The Poems of Andrew Motion Poem Text

The Poems of Andrew Motion Poem Text

An Elegy on the death of

HM QUEEN ELIZABETH,

THE QUEEN MOTHER

1.

Think of the failing body now

awake in its final hours although

the fizz and scythe of city wheels,

the pigeon-purrs, the way light steals

across a bedroom wall then goes,

are not the things this body knows,

held in a trance of fading light

before that dies, and gives the sight

of what it means to be set free

from self, from sense, from history.

2.

In the swirl of its pool

The home-coming salmon

has no intuition

of anything changed,

just that the silver cord of its current

is clear water running,

the lid of its sky

light soaking through light,

without any shadows

of faces or lines

to splinter its path,

and pull out of true

the course of its mind.

3.

Think of the flower-lit coffin set

in vaulted public space, in state,

so we who never knew you, but

all half-suspect we knew you, wait,

and delve inside our heads, and find

the harsh insistence in our mind

which says we're honouring a time

that simply as a fact of time

could only end, as also must

our own lives turn from dust to dust.

4.

In the grip of their season

the sky-scraping trees

continue their business

of plumping up buds

without an idea

of what it might mean

so long as leaves shoot

in the polishing breeze,

so long as leaves fall,

so long as the burden

of sunlight and dark

rolls round its O

without changing its plan

or resting its weight.

5.

Think of the standard and its blaze

the tightened focus of our gaze,

as now the coffin glides away

through London's traffic-parted day

and we, who estimate our loss

in ways particular to us,

can start to understand that here

we see our future coming clear -

our selves the same yet also changed

and questioning, and re-arranged.

6.

On the crest of their Downs

with galloping sunlight

the horses in training

know in their bones

nothing but racing,

so all they can manage

today is the beauty

of sprinting and spurting

mud-moons behind them,

the draggle of mufti

wind-burning to silk,

the unbuttoned gasp

of pleasure and longing

at what might be won.

7.

Think of the buried body laid

inside its final earthly shade,

in darkness like a solid cloud

where weight and nothing coincide,

in silence which will never break

unless real angels really speak,

while we who wait our turn live on

re-calculating what has gone -

time-tested dignity and pride

and finished work personified.

8.

In the eyes of our minds

when the country and cities

turn back to themselves

this history stays:

the four generations

which linked with your life

re-winding their span

to childhood again,

and seeing you stand

at the edge of their days,

where if they so wished

you helped give a shape

to slipstreaming time

with a wave of your hand.

Ice


When friends no longer remembered
the reasons we set forth,
I switched between nanny and tartar
driving us on north.

Will you imagine a human hand
welded by ice to wood?
And skin when they chip it off?
I don’t think you should.

By day the appalling loose beauty
of prowling floes:
lions’ heads, dragons, crucifix-wrecks,
and a thing like a blown rose.

By night the seething hiss
of killers cruising past -
the silence after each fountain-jet,
and our hearts aghast.

Of our journey home and the rest
there is nothing more to say.
I have lived and not yet died.
I have sailed in the Scotia Sea.

The Last Call


Death called me,
I did not hear.
He spoke again:
Come near.

I went to look
for pity.
Poor death, I thought,
he loves me.

I guessed right,
he does.
And now I love him too,
just because.

Diving


The moment I tire
of difficult sand-grains
and giddy pebbles,
I roll with the punch
of a shrivelling wave
and am cosmonaut
out past the fringe
of a basalt ledge
in a moony sea-hall
spun beyond blue.
Faint but definite
heat of the universe

flutters my skin;
quick fish apply
as something to love,
what with their heads
of gong-dented gold;
plankton I push

an easy way through
would be dust or dew
in the world behind
if that mattered at all,
which is no longer true,
with its faces and cries.

A Glass of Wine


Exactly as the setting sun
clips the heel of the garden,

exactly as a pigeon
roosting tries to sing
and ends up moaning,

exactly as the ping
of someone’s automatic carlock
dies into a flock
of tiny echo-aftershocks,

a shapely hand of cloud
emerges from the crowd
of airy nothings that the wind allowed
to tumble over us all day
and points the way

towards its own decay
but not before
a final sunlight-shudder pours
away across our garden-floor

so steadily, so slow
it shows you everything you need to know
about this glass I’m holding out to you,

its open eye
enough to bear the whole weight of the sky.

- Andrew Motion

Update this section!

You can help us out by revising, improving and updating this section.

Update this section

After you claim a section you’ll have 24 hours to send in a draft. An editor will review the submission and either publish your submission or provide feedback.