ANDREW MAYNE POETRY
Poems Published in Magazines (2010-13): a selection of ten
OUT OF THE DE GREY LIBRARY
A manor house, late eighteenth century
with lawns that shelve down to a lake with swans:
my mind runs on lines by W.B.
though I’m reading a volume of Tennyson’s.
Priming the pump – for something of my own?
No juice for months, but as the weekend guest
of a friend (absent for the afternoon)
who runs this place for the National Trust,
you’d think I’d grab an opportunity
to scrounge my subs for the confraternity.
“O heart, look down and up/ Serene, secure…”
I clock the full echo – Gerard Manley;
at least the fourth time – parallels galore
by now scholarly charted? No doubt, amply.
For me you link joint equal – ‘Best Recorder
of Nature’s Micrography’ (to me a blur):
that ragged corner of a cloud’s disorder;
the exact crosshatching of one wild flower.
Well, early spring drizzle’s hardly a lure,
but maybe my heart needs its ‘look up’ cure.
Once in the Dingle, I plod gamely on;
I pass glade-naves of pines and play the claque
to broad brushes of bluebells – that clean blue john.
Then a wall of paint blocks the bend in the track:
daub-swirls of oils that look jig-sawed by age –
yet seeming hardly dried, these tints of green.
Now ramifications of branch engage
to draw me into a Sherwood dimension.
Here’s stillness – sought by town- and book-dweller.
Tinny rain applauds on my umbrella.
The Interpreter’s House (46)
Poem 4
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