Laurie Lee Selected Poems Page 4

  Skating the floor with stiffened plumes behind him,

  Gravely off-balance, solemn in his trance.

  Drunk on these sherry vapours, eyes akimbo,

  He treads among the casks, makes a small leap,

  Flaps wildly, fails to fly – until at last,

  Folded umbrella-wise, he falls asleep.

  So bird and bard exchange their spheres of pleasure:

  He, from his high-roofed nest now levelled lies;

  Whilst I, earth-tied, breathing these wines take wing

  And float amazed across his feathered skies.

  Fish and Water

  A golden fish like a pint of wine

  Rolls the sea undergreen,

  Glassily balanced on the tide

  Only the skin between.

  Fish and the water lean together,

  Separate and one,

  Till a fatal flash of the instant sun

  Lazily corkscrews down.

  Did fish and water drink each other?

  The reed leans there alone;

  As we, who once drank each other’s breath,

  Have emptied the air, and gone.

  Seafront

  Here like the maze of our bewilderment

  the thorn-crowned wire spreads high along the shore,

  and flowers with rust, and tears our common sun;

  and where no paths of love may reach the sea

  the shut sands wait deserted for the drowned.

  On other islands similarly barbed

  mankind lies self-imprisoned in his fear,

  and watches through the black sights of a gun

  the winging flocks of migratory birds

  who cannot speak of freedom, yet are free.