Mother of Sons

The great themes are ended,
Too well and soon,
Not one I mended me
All in my afternoon.

I lay once conjured
In love where she lay,
All thoughts of causes then
Slipped them away.

Crabgrass and thistletop
Is all I have left me;
Not so, she comes now,
My woman, she mends me.

Faithful, she steals from
The web of my weavings,
Back-lit at dusklight
She picks at my leavings.

Storms at my tempests
And laps at my waters,
My mother of sons,
My dear lover of daughters.

Walks with me gently now
All in the night's cold
That I may be with her still,
When we grow old.

David Lewis Paget

Does She Stalk Pathways

'How much we change...
I well remember when,'
She said --
But that was years before
And now, she's dead!

Who was she - why,
And what to me,
Who once lived, died,
Yet stirs my memory?

A brief spark, struck
From some ancient flint
That caught, soared, burned
Cooled,
Teetered at the brink;

Then sputtered, died
Leaving no mark,
No trail beyond the heavens
That sped her... Dark!

Her flight was short, sharp
Exquisite and pale,
Translucent, futile
She spilt her grail

With every seed spawned
At harvest's spring,
Her womb wide
She let them in.

All ruffians and whores
She bore to this,
The swift brief spark, struck
Then nothingness.

So why, when mirrors
Tell me I'm old,
Does she stalk pathways
I'd paved with gold?

David Lewis Paget

Catherine Gables

What would you with me
Catherine Gables,
Turn my face
From my winter stables,
Call at the year
That my no-love lies in,
Treat the hurt
And the waste you're wise in,
Tease me and taunt
At the old love fables...
What would you with me,
Catherine Gables?

All of my shores
Are the grey of breakers
Seen from the tors of
Those same home-acres,
If there were time
And the old spark in me
I'd take heart
And a heart would win me,
Love was a dream
That I let slip past me;
What would you now,
Would you still unmask me?

If I could halt
At the port, no storm in
Red sky lit
At some shepherd's warning,
Maybe I'd take all the grief
That grieves me,
Bury it deep in the land
That needs me,
Bar the shutters
And bolt the stables,
Do what I would
With Catherine Gables!

David Lewis Paget

Audition

Life, a Play
In three parts, now
Is two parts done.

In this,
The final interval
We rearrange our scores,
The Orchestra, still poised
Will sit
To practice discords
At the pit.

Then like rent cloth
The curtains start,
The stage is lit;
And I would venture
At my part

Were I not so
Afraid of it.

David Lewis Paget

Tinder-Box

(Letter, 26 June 1983 from C.H. - 'By the time that I add
my sign to this page the pallid sunlight will have dragged
behind the Tree of Birds and spilled long shadows on
my lawn.')

You, who sit beneath your tree of birds
To meld your muse, turn water into wine,
Have endless summers stored against their loss
That you might call
Delighted, into words
Before their fruit has wasted at the vine.

You tame your stars, cull every flickered spark
Like glimpses, struck from some old tinder-box
Of what should be, of some essential truth
That you have intercepted
At the arc
Of lightning, gleaned from storms and summer phlox.

And through your words, discernment is distilled
In me, to run me ragged at the dawn
Expressing thoughts you sparked in reverie
Beneath your birds,
Within the earth you tilled
That I might spill long shadows at your lawn.

David Lewis Paget

From A Blue Cloud

From a blue cloud at the two o'clock
And out of the rain,
With a long step and a swift nod
The master came.

Swinging behind him a painted box
In an old and tattered bag,
He watched my eye on the mystery box
And sat on a damson rag.

Under the pleat of his purple cloak
Was the Queen of petty spades,
'We're off to the end of the rainbow, Jack
To the long, black end of days.'

Ducking the light of the morning star
We hid in a tulip bed,
But caught the beam in a bottle-jar
To light the way ahead.

The master took some tinsel foil
To shake on the fairy phlox,
He said: 'You can have the Queen of Spades
Or the painted mystery box.'

I chose the Queen, who dredged a pit
To place the box within,
He tipped his hat with a weary nod,
'I'm on my way again.'

Now often I notice the Queen of Spades
Look long and long at me,
With a sad smile, she whispers on:
'Oh what, and what might we?'

While I still watch for the blue cloud
And the two o'clock bus,
In hopes that he and the mystery box...
He never does!

David Lewis Paget

On Receiving Your letter for my 39th Grief

This poet grows grey-bearded,
Claws eyes, shuts out Seasons,
Love tales, reasons -
Lies, all lies!

Some long ague descends me
No word mends me
No sword spends me,
No love grieves me!

Lost as ever lost, I eat
My gruel,
And think of death
The tool of reason!

This long year
The black crow flies,
And takes my heart,
My head, my eyes
Beyond this season.

If I could start again...
No poet I, no pen!
No hopes, no dreams
All unfulfilled
No ragged expectations;
The hard cold light
Of truth would freeze
My lips, my eyes, my fingertips
And bond no lesion.

But now I feel the loved on keen
And pare the flesh,
While loss howls naked at the rib
And night descends
To snare my grief in.

David Lewis Paget

Dinosaurs

At what lame moment
Did our reason slip,
To leave us march forever
Lost at the cause,
With all that sullen certainty
Our catalyst,
To crust our blood, red-rim us,
Dinosaurs.

All force dissolves! All future impulse
Drags at our chain,
While others leap and gyre
Where we would tread,
So long disused, encrusted now
With crippled minds,
We only walk where, in the past
We bled!

When did the spark
Become the hated cliché?
When did 'we will'
Become the battered past;
It must have been when all eyes turned
To count the gains
That laurels fell, and turned to dust
At last!

David Lewis Paget