Robin Gilbert - Poems: Mycenae, 1964, Chloe, Frost on walls

Mycenae, 1964 

They say that Agamemnon held this hill.

I can well believe it. 

                                     His spirit still

(and unstill) stalks these stones, and scans in vain

the northward-marching mountains for a flame -

beacon to tell him "Troy is built again!"

The sun, a blood-red omen, waits to set.

Night, in the wings, hangs heavy like a net.

The lovers, eager at the brink, forget

the boy Orestes.

                              Far beneath the walls,

harsh in the valley, the hidden magpie calls.

 Chloe

after Horace

                               

You avoid me still -

like a fawn

in the woods

alone,

like a frightened fawn

that has lost

its mother,

Chloe.

The empty forest

comes alive

with hidden

perils.

Imagination

runs amok.

Danger comes

and goes.

A little shiver

of the leaves -

spring moving

gently.

A lizard flickers

green and gone,

blurred shadow

following.

A sudden shudder

of small limbs,

a heart's fast

beating.

 Frost on walls

"Good fences make good neighbours."  So wrote Frost,

      If only by way of upending his neighbour's saw.

Yet, wherever a stone falls, his hand is there:

His quarrel is with walls, not walls' repair.

A broken wall's a wall for mending.  There is a law

     Of love - and, without such labours, love is lost.