‘A photograph of Richard Murphy, Terrible Ted Hughes, new star Douglas Dunn & yours truly. A strange study of contrasting personalities.’

Continuing to live-that is, repeat …

Silence and space.

I will climb thirty steps to my room, Lie on my bed..

hot inexplicable hours go by

I will attend to the trees and their gracious silence, To winds that move.

sun, silence, solitude

A birthday, yes, a day without rain.

Here Here silence stands Like heat. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

Just midnight.

Long lion days Start with white haze. By midday you meet A hammer of heat - Whatever was sown Now fully grown, Whatever conceived Now fully leaved, Abounding, ablaze - O long lion days!

Every exultant sense Unstrung to silence

I put my mouth Close to running water

It's lateish on Sunday evening, and I am collecting myself slowly after a very dispersed weekend

God, the weather here is frightful. Not only wet - one expects that - but cold.

Excuse this outpouring. Obviously I ought to live out in the moors somewhere.

beastly Monday

Saturday morning I go for the meat, Body all aching Likewise the feet, Fools at my elbow Gormlessly greet, Shopping is hell In stupidity street.

Morning has spread again / Through every street, / And we are strange again

If hands could free you, heart, Where would you fly? Far, beyond every part Of earth this running sky Makes desolate? Would you cross City and hill and sea, If hands could set you free?

The earth is faint, the air is sick.