You walk unaware
Of the slender gazelle
That moves as you move
And is one with the limbs
That you have.

You live unaware
Of the faint, the unearthly
Echo of hooves
That within your white streams
Of clear clay that I love

Are in flight as you turn,
As you stand, as you move,
As you sleep, for the slender
Gazelle never rests
In your ivory grove.

*****

‘To Maeve’ is the final poem in ‘Mervyn Peake, Selected Poems’ published by Faber. Peake and his wife Maeve Gilmore were both artists and writers – after Peake’s death in 1968, Gilmore fleshed out a fourth book for the Gormenghast Trilogy from Peake’s notes and ideas, eventually published as ‘Titus Awakes: The Lost Book of Gormenghast‘.