Dissolute
   
   
Many years have I still to burn, detained      
Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshine      
A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained      
In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.
         
And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of life,           5   
What matter the stuff I lick up in my living flame,   
Seeing I keep in the fire-core, inviolate,      
A night where she dreams my dreams for me, ever the same.

Submergence
   
   
When along the pavement,      
Palpitating flames of life,      
People flicker round me,      
I forget my bereavement,      
The gap in the great constellation,           5   
The place where a star used to be.
         
Nay, though the pole-star      
Is blown out like a candle,      
And all the heavens are wandering in disarray,      
Yet when pleiads of people are           10   
Deployed around me, and I see      
The street’s long outstretched Milky Way,
         
When people flicker down the pavement,      
I forget my bereavement.

The Enkindled Spring
   
       
This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,   
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,      
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between      
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.
         
I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration           5   
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze      
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,      
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.
         
And I, what fountain of fire am I among      
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed           10   
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng      
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.

Reproach
   
    
Had I but known yesterday,      
Helen, you could discharge the ache      
    Out of the cloud;      
Had I known yesterday you could take      
The turgid electric ache away,           5   
    Drink it up with your proud      
White body, as lovely white lightning      
Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth,      
I might have hated you, Helen.
         
But since my limbs gushed full of fire,           10   
Since from out of my blood and bone      
    Poured a heavy flame      
To you, earth of my atmosphere, stone      
Of my steel, lovely white flint of desire,      
    You have no name.           15   
Earth of my swaying atmosphere,      
Substance of my inconstant breath,      
I cannot but cleave to you.
         
Since you have drunken up the drear      
Painful electric storm, and death           20   
    Is washed from the blue      
Of my eyes, I see you beautiful.      
You are strong and passive and beautiful,      
I come like winds that uncertain hover;      
    But you           25   
Are the earth I hover over.