All Poems
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Sea
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
1
(Windless Summer)Between the glass panes of the sea are pressed
Patterns of fronds, and the bronze tracks of fishes. 2
(Winter)Foam-ropes lasso the seal-black shiny rocks,
Symphony In Red
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Within the church
The solemn priests advance,
And the sunlight, stained by the heavy windows,
Dyes a yet richer red the scarlet banners
Epitaph For Our Children
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Blame us for these who were cradled and rocked in our chaos;
Watching our sidelong watching, fearing our fear;
Playing their blind-man's-bluff in our gutted mansions,
Their follow-my-leader on a stair that ended in air.
Unlyric Love Song
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Now I (no communist, heaven knows!
Who have kept as my dearest right to close
My tenth door after I've opened nine to the world,
To unfold nine sepals holding one hard-furled)
Shall - or shall try to - offer to you
A communism of two ...
Never
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Suddenly, desperately
I thought, "No, never
In millions of minutes
Can I for one second
The British
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
We are a people living in shells and moving
Crablike; reticent, awkward, deeply suspicious;
Watching the world from a corner of half-closed eyelids,
Afraid lest someone show that he hates or loves us,
Afraid lest someone weep in the railway train.
To Be Blind
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Is it winds
curling round invisible corners?
Polyphony of perfumes?
Antennae discovering an axis,
erecting the architecture of a world?
Polyphony In A Cathedral
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Music curls
In the stone shells
Of the arches, and rings
Their stone bells.
Discovery
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
When you are slightly drunk
Things are so close, so friendly.
The road asks to be walked upon,
The road rewards you for walking
Birch Tree
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
The birch tree in winter
Leaning over the secret pool
Is Narcissus in love
With the slight white branches,
Cinema Screen
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Light's patterns freeze:
Frost on our faces.
Light's pollen sifts
Through the lids of our eyes ...
Empty Room
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
The clock disserts on punctuation, syntax.
The clock's voice, thin and dry, asserts, repeats.
The clock insists: a lecturer demonstrating,
Loudly, with finger raised, when the class has gone.
Meeting
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell,
Cats' meetings are neat, tactual, caressive.
Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak.
Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge.
The Children Look At The Parents
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
We being so hidden from those who
Have quietly borne and fed us,
How can we answer civilly
Their innocent invitations?
Attack On The Ad-Man
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
This trumpeter of nothingness, employed
To keep our reason dull and null and void.
This man of wind and froth and flux will sell
The wares of any who reward him well.
Houses
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
People who are afraid of themselves
Multiply themselves into families
And so divide themselves
And so become less afraid.
Black Morning Lovesong
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
And the question finds no answer
And the tune misleads the dancer
And the lost look finds no other
And the lost hand finds no brother
And the word is left unspoken
Till the theme and thread are broken.
Black On Black
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Serrations of chimneys
Stone-black perforate
Velvet-black dark.
A tree coils in core of darkness.
June Sick Room
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
The birds' shrill fluting
Beats on the pink blind,
Pierces the pink blind
At whose edge fumble the sun's
Day Dream
© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
One day people will touch and talk perhaps
easily,
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as
sunlight,
