SIX POEMS
The Feeders
Among the serviceable mills and The galleries of riverside poplars In the holiday house, no hours Were set aside for my writing; It was less well-appointed than ours, Yet Art found it inviting.
In that impelled present, a weight Of water behind it, Art And Life fed into each other: Children who could not know How uniquely their mother Assisted, themselves did so, On their long serpentine Of that full river, Simply by making demands. Art liked that changeable weather. I had only one pair of hands; They held more, cupped together.
Now I must feed myself
On feelings fresh from their source, Flash-floods tapped in the highlands Under the glare of noon.
I have only one pair of hands, And one must hold the spoon.
In the uplands the stony beds, Chalk-white under vacant bridges . .
My public has shrunk to one reader, And that the most exacting, The hateful, insatiable feeder, Art; and the rest, play-acting.
DONALD DAVIE
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