The Mystery of St. MylornDateless, quite weightless, the Holy BoynHovers alone in frosty light.nHis naked tomb fringed with the goldnOf winter furze and aconite.nHis silver hand, his brazen footnAre fire against a sky of slatenAnd now are flesh and bone, and bynA miracle, articulate.nHere it was the virgin earthnOpened her side where he might lie.nDrew a green field above his brownUntil his huntsman passed him by.nAnd neither fell the rain nor hail,nNor even spear of grass has grown.nAnd never a rag of snow that laynUpon this roofless box of stone.nBut when beside the famished seanPrince Mylor lay as on a bed,nSilently his assassin camenAnd severed him his glittering head.nPlant your broad staff, Prince Mylor cried,nAnd it shall branch and it shall blownAnd at its foot a root shall springnAnd from that root a stream shall flow.nTell me, I asked the Holy Boy,nThe true mystery that you spell.nI leaned and listened for his voice.nIt was the ringing of a bell.nIn 1933nI see the deep November street.nThe crowd suddenly still beneathnThe dark lurch of the Castle KeepnAs though the evening held its breathnBefore the bell-man’s starting crynAnd the first rocket hit the sky.nIt was a children’s land: a tower.nShips, houses grumbling in low gear,nThe stick-man stalking through the Square,nParaffin torches slopping fire,nA child’s heart too afraid to asknWhich was a face and which a mask.nI see the gold set-piece that readn’God Save Our Empire,’ as each headnIn fireworks of the King and QueennAt the far end of Castle GreennDribbled blue flame, began to sproutnFlowers of dark. Went slowly out.nPOEMSnbynCharles CausleynnnSibard’s WellnMy house, named for the Saxon spring.nStands by the sour farmyard, the long-nDry lip that once was Sibard’s WellnBuried beneath a winding-stonenTo stop the cattle falling in;nYet underfoot is still the soundnAt last of night, at first of day,nIn country silences, a thinnLanguage of water through the clay.nAt mornings, in small light, I hearnChurn-clink, the bucket handle fall.nAn iron shirt, a sudden spearnUnprop themselves from the farm wall.nA voice, in a far, altered speechnBeneath my window seems to say,n’I too lived here. I too awokenIn quarter-light, when life’s cold truthnWas ail-too clear. As clearly spoke.’nAt St. HilarynBetween two Cornish seas, the spirenBlazes the land, the waving air.nThe dark stem of a Celtic crossnSprouts, half-grown, from the shallow grass.nA tomb, exploded, shows the bonesnOf a young sycamore. Slant stonesnCram the graveyard like ships stormbound.nA wasted urn drips shard and sand.nLike auguries, two seabirds lienMotionless in the squalling sky.nThrough rain and wind and risen snownI come, as fifty years ago,nDrawn by I know not what, to soundnA fabled shore, unlost, unfound.nWhere in the shadow of the sunnPast, present, future, wait as one.nOnly the breathing ash speaks true.nNothing is new. Nothing is new.nAs the sea slinks to where I standnBetween the water and the land.nJUNE 1988137n