In response to my recent post, John Milbank was kind enough to send me his unpublished poetry, some of which is quite extraordinary (including a magnificent epic on the mythic history of England). And he has kindly allowed me to reproduce a few of his shorter poems here – so here are three of my favourites.



Three Revelations in Gloucestershire



Crimped oak-tree

by the centuries set

with slow lightning,

whose zigzags are as sure

as they are sudden.



The shock of endurance.

Pure gold pours gift

of the sun’s cornlight

through the slatternly opening

of the slanting gateposts.



The bold of the evening.

Broad original shadow

extends the wood’s domain

over the golden stubble

in the passing twilight.



A rare, a ravishing most secret.





Considering Lilies



Looking for rain,

celestial water

above all ponds,

the weed-lilies of convulvulus

in September foregather in the hedgerows

like white bells for a late marriage

of a still beautiful virgin,

their pure glamour disparaged,

as gypsy-women are the tares of queendom,

more savagely still in their darkness

and more blowingly resplendent

through its untamed virtue.



Returning on the train in hope

after many years

of a better consummation, he

recalled the school bell’s autumn sound

which once confirmed yet interrupted

his childhood rural pasturage.

It had reached attractively and insidiously

across all fields and past them,

suspending forever nature’s mute

untimetabled instruction.

So we probe the stars with signals,

travel anywhere in lines and pay

in numbers if we get them right

for anything available.



While nature lost still stays our course,

like a vast golden shadow of background,

ever forgotten, ever present

to accuse us of a wholly inadequate answer

to her perennial welcome.

Why do the skies alter, the seas surge and yet

the earth stays firm on which we are planted

in order to till, walk ever onwards,

look upwards that we might re-consider always?

Shifting the soils like a horde of phantoms

has got us nowhere.

Gridding the earth with waves and networks

has communicated to us nothing.



The road bends: he longs to linger

by the gate’s opening perchance

to greet her. Lone winds leave

the fascinating clouds from which

the dark birds also swarm. The willowherb

grows in this season more freely than the grasses.





One Green Day



One green day

rising

with you above

the valley deep

with promises

to market now

the road

so steep

a gradient of dreams

so light

we rise

together and the vertiginous is wanted

for its near verticality

which is you for me

eased just enough from the precipice

for us to glide upwards thrilled

by the terror

and yet the ease

before the plunge sideways

delighted

by the green sheltering deviation

that lies still higher yet before us

you beside me.