Disenchantments

1

In my mind's eye now as I am gazing
And have gazed, long and longing as I will forever,
I see horizons misted with a bloom of blueness
Like the breath of April in a bluebell spinney,

Mountain horizons, always, now and everywhere
Carved of a blue so lucent, the impasto
Of heaven's own indigo and azulene
Yet moist, in the blue of my eyes that are hazel really,

Horizons of mountains, such mountains! and so clearly
Delicately high in a blue haze hanging
Like the bloom on a sloe or damson, wild and delicate,
A blue like a breath, a mist, untouchable . . .

2

Tomorrow I may reach out like a curious infant
To touch the still-wet pigments of my father's canvas
And stare bewildered at the blue tip of my finger;
Tomorrow may be plucked the blue sloe or the damson

And under my thumb the bloom wiped clean away
Like a breath, a mist, and all my pastel distances
Erased to blue dust on my palms, my eyes of hazel
Scoured of their April bloom in winds of autumn . . .

3

The horizon's blue bow, bending, loosed him like an arrow.
Robed in her waters the chaste earth blushed and spurned him,
Profaned like a bridal virgin at her veiling;
Then, fire-fletched, down into that blue returning

He stared unseeing through the crowds that honoured him
Envying the blue of his ambitious eyes so steely -
Their blue like a breath, a mist, like snows of winter -
Haunted by a dream forever lost to them . . . .