THREE NEW POEMS
Afternoon Tea
An index dream or drinking bout, Her bitter monologue gathered speed In a sharp sleeper's voice. He watched The little wicket click unlatched And the starved ferret wander out, Ignorant, at first, of its own greed: But learning, as it ran and snatched.
Endlessly, like a radio, as She razed and then rebuilt the past, She gabbled on. Her greying head Turned idol : bird's mask : he said Nothing at all, seeing she was Unlatching the hutch door at last. Down the blank drives the ferret sped.
Out of the dark her comet streamed Scarlet and orange and acid green : Yet he sat baffled, that she could Zigzag so well from bad to good, From fantasy to truth, it seemed The real world's plain fact had no clean Frontier at all, from her falsehood.
Ridiculous masque and anti-masque Swept in strict logic from the dense Wood of the past to fill the gloom Inside her quiet cottage, womb
Of frenzy that yet made him ask Himself which made the richer sense— Her nightmare: or his lecture-room.
JOHN HOLLOWAY
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