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