W.S. Graham's Implements in Their Places (Faber, 1977), 2 of 2
Here's a second run of favourite passages from this splendid book:
Do not intrude too much
Into the message you carry....
from 'Johann Joachim Quantz's Five Lessons'
So she was seen to enter
The wood with her young skirt
Flashing.
from 'The Lost Miss Conn'
To set the scene. The night
Wind is rushing the moon
Across the winter road.
A mile away a farm
Blinks its only eye.
from 'The Murdered Drinker'
Up over the wood's roof I imagine
The long sigh of Outside goes.
from 'The Secret Name'
Because I could not gracefully
Get out of what I was doing, I made
An inner task come to fruit
Invisible to all spectators.
*
Dammit these words are making faces
At me again. I hope the faces
They make at you have more love.
from 'Implements in Their Places'