Four Poems by Robert Gittings

From COLLECTED POEMS, by Robert Gittings.
Heinemann, London, 1976.

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CAT,
by Robert Gittings.

My old cat stretches out his arm,
To say, 'I and You'.
He thinks the future threatens harm;
I feel it too.
The flexing paw to reassure
Myself and creature
Asserts, in feline comfiture,
Our frail, shared nature.

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FAIRY TALE,
by Robert Gittings.

If by white magic I could snatch a wand
To catch three choices from a fairy tale,
I would not, like the first two brothers, fail
Greedily: but as the fortunate third I'd stand,
Simple, blue-eyed, and Scandinavian blond,
To ask the obvious: that no evil assail
My darling: that she sleep: that she wake well
To find whoever she then loves best at hand.
If that one should be I, I'd stay till death.
If not, and knowing Not might be the word,
Take my luck, knapsacked on my travelling back,
Happy to carry a quarter-century's breath,
In which to memorize all I ever heard
From you, of you, about you, and for your sake.

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SPARROW,
by Robert Gittings.

I pulled the sparrow's nest ravelling down with the ivy
That clawed my wall; less than half-made; he'll build
Another, I thought. But look, this little fury
With a beak attacks my window. Day and night
He hammers protest; he's cracked a pane. The life
Within a life, how it squanders itself at a wrong,
Even if the world never knew the wrong was done,
Or even, half-guilty, covered its face and turned.

So this small fledged prehistoric, tapping its flint
At a heartless glazed-in god, reminds me of
The limitless rages that we have learnt to still: --
Outwardly: but they shudder within; they take on
The heart-valves and the very pulse; they rule
How we live, dictate how we suddenly die.

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KEEPING WATCH,
by Robert Gittings.

My father's gunmetal watch has gone with me
To hospital. When as a houseman he walked
The wards of the London or the Middlesex
He carried this watch. No bleeper kept in touch
The silver doctor as they called him then --
His fine and flaxen hair that I inherit
Just as I do this watch -- though not his fine
Conscience and skill he carried all his life.
The watch is sound as well: a splintered face,
But telling true. I hear it tick along
My own left side, twin reassurance as
It once lay smooth and warm in his cupped hand,
Steadily taking the pulse or timing thermometer.
I put my own hand on it, till the last minute
They take me down for surgery. It will still
Be going when they bring me back, I know,
The silver doctor's standby, keeping watch.