STALKING GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
I’ve been reading your diary and sniffing its flowerbeds
The white violets are broader and smell of April 15, 1871
treading in my bare reader’s feet the sharper whelking and
a more winged recoil in the leaves. I’ve left some of the days
to themselves, unfinished like Spring, 1871, April 21
We have had other such afternoons, one today – the sky a
I’ve whisked past that specific (it was beautiful grained) blue
and backwards to peruse you, in letters to your father,
to read you caught believing, between him 16 October 1866
You are so kind as not to forbid me your house, to which I have no claim,
on condition, if I understand, that I promise not to try to convert
my brothers and sisters
and your superiors Before I can promise this I must get permission,
wh. I have no doubt will be given. Of course this promise
will not apply after they come of age. Closeness to a God penning
the distance – grown child’s to parent’s soul – that’s as much
like doubt as faith Whether after my reception you will still speak
as you do now I cannot tell
I can spell no comfort in my witness’s wince, though I spy onwards
irreverent with chronology and plundering half-sprung authorship, poet
to his pal 15 Feb 1879 When I say that I do not mean to publish
I speak the truth. I can wedge myself in between you, your mum and
Marvell most rich and nervous of verse, not knowing who I was
looking for in your bud-filled universe until via post-Herbert Vaughan
27 Feb 1879 . . . and even his muse underwent a conversion
(for he had written before).
I’ve been reading your diary and sniffing its flowerbeds
The white violets are broader and smell of April 15, 1871
treading in my bare reader’s feet the sharper whelking and
a more winged recoil in the leaves. I’ve left some of the days
to themselves, unfinished like Spring, 1871, April 21
We have had other such afternoons, one today – the sky a
I’ve whisked past that specific (it was beautiful grained) blue
and backwards to peruse you, in letters to your father,
to read you caught believing, between him 16 October 1866
You are so kind as not to forbid me your house, to which I have no claim,
on condition, if I understand, that I promise not to try to convert
my brothers and sisters
and your superiors Before I can promise this I must get permission,
wh. I have no doubt will be given. Of course this promise
will not apply after they come of age. Closeness to a God penning
the distance – grown child’s to parent’s soul – that’s as much
like doubt as faith Whether after my reception you will still speak
as you do now I cannot tell
I can spell no comfort in my witness’s wince, though I spy onwards
irreverent with chronology and plundering half-sprung authorship, poet
to his pal 15 Feb 1879 When I say that I do not mean to publish
I speak the truth. I can wedge myself in between you, your mum and
Marvell most rich and nervous of verse, not knowing who I was
looking for in your bud-filled universe until via post-Herbert Vaughan
27 Feb 1879 . . . and even his muse underwent a conversion
(for he had written before).
