Simultaneous

At one time
The bottle-hyacinths under Orvieto -
At one time
A letter a letter and a letter -
At one time, sleepless,
Through rain the nightingale sang from the river island -
At one time, Montparnasse,
And all night’s gloss,
Splendour of shadow on shadow,
With the exact flower
Of the liqueur in its glass.
Time runs,
But thought (or what?) comes
Seated between these damaged table-tops,
Sense of what zones, what simultaneous time-sense?

... Then in Ravenna
The dust is turned to dew
By moonlight, and the exact
Splayed ox-feet sleep that dragged the sugar-beet
To dry maremmas
Past Sant’ Apollinare,
Fuori Mura.

In Calais Roads
The foam-quilt sags and swells,
Exact are the land’s beacons to the sea -
Twin arms crossed, thrown across sleep and a night-wind.
Time falls from unseen bells
On Calais quays (that were sometimes a heart’s keys.)

Red bryony
Steeps in loose night-air, swelling -
October crumples the hedge -
Or the wind’s in the ash, opening the seed-pods.
(The revolution in the weeds -
Rain somewhere. Rain suggests
Their dissolution to the seeds.)

Midnight,
While some protract their trades
Forcing the line - sleep takes them.
But the baker
Cools at the sill, yeast raising auburn flour.

Midnight
And trains perambulate (o noctis equi);
Faust is in hell that would have stopped the horses of night
In their gallops, that would have galloped atop of them,
But was outpaced, overthrown for too exact questioning.

And in Albi
Les orguilleux sus des roues continuellement
(hell’s fading fresco),
And in Torcello
The mud-fogs now, and on all unknown
Ripe watery wastes
The rich dead silence.

Silence - - or a night-wind on a lawn
Turning the pages one by one of a forgotten book.

(1924)