FULL OF STAR’S DREAMING: PETER REDGROVE 1932-2003



Other Rooms
i.m. Peter Redgrove

Full moon, high tide,
smell of salt in the air;
oceans can seem kind
but a man got washed away.

Windows emit more light
than pale sun gives out:
this was the house
of the laborator.

He owned
a collection of hills,
the secrets of pools,
rich smells and clay ooze.

What he knew
could only be said
in the language of thunder,
seen in sand and stone.

Departing from us
he left books of wisdom
and magic in the world;
many words of blessing.

The future’s full of stories
and other rooms, unexplored.
They are in a different country
where we have no choice but to go.

Absence marks the opening of days,
loss grows fainter as the wind
tears his voice away. It is only
truly dark within the cave of self.

© Rupert M Loydell





Lacrimae Rerum

All the pages in all the books have become one word
because this is the pity we read with, write with, wish
to become. And it is slow this gentle recognising,
this seeing through one light and out to another,
the loss of enchantment, as if in the centre of the song
there is this secret that we do not even know we seek.

There is this secret that we do not even know we seek,
the loss of enchantment, as if in the centre of the song
this seeing through one light and out to another
to become. And it is slow this gentle recognising,
because this is the pity we read with, write with, wish
all the pages in all the books have become one word.

© David H.W. Grubb





Post Mark Obscured

Rara Avis these days
perched on black rock
familiar of the hornwork

brooding over Fal
Crow is spotted paying
the black respect of his presence:

turns his back, breaks wind,
offers nothing, no spit caw croak
against the blackness or groan-grey

mist that drew him when he know
his old crony of a fellow
wizard, seared seer of the self-

same mystery, drank the murk:
disdains to linger, prepares
to return to his own place

in the far dark, but carries
off a beakful of his fellow’s brilliance
forking the pallor with its last light:

hits us with something white.

© Brian Louis Pearce





In Perpetuum
i.m. Peter Redgrove

Switch off the lamp. The night that fills the room
is friendly, like those animals that talk
in children’s books. The windows shift from black
to starlight; wind; the unexpected calm

of roads we only ever see in dreams,
silent and wet with rain, all traffic
gone, as spirits move in from the dark
to fill each space, a transitory gleam

that no one can enumerate or name.
Switch off the power, let the porch lights dim,
and notice how this glimmer turns for home:

alive, sure-footed, like the friend we knew,
yet strange as rainfall, come, out of the blue,
to amplify this house, and keep us true.

© John Burnside


•

These poems are taken from Full of Star’s Dreaming, a Stride memorial volume for Peter Redgrove which includes new poems by John Burnside, David Caddy, Rose Flint, Mark Goodwin, Philip Gross, David H.W. Grubb, Harry Guest, Philip Hobsbaum, Rupert M. Loydell, Andrew Motion, Brian Louis Pearce, Peter Porter, Jay Ramsay and Neil Roberts.

It is available direct from the publishers, price £5.95.

Also available is a new Peter Redgrove book, Sheen, for £10.00.

Please send cheques payable to ‘Stride’ to
STRIDE, 11 SYLVAN ROAD, EXETER, DEVON EX4 6EW