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Handlyng Synne by William Bedford (For Helen: April 1967) He wrote Handlyng Synne in the fields where we met for sin: Sgt Pepper and a flask of coffee, your favourite delicatessen sandwiches and a sky of fierce cobalt blue, burning over our swinking hours. You showed me the poem in Sisam, a red Oxford volume that sits on my shelves now in the room where you sometimes telephone, telling me about your old lovers who were 'before' or 'after' depending on the spells you are weaving. Such ghosts shimmer in your tapestry, stitching together our forgotten lives. There is no end to this business of tapestries: Robert Mannying of Brunne - Blissed be he of God of heuene - turning lewde men to the grave in the bone, following us through the fields of yellow seed: rape seed; Van Gogh's yellow, blistering sun. I can't get my mind round our farewells: your look of intense, simple desire, your teasing that has teased me forever. I go back to the grounds of the Abbey, the buttercup meadows and the deep lanes, the riverbank where we collected simples, imagining we were being wise. You have walked with me from Chaucer to evensong, and now I have a missal which tells me all that we did was wrong, but not the story: not our sweet story. © William Bedford « Home | Contributor Notes » Feel free to comment on this poem. |
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