On browsing through some British poems

On browsing through some British poems

On browsing through some British poems

I must express not what I know
but what I do not know
until the poem is written.
This is no English lesson on, say, C.H. Sisson;
nothing deliberate here;
I am not sifting through a set work
for an exam that will be marked in Cambridge, England.
This is something like the heart-break that a tree . . .
it grew elbows with funny bones,
just outside the ladies' changing room,
P.O. Colleen Bawn. Once I peeped
and saw, I think, a pair of knees,
to which I now add nipples and a bounce.

I know that we do not belong,
wife, child, puppy, sweet peas,
to this brown land; nor in Somerset
where Sisson lives. But something like the heart-
break that a road . . . two strips of tar
that smelt, when afternoons grew hot
in Colleen Bawn, or liquorice,
to which I now add all sorts
of sweet rememberances.

I know that we are merely visitors in Africa –
the blue eyes of our child, the marmalade,
the pets, the BBC. And when I went to London
to find some British poets
shuffling verses for a game of rhyme,
I was a visitor.
It's something like the heart-break that a roof . . .
the first hot drops of Bulawayo rain
that pound the corrugations of my mind
releasing songs of leaves and earth and tin,
to which I add:
I understand you well enough Charles Hubert Sisson.
First, that you are a man of ability:
your poet's tact to express not what you know
but what you do not know until the poem is written.