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To Charles Brasch
Preface
Part One
Sleep Will Come Singly • A Ballad of Bad Omens • The Tempest • Sea Legend • Fire Without Phoenix • The Time of the Eagle • And I, In Arcady • The Beachcomber • For One Flying • A Handful of Sea Shells • A Figure at the Window • Island
Part Two
Ceremony of Pain • Dream • Soldier's Pay • Monastic Ruins • A Performance of Death & The Maiden • At a Holy Well • From a Train in the Midlands • In Radcliffe Square, Oxford • The Streets of My City • In the Fields of My Father's Youth • Colophon—The Poet to his Book
Source: Oliver, W. H., Fire Without Phoenix: Poems 1946-1954. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1957
Electronic source: Fire Without Phoenix: a TEI-conformant transcription
All poems © W. H. Oliver
Colophon—The Poet to his Book
You are the ones who slipped across the border;
You can hardly recall the panoply of your youth;
You will show less conceit in this disorder.
Many turned tail at reason's ominous face;
Some of them fell on the pikes and spears of metre;
A couple withdrew at the piteous voice of pain.
All fought my own and men's plight: heaven's order —
Heaven whose walls threw back their trumpet note;
This sent the army hot-foot from the encounter.
The long retreat was hungry, bitter and cold.
Society sniped a few of the poor survivors;
Love left most spread-eagled on the wire.
Those that were still left, dexterous escapers,
Theology caught with a withering burst of fire.
And you, at the last, have straggled across the border.
May you have grace to thank the careless guards
Who waited until you were probably over the frontier
And bid you good-bye with a shot or two at your heels
And may you distinguish friend from foe in the future,
May you remember suffering and disaster,
May you make friends where you left enmity.