Posts Tagged ‘The Many Faces of Love’

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

That Place

This time I saw the garden
From a side street by a shopping mall.
I looked across a wall, and there it was,
Full of chrysanths and wallflowers.
I could almost smell them,
They were so bright and clear.
And she was there in the garden again,
In a bright red dress, belted,
And just above her beautiful white knees.

Seeing her once more,
With her red hair framing her face,
Set me longing for her.
The past rose up to stand by me,
As if I were still with her.
And I try – how many times have I tried?
To see the way to that garden – to her.

It always looks so easy.
Take a left, keep straight on,
And head towards the high ground.
I try, but I never find it.
I never arrive.
And perhaps, looking back, I see it again;
I see her reading, or busy with the roses.
It’s been nearly seven years since I held her,
Since she was mine,
And walked the same life,
Enlivening and making a home together.

I’ve seen that garden from the river.
I caught a glimpse of it
From up against that grand old oak tree,
Near Hodden’s wood.
Sometimes I even see it in photos
In the newspaper,
Or occasionally
Watching old films on TV.
And if I don’t see the garden,
Then I might be reminded of her
In some other way.

While in K Mart,
I was idly watching a couple my age,
Selecting a freezer.
I must have been staring,
Because I was lost in the woman’s quality,
Her cleanness, her intelligence,
And her full female body.
Then suddenly I realised her man
Was looking at me,
Probably wondering why I was staring.
I smiled and looked away,
Not able to tell him
How much I had lost.

But perhaps today
I can climb across the wall,
Scramble straight to that garden.
Maybe I can keep
The shape of her in sight,
In her red dress.

Tony Crisp

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