1
I saw a woman in a green field
Threading upon her hands the bright beads of song
threading her voice among the tall bright ears
and her skin like the skin of water lay
over her body where the light was moving
and from her breasts the daisies dropped like milk
there sang a woman in a field of ears
under a midday heavy as a shroud
and on its windless pool her white song fell
and when the song moved the crop moved with it
and the skyline’s blue dust began to rise
the milky flowers in its upright wind
and from the hedges her song called white children
and from the dropping tree above her head
her song’s long finger shook a river down
there sang a woman in a field of ears
and her song like bright beads scattered
fell round her thighs among the grass
for this song is living, is time
no virgin knows this song but women only
2
There is a white mare that my love keeps
unridden in a hillside meadow white
as a white pebble, veined like a stone
a white horse, whiter than a girl
And now for three nights sleeping I have seen
her body naked as a tree for marriage
pale as a stone that the net of water covers
and her veined breasts like hills the swallow islands
still on the corn’s green water: and I know
her dark hairs gathered round an open rose
her pebbles lying under the dappled sea.
And I will ride her thighs’ white horses.
3
In the stony night move the stars’ white mouths
a net of mouths is looking for food
I think we are their food
they will unlock our fingers, even if we lie
closer than bone to bone closer than the grave’s
white tangled dancers. The streams and the sea will help them
we shall not be able to touch each other
when we feel cold. Somewhere I saw
two Christian lovers waiting in the sand
and round them went the lion, like the stars
in that last minute feeling each others flesh
and love whose silence, like the bright silence of wind
washes the trees and islands until night:
till their joined hands sink in a darkness of sand
4
This was Briseis’ way: she was a bridge,
a white flute for her master’s fingers
he smelling of war and she of woman
breaking her wheeling waves against his rock
This was Milanion’s way (the crowd gone home,
and she, trembling to be alone with him)
pinioned his white swan there after the race
and made her thighs a necklace of his own
or this was Helen’s way, she, a dark mare
let down her mane, his mouth upon her nape
kneeling, a penitent, her face hidden,
and feeling only Paris in his hands
This was Octavia’s way, the rider’s way
straight like a candle, her hair a flame,
and outstretched Anthony saw in her half-light
her white horse galloping beside his own
or this was Lais’ way, an outspread ship
arid he a swimmer on her whitening pool
spanning her hollows with his open hand
wide opened, like a county or a star
And then the sleep, in various figures, still
his face between her breasts, and she awake
holding him sleeping, listening to the clocks
5
The moon fills up its hollow bowl of milk
bodies grow blue like pebbles in a stream
and light falls like a wind in summer stripping
girls into statues, showing their round limbs
moving but frozen under the watery cloth:
tonight I watch her mask move into sleep
her breathing like a bee on a wood’s floor
coming and going to and from the light
She is my field, and in her furrows run
my ways like rain, and the crops of her shadows
are pools, are a wild sea. And she has mountains
stranger than feathers, hard as fishes. There
fall in her hollows shadows of orchard trees
that follow the moon’s circle like a tide
grassy nets that move on the dropped apples.
Body, white continent
on all whose beaches break the seas of years
this is the surf they say the dying hear.
We both are islands, and our grassy edge
creeps inwards, like the healing of a wound.
And the windy light is time, a limitless water,
a white sea lying restless as a hand
where no rock rests the gull, and no tree stands
ever, forever moving, lifeless, alone.
(Alexander Comfort)
More Poetry from Alexander Comfort:
Alexander Comfort Poems based on Topics: Nature, Night, Time, Sleeping, Death & Dying, Sleep, Summer, Home, Lions, Light, Woman- Song For The Heroes (Alexander Comfort Poems)
- Notes For My Son (Alexander Comfort Poems)
- Fear Of The Earth (Alexander Comfort Poems)
- Pick Upon Pick . . . (Alexander Comfort Poems)
- The Lovers (Alexander Comfort Poems)
Readers Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: Night Poems, Light Poems, Time Poems, Death & Dying Poems, Nature Poems, War & Peace Poems, Home Poems, Sleep Poems, Woman Poems, Summer Poems, Water PoemsBased on Keywords: pinioned, half-light, spanning, inwards, lais, briseis, octavia, milanion
- Book III - Part 03 - The Soul is Mortal (Lucretius Poems)
- Out Of The East (John Freeman Poems)
- Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos. - Canto III. (Matthew Prior Poems)
- Of The Nature Of Things: Book II - Part 03 - Atomic Forms And Their Combinations (Lucretius Poems)
- Rhodon And Iris. Act III (Ralph Knevet Poems)