'As sweet as a dance'

 

“Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.” – John Barrington Wain 

Born in England in March of 1925, Wain was a prolific poet, novelist and journalist, associated with the post-WWII literary group known as "The Movement.”  Led by the award-winning Hurry On Down and Young Shoulders, he wrote 14 novels, 3 short story collections and 9 collections of poetry, including the much-lauded Letters To Five Artists.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Wain’s,

                                Outside, gulls squabbled in the empty street

                                       Outside, gulls squabbled in the empty street.  Criticism

                                       and name-calling.  Salt air scrubbed the gleaming

                                       Sunday morning walls.  Gutter-split stalks, leaves, fueled the

                                       squalling

                                       and wheeling.  Feet, motors, slept. The inured citizens

                                       turned over to snore again.  Beside me, my darling

 

                                       slept in a deeper peace, like a princess in a fable

                                       all through the sea-clean, gull-torn dawn, slept below

                                       dreaming,

                                       stunned by those hours of outrageous bliss, bliss upon bliss,

                                       when love leapt higher than even the fiercest lovers were able.

                                          Patient, I lay, expecting tea and her morning kiss.