I spent the day reading Charles Nicholl's `Somebody Else', which is
a life of Rimbaud concentrating on his Abyssinian adventures. I would
recommend the book to anybody. It put me in mind that I never got
round to publishing my sequence `civilisation: a diary' from 1970-1
and I thought I would tender my Rimbaud/Holderlin poems for which
I have a deep affection. It was silly of me not to include them in
my first book in 1985, but better late than never. I see a Selected
Holderlin is due to be published. I would strongly recommend David
Constantine's literary biography. And I wish they would put Prater's
Rilke out in paperback. But my poems:
pagan
the coffin wends through Charleville,
it is a rich day for rags;
we thought you painted our rosary.
little is left but the weeping of children,
spawned was your growth;
pagan.
perhaps, we believe you.
that the sun is good,
the snow black as a charnel house.
no epithets.
there will be other gods.
`...and yet none more wonderful than man'
in homage,
Scardinelli;
in homage.
yours was the solstice,
the Attic sun.
Diotima: you could not survive her;
for poets there is only one giving,
one bittersweet.
now wait the drunken intruder
to wake the Christian night.
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