Lay for the Day
15th
April
1843: the birthday of Henry James.
The poem, from the book of Praises, was written at Rye on the south coast of England, once the novelist’s home.
77.
Of Bedtime Reading
The
brown hand holds the white
palm,
tanned forearm on sheltered wrist.
Her
even breathing’s resonant
and
calming as the herb
she twisted and frayed to breathe today in
Henry
James’s garden,
puzzled
to name the cinder-grey
feathery
leaf, losing herself
in the
scent’s elusion.
Her sighs are from the far
side of a field
of downland
a gate gave on to
out
of ten clear pages
where
mild shade drifts, pierced with sunlight,
from the fourth chapter of The Europeans.
John Gibbens
from Collected Poems
The Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar
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