Two from Thom Gunn's 1967 "Touch"

[woody-wilson.livejournal.com]

The Kiss at Bayreuth

Colours drain, shapes blur, resisting,
details swim together, the mass
of the external wobbles, sways
disintegrating, yet seems to
hesitate before it is sucked
into the eye of the cyclone.

What is this pillar with the eye
the bares and discolours the world,
surrounded by the wash of time?
The inhuman eye contemplates
its own calm inclusive fulness,
its tendency, even, toward death.

The two, their turbulence the kiss
and yet annulled by it, may then
be said to both move and be still,
move in awareness and be still,
to, for one moment and only
that moment, not think of themselves.


In the Tank

A man sat in the felon's tank, alone,
Fearful, ungrateful, in a cell for two.
And from his metal bunk, the lower one,
He studied where he was, as felons do.

The cell was clean and cornered, and contained
A bowl, grey gritty soap, and paper towels,
A mattress lumpy and not over-stained,
Also a toilet, for the felon's bowels.

He could see clearly all there was to see,
And later when the lights flicked off at nine
He saw as clearly all there was to see:
An order without colour, bulk, or line.

And then he knew exactly where he sat.
For though the total riches could not fail
--Red weathered brick, fountains, wisteria--yet
Still they contained the silence of a jail,

The jail contained a tank, the tank contained
A box, a mere suspension, at the centre,
Where there was nothing left to understand,
And where he must re-enter and re-enter.