Roy Fuller

Today we note the birth date of Roy Fuller (February 11, 1912 – September 27,1991), English poet and writer.

Poems (1939) was his first book of poetry. He also wrote fiction, including crime novels, in the 1950s, and wrote several volumes of memoirs.

Here is one of his poems for your consideration:

Good-Bye For A Long Time

A furnished room beyond the stinging of
The sea, reached by a gravel road in which
Puddles of rain stare up with clouded eyes:

The photographs of other lives than ours;
The scattered evidence of your so brief
Possession, daffodils fading in a vase.

Our kisses here as they have always been,
Half sensual, half sacred, bringing like
A scent our years together, crowds of ghosts.

And then among the thousand thoughts of parting
The kisses grow perfunctory; the years
Are waved away by your retreating arm.

And now I am alone. I am once more
The far-off boy without a memory,
Wandering with an empty deadened self.

Suddenly under my feet there is the small
Body of a bird, startling against the gravel.
I see its tight shut eye, a trace of moisture.

And ruffling its gentle breast the wind, its beak
Sharpened by death: and I am yours again,
Hurt beyond hurting, never to forget.
--Roy Fuller