A Cento

As if, on water, that unfocused she

No match lit up, nor drag ever brought near,

In her consists my happiness and thine.

So bide ye in the Maiden Tower,

While others fight for thee.


She is foremost of those I would hear praised,

I will talk no more of books, new faces, other minds.

But o, photography! As no art is,

Faithful. A dream. O light upon the wind.


But in behind our path they closed,

Though fain to let us through. I believe

I heard your master sing – ‘Poor maidy dear!”

They shall be speaking forever,

The people shall hear them forever,


And I murdered William Moore, without the leave of thee,

Her minion-knights, the gong-tormented sea,

It’s not the selfsame bird of columbine,

What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.


[To some extent in order of appearance - Larkin, Shakespeare, traditional, Yeats, Tennyson, Leonard Cohen, Hardy, Joni Mitchell.]