Author Archive

Your Warmth

How warm the darkness, hiding all our faults, making us into voices, a warmth when near each other. Our fears are lost and found in the darkness, and I have done both, for you are with me.

Words escape for a while as the heated matter of the long lain feelings find words to compass. But the words ceased, and I fall forward on your breast to be healed, and to heal you. The deep lain engulfs us in silence. I am a child in your arms, and they are comfort. Hold me warm to you. Be what you are with me. Stroke my hair and my stubble with your fingers, and put your cheek to my forehead. Whisper nothing, nor think beyond the moment of what we are feeling.

So warm are you, so willing to my arms, each movement a response, each kiss a satisfaction. Tenderly be with me. Handle my affections as your own, and take away the wanting with your love. To you I am. To you I will be. To me you are – all in that moment of pillowing my head upon yourself. There is no more than this…

Art by Alexander Danel

Our Child

I felt something stir when her name was spoken. It was strange to feel it move upwards in me, released from some region I have not yet discovered. Its movements were gentle and explorative, and I knew it was fresh and untouched by the rest of me.

It was silent when it came, and I let the silence remain the better not to startle it. It had heard her name, and the vibration had woken it. But the name had passed, and it looked about in me wonderingly, listening and perplexed. There was no shape to it, only a quality that lit up whatever in me it touched, rather like a passing candle in some old gallery. Yet it seemed trying to form the name inarticulately, and failing.

I repeated the name to myself quietly. “Sylvia. Sylvia!”

It took up the echo, now far away. “Sylvia.” But it wasn’t the name it was seeking. The name was only a finger of confusion, touching awake memories, and only then did I know it for what it was.

It was a child. My own at that, and I had not known it. Sensing the recognition, it repeated her name again, questioningly, “Sylvia?”

But I could give it is no hope, for I had none. My poor inverted dream, projected backwards into myself until it was lost in my shadow, from whence her name had made it known again, unrecognisable.

Now I could see it. What a sweet face the child has. How like my own when young. Yet with more loneliness and pathos than my own. How could it be otherwise though, for I had gathered those two since childhood, and had wept them into the features. The trusting eyes, the loneliness; I had dreamt them all for Sylvia, and lost them in myself for lack of somewhere else to put them.

Yes, how like me the child is, and yet it has her nose, and the auburn tint of her hair.

Strange dream to trouble me by day. Strange blessed dream, for the hands, the lovely hands, were not hers nor mine, but those of an holy angel.

Looking back to see where it had come from in myself, there was no path, no passageway – nothing. And looking, it melted quite suddenly back into that very same nothingness. All that is left is the silence. But it does not disturb me now, for I know there, in the shadow, is an angel.

Young Girl

Is that somebody crying outside in the wind?
Some lonely person dying,
Weeping because they sinned?
No, it’s only a poor girl’s sobbing,
Carried by the gale,
Only a young girl,
Lost in the lonely night,
Limbs and feelings tired,
With no strength left to fight.

Only the comfort of being alone,
To weep as deep as she cares,
Walking along with the wind and leaves,
Blown against her hair.

There’s nothing in words to say,
And nothing in doing to do,
But walk with her wind fluttered shadow,
And share her misery too.
It’s only a young girl’s arm in mine,
Slim and cold from the night,
And I touch the arm,
And I leave the arm,
And I know what I did was right.

There’s a girl in the wind and I call her,
With a cry the same as her own.
And the wind it carries it to her,
And she knows she’s no longer alone.
For the wind has carried the weeping,
From all the ages of men,
Has carried the breath from the sleeping,
And put it back again.
For the wind is the soul of women,
The spirit of men’s unrest,
And we carry its child within us,
Living in our breast.

Yesterday

Gradually you undressed.
As shy as you are,
You took off your pride.
Then, with a glance at me
Off came the bandages
Covering the wounds
Left by lost love
And abandoned hopes.
There were tears in your eyes
As your face changed
With the pain revealed.
No words were spoken,
But your expression
Was a history
Of your dashed eagerness.

Seeing your red scars,
And knowing my own clumsiness,
I said I was not the man for you,
Being too likely to create more damage.
You looked at me,
Your face swollen with misery,
And you said,
“I don’t want anyone else!”

Wondering

I’ve been wondering
After listening to women talk
About desires and love,
Why such a push for sex?
Alicia said she needed it,
Or her sense of identity suffered,
And when she split with Michael
It hit her badly.
Rachel explained
She wants sex so much
That if she has no regular partner
She has some “fuck buddies”
She can phone
For a noncommittal shag.
I remember when I first visited
She pulled me into the house,
Closed the door,
And we were on the floor.
Sandra thought perhaps
There is confusion
Over need for love.
She gets love with open legs.
But I sense there’s more to it than that.
Mary has an ocean
Of warmth and connection
Flowing out of her
As sexual pleasure.
But Sue has met
Troubles with her men that way;
Hassles, pain, disturbance,
Followed in the wake of romance.
Yet she presses on,
Supporting her child alone,
Still hoping to be loved,
And perhaps there is the key —
Unmet longings,
Needs never fulfilled,
Parts of us pressing
To grow and flower
With so much to give,
So much to receive —
And who will be our
Partner in it?
To become.
To reproduce.
To know oneself.
To find a helpmate and support.
They are all involved.
Perhaps we need so many people.
Someone to want us specially
And recognise who we are.
A delightful sexual partner;
Then we need a practical
Down-to-earth problem solver;
And of course,
Someone to stimulate our mind,
Our creativity and growth.
Oh yes, the friend we can
Tell everything to,
Without their judgment or pressure.

And I?
Well, I hear and witness these things.
There are so many ways
Of seeing people.
David said to me
That his lover
Told him he must be impotent
Because his manhood would not rise.
And he watched her
Applying vaginal lubricant
Because she produced none
Of her own.
And he thought
There are two of us here
Who are impotent,
But only one admitting it.
So is it all a crazy fit,
An excess of our hormones
That we get shaken by?
Or perhaps a flowering love
That promises so much,
But in so many of us,
Has only put a tip above
The surface of our life,
The glory of which
Fails to emerge.

So I walk by the lake shore,
Watching the swimmers,
Without much urge to
Be immersed myself.
More needy of warm companionship.
Your body near me,
Than to be in the
Waves and currents of sex.
But I am an old man,
And life gets easier
And hormones less.

Waters of Life

With the juice of
Your body
Still on me
I am anointed
With life and love.
Here is the Holy spring
We bathe in
For renewal.
Here is the place
To kneel
For blessing.
For you
Have bathed
Me
In yourself.

Art by Lee Bogle

Walking With Me

To discover love,
When I have walked
So long alone,
And find you
Walking with me.
To be loved,
When it was I
Who killed love
In my youth,
And stood with
Bloodied hands
Before You.
To find love dead,
And bend with pain
To tend it.
To plant one fallen
Tear of it and
Call it into growth
Through the years.
Till I can stand
With arms raised
To touch its boughs
And kiss its tender
Leaves.
To love you
Through the branches
And the leaves
Of my soul’s years.
To love you
Tender, awakening,
Reaching for what
I lost and was lost
Without.

Tumbling

Tumble, words, like couples in the woods.
Please her at each touch,
And yet be free to look upon the sky.
Or at the pigeons starting from the trees
As we pass by.
Kiss her warmly on the cheek
And on the breast, my words.
And while she whispers me
Into the deep wood,
Turn smiling from her and run
Eager fingers through the warm
Places of the Earth’s Soul.

The Revelation

I walked the ancient pavements,
Where churches built on temples stood,
And temples had in yet older times
Been raised on holy groves
And mounts where gods had trod.

And I, wandering
And at ease with the paths
And ancient stones,
Came to a low wall
Above an open rising courtyard.
And there below me,
In that place of worship,
A woman stood naked and adored.

No painting beauty,
Yet beautiful.
Full limbs with
Swelling hips and breasts,
Simply and wonderfully woman.

She was and is the revelation –
There for any to see the splendour
Of this most ancient goddess –
Revealed and revealing –
While I knew all the ancient fires
That burn in worship,
And heard the voices
Singing to her flowering.

The Princess

Is this what it’s like to be with a princess?
To stand near to someone,
To be sometimes touched by fingertips,
To look into the shining eyes of a woman
Apparently so innocent of the world,
With so much quality,
That I experience a constant delight?

Of course I have loved before,
But with my Princess the love
Is for a beautiful person
Who can be looked at,
But not owned,
Not picked up and held.
Yet the reserve,
The slight remove,
Is part of the continuing pleasure
Of shared laughter,
Of a special wonder
In watching her move and speak.

Strange though that
Princess is an ordinary woman,
And these special feelings
Take me to a world
I have never known before.
It is a world of royalty and courtiers.
It is a place where the time
Is not crowded with duty,
And people can be together without hurry.

Though you may not guess it,
This is how I am with you,
As if in some past age in which
I am a special companion to you –
And you – well,
You are a princess I love and serve.

Strange, isn’t it,
That there are no kings and queens here?

Tony Crisp

The Kiss

I have kissed your lips and eyes,
I have kissed your breast, my fair.
But the sweetest kiss of all,
Was when you kissed my hand in prayer.

You have stirred my heart to life,
Given me both laugh and care.
But I felt the most my dear,
When you kissed my hand in prayer.

Memories have sprung from you,
Memories of your smile and hair,
But a graven memory deep,
Is when you kissed my hand in prayer.

We may never know the truth,
Of each other’s souls laid bare,
But in life the nearest came,
When you kissed my hand in prayer.

Art by Caroline Atkinson

Tony Crisp

The First Time

The first time was strange. There had been so many ideas about what it would mean, about what it would change in Eddy’s life. He had lived all his life with a personal rule about fidelity, about creating a place beyond which one did not go. Being with Inez had taken Eddie to the very edge of that place, and it had disturbed him that he did not wish to stop at that frontier. Nevertheless his desire to deepen the relationship, to go beyond the limits of physical contact that he had lived by, had disturbed him. While away from Inez he found he could rebuild the walls of his border again. In doing so though he realised clearly that the wall shut out the light. By his own act he made a shadow in which he lived. And was that place where fewer things grew where he wanted to dwell?

The first time? Well, that’s how it seemed in his mind. It appeared an irrevocable step which once taken could never be reversed. Inez also seemed hesitant, and he welcomed this. They wandered along the boundary fences of their own desires and leaned over the wall where it was low enough, and kissed and touched each other’s body where gaps in the structure allowed. What beautiful welcome kisses, what history they each poured into them, what shyness, what daring, what hidden feelings, what obvious needs – what?

The first time, when it happened, Eddie had committed himself. It was not taken from him while he half hid behind his wall. He had decided to walk through. He had stepped forward to meet whatever change might come upon him. He met Inez walking toward him also, and the loving, body to body, flesh into and around flesh – lips and tongues and arms – hands and eyes looking, gazing into eyes, body fitting into body and body fitting around body, comfortably. There was movement and waves of movement. There was waiting and there was no waiting but taking and giving and pouring over each other.

That was the first time that Eddie had dared beyond his own decisions. That was the first time Eddie had been bold enough to defy the rules he himself had made. Strange how we create worlds and live in them, forgetting we are the creator, and bowing down to the laws of the land.

That was the first time that Eddy, having gone beyond himself, realised with puzzlement that he had already been to that place. Or perhaps a better way of telling it is to say there was no separation, no gap, no difference. In the moments of his passion the realisation – no the condition of his body and heart – made him aware that the love he felt now had already existed. There had never been a wall. There had never been a boundary to cross, except in his mind.

The feeling was so delicious and unexpected it locked him to Inez with subtle yet strong connections. When a river joins and flows into another river, you can never separate them, as soft as the water might be. So Eddy realised a wonderful ease. How could there be guilt or betrayal when this side of the wall was the same as the other? The same because the joining of Inez and Eddy in the body was only an incident continuing something that had already happened when they reached out across the wall, when they admitted how much they wanted each other.

In trying to tell Inez how he felt, Eddy said to her, “There was movement. There was change. There was the beginning and end of our love making, and there were words spoken. But in it all, I knew a thing that wasn’t moving or changing. In those moments there was something that had existed in all the moments before. And in the difference of those moments there was no difference. I had not moved. I had not lost anything. Nothing had changed.”

“Do you mean you had no feelings about us or what happened?” Inez asked.

“No. But I barely understand what I experienced myself. Strange, but I cannot grasp this thing to show it to you. No more than I can grasp what I felt as I sat and held you afterwards. I remember asking if you were sharing it, the awareness of you in my arms smaller in body and in some way like a gentle face upturned trustingly turned to warmth. And I as a rugged tree which your mobile form found life in.”

“I know there is something I love, whether it be as a man or a tree or a spirit. I don’t know. I have not found words either.”

So in the changing moments of his life, Eddy found constancy. There was nothing taken and nothing given, even though there was change and day passed into night.

That was the first time.

Tony Crisp

The Elms

I’ll walk up over the hills to you,
And meet you under the elms.
There by the rough barked trunk we’ll lean,
There where the cows have rubbed;
And we’ll talk and laugh,
And we’ll love my one,
Out in the open air.

Walk down over the hills to me,
And I’ll wait for you there in the dell.
And no one shall know what we’ve seen my love,
Save the old elms where we’ve been my love,
There in the cow dunged green.

All that we left behind is lost,
Touching upon the hills.
Meeting for happiness,
Nothing but happiness,
Just when the voices call.
Up from the valley,
Down from the hilltop,
Feeling each others pull.

Asking no name and giving no name,
But parting and coming afresh again.
Back to the spot when our hearts are closed,
To open them out anew.
Back to the elm where the cow dung’s brown,
Just for the loving of you.

Tony Crisp

Echoes

All my hopes are so transparent now,
So still has the night become.
And in the stillness I know that I love you.
The quietness tells me over and over.
But there is always an echo
From somewhere beyond,
Beyond my knowing,
Out of the invisible.
It too says, “I love you,”
And is speaking it back to me.
Not merely echoing,
But saying it to me.
And the echo that speaks
Makes reply to my hopes
As they rise, back out of the invisible
Into which I had unknowingly dropped them.
Up out of the boundless
Comes my hope for you,
Humming a song
That makes some part of me ache,
Because you are not here.
And the echo says, “You are not here!”
And there is pain in the voice.
But the pain in the voice
Is my own pain echoed back,
And if I could but sing exultant love,
The echo would be exultant too.

Tony Crisp

The Cuckoo

Through the dark trees flew the cuckoo.
Velvet and silken green –
Green and welcoming as a young woman’s skin
Warm and living,
And in flew the cuckoo.
Through branches tipped by soft green –

It was the nest calling him from his flight,
It was a new nest, a warm nest,
Smooth and curven round.
It was an egged nest,
Yet for him a virgin still.
A neat nest, a nest he hadn’t known.

Through the dark trees flew the cuckoo.
His wings touched
Young green places on the tree,
And the tree thrilled at the stranger
And offered its nest.

The cuckoo flew round the tree
Wondered at its enchantment.
Excited at the pregnant nest,
Savouring the feeling
It might have around him,
And delighted at the fresh green flames
That enveloped him
Flying and laughing.

Come in – whispered the tree.
And the cuckoo flew
Through the dark branches
Trembling.
And the tree
Sweetened him with her perfume
Pushing him trembling, laughing,
Into her warm nest.

The green
Was quietly reflected in his eyes.
The dark branches were still.
Wild bird who flew
Laughing over the woodlands
And cold streams – spoke the tree,
Whispering and breathless;
Spend in me the moonlight
And the perfumed winds.
Leave me the memory of this moment.

And the cuckoo laid an egg,
Weeping at its loss.
Through the dark branches
And green living places
Flew the cuckoo,
Leaving the tree fearing
Yet excited at its sin.

Over the heads of the trees
The cuckoo laughed
As the wind claimed it.
And none knew but he –
And the green velvet heart
Of the tree.

And the green velvet heart
Of the tree,
Loved above all else,
The precious tremble laid egg
Of the cuckoo.

Tony Crisp

The Bride

I am sitting alone,
In my small room,
Looking at our wedding photographs.
And I wonder how long it takes
To appreciate someone.
You are so young in those photographs.
So beautiful.
In every picture you are shining
With the joy of the day.
Was I blind not to see
The radiant woman who was my wife?
Did some private torment eat out my heart?
And here I am in some
Strange country of separation,
A country I have wandered to over the years.
And in this foreign land,
My darling woman,
I am so sorry.
I am so sorry.

Tony Crisp

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Tony Crisp

Author Archive

Your Warmth

Our Child

Young Girl

Yesterday

Wondering

Waters of Life

Walking With Me

Tumbling

The Revelation

The Princess

The Kiss

The First Time

The Elms

Echoes

The Cuckoo

The Bride

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