The Bed - Thom Gunn

Another by Thom Gunn, who transplanted to the West Coast from England decades ago, and became a part of the San Francisco poetry "scene".  Not a great poem but a good rendering of an experience we have all had.
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The Bed

    The pulsing stops where time has been,

         The garden is snow-bound,

The branches weighed down and the paths filled in,

             Drifts quilt the ground.

    We lie soft-caught, still now it’s done,

         Loose-twined across the bed

Like wrestling statues; but it still goes on

             Inside my head.

                                                                                Thom Gunn - American

 

Modes of Pleasure, II - Thom Gunn

(This is Gunn's second poem here.)  I've known this poem for over thirty years and I shudder every time I read it.  I once had it committed to memory, a sentinel and warning against becoming like the speaker.  It's an easy trap, in this day and age of "hooking up" (and, in my day, of "free love" pre-AIDS), to forget that while the hunt is exciting, it ends with something that does not survive it.....
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Modes of Pleasure II

Modes of Pleasure

New face, strange face, for my unrest.
I hunt our look, and lust marks time
Dark in his doubtful uniform,
Preparing once more for the test.

You do not know you are observed:
Apart, contained, you wait on chance,
Or seem to, till your callous glance
Meets mine, as callous and reserved.

And as it does we recognize
That sharing an anticipation
Amounts to a collaboration –
A warm game for a warmer prize.

Yet when I’ve had you once or twice
I may not want you any more:
A single night is plenty for
Every magnanimous device.

Why should that matter? Why pretend
Love must accompany erection?
This is a momentary affection,
A curiosity bound to end,

Which as good-humoured muscle may
Against the muscle try its strength
- Exhausted into sleep at length –
And will not last long into day.
                                                                    Thom Gunn - American

Carnal Knowledge - Thom Gunn

Gunn (1929 -2004), as mentioned with his first poem here, has always dazzled me with a seemingly effortless ability to express his subjects while dressing them in the uniforms of a particular poetic style and/orform.  (I don't believe one has to be a writer of poetry to appreciate the difficulties involved, but it helps.)  This poem is a solid example: note the rhyming scheme used and then think about what it takes to convey what you want expressed using that scheme!  Makes my head spin: it's a world away in complexity and elegance from "moon, June, croon", country and western songs, and what often passes for poetry by people who write - but don't read - poetry (one of my pet peeves)....  His "love poems" - they are really more than that- are dark and, I believe, informed by the dynamics of his sexual orientation and community (gay).  There's an edge to them, a wedding of anger and sadness, and their truth about the range of unlovely emotions "love" can stir is harsh.  Reading his "take" on relationships and love -  including this one, but particularly Mementos I, which I'll include later - brings to mind that plea by a young fan of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson about Jackson's role in baseball's famous "Black Sox"game-fixing scandal: "Say it aint so, Joe!"..... Say it ain't so, Thom....
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Carnal Knowledge

Even in bed I pose: desire may grow
More circumstantial and less circumspect
Each night, but an acute girl would suspect
That my self is not like my body, bare.
I wonder if you know, or, knowing, care?
You know I know you know I know you know.

I am not what I seem, believe me, so
For the magnanimous pagan I pretend
Substitute a forked creature as your friend.
When darkness lies without a roll or stir
Flaccid, you want a competent poseur.
I know you now I know you know I know.

Cackle you hen, and answer when I crow.
No need to grope: I’m still playing the same
Comical act inside the tragic game.
Yet things perhaps are simpler: could it be
A mere tear-jerker void of honesty?
You know I know you know I know you know.

Leave me. Within a minute I will stow
Your greedy mouth, but will not yet to grips.
‘There is a space between the breast and lips.’
Also a space between the thighs and head,
So great, we might as well not be in bed.
I know you know I know you know I know.

I hardly hope for happy thoughts, although
In a most happy sleeping time I dreamt
We did not hold each other in contempt.
Then lifting from my lids night’s penny weights
I saw that lack of love contaminates.
You know I know you know I know you know.

Abandon me to stammering, and go;
If you have tears, prepare to cry elsewhere –
I know of no emotion we can share.
Your intellectual protests are a bore
And even now I pose, so now go, for
I know you know.
                                                                                   Thom Gunn - American

Touch - T. Gunn

I was going to introduce Gunn with the poem that first made me notice him, but this one is "softer" without diminishing a show of his talent.  He transplanted from England, where he was born and studied, to San Francisco where he has lived an openly gay adult life, teaching and writing.  I prefer poets (and artists who demonstrate a command of the craft and traditional forms of their medium before "experimenting".  Gunn has done that in spades, as will be seen in his other poems that will be posted.  His bio - click his name below - is worth reading.  (Photo - 1971)

Touch

You are already

asleep.  I lower

myself in next to
you, my skin slightly
numb with the restraint
of habits, the patina of
self, the black frost
of outsideness, so that even
unclothed it is
a resilient chilly
hardness, a superficially
malleable, dead
rubbery texture.

You are  a mound
of bedclothes, where the cat
in sleep braces
its paws against your
calf through the blankets,
and kneads each paw in turn.

Meanwhile and slowly
I feel a is it
my own warmth surfacing or
the ferment of your whole
body that in darkness beneath
the cover is stealing
bit by bit to break
down that chill.

                                 You turn and
hold me tightly, do
you know who
I am or am I
your mother or
the nearest human being to
hold on to in a
dreamed pogrom.

What I, now loosened,
sink into is an old
big place, it is
there already, for
you are already
there, and the cat
got there before you, yet
it is hard to locate.
What is more, the place is
not found but seeps
from our touch in
continuous creation, dark
enclosing cocoon round
ourselves alone, dark
wide realm where we
walk with everyone.
                                                         

Thom Gunn - English/American