Robert Wells writes poems of memory, a memory so intense it conjures places, objects and desires with their original force and freshness. The high points of a life are celebrated, and personal memories and the common memories of a culture are brought together.

This collection of poetry and translations draws together the threads of his work in eight linked sections of sensuous evocation. There are poems set on the coast of Exmoor and in the hill country of central Italy; some concerned with erotic friendship, with travel and landscape. In the final two sections, his celebrated translations of Virgil's Georgics and the Idylls of Theocritus fuse lived experience with a deep knowledge of the original texts.

Cover image: The Fig Gatherers by Aristide Maillol (Paris and DACS, London 2009). Cover design by StephenRaw.com.

Contents

Foreword   


1


The Winter’s Task
The Stream (‘Inopportune desire!’)    
Bonfire (‘The fire burns deepest at dusk’)    
His Thirst    
Love’s Default    
The Colonist    
Emblem    
The Hero    
‘Life was not in your hands’    
The Will    
A Caution    
New Year    
The Young Woodman    
Woodman’s Song    
On the Hillside    
On the Doorstep    
The Axehandle    
At the Pathside    
After Haymaking    
Haymakers at Dusk    
Haymaker    
At the Back of his Mind    
Impasse    
The Day (‘I stand on the doorstep’)    
Morning (‘Like mist from water’)    
At Dusk    
Meridian
Vesperal    
A Fantasy    
Larchtrees    
‘A patch of grass’    
‘The fogbound dusk’    
A Stag at Sea    
The Fawn    
‘At the head of the coomb’    
Poaching on Exmoor    
Clearing Ground    
Bonfire (‘The heaviness of the waste’)    
Six Emblems    
A Motto    
After the Fire    
Making a Bonfire    
‘When days open’    
The Forester    
Ashton    
A Memory of Exmoor    
Before Sleep    

2


Further on Down    
‘Sure in its strength’    
Cattlemen    
Breakfast    
Shape of Air    
Vendemmia    
Asleep    
Contadino (‘He goes under the deep-coloured shelter’)    
The Mill    
The Bathing Place (‘He turns feeling the straw’)    
Afield    
The Attributes    
‘O wilful spirit’    
A Dream    
Off the Path    
Deus Loci    
The Unnamed Pool    
At Vigna La Corte    
The Pool (‘There is no reflection’)    
A Greeting    
At Midday    
‘Nothing but the flicker of leaf shadow’    
For Pasolini    
Derelict Landscape    
The Last of Summer    
Autumnal    
Seasonal    
Pastoral    
Shadowtail    
Summer Noon    
Autumn Night    
Summer    
Osier Bank    
A Storm    
Broken Weather    
Outside    57
After Football    
Contadino (‘I am not these: stones, a handful of earth’)    
Hill-Path, Meadow, Cascade    
Orchid Field    
The Valley    
Alone    
At Moonrise    
Vintage    
The Bathing Place (‘The body, wearied by labour’)    
Hang-Glider    
Bather    
On the Same    
Diving In    
Torrent    
A Last Look    
Further Notes    
At Ponte Margheruta    
Youth    

3   Monte Gennaro Epigrams, One and Two


The Pool (‘What can the water be’)    
The Day (‘Slow climb through darkness’)    
The Men who Built the Paths    
The Paths    
Morning Moments    
Sunrise (‘Your face still blurred with youth’)    
‘I had no way’    
Hillside    
The Bathers    
Monte Gennaro    
Two Hill-Pools    
Ruined Shrine    
The Spinney    
Panic    
The Stream (‘Pouring of water through the night’)    
Bather and Horseshoe
The Last of Monte Gennaro    

4   Sabine Portraits


Antonio    
Franco    
Giovanni: Recollections of the Mill    
Giuseppe    
Maurizio    
Adamo    
A Sequel    
Improvements    
Angelo Hang-Gliding    
La Risecca    
Castagneto    
Maria    
Elisabetta    
Near Civitella    
Licenza    


5


The Trance     
Morning (‘I watch the shadows of trees’)    
‘Runner, unwearied’    
Fantasy    
Two Shepherd Boys with Dogs Fighting    
Night Piece (‘You have freed me ’)    
Bedsit in September
The Kites    
While Dancing    
The Slope    
Night Piece (‘Your sanity was my presence’)    
Bengal Nights    
Sybarites    
The Cookbook    
Harangue    
To Let    
Traces    
Indus    
The Enjoyment    
A Blazon
Stressed Syllables    
The Lake    
Five Sketches    
A Likeness    
Before a Journey    
Tufan Express    
Small-Hours Stop
At the Hill-Station
Hill-Station Souvenir    
An Ending    
There   


6


The Last Caliph    
Virginity    
Waterfall    
‘Hardly dwelt in’    
The First Thing    
Islamic Shrine    
Sassanian Ruin    
Median Palace    
No Village Was Too Remote    
A Coin    
Bread and Brotherhood    
Middle Age    
The Fault    
At the Well    
The Pillar    
Paestum Quatrain    
Gran Sasso    
The Fields of Self    
Hellenistic Torso    
The Plane Tree    
The Statue    
Aspromonte    
Leaving    
Common Sparrow    
A Robin    
Richard Wilson in Wales    
Palm Leaves    
The Alfred Jewel    
Chinese Dish    
Angel    
A Photograph    
If Once    
The Icknield Way
Sunrise (‘Thin warmth toward which the body turns’)    
Epigram    
The Knot    
Departure    
The Changeling    
Three Oxford Poems    
The Bravest Jump    
At Old Hall    
Mr Thewes    
Old Boy    
The Thirteenth Book    
Middle-Aged Query    
Paysage Moralisé
Portrait of a Virtuoso    
By the Loire    

TRANSLATIONS

7   Virgil, The Georgics


Georgic 1    
Georgic 2    
Georgic 3    
Georgic 4    

8   Theocritus, The Idylls


1    The Passion of Daphnis    
2    Pharmaceutria    
3    The Lovesongs    
4    The Herdsmen    
5    Goatherd and Shepherd    
6    Damoetas and Daphnis    
7    The Harvest Festival    
10    The Reapers    
11    The Cyclops    
12    The Touchstone    
13    Hylas    
14    Aeschines and Thyonichus    
15    The Festival of Adonis    
16    The Graces    
17    Encomium to Ptolemy    
18    Helen’s Epithalamium    
22    The Dioscuri    
24    The Childhood of Heracles    
26    The Bacchae    
28    The Distaff    
29    Drinking Song    
30    The Fever    


NOTES AND INDEXES


Notes on the Poems    
A Note on Translation    
The Georgics    
The Idylls    
Index of Titles    
Index of First Lines