Incidence:
     (Is that the word?)


Ronald Holloway gives me this
diary at the Unicorn Press,
                 and
offers beer. But
Robert Lowry is churlish
sullen and inhospitable
             as
the Atlantic waves breaking
over his sullen Irish coast,
       all
Jerseys and men with
stumpy legs and dogs with
stumpy tails, looking for
casks of rum after
   the shipwreck. But
        finding it not.
                    Which
Brings me back to the beer;
           while
Ronald seeks it, I do sit in
the sun, on a broad-based
   rock of
Volcanic origin. But
Imperturbable nature. Hard by
an ivy geranium, complete
          with
Pink stare and baby snail,
And
       There dream, watched by
Loafers, dogs with scabby
tails, sparrows, shiny car-
surfaces, hot-baked bricks
like
      Loaves crusty from
The giant’s oven,
                  And,
The Police who know no
            Better. Till
Ronald arrives with the
      beer and,
under the disapproving
    eye of Robert, we
Drink it out of a jug
Which has held nasturtiums,
        Brown
velvet nasturtiums, cinnamon,
clear
      orange flowers, flowers
absorbent of too
         much sunshine, too
great a lucidity and
grasp of
          the sun’s big idea,
too
     marked a comprehension
                     of
     what it is all about, too
     little tolerance
             of
groundlings, nidderings; star-
    squibs, the
trite and the obscure, the
       Rueful ones left out
                   when
Colour was handed round.
               From
     the earthenware influenced
     by these masterful
                 Flower-dragoons, I
Drink beer without visible
   effect, but
          not without comfort;
          And
return to sitting on the
   stone in
       the sunshine,
                Like
a lizard but not so
             green;
Salve regina, that is to say
             The
nasturtium: salve
             Imperator, the
beer. Save all of us
           except
Politicians: and Robert.

           Amen