The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea Read Online Free

coarse red track
through beet-fields and water-cress.
No map, only moth and star
and pine, the German weather
pleasing but without glamour.
The peasants laughed. He could not.
Something was waiting for him,
a little havoc of exquisite blue eyes,
the kindness of puzzles
and the quarrels of politicians.
His heart spoke in an unknown tongue.
CHAPTER 2—HUNT
    Daylight and velveteen morning,
fried eggs and blue granite.
His mind was a dark stone.
Was there really a corpse?
Might not the purpose of the devil
be to break the plump and soft?
He rested for ten minutes
by the car factory
where Said was burned.
He had tasted the prince’s hand
in Cairo. Bees, verbena,
agapanthus, that hot breath.
He had been filled. But after that?
CHAPTER 3—FATE
    Strawberries, turquoise snowdrifts,
satisfactory hot food, the same pumpkins
drying on the shingle, green water.
The afternoon enlivened by the thought
of being unpleasant in the sulphur baths
with her English friend. Letters
to Bolivia, Uruguay, Scotland.
The quiet cancelling-out of the soul.
CHAPTER 4—DIFFICULT
    Meaning is nothing. Nothing.
To understand you have to get down
into the meadow of twinkling lights.
CHAPTER 5—GONE
    The sun, the road, this earth,
the body, food, sleep, questions,
judgement, medicines,
a rifle bullet, endless walks,
the works of Walter Savage Landor,
public houses, veal, goat, tea,
good government, bad government,
old mischief, new brooms,
a woman shot against a wall,
a deal, an aeroplane, the logic
of events, that solemn river,
a tombstone over the border.
CHAPTER 6—RAIN
    They did not expect comfort.
They turned and stood
in the acetylene dazzle,
the gentleman queer
and the plain German dyke.
Her car was in disrepair.
He suggested coffee.
“I know you.” “How?”
“The prince. That evening …”
Question. Answer. Bad news.
His blue eyes had a light in them
that scored the heart.
CHAPTER 7—LESS
    The delicacy of the situation.
The youth of a nation.
The toy shops of fame.
The old, fierce game.
Delirious applause.
Loyalty to the cause.
The smoke of a train.
The cornfield plain.
The wolf’s cup.
Farm boys strung up.
The heart a stone.
The years alone.
A photograph of a face.
The mercy of the human embrace.
CHAPTER 8—MEND
    The sack over his head.
His last minutes,
treated as a common dog.
A toilet, blood,
two smoking wires.
A memory of Cambridge,
soda water on the terrace,
a sleepy cat.
The sound of triggers
at the back of his head.
An open window.
Guns. A turtle-dove.
CHAPTER 9—NIGHT
    We expect a pattern,
but the only song
is a crazy noise
of philosophy and accident,
calamity and transformation,
a rare black comedy
of hideous things
and ragged lights
in an adjacent field.
CHAPTER 10—AURA
    So small a thing
that little room of sleep,
yet it was sealed to him.
He walked the empty street.
Hot breath of baking.
Garbage in the gutters.
A bicycle. The derelict
torches of the stars.
CHAPTER 11—BLOOD
    Sea-sick, light-headed,
the swell strong, the honeycomb
clouds scattering. Time
telescoped. Mere antique dust
her lovers now. She was a wolf,
exotic, reckless. Women
were like horses, to be broken.
The troubled girl with amber hair
that she had forced, the trembling
countess, Janet, picturesque
Miss Squire … That desperate
hot trust. Her heart poised
like a falcon for the swoop.
The wild relief of sex.
CHAPTER 12—ROPE
    The English had the house under observation
and had come to certain conclusions.
It was done circumspectly so as not to alarm.
There was no evidence of human presence.
But what was the meaning of the distant bells?
That horrid certainty. The halted, faint notes.
Spilt lime. A spiral staircase. Light.
A door unlocked. Inside, rotting boards
and paper dropping from the walls, the odour
of a barber’s shop, the slow turn
of the monstrous gargoyle and that click,
as if a clock were running down.
CHAPTER 13—HOME
    The city sparkled in the sunlight
as a waiter brought the morning paper.
From it stared a face of … Oh,
it was ridiculous.