Text 109

FOR X

When clerks and navvies fondle

Beside canals their wenches,

In rapture or in coma

The haunches that they handle,

And the orange moon sits idle

Above the orchard slanted −

Upon such easy evenings

We take our loves for granted.

But when, as now, the creaking

Trees on the hills of London

Like bison charge their neighbours,

In wind that keeps us waking,

And in the draught the scalloped

Lampshade swings a shadow,

We think of love bound over −

The mortgage on the meadow.

And one lies lonely, haunted

By limbs he half remembers,

And one, in wedlock, wonders

Where is the girl he wanted;

And some sot smoking, flicking

The ash away and feeling

For love gone up like vapour

Between the floor and ceiling.

But now when winds are curling

The trees do you come closer,

Close as the eyelid fasten

My body in darkness, darling.

Switch off the light and let me

Gather you up and gather

The power of trains advancing

Further, advancing further.

A poet with perhaps the longest poetic career, Robert Graves (1895-1985), published his first book when he was twenty-two. Many of his poems are about love: many have as their central subject the relationships between men and women, and how the lost sense of innocence and wonder can be brought back to human elationships. These poems often view physical love as representing the emotion that brings life to the world.