Susan Hamlyn
Need
The children ask me what it was like.
I tell them about the absences.
No harsh noise, no fear, no want.
There was no future to provide for,
no need to supply.
My elder child cries for the loss;
my younger boy follows his father
and plants the autumn grain.
Adam won't speak of it.
He looks at the earth, rolls it
in his fingers, kneads it, works it.
I think about it, the gain, the loss.
Order is gone and oneness.
A calm sky and mind.
Beasts are shy now, need coaxing.
God, if he still knows us, visits rarely;
we have to find the time for him.
I cannot tell the children yet
about the gain. They see us fight,
they know we never fought before.
They think we fight about our lost
eternity. I say it is not lost.
I cannot tell them how I feel it
in his touch upon my breast
and in his voice and supple tongue
which parts my flesh and makes me
fire in the night. It is an endless need
which craves the more it's fed.
I see it growing in the anger
of my thrashing boys - there is no loss.
Under a disordered sky
my strong boys stride into the fields,
grim and heavy with seed.
I tell them about the absences.
No harsh noise, no fear, no want.
There was no future to provide for,
no need to supply.
My elder child cries for the loss;
my younger boy follows his father
and plants the autumn grain.
Adam won't speak of it.
He looks at the earth, rolls it
in his fingers, kneads it, works it.
I think about it, the gain, the loss.
Order is gone and oneness.
A calm sky and mind.
Beasts are shy now, need coaxing.
God, if he still knows us, visits rarely;
we have to find the time for him.
I cannot tell the children yet
about the gain. They see us fight,
they know we never fought before.
They think we fight about our lost
eternity. I say it is not lost.
I cannot tell them how I feel it
in his touch upon my breast
and in his voice and supple tongue
which parts my flesh and makes me
fire in the night. It is an endless need
which craves the more it's fed.
I see it growing in the anger
of my thrashing boys - there is no loss.
Under a disordered sky
my strong boys stride into the fields,
grim and heavy with seed.
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- Lamport Court
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- Modern Poetry in Translation
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
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- Poetry London (1951)
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- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
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- Ugly Tree, The
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- Yellow Crane, The