George Barker (poet)

“My one, my one, my only love,Hide, hide your face in a leaf,And let the hot tear falling burnThe stupid heart that will not learnThe everywhere of grief.”

“Turn on your side and bear the day to meBeloved, sceptre-struck, immuredIn the glass wall of sleep. SlowlyUncloud the borealis of your eyeAnd show your iceberg secrets, your midnight prizesTo the green-eyed world and to me.”

“I, born in Essex thirty-fourEssentially sexual years ago,Stepped down, looked around, and sawI had been cast a little lowIn the social registerFor the friends whom I now know.Is a constable a mister?Bob's your uncle, even so.”

“To be so closely caught up in the teeth of things that they kill you, no matter how infinitesimally kill you, is, truly, to be a poet: and to be a poet in fact it is additionally necessary that you should possess the tongues and instruments with which to record this series of infinitesimal deaths.”