one, these two, Unquadratic unresolved. ca. 10 March 1953

Wheel dove, wheel eagle, gyre skylark Wheel dove, wheel eagle, gyre skylark, Jewelled feathers, the boot-button eyes the gulls Squabbling on a fish shed roof With pitiless beaks. ca. 10 March 1953

When we were younger and loving When we were younger and loving Groping to find the body of love To discover in the many facets of love

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One love, in body thrust against single body One body – ca. 18 March 1953

I do not know these men I do not know these men Who swim stricken in the broken sea. They are not my shipmates Yet they call out to me and I cannot deny them – 17 May 1953

I would come to a point in timelessness I would come to a point in timelessness And there dwell, candescent an instant, Upon the stroke of eternity. ca. 1952–53

Myth, that ganglion of symbols Myth, that ganglion of symbols, Is the heart torn throbbing From the ribbed and burning tower of legend. ca. 1953

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Veronica The crumpled linen of her face Bears no imprint of victory Unless lost youth be triumph. But her eyes flicker Like remembered lightning And a serpent’s wise tongue Transfixes the forked victory That women hold over truth. So a solitary seabird Or a cold dawn may flood The eyes with the bitterness of light. And the flower borne for a cross Is trodden by the sword of time, Crucified with the nail prints Of passion on this crumpled linen. 27 June 1954

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There’s nothing for it but drop an anchor there There’s nothing for it but drop an anchor there On a cross-bearing of rue and lad’s-love, Take a fix on candlelight and laughter, And swing to the seven shackles of repose Till the gale stops blowing the seagulls inside out. It’s a wise woman knows all the weathers of love; And the strong wisdom born of the folly of love Is the leagues-long seamanship and blunt Sensitive seafaring thumb that knows Good holding-ground and a snug berth When you’re driven like a draggled yawl under the lee Of an iron cliff to weather a bitter gale In an anchor watch long as the days are long And weary as the empty nights.

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This anchor, heavy as doom, is ebbing time Set outwards away from the agony of parting. Be patient, darling: the bleak watch will end When the heart’s hurricane blows itself out In calm of the still heart, a new found land Familiar as the ways of the hands.

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And I, moored to the gentle body of your love And the bright corposants of memory, Mumble the weavilly biscuit of your absence And preach a patience which I cannot command, Fuming for sailing orders, finding a little Content in the knotted cord that searches the fathomless Mystery of your love until I slip From this open roadstead and venture the dark Crossing to the lips’ hungry harbourage. Beloved, be sure that, when in the end We have suffered and weathered all We ever foreknew or dreaded, you will come To quiet harbour out of the storm’s way, Where the hills lie breathless under the moon And the feathery owl murmurs in his sleep Dreaming of Athenian olive-trees, And all the stars are candlelight. And you will come, in that night, By way of some meticulous Merriment, to a warm silence Beyond thought, beyond time, Caressed by candlelight; Coming as your heart’s due Into your beauty’s right. 5 September 1954

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When we set out, there was little gear to muster When we set out, there was little gear to muster. For high hopes and first love travel light Expecting no resistance and at first encountering none For time reserves judgement and plays a waiting game. Pistols we took and machetes To arm us against the rain-forest of desire. (In a just world the piranha stay in the rivers, The tiger sleeps, the parrots are not carnivorous.) And traversed that desolate and fertile region of the lowlands Up to the cold hills, and stand here now Anoxic with despair, hysterical with desolation Here the exploration fails and the work begins With two reduced to one and that one lost. Methodically now, for there’s all the time in the world, Walk round the place, lay out a base-line, Shoot stars, take azimuths, at leisure, at leisure. Accuracy for its own sake, lost at high altitude.

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Is this another hallucination of the thin air? Memory accurate as a dream, accurate as an accusation. Below there the starting-point, now not worth returning to, 20 And the first landscape no longer made exotic by the hunger of the eyes. And ourselves O diminished, how by optical inversion diminished To the glad gaiety of that setting forth. Dressed all over with the colours of love The days came and went. Night brought rain sometimes 25 Or a gale of wind, but the days were fair and the twilight fragrant. And stars I remember naked above the tide. And a ship riding under the stars. Moored to silence, the lips closed in. On the uplands the wind is never still But no wind of the spring blows here bringing

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The trumpet flowers or the vine-visionary slow beech-leaves. The grove is deserted though the sun mottles the bronze debris on that still floor Underwater, dreaming uproad through the pools of sun. Shame grips my throat with a terror of drowning, 35 The fracture of a beetle whets the edge of humiliation And there is no gesture of renunciation can appease In that surf the shark-tooth of remorse The wreck, the ship gone, the captain’s dismay at his bad navigation And the drowning voices, asking without accusation, pleading. 40 Here there is all the time in the world, convenient nautical twilight And an artificial horizon, survey not navigation. Over the weir the brown river slips Outflanking the lock in indolent complacency. But that was somewhere else. Here the mountain stream rages roisters when the rain falls or the snow melts 45 But the season is wrong, the sky as empty as a hangman’s face, The rock bed of the stream is promise of destruction but dry, dry Not even the savage shame or the listening humiliation Will weep to make the streams run. I had hoped that vine and olive would reign in the end 50 Making the valleys fertile and the uplands fruitful But the culture is traditional, a lost art Forgotten in the exploration of a new and savage country. The party is now reduced to one, and here On this bleak upland where the meticulous survey 55 Chains and cross-checks its spider-web of impotent accuracy We stand amazed, hysterical with grief, Drunk, uproarious in an indecent merriment, At the wrong time under the worst possible circumstance Like Byron and Hobhouse in their coach racing along the coast-road 60 The afternoon they watched the fire, laced with wine and spices, immolate

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In a bright sun on the beach near Pisa The drowned fish-bitten bright blue body of Percy Shelley. ca. 1952–54

And this befell and that happened And this befell and that happened – You may recall the details moments that spired Pageanting an ecstasy. Dressed all over With the colours of love the days came and went – And night too, not without rain and wind, And sometimes tears, but stars I remember Naked above the tide. There is no wind Of spring bringing flowers and the slow beech-leaves But speaks of the shame tight at my throat, Whets the edge of humiliation that brings me naked and humble to you. Twice I have nearly Drowned in a terror of waters; that was Gentle, a benign savagery compared with The salt loneliness, the shark-tooth of remorse, The wreck.

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ca. 1952–1954

You are here, auburn-headed and slender You are here, auburn-headed and slender Unchanged by 20 years And this girl, with breasts just budding Would be my daughter And yours

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If I had had courage equal to instinct And vision equal to desire But it was otherwise and 20 years Has set the ocean Between us.

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The miracle was not damaged By possession or promise Yet the years endorse the instinct That she is mine And I hers.

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But of my daughter she would not say “That child but for the grace of chance Would be my daughter.” For another Cast of spirit is there, not the bond Between her and me Or of hers Yet alien I am, yet loving; and dying Will never steal brightness from The miracle of that first timid Encounter too vivid To be love. 20 October 1956

Admonishment Maidens are timorous, shy of experiment, but with experience appetent, ardent.

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Panurge said there was no metal so resistant as that your lover pounds blindly, persistent. Gluttons’ gross appetites grow as they eat – repetitive victories breed Love’s defeat. Bait a pride of lions, tease a starved shark, but never waken tiger sleeping in the dark!

George Whalley

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1958

Dionysiac Aquavit and beer to chase it On the patio, narrow between broken walls, And a black bird from Java in a Steinberg cage Whistling in the sun. After the aquavit (a wedding relic), Scotch 5 With beer to chase it; and after the Scotch, Vodka. Meanwhile Antonio Vivaldi ran his Seasons Hi-fi all four of them fiddling flame to the sun’s smouldering quiet. Then the flamenco. Whereupon 10 Up rose Bernardino To shuffle a slow dance Seagull-eyed and penguin-footed Up and along the path in a reverie of castanets Self-enwrapped, self-in-the-sun-enchanted. 15 More eloquent even the stillness of the silent girl Whose blue unseasonable eyes and quiet hands

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Incarnadined the air with their tendrilled passion. The dreaming dance of your stillness shapes in its fingers your heart to a helix of flame; Your eyes are lapis lazuli in a crystal skull. 20 The music will never end. And your hands, as still as birds, Renounce all motion, enclosed in the flame of your silence While the sun stands still and the bird pours down its indolent song unregarding. For here by the brooks of desire and in the mountains The sacrificial torches run indecorous through groves of sleep 25 Hounding the dainty antelopes, soft to the touch, Till they lie dismembered and their eyes filmed with darkness. Now while the sun is high, while the music revolves As blank and unregarding as that bird’s bright eye, The patio is desolate and the house empty. 30 If there is life still, it does not move and there is no sign of it. The garrulous silence of an abdicated sorrow falls Whimpering from dark to dark through the aching spaces of the mind And the frenzy of this torrential sacrament Is gathered into a quiet cage 35 Ingeniously constructed Of blazing music, birdsong, and a grave dance In a narrow place between broken walls. 31 May 1959

1965

How very odd to miss the bus How very odd to miss the bus And not be known at forty-one Or passed off as anomalous A pigeonhole without a pigeon. Bluntly excluded from collections Of poets not more competent but younger

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Whose poems compromise selections From wit too recent for my hunger And find my poems pushed aside With the condescending smile of subtle Critical disclaimer of a wide Join between the poems and the – Classical is what I haven’t got the hang of Being naïve, not schooled in the correct Graduate school that makes a thing of Making its poems from its poetry. It’s better perhaps not to have seen War or loved in war or after Or ever to have pitied man’s obscene Brutality deep as the sea and hollow as laughter.

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These stand in the light, being real, These disturb the classic calm These disclose unmanageable fields Of thought and feeling a little outside the books. The accent is not the dialogue of the tribe, Well-known for learned books not published yet. A poet – yes, of a sort, but of course His poet’s sense is seen more clearly Not in his verse but in his prose But not the prose he prizes. He had promise, but it lacked The seed of fame, the water of addiction. And what he does by sixty-one Will scarcely merit a second edition.

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But let him teach, though teaching’s not his line, Review for nothing, choose the winning poems For year by year, and add to hollow honours The learned clubs and cliques of expertise. A poet? No. A scholar – too light-hearted. A teacher? Too evasive by a mile. A name – yes of a sort because his brother Draws cartoons and never sells his pictures.

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Not at bidding nor commanding Not at bidding nor commanding The begotten forgotten begetting Comes at its own demanding And love gone, love cold, dies. ca. 1959

O World, O Word O World, O Word To mount, to feather, to tread _______ A most subversive air and wind blowing all the sand and salt of the winter in the sunlight. 28 March 1962

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But where in all this world is Eden? Where is any garden? But where in all this world is Eden? Where is any garden? And times change and hearts are broken and promises broken – And time abides, changing, unfolding, enfolding, destroying – And where in time is love, the brilliant compassionate possessive Yearning and delight and annunciation – where in time is this to abide? Where its roots and where its nourishment. The flame of accident, the glance of grace, Sunlight like trumpets, and the eyes smiling, And here, now, brought in conjunction of vivid Accident, irreversible, evanescent, mysterious, is love To unfold like a flower in peace and orders of delight? Passion burned to gentleness, compassion to flame? Or more sombre in forgetfulness, the cruel glance? Neglect of the heart’s pitiful need – or ignorance, Hard as the fist of brutality, not knowing what nourishment.

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And the sea, the sea, the oceans, burgeoning, blazing, Creating, destroying: the wind’s lips to the night’s breasts, And all things in order, towering to archangels and the celestial City of light and the precious gems of the heart’s murmuring. Labyrinth of another’s being ca. 1958–1962

Affair of Honour Eloquent between the formal hedges The date of the year is grafted in the turf With crossed swords Calling back across three centuries

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To this pastoral place above the sweet river The carnal liturgy mortal in the dawn. The principals, forthright in disaster and Foreshortened to stone, Gaze each other pale in the truculent light Under the bright eyes of the hooded golden girlchild. She at least is present, Withdrawn a little to the company of stalking shadows, Flattered to tears by the lion pride, Enchanted by the dawning horror Between the reticent formalities of the hedges.

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For love’s sake a virtuoso thrust Asserts the crabbed and scrupulous logic of honour. The casual enemy’s plea is clenched on a gasp of silence And gives no more evidence before the chief witness. I see the agile figures Sealed in the long stride of their companion shadows Startled to stone; And the drops of blood humbled by the girl’s gaze Blessing the grass.

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Can seed and rain mingle aloud and flower For pity at her frock’s hem? or the eloquent blood Spring into birdsong crying to plead Stay of execution In strictest confidence of the formal hedges?

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The shadows are long, the dew astonishes the spiders, 30 The light shivers and falters, the thin pulse ebbs into silence; And she and the man, Braggart in their opening of the unstaunched vein, Complacent as vultures, sardonic as astronauts, Cut the date of the year for joy with crossed swords 35 In the dishonoured earth, Laughing to think how it turns its face to the sky for good to celebrate

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A brave encounter here on the grass where the blood dropped down Between the formal hedges Reticent these three centuries. 40 7 December 1963

1967

Memorial As deaths go, a small one, utterly obscure, No more momentous than the clenched fist of resolve or The round O of pain quenched at the lips. Not a quick campaign either: all possible delaying tactics Were summoned to prolong to an exquisite scandal What revenge would never countenance. White anarchy ruled in the blood, but we Didn’t know the city was betrayed, and we didn’t know How the loyal citizens has sold out to a treacherous duplicity. Only the stupid held on stubbornly Like a wound healing in a body under sentence of death. The patrols slipped with confident insolence Into the suburbs of the flesh, Fanned out through the streets, along the boulevards – Doors booted in, the householders without interrogation Hosed down in a blunt stammer of lead. Then at last in the silence the faceless champions Stood abashed in the empty cathedral square. A few indifferent witnesses greeted them, Not very distinguished now, mutilated, sprawled in the sun. Of all the futilities of war This was the most brainless. It was well known That conquest could achieve nothing, Nor torture either, death least of all. Nothing could have made her turncoat. Her glory was in the names of her friends.

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She never betrayed anybody except into loving. Unkind – for her hand was always open in giving, Her worst sin the worrying for those set free by her love. She never turned any suppliant, man or child, away. The courtyards of her affection Were always sunlit and well-provided. I cannot think by what vindictive edict Death served this bailiff ’s notice of dissolution On one whose debts were always paid promptly. Nor by what grotesque habit of Slack-mouthed cretinous indifference Death, in the logic of injustice and man’s hatred, Mounted unconditional siege When time was plainly against the garrison and the conclusion certain, And raised the gallows of victory Over an obscure village, where the only rule had been An antique rule of order, The only law the grace of hospitality. This surely was an occasion for deft restraint: To suspend protocol, neglect Clausewitz, break the law. Modest and compliant, she would not have expected Anything but the most perfunctory formalities. 21 July 1964

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December 1964

A Minor Poet Is Visited by the Muse Abroad early among daisies His ear caught The surely-some-revelation murmur of Prospective polysyllables. Happily his clipboard was at hand, whereon (His eyes lifted in reverence towards the sea)

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He set down This set down This Safely delivered of his song He tethered his Pegasus To the ambrosial coffee-bar of the dawn And broke his fast in thanksgiving, His eyes glazed still By the rush of spent angels to the head.

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23 July 1964

Calligrapher In a reverie the left hand In a reverie quietly tracing a circle on slate my left hand Grinds the black ink while the right hand, Fallen upon a leopard’s grace of waiting, rests Composing itself 5 For the impetuous thought that will trace itself in the air, Sprung from the mind’s eye into a shape fluid as water Yet crisp in its enunciation through the strict tradition of Hsing Shu. Meanwhile however The left hand dreams in its motion, the right hand rests in its stillness, 10 The mind modulated to quietness with the turning motion and the motionless resting Meditates examples of excellence, And dallies – though it shouldn’t – with the hope That my old friend, crinkled at the eyes’ corners and grizzled with wisdom, Will extend his wry approval – 15 He who once in gorgeous robes – did I dream this? – in a mountain setting

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(Our serving men discreetly at a distance and the air still) Presented to me in deference some writing of his own and asked for some of mine. Will my mind grow quiet enough today in its concentred ease To impel from the shoulder with swashbuckling insolence 20 The grace that could move a mountain with a brushstroke? Will a poem Spring like a shout from eye and hand, crying out from the secret places that love springs from, And gather itself into one great outburst of bibulous largeness and biblical severity? And if so, what – 25 Resting and revolving – Shall I frame in the mind’s eye out of the heart’s crevices? Some well-turned and memorable compliment? an exercise in virtuosity or love? Perhaps a eulogy in praise of pied wagtails? Or will I, in a royal catch of phrase, touch upon beauty and the turning of the seasons, And the numb grief that time and the ancient hauntings of regret drive us to? Or will this theme choose me: absence in a desolate place and the tongue silenced by the dignity of the heart, And the terrible Tartar violence done to Hui-tsung (In an age whose art proclaimed that All men are Brothers) The emperor taken prisoner and driven out to die in exile Though his Slender Gold hand still bears witness untarnished To the measured elegance of his movement and speech – That tall imperial figure, shapely as his brushstrokes, A young learned man, handsome and very skilful: For he was of the kind of Ikhnaton upon whom and his exquisite queen Time also laid brutal hands And delivered the City of the Sun over to the lizard, leaving

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Only the painted rushes and incised scarabs to witness The silent mockery of stone hawks. And so revolving in my heart examples of excellence 45 There will be for me a moment when the right hand Bestirs itself out of time and ventures forth Composed into an act of precise certainty To set down something Momentous and wounding as an unbroken promise – 50 Say ten characters: Wind – rain – home – an alien place: A friend, wine, fire, the heart: and the rain falling. Shall I say this? declaring That we grow old in the wind and rain; that home is a place we return to and always have to leave; That we suffer alone always, and come upon death alone 55 And delight often, And tread down sorrow as best we can alone So that the heart may flower and all desire in the end be chastened? No wonder the right hand is no better than an indolent leopard, and My old writing friend is quizzical; no 60 Wonder my left hand dreams and delays in its long circular reverie upon slate As though the ink were stone and the water lay under the iron edict of frost. For now the spirit of Mi Fu strides silently across the quiet landscape of my mind, Pot-bellied and sure-footed as an athlete under the towering weight of that high dome of his brow, His shirt flying open throat to navel, arrogantly 65 Enclosed in the splendor of his thought. And I know that at one instant in time a thousand years ago The whiskers on the nose of a short-legged steppe pony and the texture of rabbit fur at a saddle bow and hawk feathers at a gloved fist

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Were fixed by the pitiless glance of love in a narrow perspective Where the hand’s perfection danced to the cunning duplicity of the eye.

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written in a ceremonious hand in the almond spring against winter solstice 29 November 1964

October 1967

Twenty years ago – on the bridge Twenty years ago – on the bridge Third class cruiser, third class officers and ship’s company Half-mutinous, the war a disgust, And knew in that grey dawn under the gunfire of silence And desolation of impending marriage That now, from this point, for which there would be no rejoicing, Would spread like a slow stain across the years The doom and loveless disaster that I saw before, see now, And better had stopped on behalf of some other disaster Rather than join murder to suicide. 29 November 1964

The Sage The forehead so high that the eyes are displaced To the place where the mouth would be But there’s no need to talk. ca. 1959–64

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A House Divided The stone balustrade ends on the empty air. The garden is full of silence and full of weeds. Was there love here ever? Jealousy and bitterness Lurk in the acrid rubble, soil the rank grass, Tainting the still air and the flowers gone to seed; Rooks like vultures circle a riven wood Where the broken stones, hauled away for a song, Wounded the trees to death protesting this final Archangelic expulsion from never-Eden.

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ca. 1963–64

After a certain age all of us, good and bad, are grief-stricken After a certain age all of us, good and bad, are grief-stricken because of powers within us which have never been realized; because, in other words, we are not what we should be. I am astonished by the contrast between the powers I am aware of in me and the triteness of my life. As I grow older I feel more and more the need to make that barren astonishment effectual, to wrest some palpable prize from it; for I cannot see that the astonishment itself is of any use to me. Mitrinovi, my old Serbian acquaintance, used to say of Bertrand Russell: “When he die, the angels, they find nothing to eat on his bones.” ca. 1963–64

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How shall I say I love thee How shall I say I love thee. It is like death and the habit of forgetting. Already in my mind you have altered shape, Startled by your slender loveliness, your offering yourself. 8 March 1965

Pig And in my household, Though well provided with wife, three children, a dog, and two cats (The parrot took wing some years ago for the Elysian Fields) There is a pig. He is called “Pig” simply, for purposes of reference and for ritual salutation, 5 Seeing that he is made of pigskin; But his shape is improvised not stuffed – Stuffed would be too horrible. His corkscrew tail is at best a rough Parody of a pig’s tail; 10 His eyes are square buttons, neatly folded, of pigskin, not very securely attached but perspicacious I am sure; His ears are like sow’s ears, as large and pendulous As blades of assegais heated too long in too hot a fire. But I think he is not a sow, because he has never to my knowledge farrowed And is gentle with small people and not possessive of the cats. 15 Year in year out, in all seasons and through all festivals He stands attentive under the piano As though he would receive at any moment some half-familiar Compliment, command, or notable intelligence And respond to it with cheerful alacrity. 20

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He came here as though by nursery rime From his own country Engelonde By air Under my arm In defiance of airline and government regulation. He savoured the flight as much as I did homeward, Or the Children of Israel escaping across the great water, Tasting already on a fine palate before landfall The sparkling light ambiguous bouquet of expatriation.

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For was he not designed to be used as a footstool or to be sat upon? He has an interior iron frame, And since his destiny is rigid yet decently concealed He commands respect when he least appears to seek it. For from behind he looks casually self-assured 35 Like a decayed aristocrat assured of his heritage or An alderman who has no doubts for his constituency. Wherefore From long acquaintance of his patient and eager aspect as He stands on guard under the piano 40 (O Pig! O Canada!) Or ventures on ceremonious occasions forth into the open – At Christmas time, or to be admired by a famous guest, or when driven out for sweeping and cleaning – I declare that he is a noble and primordial pig, and An ornament to this household and to his adopted country 45 By reason of his elegant snout, his ingenious unbristled skin, and the half-hooded benison of his little square eye. And for the comfort he gives us he is to be honoured With the dutiful reverence we accord to those illustrious ancestors Whom we never could have known. 30 October 1965

January 1967

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Saint Francis’ cloak praises Saint Francis’ cloak praises God for all his creatures: Over his head the stars; Under his feet the grass; Flowers and the brown earth Encompass his arms; The sea and running rivers Flow down from his head; And at his back the fire Rises rejoicing In all living things To praise God in his holiness And in the firmament of his power.

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31 October 1965

Flowering of an Ancient Reticence Take this for a song. Night drifting down With the bird-hush and murmur of ebbing voices: Here, at the turn of the stairs, the darkness Suddenly blazed, and all the silences that all these years Had fallen between our lips and the heart’s promptings Gathered and scattered like wings at a single gesture Of dawn or gunshot. Or was it some small sound, Of beetle or owl, or the limpid laconic brook Too shallow for suicide that rippling tripped The avalanche of gentleness and crushed The forests of delay, starting the shy Withholdings out of their wits, and all the plumed Birds of rejoicing mounted in a glory of wings, Jubilant, dainty as kestrels, psalming The unrequited sky of their desire.

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Fallen into beatitude At this turn of the stair We’d best go on higher And seek peace there. Summer 1965

I came into life and now am leaving it I came into life and now am leaving it. The air was a flowers, hoar-frost, colour. The end of desire is a blue shadow. I came into life to die. Sometimes I saw at the pole a star flash naked And knew that across the world another star At the moment of birth was burning at the point of death. And between the pole-star and the star at the end of the world Is a void to be filled and refilled With a thousand trifles – colour of time, colour of space, All living, all vanishing.

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________________________________________________ In this air, this climate, the open boat of my soul Has made its voyage before it founders in the abyss of memory. I saw a world where everywhere seeds burst into life, Where the flowers thrive in shadow, And life soars toward death. My heart grew, and then failed As desire fails, as life fails. Even the sun was born to die. ca. 1959–65

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Autumn Was Never So Late Autumn was never so late nor the sun so warm at this season With the leaves fallen and the year already declining. And so we came by this unseasonable enchantment of summer weather in the late autumn To a dream place imagined for you long ago and held for you in memory Though I never dreamed that any just or lucky occasion could bring us there. 5 First the southerly tilted high-standing ridge of limestone lake-bed lifted up, Caked and crazed like mud into water-washed clumsy blocks, With cedar and stunted scrub oak somehow growing there, and many thorn-trees. Then farther along the ridge, just before the oaks fail where a brook (dry now at this dry summer’s end) 10 Slips under the trees to a cattle-trough, And the limestone dips from sight and the thorn-trees fail, Our new found land lifts to the eye, across the open, like landfall, The rocky hillside rising steeply, laced with light pencil strokes of numerous young hardwoods, And the leaves on the ground among them beech-gold and luminous 15 with the summer heat caught in the autumn colours, Leaves freckled and dappled, tinged with shadow, brazen in daylight. There they stood on their hillside, the young slender trees like young Adonis, willow of youth, slight hardwood, Or like a girl who has slipped out of her clothes and stands listening or just motionless 20 Her skin freckled and chequered with the sun’s dappling, and the warm leaves of her clothes about her feet, Here in this last not-yet bleak or pallid sunlight of the warmest autumn weather there ever was.

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What could it mean, this gracious gratuitous weather, Place, occasion, and season happily conspiring, 25 when we deserve nothing? What does the limestone mean? – crystal of shadowy traces of numberless chambered and emptied shells, bones, scales, ringed stems of sea-lilies, no heavier than the thought of a feather, no thicker than a pencil-stroke 30 these laid down layer on limpid layer like unrequited desire through millions of years till the sea water loses its salt and the lakes are shallow? Is this remembering or forgetting? And the oaks? were they gnarled for strength? or time? or some obscure tormented purpose? Were the thorns passion, deft and piercing as arrows, sweet as blood to the tongue? 35 O yes cried the sun to all this: yes in this warm late autumn weather. The young trees have slipped from their leaves like young girls from their clothes And the leaves in their amorous warmth and silence murmur content as they lie At the feet of the trees with a lover’s indolence, shameless and still in the chequered and dappling sun. 40 And you too in this summer posture, no way autumnal in your young grace sun-touched skin gold-tarnished in the sun, flaked with the dappled light, gold and murmurous to the touch of the sun’s fingers, 45 You are gathered like harvest into the strong embrace of this miraculous weather and blessed with the wound of delight. Your lovely vulnerable precious fugitive body, delicate here in the dappling of the sun, freckled and fretted among leaves and the supple fingering of the light, Is lapped and long-lazy in the sun’s leaves and flakes; 50 And my eyes and head

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Are ablaze with gold, your burnished gold, with fire, with blazing fire in this luminous moment. I cannot find a crumb of grief or regret for love out of season, love stolen and the theft unpardoned, love requited even in the honey of neglect. 55 In praise of light and the pencilled trees slender against the sky My love mounts in spirals and circles of bright air and wings beating, With the leap and surging impetus of the sun’s force in this autumn weather, Till surf breaks in a blaze of darkness, darkness, And our love lapses, under the young hardwoods, among oaks, among thorns, 60 And you murmur, lost somewhere, murmur on the lips of ecstasy, caressed by the fingers of silence, sun-fondled, freckled and dappled, crowned with the dark languor and comfort of sleep. Here under the light you are immortal among the burnished and dappling leaves. 65 Transfigured in this unpardonable meeting of thorn, limestone, hardwood, and the warm autumn sun We have found the summer weather, like our love, an unseasonable blessing And count it, like your lovely fugitive body, a lucky occasion Stolen from time, gift of grace, most precious, stolen from death. 70

ca. 1964–65

I washed my hair I washed my hair and made my body sweet for you and dressed myself in the carefully unstudied style proper to a momentous encounter.

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But you phoned just as I was setting out to say rather casually that perhaps after all that wasn’t a very good idea. That was an hour ago or two or two days ago or a year or two ago ashes used to be the old prescription accelerated loss with tearing clawing of the hair, nails clawing the cheeks and sackcloth, with lamentation in the figure of grief masquerading as penitence but that is in an antique style and too noisy more modern is to find another broad maybe.

George Whalley

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As a smiling 50-year old As a smiling 50-year old private amorist I find this disconcerting As though you firmly threaten The gonads of my timid lust.

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I wonder. But I can be patient as I send this message to you: If your house burns down Or you find yourself Pregnant by the wrong person Just phone me. I’ll be here.

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14 January 1966

Absence She has gone away leaving me The endowment of my mind. I accept the legacy, Being destitute Like a Russian empress in a winter-palace Where in all its thousand rooms State and domestic There is no sound to be heard But her own heart pulsing And the feet of the mice.

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14 May 1966

Turn the key on this room Turn the key on this room And on this house For the last time. The silence trapped here Will never stir again To your dancer’s gaiety Nor to my words.

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Is the shadow of your brilliant person Trapped In the silver of this glass Waiting for the key of your image To release it into life. The key will never turn now Before the wrecker’s hammer Shatters the secret. Can the quick-silver of my mind Remembering Hold the key Secure the images Against dissolution, Now that I turn the key on this room For the last time? I turn away from the lock That was key to the silver. This house has many rooms. From one window I once saw A seagull perch in a lilac bush From another red grosbeaks in a spruce tree Like Blake’s tree full of angels. These were gifts for you too A raven’s bounty, all haunted. All haunted with your fragrance. All to be obliterated. I would not have any one of them, Not one corner of any one of them, Soiled by exorcism Or any profane use. And therefore Turn the key on this room

George Whalley

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And on this house For the last time So to secure inviolate Your quick image Moving in the silver Moving in the quick-silver Of my mind remembering.

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21 February 1967

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5 March 1969

Cosmogony a charm for FRS behind the eye, the word among the words, the arrow under the epigram, the intelligence below the intelligence, the vision within the vision, the eye hooked to the barbed word the mind’s wing “the enlargement of wonder” 23 February 1967

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10 August 1967

Like an abandoned railway station when Like an abandoned railway station when The telegraph key receives and sends by night With its own transmission signature, Manager of ghostly arrivals and departures. Rendezvous, missed train, broken promises. 25 March 1967

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A seagull in a lilac tree A seagull in a lilac tree a girl shimmering with love the brilliant images in the glass that nothing can fix or hold, except memory and now not even there. When the spring comes It will call forth lilacs But the garden is gutted and Dug to a disastrous quagmire The squirrel will run yet past the corridor And lilac, look in Upon a house deserted A room empty and desolate When the sun alone creeps daily in silence northerly across the floor And no image moves or glows in the dark Looking-glass __________ To be demolished

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27 April 1967

Song Tuella, Minho, Sabor, Aguela – The rivers of Spain run down from the hills; And the vines stir in the mountain breeze And the girls bring olives in to the mills; And the harsh wine and smooth oil Ripen in a cool sleep. Wait for us sailing out of the sun: Wait for us sailing in from the sea.

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Douro, Aragon, Ebro, Esla – The Spanish rivers in winter spate Divide the bones of a dry land – The cold sacrament of hate Ploughs the heart for the red seed. The snow will taste the young sun And blossoms whiten the old trees, And blossoms whiten the young land.

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My heart is not here in the pages My heart is not here in the pages, the black crystals of thought set out for youthful sages to read, and reading to roam through the sunlit cloudless blue of the mind’s orbit. The years lie under my feet, the manifold colours and hues of the autumn, the red with the brown and gold. Happily they have flown. But the time has come when the heart tires of this sacrifice. Now I must turn to the broader part, the work that is not set out for youth to mark with the red pencil. It is most strange to have lived for a spell with the head in a country where others dwell in happiness. Yet I found nothing there but the soul’s unrest, a hope that some day the vision would swell, that there be no need to grope

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in an eerie intangible dark for an eerie intangible foe. Let the others live on, if they care, hourly and hourly to grow in a cunning I never could share. Beauty to me is too dear to rob it of all it holds in light and colour and sound. Let the others take it, wear the petals torn from the rose, the dust from the butterfly’s wings. Do not ask me to go with tweezers, scalpel and knife; to find in the vision the thing that men call beauty for want of expressing their wonder; to strive with the mind and the hand till the essence will breathe and live in a philosophical phrase which no critic can assail, in a universal formula good till the world’s end. Many the tracks I have trod in sun and blizzard and rain; seen the wanton rage of water where to hope or plan is vain or even to pray is hollow, in the hands of the sea and God. I have taken the wings of the swallow and the joyous fire of the sun through the dismal green of the woods to the gold and scarlet and dun of the western afterglow. Here I have seen the moods

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in the unveiled face of the Earth and sky and sea. To know whether God is in the books is not within my hand. But he is at the hearth of the sun dying over the land and in the silvered brooks by moonlight, and in the drift of snow, in the cold keen fangs of the storm. His strength is there to uplift, to put fresh fire in the old, to make the little great.

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ca. 1964–68

O O it is all come to nothing in the end all is come to nothing O all was once the whole O of the world sun and water and air how to know then it was all O nothing 23 May 1969

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All Shall Be Well After long absence, after long silence, In a dark season, the years turned and nothing hoped for, How could we guess that wings could open With benison of flame At so long remove of silence the one from the other. Yet it was so, and is so: is Bird of dawning with blessing in his wings To cherish the silence of the heart fulfilled. And now through words and winged words Fashioned to the fire of all remembered places, are become Arrows of desire homing to their heart’s comfort; And all shall be well and all Manner of thing – in the cool meadows of repose And in the most passionate silences of the heart – Shall be well.

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18 February 1974

In winter sunlight on the open street In winter sunlight on the open street Self-enclosed affirmation, unregarding, Of the eyes and lips – somewhere between Primavera and Hogarth’s “Shrimp-girl”, And in the proud set of breasts and belly and mons veneris Unprovocatively declared, little enough Of La Gioconda. Nothing more enigmatic here Than a similar figure, identical way Of the eyes and lips as she jumped off a bus in wartime In a red skirt, running towards me – The hair much darker than Primavera The lips a trace more civilised than the Shrimp-girl. And made music with me and wrote a letter – One at least – that opened with the opening measures

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Of Brahms’s 1st Piano Concerto: which also had Something to do with the breasts and belly And no doubt one mons veneris, but I cannot be certain. That was a while ago and the gods evidently Were not interested. So here in winter sunlight Passing in a public street, noisy enough For any Shrimp-girl, I wonder who she is And whether she knows what I am. 8 December 1974

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11 December 1974

To Mr W.H. All Happiness Robin Hood and Friar Tuck Decided they would try their luck With none of your whisky, none of your gin, But such as heroes revel in. They called for honey, sent for yeast, And made a compound for their feast Such as the monks of Lindisfarne (In chilly cell and draughty barn) Use to keep their ancient limbs Warmer than penitential hymns. Mead was its name: there came at length Out of the honey lion’s strength. The board was spread, the candles lit: They relished every bit of it – Mead and mushrooms, mead and pie, And mead with everything whereby A saucy wit could hang a yarn On anything but Lindisfarne. And when the candle-flame was double Tuck had omens of slight trouble. What if uncertain tread deprive

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His right or competence to drive? He brooded on his state, and then Imagined what might happen when The constables their whistles blew And cried “’Ere, ’ere”, and then “’O’s ’o”. He glanced along the empty road And, seeing no gentlemen in woad, Plucked on his driving gloves and tested The engine’s throaty purr and blessed it. And raised in thanks a little song That Marion was not along. With steely eye and expert hand He set a course across the Strand Straight as an arrow but slightly slower And came to moorings by one do-or Of Whitehall Court; and heaved a sigh So to elude the polizei; And bound him to a monkish vow That now and then, or here and now, With downcast glance, on bended knee, In praise of the industrious bee He’d sing or say a prayer to plead Blessings on Lindisfarne and mead.

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12 January 1975

Woburn Square As I was going up the stair I met a blonde who was not there. I saw her there again today And wondered did she mean to stay. I spoke to her in accents hostly Hoping her presence was not ghostly; But she remained diaphanous

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And said her only wish was If I was to see her in the round I’d best search Holborn till I found A cab to drive me to the stair Of Nine-and-Sixty Onslow Square.

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13 January 1975

Southampton Row As I was going up the lift I met a redhead in her shift, I asked her was she making for A settled assignation, or Hoping to strike some chance liaison Such as I cherish in my maison. She’d come to visit her confessor And he, she said, was no professor. In monkish thought I went to bed Certain that angels’ hair is red.

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13 January 1975

The full moon lost behind cloud The full moon lost behind cloud And the grass dark Where snow ghosted or blazed Against the woodpile Shrunk now to a few sticks of elm To perch the emerged chipmunk. The parrot tulips have opened their beaks. Day after day the sky is skeined With geese northerly, discoursing Affectionately in overloud

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Newfoundland voices And this morning Ernie Kuyt Was saying, from Fort Smith, How the whooping cranes now number Sixty-nine – from four twelve years ago Eggs surreptitiously smuggled To the foster-breast of Texan straw-logs. There is still no stile built over the wire fence Out towards the hardwood full of trilliums, Spring fancy, fox-tongue, dog-violet, And if there were there are no lovers To meet there and kiss ingeniously.

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3 May 1977

This silver turned yellow This silver turned yellow sky-black star-pricked loon cry of light across frost and darkness embraces the hard frost-iron snowless land unseasonable under a plague of crystal – Orion and the Bear, Marfak and Spica embrace in the lambent circuit of the Now-dead moon-struck two-faced unsnowed iron-cast Year. Nansi Boglo, Nansi Boglo moth-like, tentative, skilful in the half-light, hair stacked in a little bun inside the crown of your cap, deft in the dark, her fingers lisping as her lips lisp,

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her body wrapped against the night cold in a surgical gown, green, crumpled as a dragonfly’s wing from the nymph-sheathe: distant, quick, alert, attentive, ministering across the chasm, life reaching out calling absent mindedly across the dark chasm, with a slight lisp, the dark hair, light-textured, a little disordered in the informal night.

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Here spun from wood-fire and night-spaces these patterns of words with love made for you.

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6 January 1980

The voice of the wind making snow the voice of the wind making snow (in the dark) the voice of − a great white melancholy snow-braving owl-ferocious bird crying in the dark for the cold in its beak and the cruel dark light in its huge eyes

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Nansi – moth-like in the dark dust on wing: where an old voluble carbon candle gutters Not to be frightened to feel no premonition of death to have no sci-fi stories in full technicolour

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about coming back from lighted corridors and high celestial choirs to the miracle of taxes, corrupt politicians, a society degenerated into a decayed and self-consuming economy 15 is no virtue but perhaps the composure was, the quietness, like an old leafless tree in a blizzard not determined to survive, heroically and interestingly determined but simply standing still, fires banked, cherishing 20 what little fire was left ἀναζωπυρει like a black spruce in the barren ground never flamboyant like brown butterflies or the tiny Alpine flower rooted in permafrost but growing for 400 years, maybe a millimetre of green a year. 25 6–7 January 1980

Thaw-water and thaw-wind Thaw-water and thaw-wind And the black birds coming Eagle raven and pest sparrow hawk Exotic as enamel on orange leaf. 9 March 1982

I wore a khaki shirt and red tie I wore a khaki shirt and red tie And drank 2 gins and ate a ham pie And all for love of a girl I’m breaking my heart for. At a round table in a public bar I toast her eyes and remember

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The way her hands have and her way of talking And all the ingenuities of her loving. The fine mist-rain and the hard winter weather Will fall on her and leave her unmoved Nothing can take from her our love together But nothing can bring it back to her And all for love of a man Who’s breaking his heart for her. If she did not suffer now, nor I neither We admit no force to our loving To wish we did not suffer at parting Is wishing we never loved so But we loved so, as though born for it And my heart’s breaking for a girl Who’s breaking her heart for me And all for my love of a girl I’m leaving alone.

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[undated]

There’s a wise woman who knows There’s a wise woman who knows All the weathers of love, and all The several climates that from time To time may circumscribe or manifest The varying pressures, gradients, forces Dutch rain-gauge, arm in arm Umbrellad and enmackintoshed Face undaunted the coming on of Stormy weather with unbrocaded Unconcern. [undated]

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Textual Notes

The sources for all the poems in this book are detailed in the notes below. For works printed in both Poems 1939–1944 and No Man an Island, the version in the latter is reprinted here. For works printed in The Collected Poems of George Whalley that were first printed elsewhere, a source published in Whalley’s lifetime is used. All variants for poems that Whalley published multiple times are detailed in the notes. A complete bibliography for poems that appeared in periodicals and books is available at http://georgewhalley.ca. All previously unpublished poems are reproduced from the manuscripts, typescripts, and diaries in the Whalley Estate Papers and Queen’s University Archives in Kingston (qua). The details are in the individual notes. Though Whalley often used ampersands and other symbols in drafting and revising his poems, he always replaced the symbols with words for the published versions. His practice is followed here. In some typescripts he used a double dash instead of a long dash. I have made these consistent by using a long dash throughout. In typescripts Whalley used single quotation marks and in published poems these are double quotation marks. I have made these consistent with the latter throughout. I have intruded as little as possible with those works that Whalley did not publish and conservatively placed commas and/or periods where they seem to be missing. All emendations I have made are recorded in the notes with ed. ode to a college sausage m 40, no. 4 (1933): 25. homer at daw n p39–44, 1. First drafted at Bishop’s University.

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louisburg weopts, 2. First drafted and later revised at Bishop’s University. the chase diii, 11–2. 10 round.] ed.; round~ diii 14 glimpsed] ed.; glimped diii dere lict m 42, no. 2 (1934): 20. d o g watch m 42, no. 3 (1935): 17. 11 is life] ed.; life is m fr ag ment m 42, no. 3 (1935): 26. t r anscendence m 42, no. 4 (1935): 18. hy mn to the mo on m 42, no. 5 (1935): 19. The second and third stanzas are printed side by side in the journal. Without ms or ts copies of the poem, it is not possible to determine with certainty whether Whalley deliberately structured the second and third stanzas to run parallel or the arrangement was caused by a lack of page space. It seems reasonable to guess the odd arrangement is a printer’s decision. 20th century Letter to Dorothy Whalley, 4 November 1935, ms, loc #5043, box 2, file 35, qua. First drafted at Rothesay, nb. 12 gilded] ed.; guilded ms dedicat ion dv, 175–6. First drafted at Rothesay, nb.

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testament of yo uth (a sonnet) m 43, no. 2 (1935): 9. v is ion ts. First drafted in Rothesay, nb. desert ion ts. 6 shown] ed.; shone ts desire ts. in examinat ion Letter to Arnold Banfill, 17 April 1936, ts, loc #5043, box 3, file 1, qua. First drafted in Halifax, ns. 4 ἀποδέχομαι.] ed.; αποδεχομαι ~ ts 11 ἀποδέχομαι.] ed.; αποδεχομαι ~ ts and so it w ill go on till time is dead ts. 5 when] ed.; whne ts 6 another,] ed.; another ~ts 29 revising lonely] ed.; reviving loney ts da rkness – and the w ild, maniac rush diii, 197. First drafted in St Margaret’s Bay, ns. o f th e hi l ly road’s adventurous bend diii, 199. the limitations of academic philosophy ts. Whalley removed this page from the typescript entitled “Poems 1939–1944,” n.d., loc #1032c, box 16, file 32, qua. First drafted at Oriel College, Oxford. Revised in Granville Ferry, ns.

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modelled up on a ger man pr ayer div, 90. to cana da div, 118. First drafted in Germany. a smile and a nod p39–44, 4. First drafted in Freiburg-im Breisgau. d ove cot tage unv isite d dv, 126–9. First drafted at Windermere in the Lake District. Sky-lark.] ed.; Sky-lark~ dv 1 I’ve seen] ed.; I’ve see dv 5 I’ve seen] ed.; I’ve see dv 11 poems] ed.; pomes dv bat tle pat ter n nmai, 45–54. First drafted aboard the hms Tartar. behind the v ic tory p39–44, 4. First drafted in Chelsea, London. d omest ic manifesto ts. 25 furious] ed.; furois ts 42 Laymen] ed.; Layemn ts w h e at p39–44, 5; nmai, 13. First drafted in Alexandria, Egypt. 4 straight,] nmai; straight and p39–44 26 alien] nmai; foreign p39–44 29 tall slight Nile wheat] nmai; slender Egyptian wheat p39–44 by the r iver p39–44 2–3; nmai, 14–5. First drafted in Malta. 8 lost balance,] nmai; loss of balance p39–44

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13 oval … were] nmai; oval, and your eyes / smiled and were full of p39–44 25/26 no line space] nmai; line space p39–44 command os embar king Profile (23 April 1946); nmai, 16. First drafted in Kabret. 3 new-built] nmai; newly-built Profile 12 husky whispering] nmai; muffled whispering Profile 15 whirling sand-devils] nmai; prowling sand-devils Profile 18 lost whisper] nmai; sandy whisper Profile initial assault – sicily nmai, 17. First drafted in Malta. after math, july 1943. nmai, 20–1. First drafted in Tunis. pilg r im heart, tur n homewa rd nmai, 71. First drafted in Sicily. the sound of bare feet p39–44, 1–2. First drafted aboard an airplane travelling to El Alouina from Malta. one nig ht in the darkness dvi, 37–8. First drafted in El Alouina. homecoming nmai, 25. First drafted in Chelsea, London. lond on after leave nmai, 28. First drafted at Hundridge, a manor estate in England. sit t ing the nig ht out nmai, 11. First drafted in Chelsea, London.

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the messenger ts. First drafted at Hundridge, a manor estate in England. 1 weary] ed.; woary ts 11 willing.] ed.; willing~ ts 32 things.”] ed.; things”. ts 102 His] ed.; He’s ts 107 turn] ed.; turned ts the mo on ts. First drafted at Hundridge, a manor estate in England. 3 eye.] ed.; eye~ ts 4 years.] ed.; years~ ts 8 albeit] ed.; albiet ts 9 robe] ed.; robed ts the dev ils’ day ou t ts. First drafted at Hundridge, a manor estate in England. Devils’] ed.; Devils ts 12 good.”] ed.; good”. ts eng lish w inter p39–44, 7; nmai, 31. First drafted in London. The poem was printed under the title “Two Poems” and placed before “Minster Lovell” in qq 52, no. 2 (1945): 206–7. w. k.e. nmai, 3. First drafted in Brighton. b e e ch wo o d weopts, 23. First drafted in Chelsea, London; revised in Quebec. m i n ster l ove l l p39–44, 6; nmai, 27. First drafted in Chelsea, London. The poem was printed under the title “Two Poems” and placed after “English Winter” in qq 52, no. 2 (1945): 206–7. 5 steep gables] nmai; deep gables qq

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15 no line space] nmai; line space qq 17 Windrush;] nmai; Windrush: qq 18 darkness,] nmai; darkness~ p39–44 and qq there was no way of te lling bb, 16–7. First drafted in London. p ort r ait ts. First drafted in Chelsea, London; revised at Bishop’s University. you mu st have found w ithin yo urself 43–44ts, 13. First drafted in Chelsea, London; revised at Bishop’s University. das lebewo hl, die abwesenheit, das w iedersehen nmai, 35–6. First drafted in London. The third part, “The Return,” was published in p39–44, 10. Part 1, “The Parting,” was first composed 4 December 1943 in London and revised 3 January 1944 at sea. Part 2, “Winter Night,” was composed 22 January 1944 in Halifax, ns, and revised 18 April 1944 onboard hms Ceres. Part 3, “The Return,” was composed 11 December 1943 in Chelsea and revised 3 January 1944 aboard rms Mauretania. for elizabet h p39–44, copyright page; nmai, epigraph. First drafted in Chelsea. now we are both alone and isol ate nmaits, 35. First drafted in Brighton; revised at Bishop’s University. ren unciat ion 39–45ts, 22. First drafted in Chelsea, London; revised at Bishop’s University. Dated 8 December 1943 in 43–44ts, but this appears be an error because all other sources have 12 December 1943. sleep p39–44, 7. First drafted in Chelsea, London.

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Textual Notes to Pages 64–9

chr ist mas eve weopts, 59. First drafted at Hundridge, a manor estate in England; revised in Quebec. w inter north atl antic 43–44ts, 21. First drafted aboard the rms Mauretania; revised at Bishop’s University. 17 and am] ed.; and an 43–44ts if w inter comes weopts, 34. First drafted aboard the rms Mauretania; revised in Quebec. this is your music p39–44, 8; nmai, 12. First drafted aboard the rms Mauretania. 43–44ts has the date 12 December 1943 in Chelsea, but both poetry lists record 2 January 1944. 3 crushing] nmai; crushed p39–44 21 an instant] nmai; for an instant p39–44 26 there is music] nmai; there is sound p39–44 27 and fingers] nmai; and strings p39–44 retur ning to sea weopts, 41. First drafted aboard the rms Mauretania; revised in Quebec. lond on, 194 4 weopts, 44. First drafted in Halifax, ns; revised in Quebec. q.a .m . nmai, 10. First drafted in Halifax. i t was to b e ex pe c te d h e wo u l d b e yo u n g dvii, 33. 2 would] ed.; wd dvii 2 holster.] ed.; holster~ dvii

Textual Notes to Pages 69–77

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wor ld’s en d nmai, 37–9. First drafted in London. metamor phosis 39–45ts, 16. First drafted in London; revised in Quebec. the way back nmai, 34. First drafted in London. stor m Profile (23 April 1946); nmai, 33. First drafted in Portmeirion, a village in England. 7 fire, restless, absent.] nmai; fire with silent restlessness. Profile 13 made casually] nmai; made incidentally Profile seeing ducks asleep nmai, 40. First drafted aboard the hms Ceres. on re joining an old ship weopts, 42. First drafted aboard the hms Ceres; revised in Quebec. st rength and peace have come ts. Drafted and revised aboard the hms Ceres. 16 desolation.] ed.; desolation: ts after santayana 39–45ts, 32. First drafted aboard the hms Ceres, revised in Quebec. nor mandy l anding p39–44, 11–4; nmai, 59–63. First drafted aboard the hms Ceres. “D minus 42” was composed 22 April 1944 aboard hms Ceres and revised 16 January 1945 aboard rms Queen Mary. “D minus 1” was composed 4 June 1944 in Falsworth and revised 17 January 1945 aboard rms Queen Mary. “D Day” was composed 14 August 1944 in Arromanches and revised 17 January 1945 aboard rms Queen Mary. “D plus 30” was composed 9 July 1944 in hms Ceres off St Vaast and revised 17 January 1945 aboard rms Queen Mary. “D plus 60” was

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composed 6 August 1944 in hms Ceres off Vierville and revised 2 May 1945 aboard hmcs Chaudière. “D plus 70” was composed 14 August 1944 in hms Ceres off Arromanches and revised 2 May 1945 aboard hmcs Chaudière. 12 whitethorn’s chastity.] nmai; whitethorn’s tired chastity p39–44 13–15 and 17 italics] nmai; no italics p39–44 48 would do you little good] nmai; wouldn’t do you good p39–44 51 gay tranquil] nmai; gay and tranquil p39–44 75 dawnlight growing] nmai; dawnlight, growing p39–44 88 the carcinoma of conquest] nmai; the cancerous growth of conquest p39–44 101 with no stories, no proud tales,] nmai; with no proud tales p39–44 st. ja m e s’s pa r k p39–44, 9. First drafted aboard the hms Ceres. nor mandy 194 4 nmai, 64. First drafted aboard the hms Ceres off Vierville. apple orchard, nor mandy 194 4 woepts, 53. First drafted aboard the hms Ceres; revised in Quebec. epithal amion p39–44, 15. First drafted aboard the hms Ceres. how the time passes weopts, 45. First drafted aboard the hms Ceres; revised in Quebec. prothal amion ts. Drafted and revised aboard the hms Ceres. the serene r ing of the hor izon ms. 1 horizon] ed.; horizon. ms 4 you.] ed.; you~ ms

Textual Notes to Pages 85–90

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his love did not st r ike and blind me ms. when this sou thbound ship comes in ms. First drafted at sea. the g reat ship, reeling and rear ing ms. 4 bow] ed.; bows ms 17 deck] ed.; truck ms 18 waist.] ed.; waist~ ms w ith a sapphire r ing bb, 36. First drafted at Cornwallis Island. a g irl in love nmai, 26. First drafted in Halifax, ns. peter nmai, 32. First drafted on train from St Marguerite to Montreal. emergency oper at ion p39–44, 10; nmai, 30. First drafted in Montreal. 6 swift intensity] nmai; swift unseen intensity p39–44 19–20 The sailor trembled and looked away, / afraid to meet the mother in her eyes.] nmai; Afraid to meet the tenderness /and suffering of her eyes, / the sailor trembled and looked away. p39–44 fr ag ment p39–44, 9. First drafted at Bishop’s University. proud w ings from a snow-swept pine forest dviii, 3. 6 speak] ed.; Speak dviii

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Textual Notes to Pages 91–9

cana dian spr ing nmai, 41–2. First drafted aboard the hmcs Chaudière. 28 candlelight] ed.; candelight nmai 63 a cold] ed.; A cold nmai we w ho are left p39–44, 16; nmai, 65. First drafted aboard the hmcs Chaudière. 2 killed;] nmai; killed, p39–44 end of foreig n serv ice leave weopts, 80. First drafted aboard the hmcs Chaudière; revised in Sydney, ns. 6 skillful] ed.; skilful weopts v ic tory in europe nmai, 70. First drafted aboard the hmcs Chaudière. ships’ sirens cry w ith r agged mel ancholy dviii, 19–20. First drafted aboard the hmcs Chaudière. 2 through] ed.; thro’ dviii 6 through] ed.; thro’ dviii 9 thought] ed.; thôt dviii 18 underground] ed.; undergrounds dviii 26 through] ed.; thro’ dviii all these i g ive yo u, the gentle cunning dviii, 22. First drafted aboard the hmcs Chaudière. for the sweeties ms. First drafted aboard the hmcs Chaudière. apr il shower nmai, 67. First drafted in Sydney, ns. p o et ics weopts, 84. First drafted and revised in Quebec.

Textual Notes to Pages 99–106

punctually to obey, unquestioning dviii, 27. First drafted in Sydney, ns. 6 commandments;] ed.; commandments. dviii va r iat ion up on a seventeenth century theme nmai, 72. First drafted in Sydney, ns. counter p oint nmai, 29. First drafted in Sydney, ns. pr ay silence ts. First drafted in Sydney, ns. this is how it was the first time dviii, 41. First drafted in Sydney, ns. 2 couldn’t] ed.; cdn’t dviii 4 that] ed.; θ dviii gunboat sort ie nmai, 4–5. First drafted in Sydney, ns. cand lelig ht wor ks such a mir acle dviii, 43. 3 body.] ed.; body~ dviii a l a n g ate l i n g Profile (23 April 1946). First drafted in Halifax, ns. da d ms. First drafted in Halifax, ns. 4 that] ed.; θ ms 4 much that] ed.; much θ ms 6 that] ed.; θ ms 7 that] ed.; θ ms 10 would] ed.; wd ms 13 three] ed.; 3 ms 13 daughter] ed.; dr ms

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Textual Notes to Pages 107–13

covena nt w ith death qq 52, no. 4 (1945–46): 458; nmai, 19. First drafted in Quebec. 7 unquestioning and alone] nmai; alone and unquestioning qq 11 no line space] nmai; line space qq 14 wind drives] nmai; winds drive qq five years ts. First drafted in Quebec; revised aboard the hmcs Saskatchewan. 12 gland] ed.; galdn ts 28 but] ed.; But ts l andscape w ith r a in: schwarzwald weopts, 3. First drafted in Quebec; revised at Bishop’s University. music has t wo lives dviii, 46. First drafted in Quebec. 1 lives] ed.; lives personalities dviii 1 two] ed.; 2 dviii 2 that] ed.; θ dviii music goes ou t at the fingers dviii, 43. four freed oms ts. First drafted in Quebec. 9 implacable] ed.; impalacable ts dunster nmai, 55. First drafted aboard the hmcs Saskatchewan in Quebec. cabot st r a it qq 53, no. 2 (1946): 198–9; nmai, 66. First drafted aboard the hmcs Saskatchewan in Quebec. 18 them;] nmai; them: qq

Textual Notes to Pages 113–19

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it never seems to be summer in a ship dviii, 52. First drafted aboard the hmcs Saskatchewan in Quebec. 3 lightning] ed.; ltning dviii 6 Fragrance of land] ed.; Fragrance of land dviii pick -up dviii, 54. mor ning watch m 53, no.1 (December 1945): 17; cpm 9, no. 4 (1946): 13–14; nmai, 68–9. First drafted aboard the hmcs Saskatchewan. The revision date for “Dawn” is 13 and 16 September 1945. 8 sea,] nmai; sea; m 9 solitary cloud] nmai; solitary dark cloud m 13 soundings] nmai; soundings, m and cpm 14 the light] nmai; the first light cpm 20 perfection).] m and cpm; perfection.) nmai 22 black, blacker than night,] nmai; black as the deepest water, m and cpm 24 flakes and flecks] nmai; flecks and flakes m 31 no line space] nmai; line space cpm 33 left on course with our somber thoughts] nmai; left to our course and our somber thoughts m and cpm thal amion dviii, 62–3. First drafted in St John’s, nl. toro weopts, 88. First drafted aboard the hmcs Saskatchewan in St John’s, nl; revised at Bishop’s University. j. w. weopts, 86. First drafted aboard the hmcs Saskatchewan. anniversary dviii, 62.

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Textual Notes to Pages 119–28

rot terdam weopts, 5. First drafted aboard the hmcs Saskatchewan; revised at Bishop’s University. ac tion stat ions Profile (23 April 1946). First drafted at Bishop’s University. pr ayer for the liv ing nmai, 63. First drafted at Bishop’s University. sicilian v ig net te nmai, 18. First drafted at Bishop’s University. ta ke ou t of my heart dviii, 71. First drafted at Bishop’s University. discharged: serv ices no longer re quired ts. ron d o ts. First drafted at Bishop’s University. exe g i m o n u m e n t u m ms. First drafted at Bishop’s University. Title Monumentum] ed.; Monimentum ms 10 bronze.’”] ed.; bronze.’ ms one of yo ur let ters held the ger m of a p o em dviii, 7. First drafted aboard a train. Seascape nmai, 6–9. First drafted at Bishop’s University. 72 boats.] nmaits; boats~ nmai

Textual Notes to Pages 128–37

let ter from l agos ts removed from nmaits. First drafted and revised at Bishop’s University. In the table of contents of nmaits, the title and page number (87), have been struck through. dieppe nmai, 56–7. First drafted at Bishop’s University. meditation on tower hill ts. First drafted and revised at Bishop’s University. to r.g . ts. First drafted at Bishop’s University. wa lker dviii, 95. 3 light] ed.; lt dviii 4 self-devotion] ed.; se-devot-- dviii 4 self-destruction] ed.; self-destruct-- dviii 6 great] ed.; gt. dviii 6 of] ed.; Ɩ dviii 7 rendezvous with] ed.; R/V w. dviii after it’s all over, w hatever the cr isis dviii, 95. 2 with] ed.; w dviii a da m ts. First drafted and revised at Bishop’s University. ly r ic ts. First drafted and revised at Bishop’s University. in bl ack, w ith a w hite dviii, 97. First drafted aboard a train. 3 framing] ed.; framing? dviii

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Textual Notes to Pages 137–45

chief ts. First drafted and revised at Bishop’s University. undertow Letter to George Herbert Clarke, 1 February 1948, ts. George Herbert Clarke Fonds, loc #1066, box 3, file A63, qua. First drafted at Bishop’s University. 38 intransigence] ed.; intransigeance ts death by drow ning ts. First drafted at Bishop’s University. 28 humming] ed.; hjmming ts clerk in underg round ts. First drafted at Bishop’s University. 18 back] ed.; bcak ts 22 umbrella ed.; ubrella ts the silver cord nmai, 58. First drafted at Bishop’s University. pr iest among the dandelions cpm 10, no. 3 (March 1947): 33. First drafted at Bishop’s University. anima p o etae (after coler id ge) ts. First drafted in Granville, ns. 5 I drive down the terror / of my infirmities, take up the pen / that Chaucer wrote with, take the language Shakespeare / fashioned to loveliness, and write a book.] ts; I drive down the terror, take the pen that Chaucer wrote with, take / the language Shakespeare fashioned to loveliness / I drive down the terror / of my infirmities, take up the pen / that Chaucer wrote with, take the language Shakespeare / fashioned to loveliness, and write a book (verse). ts a n na p o l i s n i g ht fa l l qq 64, no. 3 (Autumn 1947): 359. First drafted in Granville, ns.

Textual Notes to Pages 145–9

247

i wonder what it’s like dix, 4. nig ht br ing s back the ships dviii, 115. 1 Night] ed.; nt dviii 4 that] ed.; θ dviii to day, he thoug ht, the office won’t be fun ms. First drafted at Bishop’s University. we dlo ck is so esy and so clene ts. First drafted at Bishop’s University. b e a k y, aetat 7 7 ts. First drafted at Bishop’s University. ho oded eag le ts. 1–3 ~] ed.; Human happiness / Happiness, like the aloe / / All the height of the sky, from horizon ts 8 up my] ed.; upmy ts 13 die,] ed.; die. ts 26 to] ed.; ot ts 31 the] ed.; The ts 33 only] ed.; Only ts 37 hands] ed.; hand ts 39 because] ed.; becuase ts those who have no love of life die dix, 9. after g iorda no bruno The Philosophical Lectures of Samuel Coleridge: Hitherto Unpublished, edited by Kathleen Coburn (New York: Philosophical Library 1949), 325. First drafted at Bishop’s University.

248

Textual Notes to Pages 150–5

national anat hema dix, 11. alchemical retort : re cipe for a national fl ag ts. First drafted and later revised at Bishop’s University. ubi thesaurus ibi cor m 55, no. 1 (Michaelmas 1947): 45–7. First drafted at Bishop’s University. 41 perhaps.] ts; perhaps~ m 43 damp] ts; ramp m 50 a] ed.; A m her cheeks were plump and rosy ms. 4 could] ed.; cd ms 4 stare.] ed.; stare~ ms what was not said and never can be said now dix, 19. 5 For] ed.; for dix 10 forsaken ed.; foresaken dix go lit te l boke, go lit tel my t r agedy dix, 19. 2 ecstasy] ed.; ectasy dix 4 light] ed.; lt dix thre e years after ms. First drafted at Bishop’s University. 15 Address Unknown] ed.; Address Unknown ms there are other cent res than cities and gover nments dix, 22. 1 governments] ed.; govts dix

Textual Notes to Pages 156–61

249

bar renness comes on my pen dix, 22. First drafted aboard a train. the sea may pick my bones dix, 22. First drafted aboard a train. g r im and sulky beau t y dix, 23. First drafted in Compton. 4 your] ed.; you dix 5 show] ed.; should dix when what yo u wanted has not been had dix, 26. p o em cpm 21, no. 1 (September 1948): 24. First drafted at Bishop’s University. death of a bird cpm 11, no. 4 (June 1948): 41. First drafted and later revised at Bishop’s University. the star k cl ar it y of starlig ht ms inserted between pages 12 and 13 in Diary IX. Whalley made revisions without crossing out the words he replaced. I have adopted these changes: 4 Fashioning] ed.; Fashioning ➝ Preparing ms 4 sets spinning] ed.; devises – (sets spinning) ms 7 – that comes with the light will be] ed.; that comes with the light will sharp & stellate be ms this is the self-created t r agedy of the world Letter to George Herbert Clarke, 1 February 1948, ts, George Herbert Clarke Fonds, loc #1066, box 3, file a63, qua. First drafted in Toronto; revised at Bishop’s University. 20 strips] ed.; xtrips ts 23 alpha] ed.; alpha ts

250

Textual Notes to Pages 161–8

chr ist mas eve ms. 2 Maketh] ed.; Maked ms hatasis ms inserted between pages 38 and 39 in dix. 10 cannot have] ed.; cannot ms 25 lightly.] ed.; lightly~ ms super flumina ts. hodie tibi, cr as mihi ms. 4 Kubla] ed.; Kubla ms 16 solitude?] ed.; solitude. ms the spear and thrust of bud and blossom dix, 40. biolo g y ex hibitions dix, 42–3. 6 through] ed.; thro’ dix 7 Mendel’s] ed.; Mende’s dix 36 shark.] ed.; shark~ dix 39 through] ed.; thro’ dix u to p i a 1 9 4 8 ms. the hig h whir r of and w ing s and shad ow dix, 45. wh e n th e bo oks are bal anced dix, 49.

Textual Notes to Pages 169–73

251

penelope of the white hands and the br ig ht eyes dix, 50. how shall i break this chaotic shell of silence dix, 52. 8 gone.] ed.; gone~ dix 13 warmth.] ed.; warmth~ dix suddenly the veil of self-pit y lifted and i felt dix, 52. 3 loneliness.] ed.; loneliness~ dix h ow pi ti f ully t r ans itory, s mall, imperfect seems dix, 52. we mu st go dix, 56. 8 edge.] ed.; edge~ dix daw n comes in inexor able beau t y ms inserted between pages 48 and 49 in dix. 6 ticklishness] ed.; tickleshness ms 7 east-northeast] ed.; ene ms 8 light.] ed.; light~ ms The flower unfolds dix, 58. nig ht flig ht qq 59, no. 1 (1952): 24; m 60, no. 3 (1953): 42–3; New York Book Review (1 June 1958): 2; Pan-ic: A Selection of Contemporary Canadian Poems, edited by Irving Layton (New York: Alan Brilliant, Housatonic 1958). 1 trimmed] New York Book Review; ruffled qq 7 to the ear] New York Book Review; to ear m and qq 17 leader’s] New York Book Review; leader m and qq 27/28 no break] New York Book Review; stanza break m and qq

252

Textual Notes to Pages 173–80

ru naway ts. 2 That] ed.; that ts 3 Plain] ed.; plain ts 4 And] ed.; and ts me, dr iven throug h minefields, w ith a quarter ing ms. 4 sail] ed.; snail ms 7 wheel.] ed.; wheel~ ms elegy qq 60, no. 4 (1953–54): 551–3; Canadian Anthology, edited by C.F. Klink and R.E. Watters (Toronto: W.J. Gage 1955), 445–7. In the qq version, l.49 was printed as the last line in stanza 2. 23 spindle] qq; spindel Canadian Anthology 100 breath] Canadian Anthology; breath, qq if it must be an affa ir of drow ning , let it be ms. 5 caressing] ed.; carressing ms this death was cruel certainly ms. Incomplete and ends with the word “Do.” 4/5 stanza break] ed.; no break ms 17 Face] ed.; Glance ms Face g y ro ms. First drafted in Toronto. 2 choice.] ed.; choice~ ms how shall i say, hav ing come this far ms. 2 go.] ed.; go~ ms 5 chaise lounge] ed.; chaise lounge ms 13 would] ed.; wd ms

Textual Notes to Pages 180–5

15 should] ed.; shd ms 16 terror.] ed.; terror~ ms l aza rus qq 63, no. 1 (1956): 69–70; Best Poems of 1956: Borestone Mountain Awards 1957 (Stanford: Stanford University Press 1957), 95–6. 47 Languid] Best Poems; Lanquid qq ploug hed and har rowed w ith cr ies of drow ning ms. 4 breaker] ed.; breaker (wave ms r aising a hand to my forehead ms. 1 Raising] ed.; raisg ms 12 tumbled] ed.; tumbley ms spindr ift of spind le-shank children ms. 6 a] ed.; an ms thoug h inl and, thoug h fa r ms. 4 stir] ed.; sti ms the rest may rest as best they lost ms. 4 unresolved.] ed.; unresolved~ ms w h e e l d ove, w he e l e ag l e , g y re s k y l a r k ms. when we were yo unger and lov ing ms. First drafted in Halifax, ns.

253

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Textual Notes to Pages 185–8

i d o not know these men ms. 2 sea.] ed.; sea~ ms 4 call] ed.; cry ms call i would come to a p oint in timelessness ms. my th, that gang lion of sy mbols ms. 1 that] ed.; θ ms 1 ganglion] ed.; gangleon ms 2 the] ed.; Ɩ ms veronica Quarry 14 (1964–65): 13; English Poetry in Quebec: Proceedings of the Foster Poetry Conference, October 12–14, 1963, edited by John Glassco (Montreal: McGill University Press 1965), 135. Not known which publication appeared first. First drafted at Oxford University. 4 her eyes] Quarry; the eyes English Poetry in Quebec 5 Like remembered] Quarry; With remembered English Poetry in Quebec 12 And the flower] Quarry; The flower English Poetry in Quebec 13 Is trodden by the sword of time] Quarry; Is a lost man’s image English Poetry in Quebec there’s nothing for it bu t drop an anchor there ts. when we set out, there was lit tle gear to mu ster ms. 7 rivers,] ed.; rivers. ms 8 carnivorous.] ed.; carnivorous, ms 8 sleeps] ed.; dozes ms sleeps

Textual Notes to Pages 188–94

255

14 there’s] ed.; theres ms 18 hallucination] ed.; halucination ms 19 accurate] ed.; sharp ms accurate 19 accusation.] ed.; accusation~ ms 29 closed in.] ed.; closed in~ [ ]. ms 39 navigation] ed.; navigat-- ms 53 country.] ed.; country~ ms 58 merriment,] ed.; merriment~ ms 63 Shelley.] ed.; Shelley~ ms and this befell and that happened ms. you are here, aubur n-headed and slender ms. First drafted in Litton Cheney, a village in Dorset, England. admonishment Pan-ic: A Selection of Contemporary Canadian Poems, edited by Irving Layton (New York: Alan Brilliant, Housatonic 1958). dionys iac English Poetry in Quebec: Proceedings of the Foster Poetry Conference, October 12–14, 1963, edited by John Glassco (Montreal: McGill University Press 1965), 133–4. how very odd to miss the bu s ms. 2 forty-one] ed.; 43 ms 12 poems] ed.; poem ms 14 naïve] ed.; naive ms 17 It’s] ed.; its ms 21 the] ed.; Ɩ ms 22 the] ed.; Ɩ ms 24 thought] ed.; thôt ms 24 the] ed.; Ɩ ms

256

Textual Notes to Pages 194–203

26 published] ed.; pbd ms 33 sixty-one] ed.; 61 ms 35 though] ed.; tho’ ms 38 The] ed.; the ms not at bidding nor commanding ms. 4 dies.] ed.; dies~ ms o wor l d , o word ms. First drafted at the University of Wisconsin. 4 the] ed.; Ɩ ms 5 of the] ed.; of Ɩ ms 5 in the] ed.; in Ɩ ms bu t where in all this world is eden? where is any garden? ms. Incomplete and ends with the word “being.” affa ir of honour Modern Canadian Verse: In English and French, edited by A.J.M. Smith (Toronto: Oxford University Press 1967), 176–8. First drafted in Toronto. memor ial Yes 13 (December 1964). First drafted at Stanley House, New Richmond, Quebec. a minor p o et is v isite d by the muse ts. First drafted at Stanley House, New Richmond, Quebec. callig r apher Yes 16 (October 1967). 34 All men are Brothers] ed.; All men are Brothers Yes 71–3 written in a ceremonious hand / in the almond spring / against winter solstice] ed.; written in a ceremonious hand / in the almond spring / against winter solstice Yes

Textual Notes to Pages 203–8

t went y years ago – on the br id ge ms. 2 Third] ed.; 3rd ms 2 third] ed.; 3rd ms the sage ms. 1 that] ed.; θ ms a house div ided ts. after a certain age all of us, go od and ba d, are g r ief-st r icken ms. 4 the] ed.; Ɩ ms 5 the] ed.; Ɩ ms 6 the] ed.; Ɩ ms 6 to] ed.; 2 ms 6 that] ed.; θ ms 8 to] ed.; 2 ms 9 to] ed.; 2 ms 10 the] ed.; Ɩ ms how shall i say i love thee ms. First drafted at Queen’s University. 2 forgetting.] ed.; forgetting~ ms pig Quarry 16, no. 2 (January 1967): 10–11. saint fr ancis’ cloak pr aises ms. 7 the running rivers] ed.; running rivers ms flower ing of an ancient reticence Literary Review (Summer 1965): 571.

257

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Textual Notes to Pages 208–13

i came into life and now am leav ing it ms. au tumn was never so l ate ts. Whalley marked indentations to differentiate enjambed lines from short lines that must be indented. To differentiate between long lines and short lines I have indented enjambed lines with a short space and the short lines with a long space. 18 willow] ed.; Willow ts 29 bones] ed.; Bones ts 30 no] ed.; No ts 31 these] ed.; These ts 51 And] ed.; and ts i washed my hair ms. 4 proper to a momentous encounter.] ms; appropriate to an important occasion. ms 5/6 ~] ms; [very casually] ms 6 just as I was setting out] ms; just before I was due to set out ms 8 rather casually] ms; ~ ms 11 after all] ms; ~ ms 15–17 or two/or two days ago/or a year or two ago] ms; or two or two days ago or a year or two ago ms 20–2 accelerated loss/with tearing/ clawing of the hair, nails clawing the cheeks] ms; ~ ms 21 the cheeks] ed.; Ɩ cheeks ms 22–3 and sackcloth, with lamentation/in the figure of grief masquerading as penitence] ms; and sackcloth, with lamentation, in the figure/of grief masquerading as penitence ms 24 antique] ms; old ms 25 and too noisy] ms; and noisy ms as a smiling 50-year old ms. 5 lust.] ed.; lust, ms

Textual Notes to Pages 213–19

absence ts. 4 Being] ed.; being ts 9 But] ed.; but ts tur n the key on this ro om ms. First drafted in Kingston, on. 3 time] ms; timmer [indecipherable] ms cosmo gony ts. First drafted in Kingston. like an aband oned r ailway stat ion when ms. 2 receives] ed; receive ms 3 signature,] ed.; signature~ ms 4 departures] ed.; departure~ ms 5 promises.] ed.; promise~ ms a seagull in a lil ac t ree ms. 6 there.] ed.; there~ ms 12 lilac, look] ed.; lilac look ms 13 deserted] ed.; dessertes ms 15 northerly] ed.; northery ms song ts. my heart is not here in the pages ts. o ms.

259

260

Textual Notes to Pages 220–6

a l l s h a l l b e we l l ms. First drafted in London. All Shall Be Well] ed; All shall be Well ms in w inter sunlig ht on the open st re et ms. to mr w.h. al l happiness ms. First drafted in London. wobur n square ms. First drafted in London. 8 wish] ed.; wishes ms s o u t h a m p to n row ms. the full mo on lost behind cloud No ms or ts copies. Johnston’s typescript of the poem is in the George Johnston Fonds (mg 31, d 95), Finding Aid No. 1193, vol. 19, file 57, “Collected Poems of George Whalley. Notes, Poems.” 6 chipmunk.] ed.; chipmunk, George Johnston Fonds this silver tur ned ye llow ms in George Johnston Fonds (mg 31, d 95), Finding Aid No. 1193, vol. 19, file 57, “Collected Poems of George Whalley. Notes, Poems.” First drafted in Kingston, on. 12 Boglo] ed; Bogle / Bogla / Boglo [indecipherable] ms 34 you.] ed; you~ ms the voice of the w ind making snow ms in George Johnston Fonds (mg 31, d 95), Finding Aid No. 1193, vol. 19, file 57, “Collected Poems of George Whalley. Notes, Poems.” First drafted in Kingston, on. 14 high] ed; high ms

Textual Notes to Pages 226–7

thaw-water and thaw-w ind ms. First drafted in Hartington, a village north of Kingston, on. 4 leaf.] ed.; leaf~ ms undate d p o ems i wore a khaki shirt and re d tie cpgw, 111. there’s a w ise woman who knows cpgw, 112. Lines 1–2 are found in “There’s nothing for it but drop an anchor there.”

261

Explanatory Notes

The King James Bible is the source for all the biblical references. Some of Whalley’s allusions to works by other writers, such as T.S. Eliot, are recorded, but no systematic search to catalogue all of the allusions has been undertaken. In an unpublished essay, “Stitching and Unstitching,” which is an account of the composition of the poem “Night Flight,” Whalley reveals the complex play of allusions to and echoes of writings by others and himself. It is a cautionary tale that makes an editor pause: any attempt to make a comprehensive catalogue of allusions will be inadequate without an equally comprehensive knowledge of Whalley’s extensive reading. ode to a college sausage Whalley borrows the stanza form of this poem from “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (1795–1821). Quod scelus latet? From Latin, meaning “What wickedness lies hidden?”, which Whalley jokingly ascribed to Virgil. In the original, Whalley uses the spelling “Vergil,” still used in some departments of classics. dere lic t 15 foc’s’le. Abbreviation for forecastle, ship’s upper deck ahead of the foremost mast, usually containing the ordinary sailors’ living quarters below deck. hy mn to the mo on 4 Whalley deliberately uses the archaic spelling “croud” instead of “crowd.”

Explanatory Notes to Pages 12–26

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dedicat ion 7 passing strange. William Shakespeare, Othello, 1.3.161., edited by E.A.J. Honigmann (Walton-on-Thames: Arden 1997). in examinat ion 2 gobbets. Term used by Greek professors to denote a passage of text meant for identification and commentary, not translation. 3 dolmens. Structures generally regarded as prehistoric tombs built of two or more upright stones supporting a large, flat horizontal stone. 3 gerundives. Verbal adjectives in Latin grammar. 4 aorist optative passive. This grammatical form of the word is αποδεχθειην, Greek, meaning “may I be admitted (accepted).” 4 ἀποδέχομαι. Greek, meaning “I accept (admit).” d ove cot tage unv isite d Dove Cottage, the home of the English poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855), an author and William’s sister, from December 1799 to May 1808, is in Grasmere in the English Lake District. Ode Not to a Sky-Lark. Allusion to “To a Skylark” by William Wordsworth and/or “To a Skylark” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). Loquitor Americanus. Latin, meaning “the American speaks.” 15 American poet Edward Arlington Robinson (1869–1935). 20 Pike’s Peak, a mountain in the Rocky Mountains near Colorado Springs, co. 39–46 See T.S. Eliot’s “Marina,” ll. 42–9, Collected Poems 1909–1962 (London: Faber & Faber 1963). bat t le pat ter n 2 Sub Lieutenant. Junior officer, in rank below lieutenant. 4 Wardroom flat. A little lobby on a ship leading to the wardroom, the mess-cabin that is both a dining and a recreation room reserved for officers. 5 after supply party. Crew who transport armaments from the magazine to the guns at the rear of the ship. 11 screws. Ship’s propellers.

264

Explanatory Notes to Pages 26–32

24 forward mess decks. Area towards the bow of the ship in which the sailors lived. 25 lifelines. Anchored lines for sailors to grasp for safety. May also refer to lines thrown to someone in the water. 27 fo’csle. Abbreviation for forecastle. See note to l. 15 in “Derelict,” 262. 32 ammunition ports. Openings on deck through which ammunition is conveyed to the guns. 130 cordite-smoke. Smoke produced from the cordite propellant used to fire shells from the guns. 145 Hood. hms Hood, Royal Navy battle cruiser sunk by shells fired by the German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prince Eugen on 24 May 1941. 156 azimuth ring. Device used for navigation, placed on the compass or a map to determine the ship’s bearing. 164 graal quest. Earlier spelling from Old French, for grail, sometimes a cup or chalice that is the object of a journey undertaken to find it. 173–4 vinegar … hyssop: vinegar and hyssop given to Christ on the cross, John 19:29; hemlock given to Socrates to carry out his death sentence. 175 blood and water. From the thrust of the soldier’s spear into Christ’s side, John 19:34. 178 drink we this cup. Mark 14:36 and Luke 22:42. 188 Golgotha. Place just outside the walls of Jerusalem where Christ was crucified. 194 Sub. See note above, l. 2. 195 tiller flat. Area of the ship where the steering apparatus is located. 201 monkey-jacket. Waist-length jacket commonly worn by sailors. 203 iron-deck. Comprised of layers of plates that armour the ship against vertical attack from shell fired by ships or bombs dropped by aircraft. 204 masthead. Top of a tall vertical mast traditionally used for sails but on modern destroyers used for antennas and other instruments. 207 aft. Towards the rear of a ship. 210 multiple. Multiple-barrel gun. 212–13 And some there be. Ecclesiastes 44:9.

Explanatory Notes to Pages 32–9

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214 We therefore commit. From the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, Order for the Burial of the Dead Used at Sea, adapted from 1 Corinthians 15:20. 215 where sorrow and pain. Revelation 21:4. 216 Concerning them. 1 Thessalonians 4:13. 217 They rest from. Revelation 14:13. 218 looking for the. Not from a specific biblical passage, but central to Christian belief. 219–21 Behold I tell you. 1 Corinthians 15:51–2. 222 Why do we also. 1 Corinthians 15:30. 224 if there is no. 1 Corinthians 15:13. 225 if the dead are. 1 Corinthians 15:16. 226–7 if in this life. 1 Corinthians 15:19. 236 Blessed are the dead. Revelation 14:13. 237 for since by man. 1 Corinthians 15:21. 242 log-repeat. Instrument for measuring the speed of a ship at sea. 242 gyro. Device for measuring the orientation of a ship at sea. 244 voice-pipe. Speaking tube used for communicating between decks. 277 crepuscule. Twilight. 294 anchor-fluke. Flat triangular blade on anchor used to catch in the seabed. 314 diatom. Single-celled alga, among the common types of phytoplankton. behind the v ictory 4 wardroom. See note to l. 4 in “Battle Pattern,” 263. d omest ic manifesto 48 Burlington House. Located on Piccadilly in London, housing the Royal Academy. w he at 21 Lazarus. Of Bethany, resurrected from the dead by Christ. John 11:1–46.

266

Explanatory Notes to Pages 41–57

command os embarking 1 Great Bitter Lake. Part of the Suez Canal in Egypt. 2 Commando Company. Special military operations unit of British forces. 3 Alamien. Also known as El Alamein, site of two World War II battles. The first (1–27 July 1942) resulted in a stalemate between Allied and Axis forces; the second (23 October –11 November 1942) was the first decisive Allied victory over the Axis since 1939. 16 Ataqa Mountain. Located by the Rea Sea in Egypt. initial assault – sicily 15–17 And Canea, Mersa Matruh, etc. Significant sites of airfields and/or battles during World War II. after math, july 1943 2 Tunis. Capital of Tunisia. 5 Malta. Island nation south of Sicily. 8 flak. Anti-aircraft gunfire. 12 Augusta. Old town on the island of Sicily. 15 salvos. Simultaneous discharges of guns. pilg r im heart, tur n homewa rd 4 Avola. City in Sicily. Not known if this is an allusion to a person from history. 9–11 triumphal arch. Unidentified. 26 Mount Etna. Volcano on the east coast of Sicily. w. k.e. W.K.E. are the initials of William Keightley Evers, a friend of Whalley’s from Oxford who was killed in action on 22 September 1940. His body is buried in El Alamein War Cemetery. m i n ster l ove l l 2 Cotswold. Area of hills in southwestern and west central England. 16 Minster Lovell. Village in Oxfordshire, England. 17 Wychwood. Forest in Oxfordshire, England.

Explanatory Notes to Pages 57–72

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17 Windrush. River that flows through Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire into the Thames. das lebewohl, die abwesenheit, das w iedersehen The title alludes to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-flat major. The titles of the three movements can be translated as “The Farewell, The Absence, The Return.” 45 prodigal son. Figure in a parable told by Jesus in Luke 15:11–32. for elizab eth The dedication is to Elizabeth Whalley (née Watts), who married Whalley on 25 July 1944. sleep 12 Inca. Peruvian civilization with an empire from the fourteenth to sixteenth century. w inter north atl antic 5 Farcombe. Village in Surrey, England. 5 Chideock. Village in southwest Dorset, England. 6 Minister Lovell. See note to l. 16 in “Minster Lovell,” 266. 8 Cheyne Walk. Street in Chelsea, London. 12 Whalley deliberately uses the archaic spelling “weavils” instead of “weevils.” lond on, 194 4 8 jinking. Making a quick, evasive turn. q .a .m . Q.A.M. refers to the Queen’s Anne Mansions, location of a Royal Navy Admiralty office during World War II. wor ld’s en d World’s End is a district of Chelsea, London, often bombed during World War II.

268

Explanatory Notes to Pages 74–82

stor m 18 Praxiteles. Athenian sculptor, fourth century bc. after santayana George Santayana (1863–1952). Spanish-born American philosopher, essayist, and novelist. nor m andy l anding D minus 42. D-day signifies an unnamed day for the commencement of a military operation, in this case referring to 6 June 1944, Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of France. D minus 42 indicates forty-two days prior to the start of the operation. Devonport. Royal Navy base in Plymouth in the southwest of England. 7 Devon. County in the southwest of England. 13–14 Man that is… From the Order for the Burial of the Dead in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, adapted from Job 14:1. following 29 Falmouth. Town on south coast of Cornwall, England. 59 chapel of St. Faith. Chapel inside Westminster Abbey in London. 62 raffia. Palm burnt for religious observances. following 63 Vierville. Commune in northwest France and the landing site, known as Omaha Beach, for the US Army in the Allied invasion. 69 red tracer. Bullet that illuminates when fired to make the trajectory visible. following 84 St. Vaast. Commune in northwest France with a harbour, the first freed by the Allies after the invasion of France. following 89 Arromanches. Commune in northwest France, an area central to the Allied invasion in June 1944. st. ja m e s’s par k St. James’s Park is east of Buckingham Palace in central London. nor mandy 194 4 15 V-letters. May be an abbreviation for victory-letters and refer to the process in the military postal system in which printed letters were

Explanatory Notes to Pages 82–95

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censored, copied to film, transported, and then reprinted to paper for delivery. 20 Bayeux. Located 7 km from the northwest coast of France, the first city to be liberated following the Allied invasion of France. 21 Caen. Commune located 30 km Southeast of Bayeux; suffered considerable destruction in the heavy fighting after the Allied invasion. apple orchard, nor mandy 194 4 6 second Thermopylae. In 279 bc the Gauls invaded Greece and fought a battle at Thermopylae, a site already famous for a battle during the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 bc. epithal amion An epithalamion is written in honour of a bride and bridegroom. prothal amion A prothalamion is a song or poem written in celebration of a marriage. w ith a sapphire r ing 3 Chideock. See note to l. 5 in “Winter North Atlantic,” 267. 5 Dunster. Village in Somerset, England, on the Bristol Channel. peter 8 Burma. (Now Myanmar.) Major battleground between the Allies and the Japanese during World War II. cana dian spr ing 49 Somerset. County in southwest England. end of foreig n serv ice leave Foreign service leave is granted to military personnel serving abroad to give them an extended period of time at home. v ic tory in europe The war ended in Europe on 8 May 1945, Victory in Europe (ve) Day. 7 the East. London’s East End.

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Explanatory Notes to Pages 95–8

7 Paul’s dome. Dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, London. 9 “had a glory round about it with fires.” Quotation from the diary of Samuel Pepys, entry for Tuesday, 23 April 1661. 18 King’s Road. Major street running through the Chelsea and Fulham areas of West London. 23 Richmond. Suburb in southwest London; Gravesend is the gateway to the Thames River on the South Bank in Northwest Kent; Watford is a town in Herefordshire, northwest of London; Chislehurst is a suburb in Southeast London. ships’ sirens cry w ith r agged mel ancholy 8 Battle of Britain. Bombing campaign and air battle over England between the British and the Germans from 10 July to 31 October 1940. 15 Piccadilly. Road in London, though may refer to Piccadilly Circus, a road junction in central London. 24 Devonport. See note in “Normandy Landing.” 26 Luftwaffe. German air force. apr il shower 1 Hyde Park Corner. Southeastern corner of Hyde Park in London where six streets converge. 6 Piccadilly. See note to l. 15 in “Ships’ sirens cry with ragged melancholy,” above. 7 St. James’s Palace. Located in Pall Mall, London, north of St James’s Park. 8 Westminster. Area in central London, where Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, and other important sites are located. 12 Cenotaph. In Whitehall, London, the monument commemorates British who fought and died in wars; originally erected for those who served in World War I. p o et ics The title refers to The Poetics, a treatise in literary criticism by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (382–344 bc).

Explanatory Notes to Pages 99–119

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punctually to obey, unquestioning 3–4 King’s Rule and Admiralty Instructions. Code of conduct and general regulations for those serving in the Royal Navy. gunboat sort ie 16 black tower of Triagoz. Square lighthouse located off the northwest coast of France. 49 tracers. See note to l. 69, “Normandy Landing,” 268. l andscape w ith r ain: schwarzwald Schwarzwald, commonly known as the Black Forest, is in southwest Germany. dunster Dunster. Village in Somerset, England on the Bristol Channel. 19 Exmoor. Open area of hilly moorland in Somerset. cabot st r ait The Cabot Strait is north of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, at the mouth of the St Lawrence River. mor ning watch In the Royal Navy, the morning watch is 0400 to 0800 hours. 8 Leviathan. Sea monster from the Old Testament. See Job 41: 1–34. thal amion A thalamion is a bridal chamber. j. w. 4 John Dowland. English composer (1563–1626). 4 Peter Warlock. Pseudonym for British composer and music critic Philip Arnold Heseltine (1894–1930). 10 Helvellyn. Mountain in the English Lake District. rot terda m Rotterdam in the Netherlands was largely destroyed by German bombers on 14 May 1940.

272

Explanatory Notes to Pages 119–26

ac tion stat ions 1 Sub Lieutenant. See note to l. 2, “Battle Pattern,” 263. 4 fo’csle. See note to l. 15, “Derelict,” 262. pr ayer for the liv ing 3 we know not what we do. Reference to Christ’s words in Luke 23:34. ron d o A rondo is specific form of music but can also refer to the fast speed of the performance of the form. 1 da capo. Italian, a direction in music meaning “from the beginning.” 7 appassionato. Italian, a direction in music meaning “passionately, with emotion.” exe g i m o n u m e n t u m The title is adapted from the closing poem of the third book of Horace’s Odes entitled “Exegi monumentum aere perennius.” Whalley translated this as “I have raised a monument more lasting than bronze” in a letter to Katharine Whalley (4 August 1977, kwcp). seascape 7 quid novi. Latin, meaning “what’s new?” 10–11 “For this relief much thanks.…” William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.1.10,.in The Norton Shakespeare, vol. 2, The Later Plays, edited by Stephen Greenblatt (London: Oxford University Press 2001). 28 Eileen Trodday. Island with a lighthouse off the north coast of the Trotternish Peninsula, Skye. 30–1 Thunderbolt, etc. Royal Navy submarines. 32 Brodick Bay. On the east coast of the Isle of Arran, Scotland. 33 Paddington. Railway and subway station in London. 35 Loch Eck. Lake in Scotland, located on the Cowal Peninsula. 37 Winchester. Former capital of England, located in Hampshire in the south. 38 Clyde. River in Scotland, important during the World War II for Royal Navy shipbuilding and engineering. 40 Empire Dorado. American cargo ship sold to the British Ministry of War transport in 1940 and sunk in 1941.

Explanatory Notes to Pages 126–31

273

40 Rothesay Bay. Located on the Isle of Bute, Scotland. 49 Lofoten. In Norway, an archipelago in the county of Nordland, raided by British commandos in March 1941 during Operation Claymore. 52–3 Bach Coriolan Prokofiev the 8th. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685– 1750); the “Coriolan Overture,” by Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770– 1827); Piano Sonata No. 8 in B-flat major by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953). 54 tracer. See note to l. 69 in “Normandy Landing,” 268. 81 Mull o’ Kintyre. Southwestern tip of the Kintyre Peninsular, Scotland. 81 Ailsa Craig. Small island ten miles off the west coast of Scotland. 82 Holy Island. Tidal island off the northeast coast of England. 83 Cumbraes. Group of islands in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland. 83 Rothesay. See note to l. 40, above. 83 Toward. Likely a reference to Castle Toward on the southern tip of the Cowal Peninsula in Scotland. 83 Holy Loch. In Scotland, used as a submarine base in World War II. 87 Lundy. Largest island in the Bristol Channel off the west coast of England. 89 Cautionary Tales. Children’s book by Anglo-French writer Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953). 90 Cape Wrath. In Scotland, most northwestly point of the United Kingdom mainland. 94 Antares. Red supergiant star. 112 Autumn of Munich. Reference to the 29 September 1938 agreement that allowed Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia. let ter from l agos Lagos is a port city in Nigeria. 1 Pointe Noire. Port city in the Republic of the Congo. 48 sextant. Navigational instrument that measures angles relative to celestial objects. 69 Apapa. Major port in Lagos.

274

Explanatory Notes to Pages 131–7

dieppe Dieppe is in France, a port on the English Channel and was the site of a raid by Canadian and British forces that began on 19 August 1942. meditat ion on tower hil l 2 Tower Hill. Elevated place northwest of the Tower of London. 17 Crutched Friars. Area near Tower Hill named after Roman Catholic friars who settled in London in 1249. 18 The Minories. Area near the Tower of London, and also the name of a street there named after the Minoresses of St Mary of the Order of St Claire, founded in 1294. 18 St. Mary Axe. In London, a name that survives from a medieval parish and church demolished in 1561. 18 All Hallows. Also known as All Hallows-by-the-Tower, the oldest church in London, founded in 675, located by the Tower of London. 21 Rip Van Winkle. Eponymous hero of a short story by American writer Washington Irving (1783–1859), about a man who awakens after sleeping for nearly twenty years. wa lker 3 Drakian. Refers to Sir Francis Drake (1540–1596), English navigator and politician. 5 tbs microphone. World War II high frequency communications device developed by the US Navy. 6 Leviathan. See note to l. 8 in “Morning Watch,” 271. a da m See Genesis 2:7 to 3:24 for the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Paradise. chief 1 iron-deck. See note to l. 203 in “Battle Pattern,” 264. 1 tubes. Torpedo tube launchers. 13 Bear Island. North of Norway in western part of Barents Sea. 13 Murmansk Run. In World War II, an important convoy route for Allied ships bringing supplies to the port in Murmansk Oblast, Russia.

Explanatory Notes to Pages 139–46

275

undertow 49 Channers. Usually a verb, here a noun, meaning mutterings, grumblings. 55 tidewarp and seaweft. Coinages from weaving, in which the interwoven weft threads cross at right angles to the warp threads. death by drow ning 25 channers. See note to l. 49 in “Undertow,” above. pr iest among the da ndelions 4 Kenelm. May be an allusion to Saint Kenelm in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” ll. 3110–21, in The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008). anima p o etae (after coler id ge) The poem adapts a passage from Earnest Hartley Coleridge’s Anima Poetae: From the Unpublished Note-Books of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “Why do you make a book? Because my Hands can extend but a few score Inches from my body; because my poverty keeps those Hands empty when my Heart aches to empty them; because my Life is short, & my Infirmities; & because a Book, if it extends but to one Edition, will probably benefit three or four on whom I could not otherwise have acted; & should it live & deserve to live, will make ample Compensation for all the afore-stated Infirmities” (London: William Heinemann 1895), 256. The passage is number 4082 in volume 3 of The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Kathleen Coburn (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1973) and number 524 in Coleridge’s Notebooks: A Selection, edited by Seamus Perry (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002). a n na p o l i s n i g ht fa l l 5 groyne. Wall of concrete or masonry, or a timber framework, erected out into the sea as a defence against the force of the water. we dlo ck is so esy and so clene The title is from Chaucer’s “The Merchant’s Tale,” l. 1264.

276

Explanatory Notes to Pages 147–53

ho oded eag le This poem adapts and rearranges the words in a number of passages from Coleridge’s notebooks taken from Anima Poetae (see note to “Anima Poetae,” 275). Whalley initially typed the passages on pages separate from the ts. The first stanza is rooted in the passages “What a sky! the not yet orbed moon…” (125); “One lifts up one’s eyes to heaven…” (150); and “To you there are many like me…” (188). The second stanza uses “O Heavens! when I think how perishable things…” (8); “The first sight of green…” (25); and “Snails of intellect” (6). The third stanza is from “The voice of Greta and the cock-crowing” (43–4). For the last stanza, see note to “Anima Poetae” above. Some words and/or phrases may be from other notebook passages yet to be identified. after g iorda no bruno In a letter to G.H. Clarke dated 23 February 1947, Whalley writes that the “Latin poem is isolated at the beginning of a 1591 (Frankfurt) edition of [Giordano] Bruno’s DeMonade and De Innumerabilibus.” Giordano Bruno (1548–1600). Italian philosopher, mathematician, poet, astronomer alchemical retort : re cipe for a national fl ag 14 college of heralds. Professionals appointed to grant coats of arms, such as the College of Arms in England. 31 tensor calculus. Advanced form of calculus used in physics, engineering, and general relativity, for instance. ubi thesaurus ibi cor Whalley translated the title as “where your treasure is there your heart be also” (gwr 64). 3 Mu. Greek letter (uppercase, M; lowercase, m), though perhaps also a reference to a disappeared continent proposed in the nineteenth century and since then considered fictional. 52 Schonberg. Arnold Schönberg (also spelled Shoenberg, Austrian composer, 1874–1951.

Explanatory Notes to Pages 154–63

277

go lit te l boke, go lit te l my t r agedy The title is from Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, book 5, l. 1786. there are ot her cent res than cities and gover n ments 3 World’s End. See note to “World’s End,” 267. 4 King’s Road. See note to l. 18 in “Victory in Europe,” 270. the sea may pick my bones 3 morning watch. See note in “Morning Watch,” 271. the star k cl ar it y of starlig ht 7 stellate. Star-shaped. 8 pointillate. Coinage for a small point. 8 excruciance. Coinage for an instance of suffering pain. chr ist mas eve 1 snow on snow. Christina Rossetti, “A Christmas Carol,” ll. 5–6, The Complete Poems (London: Penguin 2001). 2 Maketh all things new. Revelation 21:5. 3–4 a light / Shineth in the darkness. John 1:5. 12 darkness comprehendeth not. John 1:5–9 15 in a manger. Allusion to the birth of Christ. 18 folded that up like a vesture. Allusion to Hebrews 1:12. 20 honey and the honey-comb. Psalms 19:10. 23 will of the flesh and the will of man. Allusion to John 1:13. 29 liturgy of the Word. The mass. hatasis 11 Levantine. The eastern Mediterranean region, which includes Egypt. 27 Eastern Townships. Region in Quebec located between the St Lawrence River and the United States.

278

Explanatory Notes to Pages 163–8

super flumina The title is a reference to Psalm 137, commonly known as “By the waters of Babylon,” which has often been set to music. 1 St. Charles River. Main river running through Quebec City. hodie tibi, cr as mihi The title and subtitle are taken from Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, edited by N.W. Bawcutt (Oxford: Manchester University Press 1978), in a speech by Pilia-borza: “Upon mine owen free hold within fortie foot of the gallows, conning his neck-verse I take it, looking of a Fryars Execution, whom I saluted with an old hempen proverb, Hodie tibi, cras mihi, and so I left him to the mercy of the Hangman: but the Exercise being done, see where he comes” (5.2.18–23). 2 Felix Randal. Title of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. 3 time’s eunuch. Phrase from l. 13 of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend,” in Poems and Prose, edited by W.H. Gardner (London: Penguin 1985), 67. 4 Kubla. Reference to the poem “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834). 7 Ecstacy. Allusion to Donne’s “The Ecstacy.” 15 terrible crystal. Ezekiel 1:22. biolo g y ex hibitions 7 Mendel. Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), Austrian monk whose discoveries in the laws of inheritance were ignored until the beginning of the twentieth century. 38 St. Elmo’s Fire. Phenomenon in which plasma discharges from a pointed object such as a mast or lightning rod in a strong electrical field. w hen th e bo oks are bal anced 9 Atilla. Ruler of the Huns from 434 to 453 bc.

Explanatory Notes to Pages 169–78

279

penelope of the white hands and the br ig ht eyes 1 Penelope. Odysseus’s faithful wife in Homer’s Odyssey. how shall I break this chaotic shell of silence 4 Lifting the flaming coal. Isaiah 6:6–7. 6 O sacred Head. From the hymn “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.” suddenly the veil of self-pit y lifted and I felt 2 Gethsemaneal. Referring to the night before Christ’s crucifixion when he prayed with his disciples in Gethsemane. how pitifully t r ansitory, small, imperfect seems 3 strange devices, strange banners. Allusion to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Excelsior,” l. 39, in The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, edited by Samuel Longfellow (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. 1886). nig ht flig ht 29 Tierra del Fuego. Archipelago off the southern tip of South America in the Strait of Magellan. 31 The Horn. Cape Horn, southern tip of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. me, dr iven thro ug h minefields, w ith a quarter ing 2 asdic. First active underwater sound detective device, developed by the Royal Navy in 1916, more commonly known as sonar. 2 degaussed. Process used by the Royal Navy during World War II to reduce the magnetic field of ships as a countermeasure against German magnetic mines. 7 quartermaster. In the navy, a non-commissioned officer responsible for navigation of the ship. elegy 10 Fustian. Here meaning “high-flown.”

280

Explanatory Notes to Pages 179–84

this death was cruel certainly 27 fathered forth. Allusion to Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty,” l. 30–1. g y ro 2 gimbals. On a ship, pivoted supports that allow an object (such as a compass) to rotate about a single axis and remain upright in relation to the horizon, regardless of the ship’s pitch and roll. how shall I say, hav ing come this far 5 chaise longue. Literally, a long chair; providing support for the legs. l aza rus Lazarus. See note to “Wheat,” 265. 58–9 For the sword was made flesh / And dwells among us. Allusion to John 1:14, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” ploug hed and har rowed w ith cr ies of drow ning 11 man-o’-war. Royal Navy expression for a powerful warship, sixteenth to nineteenth century. r aising a hand to my forehead 6 infinite jest. Hamlet 5.1.171–2. 11–12 gravedigger’s spade. Allusion to Hamlet, 5.1.81–9; 5.1.174. spindr ift of spindle-shank children 5 Woolworth. Reference to the American retail chain F.W. Woolworth Company. thoug h inl and, thoug h far 1 Though inland. Allusion to Wordsworth’s “Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” l. 167, in The Major Works, edited by Stephen Gill (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000).

Explanatory Notes to Pages 186–201

281

veron ica The title refers to Saint Veronica, who gave Christ a veil to wipe his face when he was carrying the cross to Golgotha. The cloth had an impression of Christ’s face when he returned it to her. The allusion is explicit in the poem’s working title: “St. Veronica’s Napkin.” when we set ou t, there was lit tle gear to muster 11 Anoxic. Totally depleted of oxygen. 60 Byron and Hobhouse. Lord Byron (1788–1824), English poet, and his friend Sir John Hobhouse (1786–1869), British politician. 63 Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), English poet, who drowned off the coast of Italy. His body was cremated on a beach near Viareggio, close to Pisa. dionys iac 8 Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), Italian composer whose work includes the violin concertos The Four Seasons. memor ial 46 Clausewitz. Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), German-Prussian military theorist and author of On War. a minor p o et is v isite d by the muse 7–9 He set down / This set down / This. T.S. Eliot, “Journey of the Magi,” ll. 33–5, Collected Poems 1909–1962. 11 Pegasus. Winged stallion in Greek mythology. callig r apher 8 Hsing Shu (or xingshu). Chinese, meaning running script, a calligraphic style developed during the first to third century ad. 33 Hui-tsung. Chinese emperor (1082–1135; reigned 1101–1126), whose devotion to the arts and neglect of the military led to his defeat by the Tartars. 40 Ikhnaton. also spelled Akhenaten, and known as Amenhotep IV, an Egyptian pharaoh who reigned from 1353–51 to 1336–34 bc.

282

Explanatory Notes to Pages 201–20

42 City of the Sun. Heliopolis, city of Ancient Egypt. 63 Mi Fu. Chinese calligrapher, poet, and painter (1051–1107), known for misty landscapes. a house div ided 9 Archangelic expulsion. Allusion to the expulsion of Adam and Even from the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3:1–24. after a certain age all of us, go od and ba d, are g r ief-st r icken 9 Mitrinovi. Possibly Dimitrije Mitrinovi (1887–1953), Serbian philosopher and poet. 10 Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), British philosopher and social critic. pig 3 Elysian Fields. Final resting place, in Greek mythology, for heroes and the virtuous. 13 assegais. Southern African tree, one whose wood is suitable for making spears. saint fr ancis’ cloak pr aises Saint Francis, also known as Francis of Assisi (1181/2–1226), an Italian Catholic friar. The poem represents a Boy Scout cloak made for Whalley by Joyce Chambers when he was a student at Oxford (letter to Katharine Whalley, 14 February 1971, kwcp). cosmo gony A cosmogony is a theory of the emergence into existence of the cosmos. FRS. Frank Reginald Scott (1899–1985), Canadian poet, legal expert, and professor of law at McGill University. a l l s h a l l b e we l l 7 Bird of dawning. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.1.160. 11 Arrows of desire. William Blake, “And did those feet in ancient time” (which follows the preface for “Milton a Poem”), l. 10, William Blake:

Explanatory Notes to Pages 220–3

283

The Complete Poems, edited by Alicia Ostriker (London: Penguin 2004). 12–15 And all shall be well … Adapted from a saying Julian of Norwich (1342–1416), an English Christian mystic, who said she received it from God: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” T.S. Eliot adapts it in part 3 of “Little Gidding,” ll. 196–7. in w inter sunlig ht on the open st re et 4 Primavera. Painting, also known as “Allegory of Spring,” by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445–1510). 4 Hogarth’s “Shrimp-girl.” “The Shrimp Girl” is a painting by the English artist William Hogarth (1697–1764). 7 La Gioconda. Also known as the “Mona Lisa,” painted by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). to mr w. h. all happiness 1 Robin Hood. In English folklore, a heroic outlaw who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. 1 Friar Tuck. Robin’s companion and one of his merry men. 7 Lindisfarne. A priory sits on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, off the northeast coast of England. 32 Marion. Maid Marion, the love interest of Robin Hood. 34 the Strand. Major thoroughfare in central London. 37 Whitehall Court. Nineteenth-century building in London, now partly residences and partly offices for commercial and charitable organizations; Secret Intelligence Service (mi6) headquarters until the end of World War I. wobu r n s qua re Woburn Square, built in the nineteenth century, is one of the Bloomsbury squares in London. 10 Holborn. Area of central London and the name of the area’s major street. 12 Onslow Square. In South Kensington, London.

284

Explanatory Notes to Pages 223–6

s o u t h a m p to n row Southampton Row is a major thoroughfare in London. the full mo on lost behind cloud 12 Kuyt. Ernie Kuyt, 1929–2010, Dutch-born whooping crane biologist and conservationist. 13 Fort Smith. Town in the Northwest Territories, Canada. the voice of the w ind making snow 22 ἀναζωπυρει. From Greek, meaning “it kindles (or lights up) again; takes on new life.”

APPENDICES

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Appendix 1 Contents of Poems 1939–1944

For E.W. Homer at Dawn The Sound of Bare Feet By the River Behind the Victory A Smile and a Nod Wheat Minster Lovell English Winter Sleep This Is Your Music St. James’s Park Fragment The Return Emergency Operation Normandy Landing Epithalamion We Who Are Left

Appendix 2 Contents of No Man an Island

For Elizabeth I W.K.E. Gunboat Sortie Seascape Q.A.M. Sitting the Night Out This Is Your Music Wheat By the River Commandos Embarking Initial Assault, Sicily Sicilian Vignette Covenant with Death Aftermath, July 1943 II Homecoming A Girl in Love Minster Lovell London after Leave Counterpoint Emergency Operation English Winter Peter Storm The Way Back Das Lebewohl, Die Abwesenheit, Das Wiedersehen

Table of Contents for No Man an Island

World’s End Seeing Ducks Asleep Canadian Spring III Battle Pattern Dunster Dieppe The Silver Cord Normandy Landing Prayer for the Living Normandy 1944 We Who Are Left Cabot Strait April Shower Morning Watch Victory in Europe Pilgrim Heart, Turn Homeward Variation upon a Seventeenth Century Theme

289

Appendix 3 Pages That End with the Last Line of a Stanza Derelict Battle Pattern Domestic Manifesto Aftermath, July 1943 Pilgrim Heart, Turn Homeward One night in the darkness Homecoming The Messenger The Devils’ Day Out Now we are both alone and isolate If Winter Comes Normandy Landing St. James’s Park Normandy 1944 The great ship, reeling and rearing With a Sapphire Ring We Who Are Left Variation upon a Seventeenth Century Theme Gunboat Sortie Five Years Four Freedoms Cabot Strait Toro Discharged: Services No Longer Required Seascape Letter from Lagos Death By Drowning Clerk in Underground The Silver Cord

6–7 29–30; 31–2; 32–3 37–8 43–4 44–5 46–7 47–8 52–3 54–5 62–3 65–6 79–80 81–2 82–3 86–7 87–8 93–4 100–1 103–4 107–8 110–11 112–13 116–17 122–3 124–5 130–1 140–1 141–2 142–3

Pages That End with the Last Line of a Stanza

After Giordano Bruno Ubi Thesaurus Ibi Cor Her cheeks were plump and rosy Biology Exhibitions Elegy This death was cruel certainly There’s nothing for it but drop an anchor here You are here, auburn-headed and slender Admonishment Pig Flowering of an Ancient Reticence Autumn Was Never So Late Turn the key on this room Song

291

148–9 152–3 153–4 166–7 177–8 178–9 186–7 190–1 191–2 205–6 207–8 209–10 213–14 216–17

Index of Titles and First Lines

Note that poems titled by Whalley have title capitalization (e.g. “Battle Pattern”). Those poems that Whalley did not title are given sentence capitalization (e.g. “I do not know these men”). In the index below, poems that Whalley titled appear in italics; those identified by their first line appear in regular font. Poems for which titles and first lines are the same are bolded. A bird is fragile warmth, translucent brilliance A cold wind and the melancholy cry A few nights after Christmas we made the cold A girl in love is like the soft rain A host of disasters may overtake a bird A seagull in a lilac tree A simple command cuts his death to the bone Abroad early among the daisies Absence Action Stations Adam Admiral Pathfinder, guide of the fleet, wheel Admonishment Affair of Honour After a certain age all of us, good and bad, are grief-stricken After Giordano Bruno After it’s all over, whatever the crisis After long absence, after long silence After Santayana Aftermath, July 1943 Alan Gateling Alchemical Retort: Recipe for a National Flag

158 95 103 88 174 216 180 199 213 119 136 180 191 196 204 148 135 220 77 43 105 150

Index of Titles and First Lines

293

All day long, from dawn, the drays All of him compact and powerful All Shall Be Well All the height and depth of the sky is blue All these I give you, the gentle cunning Along the shore of the Great Bitter Lake And if the year come round again And in my household, And so it will go on till time is dead And this befell and that happened Anima Poetae (after Coleridge) Annapolis Nightfall Anniversary Apple Orchard, Normandy 1944 April Shower Aquavit and beer to chase it As deaths go, a small one, utterly obscure As a smiling 50-year old As I walk the city streets in the grey of breaking dawn As I was going up the lift As I was going up the stair As I watch the grey seas At Hyde Park Corner a shower came down At sea in harbour on leave, the few terse notes At the fifth dawn the pattern recurred; rain Autumn Was Never So Late Autumn was never so late nor the sun so warm at this season

133 88 220 147 97 41 167 205 17 190 144 144 118 83 98 192 198 212 7 223 222 64 98 124 109 209 209

Barrenness comes on my pen Battle Pattern Beaky, aetat 77 Because my life is short; because my hands Because you brought me to the hard Beech Wood behind the eye, the word Behind the Victory Behold! The midnight blizzard, snow on snow

156 26 146 144 62 56 215 36 161

294

Index of Titles and First Lines

Beyond all loving and seeing Biology Exhibitions But where in all this world is Eden? Where is any garden? By the River By the waters of the St. Charles River we sat down

115 166 196 40 163

Cabot Strait Calligrapher Canadian Spring Candlelight works such a miracle Chase, The Chief Christmas Eve Christmas Eve Clerk in Underground Commandos Embarking Cosmogony Counterpoint Covenant with Death

112 200 91 105 5 137 64 161 141 41 215 101 107

Dad Darkness – and the wild, maniac rush Das Lebewohl, die Abwesenheit, das Wiedersehen Dawn comes in inexorable beauty Dear Father, look down from on high Death, at our first casual meeting Death by Drowning Death of a Bird Dedication Derelict Desertion Desire Destroying that we be not destroyed Devils’ Day Out, The Dieppe Dionysiac Discharged: Services No Longer Required

106 19 60 171 21 23 140 158 12 6 15 16 120 54 131 192 122

Index of Titles and First Lines

295

Distinct from the many noises Dog Watch Domestic Manifesto Dove Cottage Unvisited Dunster Dust stained and weary he pushed himself along

68 7 37 23 111 50

E’en like a sea-surge Ebbed now the cold fear Elegy Eloquent between the formal hedges Emergency Operation End of Foreign Service Leave English Winter Epithalamion Even behind his gaiety there lurked Ever since the clear crisp dawn Exegi Monumentum Eyes with the same directness as his father’s

4 131 174 196 89 94 55 83 59 77 124 94

Fill my life with fire and my heart with a song Five Years Flowering of an Ancient Reticence For Elizabeth For the Sweeties Four Freedoms Forget about what’s on the beaches. Tide Fragment Fragment Fragrance of sandalwood and the soft curve

16 107 207 62 97 110 82 8 90 97

Girl in Love, A Glowing rust-red bracken warmed Go littel boke, go littel my tragedy Grim and sulky beauty Gunboat Sortie Gyro

88 56 154 156 103 180

296

Index of Titles and First Lines

Hatasis He who watched some fatal four disorders Her cheeks were plump and rosy His love did not strike and blind me Hodie tibi, cras mihi Homecoming Homer at Dawn Hooded Eagle House Divided, A How pitifully transitory, small, imperfect seems How shall I break this chaotic shell of silence How shall I say, having come this far How shall I say I love thee How the Time Passes How very odd to miss the bus Hymn to the Moon

162 165 153 85 165 47 4 147 204 170 169 180 205 84 193 9

I came into life and now am leaving it I do not know these men I imagine you, at the sound of the deep-throated air-raid sirens I think they burn our letters in Pointe Noire I walk upon the ocean’s floor I washed my hair I wonder what it’s like I wore a khaki shirt and red tie I would come to a point in timelessness If a country lacks individuality If it must be an affair of drowning, let it be If Winter Comes If you should weep, or curse me with scorn or hate I might have guessed from something in her eyes In a reverie the left hand In black, with a white In Examination In five years I have known In time is no da capo. Our hands can never In time is stillness; but in time

208 185 67 128 8 211 145 226 185 150 178 65 60 146 200 136 16 107 123 142

Index of Titles and First Lines

297

In winter sunlight on the open street Infused in all the beauty Initial Assault – Sicily “It’s made of stainless steel It’s strange, things being the way they are, It is his hands that I remember It is well to recall the warmth It never seems to be summer in a ship It takes great faith to plant an appletree It took an old account book to show me of how small elements It was to be expected he would be young

220 8 42 124 173 56 36 113 83 106 69

J.W.

118

Landscape with Rain: Schwarzwald Lazarus Let others lust to bind to naked shoulders Letter from Lagos Like an abandoned railway station when Limitations of Academic Philosophy, The Look, Chum. You’d have done better Look, Mary, do you mind standing in London after Leave London, 1944 Louisburg Loving, the heart cries Lyric

109 180 148 128 215 20 134 114 48 67 5 136 136

Maidens are timorous, Me, driven through minefields, with a quartering Meditation on Tower Hill Memorial Messenger, The Metamorphosis Minor Poet Is Visited by the Muse, A Minster Lovell Modelled upon a German Prayer

191 174 133 198 50 73 199 57 21

298

Index of Titles and First Lines

Moon, The Morning Watch Music goes out at the fingers Music has two lives My country ’tis of thee My heart is not here in the pages My soul has a deep longing for thee Myth, that ganglion of symbols

53 114 110 110 150 217 22 185

National Anathema Night brings back the ships Night Flight No doubt your purpose was perfectly genuine No lasting furrow here, No tread of hours, no nibbling of seconds Now it’s all over, and we Normandy 1944 Normandy Landing Not at bidding nor commanding Not even Aristotle Not the firebright river nor the surge Nothing less than a war Now we are both alone and isolate

150 145 172 166 112 146 122 82 77 195 98 69 37 62

O O Father, grant that when my work is done O Moon, with tinted crown, sailing a sea of immeasurable blue O will the Spring come in again O World, O Word Oblivious of wind and rain and the matter of man Ocean-stained and weather-weary Ode to a College Sausage Of the hilly road’s adventurous bend On Rejoining an Old Ship One morning the frost-smoke hangs in the trees One night in the darkness One of your letters held the germ of a poem

219 12 9 65 195 53 100 3 19 75 143 46 124

Index of Titles and First Lines

Our loneliness was less in that we shared it each with each Orion laughs at your window Penelope of the white hands and the bright eyes Perhaps it is well now Peter Pick-up Pig Pilgrim Heart, Turn Homeward Ploughed and harrowed with cries of drowning Poem Poetics Portrait Pray Silence “Pray silence for the bridegroom” Prayer for the Living Priest among the Dandelions Propel yourself for a moment out of your armchair Proud wings from a snow-swept pine forest Prothalamion Punctually to obey, unquestioning Q.A.M.

299

15 67 169 93 88 114 205 44 182 157 98 59 102 102 120 143 151 90 85 99 68

Raising a hand to my forehead Renunciation Returning to Sea Robin Hood and Friar Tuck Rondo Rotterdam Runaway

183 63 67 221 123 119 173

Sage, The Saint Francis’ cloak praises St. James’s Park Scribbling they write, gleaning from staggering minds Seascape

203 207 81 16 124

300

Index of Titles and First Lines

Second degree of readiness Seeing Ducks Asleep She has gone away leaving me Ships’ sirens cry with ragged melancholy Sicilian Vignette Silver Cord, The Since, by time’s unblinking law Since there is no anger in you Sitting the Night Out Sleep Smile and a Nod, A Somehow our delicate Sometimes in a bus or on the street Song “Sophistication” (long disrobed of sense Southampton Row Spindrift of spindle-shank children Storm Strength and peace have come Suddenly the heron wakened from his dreaming Suddenly the veil of self-pity lifted and I felt Super Flumina Sure, pal. I’ve seen Venice

26 75 213 96 121 142 77 63 49 63 23 73 157 216 11 223 183 74 76 5 169 163 23

Take out of my heart Take this for a song. Night drifting down Testament of Youth (A Sonnet) Thalamion That’s it, seagull. Wheel round the ship That your hair was dark auburn, even at night Thaw-water and thaw-wind The best thing you can say for London is the way The chase was hot. He dodged and sprang and tripped The crumpled linen of her face The dark was coming, but the sand was warm The dead are lonely

121 207 13 115 85 118 226 48 5 186 140 90

Index of Titles and First Lines

The fire is low The flower unfolds The forehead so high that the eyes are displaced The frail beetle of consciousness The full moon lost behind cloud The Germans bombed Rotterdam The “Gloria” lies upon her side, The great ship, reeling and rearing The heat-shimmer rising from the heather The high whirr of and wings and shadow The Hyades like a distant The lane climbed gently, threading its way The music we made in the darkest The name that somebody put The rest may rest as best they lost The sea may pick my bones The seafog, ghosting in with the evening flood The serene ring of the horizon The Sound of Bare Feet The spear and thrust of bud and blossom The stark clarity of starlight The stone balustrade ends on the empty air The subdued voice, steeled to a hard bravado The storm sweeps over the dark estuary The Sub Lieutenant, half asleep The train started with a grinding clatter The voice of the wind making snow The Way Back There are other centres than cities and governments There is no comfort now There it is – the singing of frogs. I knew There was no other way than music There was no way of telling There’s a wise woman who knows There’s all the blue in this There’s nothing for it but drop an anchor there

301

20 171 203 137 223 119 6 86 111 168 114 57 101 42 184 156 144 85 45 165 159 204 155 74 119 141 225 73 155 83 91 66 58 227 87 186

302

Index of Titles and First Lines

These days everyone’s so goddam tough These guns could have worked These men have been too long alone This death was cruel certainly This field his realm; of lush grass and dainty summer flowers This is a winter land This is how it was the first time This is the self-created tragedy of the world This Is Your Music This silver turned yellow Those who have no love of life die Thou still unfathomed Bag of Mystery Though inland, though far Three Years After To be calm in the grip of fear To Canada To know how my time passes here To Mr W.H. All Happiness To R.G. Today, he thought, the office won’t be fun Today I will not sing Toro Transcendence Tuella, Minho, Sabor, Aguela – Turn the key on this room 20th Century Twenty years ago – on the bridge Two years have made this house my home

105 121 107 178 116 55 103 159 66 224 148 3 184 155 110 22 84 221 134 145 118 116 8 216 213 11 203 47

Ubi Thesaurus Ibi Cor Under an April sun Under glass (Do not touch the glass Under the anaesthetic Under the seawall the rivertide Under this waning moon

151 39 162 89 40 43

Index of Titles and First Lines

303

Undertow Utopia 1948

137 167

Variation upon a Seventeenth Century Theme Veronica Victory in Europe Vision

100 186 95 13

Walker Warm lantern-light bathed the dream Was woman; and the flame suddenly leaped Weary beyond the comforting of tears Wedlock Is So Esy and So Clene We must go We stood on the iron-deck by the tubes We Who Are Left What business had the Spring What hand trimmed these strident feathers for flight What was not said and never can now be said Wheat Wheel dove, wheel eagle, gyre skylark When the books are balanced When they are needed such men emerge When this southbound ship comes in When we set out there was little gear to muster When we were younger and loving When what you wanted has not been had While your lips are parted in a smile With a Sapphire Ring Winter North Atlantic W.K.E. Woburn Square Womanlike in more World’s End Would it really be good Why do we sit the night out so

135 13 136 63 146 170 137 93 81 172 154 39 184 168 135 85 188 184 157 64 87 64 56 222 75 69 54 49

304

Index of Titles and First Lines

You are here, auburn-headed and slender You hate me as an officer You must have found within yourself “You’re very young. You’ll soon get over that”

190 73 59 13