Tough

I was blind, my wife naïve;

                                                                       Eve

we didn’t know what would befall.

                                                                       Fall

The serpent's lie? I don’t recall;

                                                                       Call

I can’t be sure who to believe.

                                                                       Leave

We pluck, though is it we who sow

                                                                      So?

the fruit that lays along the bough?

                                                                      Bow

Must retribution follow? How?

                                                                     Now

Forgive us what we dare to know.     
                                                                     No

 

Repairs

 

On Monday evenings,

the bellringers’ peals

practising down

the last of the sunlight,

I saw our neighbours,

tired in gardens, argue

children to bed

at the top of the house. 

Women shelled peas,

men sprawled in shade

or else dug sluggishly

round the roots of their roses,

murmurs dull in the close air

as shadows crept over

the earth and blackened

the wall beneath my window,

my father below,

back bent, shirt-sleeved,

cobbling boots under chinks

of the hammer on segs

clawed into heels and toes.

My brothers kicked

their way to school, struck

sparks from the pavement,

from the old man, too,

when he saw the scuff

on toughened leather.

He’d be below next hot Monday,

him holding silence, attuned

to over-wall chat, bells pealing

away his gone day’s work, 
hammer-swing singing on the iron last.

Of a Response to her Husband’s Gift of a Poynted Diamond

 

All thanks to thee for this most precious gift:

I needed not thy poem to catch thy drift.

I knew thy poynt the day that we were wed

when I was shifted quickly into bed.

“To bed, abed.”  ‘Twas all I ever heard,

your codpiece joggling as your barb was stirred.

Down all the days, till I was fat with child,

thou’ld’st heave thy upward way, thought me beguiled.

Then, loving words I’d hear throughout the night,

though daylight traced thee preening in Her sight.

Thy aim was clear: the circlet of Her ladies,

whilst I was left bejewelled to brood on babies.

Though brilliant words do often shaft their way

to women’s hearts, for me they fall astray.

Thy poynt, deare John, stays bedded in my feares,

yet more’s to come; my diamonds be my teares.

Sir John Harington's original.