Needs Would Give

I've seen it in
The shadow form
That hides behind
The darkened screen,
That such of love
They saw you through
Brought only scattered
Seeds of pain.

Your planets tilted
At the tithe,
While conscience turned
Your grace to guilt,
The shadow at
Your shoulder seemed
To darken every
Need you spilt.

And every need
And every rule
Has turned your fevered
Search aside,
While bitter seeds
Took root and grew
To spare what pain
You still denied.

And now you cling
To some distress
That bitter tongues
Have dredged in spite,
While all your grace
Is sold for less
Than needs would give...
Some long night!

David Lewis Paget

My Daughters Dear

The worlds I sought and thought to win
Have slipped so far, my daughters dear;
I loved and lost them, every one,
They turned away and left me here.

The mere of memory runs deep,
And dark the depths, and chill the shore,
While those we love are often left
To perish at the warm heart's core.

For every step aside we stray,
For every hurt, and every gall,
We lose the thread that marks the path
Between each other, and the fall.

And those we love will often turn
To tear at us in bleak revenge,
For some omission, dim perceived
That pencils 'finis' at the end.

So if I miss your growing years
And all the sound of laughter near -
Tear not the web I wove you through,
I love you still, my daughters dear!

David Lewis Paget

Milady Gay

Milady Gay, whose
Breath is like a sin,
A sin, to sit upon
The light within,
Within;

The light that fractures
Forces, foreswears
The race we run -
While racked, backed and put upon
We face the face we
Trace our stencils in;
And vent our sated discontent
By pencilling our demons in.

Milady Gay, see
Not the sin in sin!
For love, lust, life, sight
Shine brightly in
The times we briefly spin;
While touch, taste, pace
Haste and promise deal
With chastity at last,
And love's hood delights all
In tight cauls at life's kiln.

David Lewis Paget

Grasmere

(From Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal - October 6th 1800.
'Monday. A rainy day. Coleridge intending to go, but did not get off.
We walked after dinner to Rydale. Determined not to print Christabel
with L(yrical) B(allads).'

I

Of all the lines
You wrote in haste
Before the dream
Was laid to waste;
With all the trappings of your spell
You wove the lay of Christabel.

Sweet Christabel, and Leoline
Whose stern and unforgiving mind
Had forged the feud with Tryermaine;
How Geraldine, the fulsome wench
Would brave the toothless mastiff bitch
To cast some all-enchanting spell -
(Jesu, Maria, shield her well),
Upon the breast of Christabel.

And now she fixes with her eye
And now she stands and stares aloft,
And though the dead all sleeping lie
Still Geraldine will whisper, soft
At some unseen but seeming host
That at her birth, our lady lost.

And now, entreating: 'lie abed
While I seek footsteps in my head,
And pray for your Sir Leoline,'
Thus spake the wiley Geraldine
Who, letting fall her silken dress
She turned to Christabel her breast,
Bewitching with half-naked side
The maiden who abed had lied
To watch this sight, so long denied.

II

At what point in their dull applause
Became the thought a certainty
That this in print must never be?
Were there lines that took the breath
From this austere togetherness -
As: 'Christabel then gave her breast
To some long-lingered, sweet caress?'

Then as the wanton, Geraldine,
The daughter of Sir Leoline oppress'd,
She ran her fingertips
Across the moist and maiden lips
Of Christabel, exquisite pain -
We walked to Rydale, in the rain.

And when her maiden thighs were spent
With all that Geraldine had lent
The lady Christabel lay still,
Deep murmured in some hidden rill,
That stole across her countenance
And took the place of innocence.

III

And in the morning, drizzle rain
That beat upon some window pane
Saw Coleridge in Grasmere pent;
While Christabel lay late abed
To footsteps, sounding in her head -
Then took to paper, pen and ink
And wrote - 'Determined not to print.'

David Lewis Paget

For Leslie - (A 21 Year Old Divorcee)

The past is neatly shed!
The long mistakes and distant heartaches
Trail no longer to your bed.
Fortune waits with bated breath
To promise you such better things,
Chrysalids yield butterflies,
And butterflies reveal -
Bright Wings!

David Lewis Paget.

Contage - (a conversational montage)

We stared the night at stars, as in a dream
That one might fall, to prove that we were real,
And show the world the order of some scheme
That we had launched, to tip the earth aside,
Beam-ended, tripped and floated cobweb wide
Where none before had thought to see or feel.

Then as we stood, they beckoned us to them,
They beamed the waste that tricked us into flight
While conjured with the bitterness of men
We sensed what none of us could ever see
As long as Mars, unconquered in your tree,
Remained to set afire the pitch of night.

'But surely, you have caught some puny stars
On canvas, where you trapped them with your brush,
As I have scrawled and inked the train of Mars
In manuscripts, on envelopes and leaves
Enough to stay the mind of man that grieves
His violence, once the world has turned to rust?'

'Too late,' you said, 'for time is running out,
And we, two puny souls, are not enough;
The world will rush, like lemmings, to decease
Before the robber barons slake their lust.
For gilt and gold and oil sate their creed,
While art and grace and culture turn to dust.'

David Lewis Paget

Brick By Brick

In every word, in every smile
We distance drift a further mile,
By every whispered fare-you-well
You brick by brick our wishing well.

In every loving touch, or kiss
The seed will start my heart to miss,
And every time you touch his hand
My blood lies weeping on the land.
In every soft and sweet caress
Despair will feed my wilderness!

David Lewis Paget

Before The Storm

If only I
Had caught the hand
That tore the shroud
And split the wand
To scatter pain
Across the land...

If only You
Had pulled the thorn
Of all my dearth
From in me born,
Or stripped your pride
Before the storm...

If only we
If only we
Had loved enough
To halt and see;
If only we...

David Lewis Paget

Bad Blood

Stars clash, and pale moons
Gloat over you, my pretty witch
While brooding shadows of the loom
Reflect you in some shining dish;
What vivid patterns of despair
Have you designed to harness me
Within the ever-changing snare
Of your disingenuity?

Your rage has torn the tattered storm,
The sheeted sky I crawled beneath,
While slatterns, with some jealous dye
Have stained us, injudiciously;
Of all I left behind in you
Some slim deceit has marked your moan
To wean you from disloyal truth
And cast you from your tragic throne.

Embattled clouds stretch you ahead,
Gales whip you onward, as before
The tides conspire with your desire
To drive against a dismal shore;
You sit astride the wreck of dreams
Like some grim ruin, at the flood
To loose the rusted anchor seams
And leave sad tidings, in bad blood.

David Lewis Paget

Against The Rain

My lady, you once sought my drift
When all the world was scatter-pain,
And in the shallows of my shift
You turned my face against the rain;
(You caught my trace in your refrain).

Word-weary in remembrance,
Embittered by a long distrust
I thought that love was some mischance
That tears and time would turn to rust;
(To leave us bleeding, as it must).

But you long drained the bitter cup
That saw me tortured at the lip,
While I divined at thigh and sup
The virgin grace that gave me sip;
(You loved me at the lowering lip).

If only care is all we find
While forging links to make the mend,
The long disasters bought in kind
May not affect the way we spend;
(And love may win us, in the end).

David Lewis Paget