THE THREE-FACED

Robert Graves. 1895 - 1985. British.

It is well-known that I love Graves's work - though his poetry falls in and out of fashion, and he is better known to some for his famous I Claudius, historical novels plus TV series that he always called his 'pot boilers.'

Graves served in the trenches in the First World War, but he did not become a war poet. He was obsessed with his idea of 'the goddess' and the relations between men and women, including his own disastrous relationship with the American poet, Laura Riding.

Graves left England to live in Majorca, loving the sun, and hating what he called 'the godawfulness' of English life.

He wasn't wrong.

Who calls her two-faced? Faces she has three;

The first inscrutable, for the outer world;

The second shrouded in self-contemplation;

The third, her face of love,

Once for an endless moment turned on me