GEOFFREY HILL'S HOUR

In the name of deliverance
from niches
of the oppressed wrongs
on uncut tall grass
by Oxford's pedagogues
sounding off in England last voice
from history's sleeplessness
in the eloquent guilt
of capital and capital punishment
in phastasmagoria's art screens
from an art movie house
where a runaway enters
a midnight showing
of "The Long Distance Runner"
on retroflexed tongues
spoken in riffled criminal files
from Birmingham's shelf
in the rictus mouths of judges
sentencing himself
to political purgatory
after reading Plato's dialogues
collapses by candlestick
closes his hands
while drinking ale
in a pub at Gatwick
ready for an armaments conference
in a Nato Royal passenger plane
with a Tory former pilot
nick- named Pontius
his Dresden mother pacing
like Lady MacBeth on the runway
feeling damned sorry for herself
has blood on her own hands
on a conscious daily nightmare
about millions of skeletons
of good citizens
lost in caves, mountains, seas
cemeteries, crematories
trying to taste Easter lilies.