Robinson Jeffers
For Jeffers: On seeing Tor House and Hawk Tower
For the first time
The Tor stones have grown wistful
Through time and absence since
Your verses filled the house with
Creative passion; the gate is locked.
A hawk rides on coastal updrafts
Calling to the empty tower
For the man who is no more
But, soul-bound, searches for.
Pain is separation; Birth,
Death, a raindrop, you, me.
Better to be a lichen
Or a puddle.
You were lying by Una when
Your poems found me, a soldier
Amid the sucking cesspools
Of jungle war.
The verses slapped my naïveté;
An instrument of politics
Acting out the Groundhog Day
War Loop for my generation.
Oh yes, Shine Perishing Republic and The Wild God
Of The World still offer their warnings, but to no more
Receptive ears. The grip of the self on humanity has loosened
“Only a little” while the ooze of the festering separations
Still flows from the primal Flaw. And the rattle of the drums
Calls for the sons and daughters of this time.
Jeffers, when your lovers come and call back
The words of your mind without speaking, drumbeats
Fade, the hawk finds her soul mate, and the separations,
For that pacific interlude, begin to cohere.
Copyright Paul M Thomson 2017
Copyright © Paul Thomson | Year Posted 2021
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