ON  THE  SPUR*
 
            1. 
How middengard of flee and fold 
love so dry flesh in sand 

how can what am 
thoughtbeats louder than noonheat 

hearing taste of marrowbones 
run through teeth and forgotten nose 

how sifted shifty 
what grasp no knowing 

what known no grasping 
sunwist 

clean with laughter 
light on a tree of apples 

eaten when so loving 
and living on after eaten. 
  

         2. 
Softly 
a small sweet stain 

come of a witherclinch 
a dream of dreaming 

a knife between darkness and light 
the keen edge stepping off into nothingness 

the stars coming out without opening 
         a door 
putting forth speech in agelong words 

whose hands are beneath earth and sky 
his feet are between his hands 

who sees his selfless self 
he knows full well what is not said 

too still for falling 
too fell for stealing 

a wading and a lifting of feet 
a walling and a crash of dung 

black crows from the throats of the 
         newly dead 
threshing the ears of the newly born. 
  

         3. 
Hiptree heaves 
fat in loafloave 

drawing the tight out of tarting 
the thighs spread their white cloth 

horseclutter pegs down the brain 
a forgotten man stands carved and cold 

standing moonlornd palely eaten 
waiting for the toads to hop 

cuddling in his arms a warmedup death 
his gnawbone child. 
  

         4. 
We stir the cookingpot of forgetting 
our bones and blood give off a good smell 

hell chuckles beneath our bellyful 
we arise in steam to holy nostrils 

who eats is eaten 
who knows is known 

so many bits without a ghost 
so much shine without a shape 

so much shape without a shadow 
come home to shed more tears. 
  

                              (1940)

__________________________
* [original endnote by Cox]: ‘I wrote this quite spontaneously one morning during the war and it remains exactly as it was then put down. The circumstances had certainly induced a hypnogogic state, the ‘anodyne’ however (in the Colgeridgeian sense) being, not opium, but extreme fatigue after an all-night vigil with a Civil Defense Rescue squad. I remember sinking down on my bed and taking up a pencil and paper but was quite unconscious of what I was writing. I have resisted all urges to clarify or ‘correct’ this, believing that if it has any interest at all it is better left. Only the title has been added.’