I. The Old Woman
A Morality Play
II. Love Poems in Summer
Singalese Love Songs I-V
The Silent Pool
Nocturne
Theme Arranged for Organ I-III
The Moonlight Sonata
Possession
Evening: the Taj Mahal
The Gift
The Bridge
A Temple I-VII
Candles
Winter Night
Last Days I-V
Sorrow
Prison
The Dream House
III. Studies and Designs
Design for a Japanese Vase
The Bow Moon (A Print by Hirosage)
An Italian Chest
The Pedlar
Portrait of a Lady in Bed I-V
Portrait of a Gentleman
From the Madison Street Police Station
La Felice
The Journey
The Last Illusion
The Desert
The Picnic
IV. Interlude
Mountain Trails I-VII
October Morning
October Afternoon
Maternity
The Father Speaks
To Allen
To Helen
The Immortal
To an Absent Child I-IV
Summer Night
Maura I-VI
November Dusk
Winter Valley I-IV
V. Love Poems in Autumn
Ballad
The Pathway of Black Leaves I-IV
Elegy
Sequence I-X
Disillusion
November Afternoon
Yareth at Solomon's Tomb
Argolis
St. Faith's Eve
Poems of Elijah Hay
The Golden Stag
To Anne Knish
Lolita
Spectrum of Mrs. Q
Epitaph
A Sixpence
Three Spectra
Two Commentaries
A Womanly Woman
Lolita Now is Old
The Shining Bird
The King Sends Three Cats to Guinevere
Ode in the New Mode
Night
I. The Old Woman
(A Morality Play)
The Old Woman
(A Morality Play)
Characters:
The Woman
The House
The Doctor
The Deacon
The Landlady
Doctor:
There is an old woman
Who ought to die—
Deacon:
And nobody knows
But what she's dead—
Doctor:
The air will be cleaner
When she's gone—
Deacon:
But we dare not bury her
Till she's dead—
Landlady:
Come, young doctor
From the first floor front,
Come, dusty deacon,
From the fourth floor back,
You take her heels
And I'll take her head—
Doctor and Deacon:
We'll carry her
And bury her
If she's dead!
House:
They roll her up
In her old, red quilt,
They carry her down
At a horizontal tilt,
She doesn't say "Yes"
And she doesn't say "No,"
She doesn't say, "Gentlemen,
Where do we go?"
Doctor:
Out in the lot
Where ash-cans die,
There, old woman,
There shall you lie!
Deacon:
Let's hurry away
And never look behind
To see if her eyes
Are dead and blind,
To see if the quilt
Lies over her face—
Perhaps she'll groan
Or move in her place!
House:
The room is empty
Where the old woman lay,
And I no longer
Smell like a tomb—
Landlady:
Doctor, deacon,
Can you say
Who'll pay rent
For the old woman's room?
* * * * * * *
House:
The room is empty
Down the hall,
There are mice in the closet,
Ghosts in the wall—
A pretty little lady
Comes to see—
Woman:
Oh, what a dark room,
Not for me!
Landlady:
The room is large
And the rent is low,
There's a deacon above
And a doctor below—
Deacon:
When the little mice squeak
I shall pray—
Doctor:
I'll psycho-analyse
The ghosts away—
Landlady:
The bed is large
And the mattress deep,
Wrapped in a feather-bed
You shall sleep—
Woman:
But here's the door
Without a key!
An unlocked room
Won't do for me!
Doctor:
Here's a bolt—
Deacon:
And here's a bar—
Landlady:
You'll sleep soundly
Where you are!
Woman:
Good night, gentlemen,
It's growing late,
Good night, landlady,
Pray don't wait!
I'm going to bed,
I'll bolt the door
And sleep more soundly
Than ever before!
Deacon:
Good night, madam,
I'll steal away—
Doctor:
Glad a pretty lady
Has come to stay!
House:
She lights a candle—
What do I see!
That cloak looks like
A quilt to me!
She climbs into bed
Where long she's lain,
She's come back home,
She won't leave again.
She's found once more
Her rightful place,
Same old lady
With a pretty new face.
Let the deacon pray
And the doctor talk,
The mice will squeak
And the ghosts will walk.
There's a crafty smile
On the landlady's face,
The old woman's gone,
But she's filled her place!
Landlady:
It's nothing to me
If the old woman's dead,
There's somebody sleeping
In every bed!
II. Love Poems in Summer
Singalese Love Songs
I
Your eyes are beautiful beggars,
Careless singing minstrels,
Who will not starve
Nor sleep cold under the sky
If they receive no largess
Of mine.
Once lived a woman
Of great charity—
At last
Her own children
Begged for bread.
II
I would make you love me
That you might possess
Desire—
For to your heart
Beauty is a burned-out torch,
And Faith, a blind pigeon,
Friendship, a curious Persian myth,
And Love, blank emptiness,
Bearing no significance
Nor any reality.
Only Weariness is yours:
I would make you love me
That you might possess
Desire.
III
Is my love
Of flesh or spirit?
I only know to me
Your eyes are wholly you.
Our glances dart
Like the flash of a bird
Gone, before the colour of his wing
Is seen.
I have not bathed my soul
In your eyes,
My soul would drown.
IV
I have starved to know your lips
Yet my soul
Does not die of want.
For only dreams are real,
And fulfilment is an illusion,
There is but one fulfilment,
Blind Nature's way—
My arms reach toward illusion,
And I would carry mist against my heart,
Not the warm, heavy head
Of a sleeping child.
Starving, I hold my dream.
V
What do you seek,
Beloved?
When you have had
All of me
There will remain for you
One beautiful desire the less.
You think you seek my love
But you seek
My denial.
Hunger, Want,
Is the only pain
I would not spare you—
Alas, that too
Will die!
The Silent Pool
Your smile is a heron, flying
Over waters cool,
My thoughts of you are blue Iris!
Today is the silent pool
Which shining heron and Iris blue
Are mirrored on.
Tomorrow
Will still reflect the Iris—
My thoughts of you;
But the heron will be gone.
Nocturne
It is enough
To feel your beauty
With the lingers
Of my heart,
Your beauty, like the starlight,
Filling night so gently, that it dreams
Unwakened.
I should feel your beauty against my face
Though I were blind.
Theme Arranged for Organ
I. PRELUDE
What would you have of me, my friend, in truth,
A breath of understanding, or a glance
Into your soul's dark places? Can a word
Aid in your brave attempt to smother youth?
Of what avail that trifling circumstance,
In such a tumult could my voice be heard?
Before your bitter need my lips are dumb
So little can I give you. Should I come
To feed a starving Titan with a crumb?
II. INTERLUDE
Alas, I am too foolish or too wise,
Too soon am blinded or I see too far!
How can I follow with expectant feet,
What is the beacon light that holds your eyes,
Can this blind alley lead to any star
And through this dark confusion, what retreat?
For heaven is awed when comets crash to earth,
But we, who grope and question our soul's worth,
Stumbling, awaken only bitter mirth.
III. POSTLUDE
A breath, a glance, a word,—no more, my friend,
This is the sum of what I have to give
Leaving the tale for ever incomplete.
No perfect moment, and no tragic end,
Within your heart those images shall live
And die like footsteps down an empty street.
Yet all the while a stifled instinct saith:
"Spend your souls vigour to the utmost breath
And let the hounds come baying at the death!"
The Moonlight Sonata
My soul storm-beaten as an ancient pier
Stands forth into the sea; wave on slow wave
Of shining music, luminous and grave,
Lifting against me, pouring through me, here
Find wafts of unforgotten chords, which rise
And droop like clinging sea-weed. You, so white,
So still, so helpless on this fathomless night
Float like a corpse with living, tortured eyes.
Deep waves wash you against me; you impart
No comfort to my spirit, give no sign
Your inarticulate lips can taste the brine
Drowning the secret timbers of my heart.
Possession
I hold you fast, your hurrying breath,
Your wandering feet, your restless heart,
Are mine alone, for only death
You vowed today, can make us part.
Your eager lips, athirst to drain
Life's goblet of its golden wine
Shall drink tonight or thirst in vain—
I hold you fast for you are mine.
And when I search your soul until
I see too deeply and divine
That you can never love me—Still
I hold you fast for you are mine!
Evening: the Taj Mahal
(A Lover Speaks)
Beloved!…
India and you
Breathe through my soul tonight,
You in your gown, impossibly white—
I marvel greatly that it fail
To glow and pale
With iridescent light—
How can it hang in silent nun-like folds?
Think of the flaming mystery it holds,
You… You…
We stand in that wide place
Where love is frozen in marble, spire on spire,
A snow-white nightingale with a heart of fire
Soaring in space.
We gaze, together, into the shining pool
To catch the soul of beauty unaware
Finding only the peaceful body there
Of beauty drowned and still in waters cool.
Burning so luminously in these pure white things
Somehow akin, are palpitating fires,
Intangible, yet visible as spires
Or wings.
And close at hand, an unseen Moslem sings
Blind, haunting chants, which speak
Of mystery, forevermore unguessed.
O shining ones, I seek
No farther, for my soul, content,
Divines the secret of the Taj Mahal and you—
Beauty and desire, possessed
In white tranquillity, in flaming peace,
Find rest.
The Gift
What is this wine you have poured for me?
You have offered up
Your face in its pure transparency
Like a crystal cup
Which trembling fingers slowly lift—
It is faintly masked
With a tremulous smile. You have brought me a gift,
Your love, unasked.
Could you trust my reckless hands so much?
With no vow spoken,
You gave me a goblet, which at a touch
Were utterly broken!
Your smile replied: "Since the glass was filled
It little mattered
Whether the wine were drunk or spilled
Or the goblet shattered."
The Bridge
I walk the bridge of hours from dawn till night
My heart beating so loud in joyous wonder
To know your love, that I can scarcely breathe;
But in the lonely darkness, with affright
I faintly hear, like ominous, distant thunder
The unseen ocean surging close beneath.
Our bridge so frail, eternity so vast!
When we must sink into the deep at last
Heart of my heart, will you still hold me fast?
A Temple
I. DOORWAY
Carven angels
On the portals,
Angels with crowns, and eagles
And golden lions
On the door.
This is why
The alien worshippers went their way,
Why you alone discovered
The gates were open.
You touched the velvet curtains behind them,
They parted to let you pass.
II. WINDOW
I make a window
Of you, beloved,
Through which the sun colours
The silence.
Even your absences
Are spaces I have filled
With sapphire;
Your denials
Are burning gold,
I have painted your reluctance
Emerald green:
Your silences
Are crimson
On which your words make delicate
Black tracery.
As for me,
My will is the grey lead
Which I have bent to hold the coloured
Panes of you.
III. SPIRE
My wish goes singing upward
Holding a chime of bells
In its heart:
Pigeons know my silent bells,
Winds touch them and wonder.
That they might reach
That high blue—
Till star fingers touch them
Ever so gently—
And drifting clouds
Lay cool cheeks against them—
My wish goes singing upward
Reaching into silence.
IV. PRIEDIEU
Beauty passes
But dust is eternal.
Outside the temple
Beauty dies in the wind.
So when my temple is fallen
And lies in dust,
Where then will be the memory
Of your beauty?
I pray my dust
That it may hold your image
Tomorrow and for ever.
V. FESTIVAL
The beloved is returning,
Let the bells ring!
I too am a tower
Hung with bronze bells,
I too am a bell
Chiming to the winds,
I too am the wind
Ringing to the hills,
I too am the hills
Singing to the sky.
I too am the sky!
The beloved is returning,
Let the bells ring!
VI. DUSK
There is no soul too poor to build a temple
Where it may go apart
And worship darkness.
For out of darkness
Images shine… and fade…
Since now there is no worship nor any music,
Let incense be a curved smile
On lips that remember,
And candles, notes of laughter
In empty dusk.
Above,
A coloured window slowly turns
Black to the night.
VII. RUINS
Temples have fallen
Before today,
Stones are ever loosening their hold
One on another…
You blocks of marble, sleeping in the sun,
Can you remember chiming bells
And incense?
Now there is only silence,
Even the winged stones of archways
Sleep in peace.
Candles
Silence is but the golden frame
That holds your face,
My thoughts, like unblown candle-flame
In a holy place
Surround you. From this secret shrine
Somewhere apart
Do you not feel my candles shine
Upon your heart?
Winter Night
The I that does not love you
I have kept hidden away
In the dark.
(I never dreamed
There was a You
That does not love me!)
Tonight they met.
I hear their words
Falling like icicles
Upon me…
I am frozen in terror…
Have they killed the You
That Loves me?
Beloved, can you hear me
Through the bitter sound
Of icicles falling?
Can you see me from behind
Your frozen eyes?
Last Days
I
Shall I pretend
These days are just like other days?
One cannot spend
Every day for seven weeks
Saying good-bye.
So when I must
I speak of your departure casually
As though it were a hundred years away;
As Youth is wont to say:
"Sometime we all must die!"
II
We talk of all the happy things we have done,
We pass them in review,
"Do you remember?" is often on our lips.
One by one
We touch our memories and put them all away—
How shall I dare to look at them
When you are gone!
III
There is no beginning to my love
Nor any end—
It is about your head
Like the deep air,
More than your breath can spend.
Oft is about your heart
Like arms of faith—
Where you go, it is there.
IV
There are no last things to say,
What promise can I make?
You know my love so well.
All that I have is yours to take.
(How will it be, with part of me away,
Must not my soul be changed?)
Shall I stay young for memory's sake?
Shall I be old and grave and grey?
If I might choose, how could I tell!
V
The You I know
I shall not see again,
A stranger will return.
How shall I win the love
Which he has kept apart
With a blurred image which once was I?
I shall not know his heart,
How can I learn?
Sorrow
Sorrow stands in a wide place,
Blind—blind—
Beauty and joy are petals blown
Across her granite face,
They cannot find
Sight or sentience in stone.
Yesterday's beauty and joy lie deep
In sorrow's heart, asleep.
Prison
I close the book—the story has grown dim,
The plot confused; the hero fades
Behind unmeaning words, and over him
The covers close like window shades
On empty windows. The watchful room
Is weary. Dully the green lamp stares
Into the shadows. The coals are dumb,
The clock ticks heavily. The chairs
Wait sullenly for guests who never come.
Suppose I leave this house, suppose my feet
Plodding into the night
Carry me down the empty street
Made hideous with arcs of purple light…
Inevitably I must return to bed.
The house is waiting, chairs, and books, and clocks.
I am their prisoner. I have no more chance
Of escape, when all is said,
Than a dying beetle in a box—
And life, and love,—and death—have gone to France.
The Dream House
I steal across the sodden floor
And dead leaves blow about,
Where once we planned an iron door
To shut the whole world out;
I find the hearth, its fires unlit,
Its ashes cold—Tonight
Only the stars give warmth to it,
Only the moon gives light.
And yonder on our spacious bed
Fashioned for love and sleep
The Autumn goldenrod lies dead,
The maple-leaves lie deep.
III. Studies and Designs
A Japanese Vase
(A Design to be Wrought in Metals)
Five harsh, black birds in shining bronze come crying
Into a silver sky,
Piercing and jubilant is the shape of their flying,
Their beaks are pointed with delight,
Curved sharply with desire,
The passionate direction of their flight,
Clear and high,
Stretches their bodies taut like humming wire.
The cold wind blows into angry patterns the jet-bright
Feathers of their wings,
Their claws curl loosely, safely, about nothingness,
They clasp no things.
Direction and desire they possess
By which in sharp, unswerving flight they hold
Across an iron sea to the golden beach
Whereon lies carrion, their feast. A shore of gold
That birds wrought on a vase can never reach.
The Bow Moon
(A print by Hiroshige)
From the dawn, Take San,
Ungathered star,
Follow me back through night
Till I recapture
Evening.
(The bending hours of darkness
Sway apart like lilies
Before the backward-blowing wind.)
At last,
Bearing in her mysterious bosom
Unravished beauty,
Dark Yesterday rises to view against her silent sky
Irrevocable… secret…
Confronting the fantastic dream
Of an impossible Tomorrow.
And that frail bridge,
Delicate, immutable,
Which rises higher than the moon,
More everlasting than the fading sky,
Joining What-was-not with What-might-have-been,
That bridge were named "Today"
If I had loved you, Take San,
If you had loved me.
An Italian Chest
(Lorenzo Designs a Bas-Relief)
Lust is the oldest lion of them all
And he shall have first place,
With a malignant growl, satirical,
To curve in foliations prodigal
Round and around his face,
Extending till the echoes interlace
With Pride and Prudence, two cranes, gaunt and tall.
Four lesser lions crouch and malign the cranes,
Cursing and gossiping they shake their manes
While from their long tongues leak
Drops of thin venom as they speak.
The cranes, unmoved, peck grapes and grains
From a huge cornucopia, which rains
A plenteous meal from its antique
Interior (a note quite curiously Greek).
And nine long serpents twist
And twine, twist and twine,
A riotously beautiful design
Whose elements consist
Of eloquent spirals, fair and fine,
Embracing cranes and lions, who exist
Seemingly free, yet tangled in that living vine.
And in this chest shall be
Two cubic meters of space
Enough to hold all memory
Of you and me—
And this shall be the place
Where silence shall embrace
Our bodies, and obliterate the trace
Our souls made on the purity
Of night…
Now lock the chest, for we
Are dead, and lose the key!
The Pedlar
Hark, people, to the cry
Of this curious young magician-pedlar
Seeking a golden bowl!
He wanders through the city
Offering useful tin-ware
For all the ancient metal
You have left to rust
In the dim, dusty attic
Or mouldy cellar
Of your soul.
He refuses nothing—
Rusty nails
Which may have played their part
In a crucifixion—
For ten of these he will give
A new tin spoon.
The andirons
Once guarding hearth-fires of content,
Now dusty and forgotten
In an obscure corner,
He will give for these
A new tin tea-kettle
With a wooden handle.
And for this antique bowl
Fashioned to hold
Roses or wine?
The eyes of the pedlar glisten!
O woman, if acid reveal
Gold beneath the tarnished surface
He will gladly give you
His hands, his eyes, his soul,
His young, white body—
If not,
A mocking laugh
And a bright tin sieve
To hold your wine
And roses.
Portrait of a Lady in Bed
I. THE COVERLET
My cowardice
Covers me safely
From everything…
From cold, which makes me yield
And quietly die
Beneath the snow;
From heat, which makes me faint
Until cool nothingness receives me;
From hurt, (Seize me, O Lion,
And I shall die of fright
Before I feel your teeth!)
From love,
Yes, most of all from love.
How can love touch me?
Is it not heat,
Or cold,
Or a lion?
My cowardice covers me
Safely
From everything!
II. THE PILLOW
To know you think of me
Sustains my Spirit
Through the long night.
(My thought of you
Is wine, banishing sleep!)
Your thoughts of me are feathers,
Light nothings,
Drifting, dancing,
Floating,
Blown by a breath of fancy
Away from your sight.
They would choke me,
They would blind me
With the Nothing I am to you
If I dared see them;
But I bind them into a pillow,
And to know that you think of me
Sustains my spirit
Through the night.
III. SOUVENIR
Harlequin, seeing me gay
You loved me,
For fools need mirth,
O solemn Harlequin!
Tall tragedians make me laugh
Joyously, riotously,
Tall, dark villains, and heroes with blonde hair
Make me laugh uproariously…
(I could elope with a tragedian!)
But you with your clowning, Harlequin,
Brought bony truth too near—
Harlequin, I might have loved you
But I could not make you gay!
IV. THE CURTAIN
I do not fear
You, or me, or death,
There now is nothing left to fear
But this,
This curtain of blackness.
Once I feared you,
And all you thought and felt
And all you said and did:
I feared myself,
And all you made me think and feel
And say and do—
Now I no longer fear
Thinking, feeling, saying, doing,
Nor blankness, silence, apathy, torpor—
I do not fear
You, or me, or death—
I only fear
This curtain of blackness
Which is your absence.
V. THE DREAM
Harlequin comes to me, smiling,
Through the white-shining birch trees
Of the twilight wood.
He has forgiven
My cowardice and hesitations,
Soon I shall sink into his arms
With all the imagined fervour…
Of a thousand dreams.
Why does he come so slowly?
There is no longer anything
To mar our meeting…
This must be real
For Harlequin is still clowning,
He waves his arms grotesquely
To make me smile….
Quick, into his arms
With unspent fervour.
Why are the trees all sighing?
Look, whispering birches, if you will,
I and my love embrace!
They do not look,
They do not seem to care…
Embrace me, my beloved!
(Can these by passionate kisses?
They feel so thin and cool
Like mist.)
The birches shiver
As though the night-wind stirred them.
Can we be dead?
Portrait of a Gentleman
Tower of stone
Rugged and lonely,
My thoughts like ivy
Embrace my memory of you,
Climbing riotously, wantonly,
Till the harsh walls
Are clothed in tender green.
Tower of stone,
Stark walls and a narrow door
Which speak:
"You who are not for me
Are against me,—
If you are mine,
Enter!"
But who would be prisoned
In unknown darkness?
Tower of stone
Rugged and lonely,
I dared not enter and I would not go
Till clasping you
My arms were bruised and torn.
From the Madison Street Police Station
I, John Shepherd, vagrant,
Petition the park commissioners
For wider benches.
My soul has long been reconciled
To the prick of gunny-sack,
(O well-remembered woollen fleeces!)
And rustling vests of newspaper,
And the chill of rubbers on unshod feet,
But to the wasteful burning of dry leaves,
God's shepherd's mattress,
Never!
Descendant of ancient ones
Who tended flocks and watched the midnight sky,
My forebears saw the Eastern star appear
Over Judean hills.
Where do your flocks graze, gentlemen?
Are there no sheep or shepherds any more?
All day long I sought the flocks
And came by night to a wide, grassy place,
Where I could sit and watch the stars wheel by—
And in the morning some one brought me here.
La Felice
La Felice, by the forest pond looks through leaves to the Western screen of Chinese gold that lies beyond black trees and boughs of golden-green.
The little body of La Felice
weary of everything on earth
has passed from love to love, till peace
and beauty alone have any worth.
So still and deep the water lies,
so fiery-cool, so yellow-clear;
Here beauty sleeps! La Felice cries,
I will give myself to beauty here!"
The mud is smooth and deep, the weeds
beneath her feet are soft and cool,
ripples widen and glistening beads
of bubble rise on the forest pool.
The water reaches to her knee,
now to her thigh, now to her breast,
till like a child all peacefully
does La Felice lie down to rest.
She struggles like a fearful bride
with ecstasy—then La Felice
turns quietly upon her side
and over the sunset pool is peace.
The Journey
Three women walked through the snow
Beneath an empty sky,
And one was blind, and one was old,
And one was I.
Bravely the Blind One led,
I questioned from behind
"Tell me, where do we go?" She said
"Have courage… I am blind!"
We came at last to a cliff,
The Blind One plunged, and was gone—
I looked behind me, stark and stiff
The Old One stood in the dawn.
The deep crevasse was black
Beneath the dawning day,
I could not turn and travel back,
The Old One barred the way.
I could not turn aside,
(To lead, one dare not see)
I think that day I must have died
Such silence is in me.
The Last Illusion
Along the twilight road I met three women,
And they were neither old nor very young;
In her hands each bore what she most cherished,
For they were neither rich, nor very poor.
In the hands of the first woman
I saw white ashes in an urn,
In the hands of the next woman
I saw a tarnished mirror gleam,
In the hands of the last woman
I saw a heavy, jagged stone—
Along the twilight road I met three women,
And they were neither fools nor very wise,
For each was troubled lest another covet
Her precious burden—so they walked alone.
The Desert
Through dusty years, and drearily,
Two lovers rode across a desert hill
While patient love followed them wearily
Through the long, sultry day…
But when night came, the desert had its way,
Turning, they found love cold and still.
It lay so pitiful a thing,
Threadbare, and soiled, and worn—
"Why have we kept such starveling love?" she cried,
"Was it worth treasuring?"
And he replied:
"Bury it then! I shall not mourn!"
The wind came from the West,
It seemed to blow
Across a million graves to the sordid bier
Where lay their love. She said: "We will bury it here!"
They laid it low,
They rode on, dispossessed.
And all around
Rose silent hills against the darkening sky,
Wave upon motionless wave.
The night wind made a mournful sound.
The woman turned: "It is lonely here!
I am afraid!" she said.
He made reply:
"What is there left to lose or save?
What is there left to fear?
Our hearts are empty. Have we not buried our dead?"
She said, "I fear the empty dark, be kind!"
He said, "I am still here, be comforted!"
Then from its shallow grave
Their love rose up and followed close behind.
The Picnic
Here they come, in pairs, carrying baskets,
Pale clerks with brilliant neckties, and cheap serge suits,
Steering girls by the arm, clerks, too,
Pretty and slim and smart,
Even to yellow kid boots, laced up behind.
They take the electric cars far into the country,
They descend, gaily chattering, at the Amusement Park.
Under the trees they eat the lunch they have carried—
Salad, sausages, sandwiches, candy, warm beer.
They ride in the roller-coaster, two in a seat,
(Glorious danger! Warm, delicious proximity!)
The unaccustomed beer floods their veins like heady wine,
And smothered youth awakens with shrill screams of joy.
The sun sets, and evening is drowned in electric lights;
Arm-in-arm, they wander under the trees
Everywhere meeting others, wandering arm-in-arm
In the same wistful wonder, seeking they know not what.
Two leave the park and the crowds—The stars shine out,
A river runs at their feet, behind them, a leafy copse,
Away on the other shore, the fields of grain
Lie sleeping peacefully in the starlight.
Tonight the world is theirs, a legacy
From those who lived familiar friends with river, field and forest—
Their forebears.
Through the night, the same earth-magic moves them
Which swayed those ancient ones, long-dead—
And these, too, lean and drink,
Drink deeply from the river, the flowing river of life.
Slowly they return to the crowds and the brilliant lights,
Dazzled, they look aside, silently climb on the cars.
They cling to the swaying straps, weary, inert, confused.
The lurching ear makes halt—they are thrown in each others' arms—
Alien and unmoved, they sway apart again—
The car moves through the fields and suburbs back to the town.
They leave the car in pairs, the picnic basket's
Rattling dismally, plate and spoon and jar.
The boy takes his girl to her lodgings in awkward silence.
They look askance—"Good-night!"—the front door closes,
Indeed their eyes have not met, since by the river
Those wondrous moments
Linked them to earth and night, not to each other.
IV. INTERLUDE
Mountain Trails
(GLACIER PARK, SEPT. '17)
I
Night stands in the valley
Her head
Is bound with stars,
While Dawn, a grey-eyed nun
Steals through the silent trees.
Behind the mountains
Morning shouts and sings
And dances upward.
II
The peaks even today show finger prints
Where God last touched the earth
Before he set it joyously in space
Finding it good.
III
You, slender shining—
You, downward leaping—
Born from silent snow
To drown at last in the blue silent
Mountain lake—
You are not snow or water,
You are only a silver spirit
Singing!
IV
Sharp crags of granite,
Pointing, threatening,
Thrust fiercely up at me;
And near the edge, their menace
Would whirl me down.
V
Climbing desperately toward the heights
I glance in terror behind me
To be deafened—to be shattered—
By a thunderbolt of beauty.
VI
The mountains hold communion;
They are priests, silent and austere,
They have come together
In a secret place
With unbowed heads.
VII
This hidden lake
Is a sapphire cup—
An offering clearer than wine,
Colder than tears.
The mountains hold it toward the sky
In silence.
October Morning
October is brown
In field and row—
Yet goldenrod
And goldenglow,
Purple asters
And ruddy oaks,
Sumach spreading
Crimson cloaks,
Apples red
And pumpkins gold—?
Perhaps it's gayer
To be old!
October Afternoon
The air is warm and winey-sweet,
Over my head the oak-leaves shine
Like rich Madeira, glossy brown,
Or garnet red, like old Port wine.
Wild grapes are ripening on the hill,
Dead leaves curl thickly at my feet,
Yet not one falls, it is so still.
Crickets are singing in the sun,
And aimlessly grasshoppers leap
From discontent to discontent,
Their days of leaping nearly done.
There's a rich quietness of earth
That holds no promise any more,
And like a cup, Today is filled
With the last wine the year shall pour.
Maternity
Sturdy is earth,
Dull and mighty,
Unresentful—
Of her own fertility
Covering scars
With healing green.
You cannot anger earth,
You cannot cause her pain
Nor make her remember
Your hungry, querulous love.
At last your unwilling body
She tranquilly receives
And turns it to her uses.
The Father Speaks
My little son, when you were born
There died a being, sweet and wild,
A lovely, careless, radiant child,
A passionate woman—her I mourn.
And in her place has come another,
With troubled smile and brooding eyes,
Insatiate of sacrifice
And wholly, utterly your mother.
To Allen
Beauty, the dream that I have dreamed so much
Comes true in your quick smile,
And on your cheek I see her touch
And sometimes in your eyes a while
Immortal beauty's fleeting image lies.
Dear child, in whose veins beat
The marching centuries of lovers' feet,
All those brave, ardent ghosts in you arise—
The souls who, loving beauty, gave you birth,
With a chain of passion binding beauty to earth,
A captured dream—these souls breathe with your breath
Living again in beauty that knows no death.
To Helen
Lie still in my arms, little four-years-old,
Little bud that glows
With more beauty and passion than it can hold,
Little flaming rose,
The spring's red blossoms, when winter lies deep
On a wind-swept world
Of tossing branches, lie safely asleep
In brown buds curled.
They wake—and the wind strips their petals away
And spills them afar—
Can I keep you from blooming, whatever I say,
Wild bud that you are!
The Immortal
Child of a love denied, a dream unborn,
Spirit more brave
Than passion's unfulfilment, wiser than fate—
Nor breast nor grave
As cradle you have known,—
I mourn
That my soul knows its own
Too late!
A soul's half-breath,
Passion's unremembered dream,
Perfume without a vase,
Intangible you seem
To life or death.
And when the coloured mantle of the days
Slips from my shoulders, and I lie
Forgetful, dumb,
Mingled with earth in passionless embrace,
Will you, forgotten as a bird,
Singing unheard
In space,
Will you not come
When every other dream is gone,
Bringing to that silent place
The shadow of a gesture flung
By motionless hands, a floating echo hung
From an unspoken word,
And to the empty sky
The sunset of a day which did not dawn
And cannot die!
To an Absent Child
I
At first in dreams
I pressed you so close
That you melted away on my breast,
But now I wait, breathless and motionless,
Till I feel your slender arms caress me
Like swallows blown against me
And quickly flown.
II
Small flower,
My body is the earth from which you sprang,
But we are more to each other than earth and flower,
Closer, even, than earth and flower,
For the sky in me is one with the sky in you…
My love for you
Is like sunlight shining in a quiet place,
You shall feel my love like soft light
Pouring about you.
III
I will not kiss you,
For my kisses are a chain without an end;
Nor take you in my arms,
My arms would smother you against my breast;
I will not even touch your shining head—
But lift your eyes up, flower-face,
And I will fill them as full of love
As they can hold!
IV
Ah no! If you were here
I would sweep you into my arms and hold you close!
Though my love is of the spirit
I must feel your little restless body
Pressed for a moment against my heart.
Summer Night
Rain, rain murmuring endless complaints
In mournful whisperings that never cease,
You bring my tired brain a certain peace
Like Latin prayers to absent-minded saints.
And whether silently to earth you fall,
Or dashed and driven in tempestuous flight
Like souls before God's wrath, the thirsty night,
The soft and fecund earth shall drink you all.
Maura
I
Maura dreams unwakened—
The warm winds touch the bands
That hold her hair.
The call of a silver horn floats by,
A lover tosses flowers into her hands.
Maura dreams unwakened—
She joins the maidens in their dance,
Her limbs follow slow rhythms,
A lover leads her into the shade,
She moves as in a trance.
II
What dim confusion
Troubles her dream,
What passionate caress
Disturbs her spirit's rapt seclusion?
Earth draws her close. How warm
Is lover-earth! Like a sleeping bird
She gives herself, then suddenly
She is a leaf whirled in the storm.
Somewhere in a quiet room, her soul unstirred,
Dead… or sleeping,
Through the blind tumult hears afar
The note of a horn, like a silver thread.
She has given her soul to an echo's keeping.
III
Who knows the mountain where the hunter rides
Winding his horn?
Maura who heard it in her dream
Wakens forlorn,
Too late to catch the tenuous thread
Of silver sound
Which in the troubled, intricate fugue of earth
Is drowned.
IV
Maura cannot follow over the hill,
Her youth is landlocked as a hidden pool
Where thirsty love drinks deep,
A shining pool, where lingers
The colour of an unseen golden sky,
A pool where echoes fall asleep.
But restless fingers
Trouble the waters cool,
Snatch at reflected beauty, and destroy
The mirrored dream. The pool is never still,
And broken echoes die.
V
The silver call has gone, but there is left to her
The gentleness of earth,
The simple mysteries of sleep and death,
Of love and birth.
There are faces hungry for smiles, and starving fingers
Reaching for dreams.
And like a memory are the wind-swept chords of night,
And the wide melody of evening sky
Where gleams
A colour like the echo of a horn.
There is a far hill where winds die,
And over the hill lies music yet unborn.
VI
Maura lies dead at last,
The body she gave to child and lover
Now feeds flower and tree.
Earth's arms are wide to her. What breast
Offers such gentle sleeping?
Her limbs lie peacefully.
From the dark West
There comes a note like the echoing cry
Of one who rides through the dusk alone
After the hunt sweeps by.
It fades—the night wind is forlorn—
Music is still,
But Maura has followed the silver horn
Over the distant hill,
Over the hill where all winds die.
November Dusk
Where like ghosts of verdant days
Whispering down,
Leaves in the November dusk
Drift and drown,
Stand two lovers, motionless
And apart
In their sturdy nakedness
Of the heart,
Two dark figures, side by side
Through the mist
Standing as though time had died
Since they kissed,
Whose deep roots, alive and sound
Blindly reach
Mingling in the fertile ground
Each with each—
Pray that we, when gaunt and old
Like bare trees
Through our common earth may hold
Close, like these!
Winter Valley
I
Grey grasses drown
in thin brown water
Wound like a chain on the valley's
Sunken breast.
Fallen leaves on the stream
Float motionless—rest—
So secretly the pale
Water winds around
Toward hidden pools,
Or sinking in the earth
Is drowned.
II
Curved crimson stems,
Thorny fingers of vine,
Reach toward the wind.
Sunlight, thin and cold,
Touches them—they shine.
Nothing passes for thorns to hold—
Red thorns,
Catching at shadows of the wind.
III
Silence in the valley,
Silence without wings—
Like the caught breath
Of an unspoken word
When no words come.
Withered reeds, and thin brown water
Above the reeds
Are dumb.
IV
For what are you waiting, winter valley,
Withered valley, brown with reeds?
You are hushed with waiting.
You are old with secrets,
You are tranquil with forgetting.
You are harsh with thorns
Of fruits long vanished.
V. Love Poems in Autumn
Ballad
Follow, follow me into the South,
And if you are brave and wise
I'll buy you laughter for your mouth,
Sorrow for your eyes.
I'll buy you laughter, wild and sweet,
And sorrow, grey and still,
But you must follow with willing feet
Over the farthest hill.
Follow, follow me into the South,
You may return tomorrow
Wearing my kisses on your mouth,
In your eyes my sorrow.
The Pathway of Black Leaves
I. THE TURNING
The pathway opened before her eyes
Between black leaves—
She laughed, and shivered, and turned aside
From the dusty road.
Her feet moved on like heart-beats,
She could not stop them;
Relentlessly each step fulfilled itself
And the steps behind it—
A hidden chain, drawing her onward
Captive.
And yet she said: "Now I walk free
At last!"
II. TOLL-GATE
The sign read:
"Paupers may pass untaxed,
The Rich shall pay a penny,
The Poor
Must give all they possess."
She emptied her pockets bravely and passed through…
They gave her a golden coin in return for her silver,
Bearing on one side the head of a king,
And on the other a worn inscription
Curved like a wreath
And written in a tongue she did not know.
III. THE INN
There was the inn, beside the path,
Standing like the words of an ancient prophet
Forgotten long, now suddenly come true.
"They who break bread here
Shall not eat for hunger;
They who lie here
Shall not sleep."
All night long the black leaves, one by one,
Laughed, and shivered, and fell into darkness.
IV. RETURN
She has come home
To the house she knew:
But she has forgotten
The square oaken smile of the door.
The room is a stranger,
The fire is sullen;
On her hair a black leaf shines
And clings where it fell.
Against her heart
She has hidden away
The bitter golden profile of a king.
Elegy
I would be autumn earth, and hold
Your beautiful body, slain,
Where, lying still and cold,
Only the winter rain
Shall touch your limbs and face;
Where the white frost shall wed.
Your body to black mould
In the close, passionless embrace
Of that dark marriage bed:
I would be autumn earth, and hold
Your beautiful body, dead.
Sequence
I. ARRIVAL
Shining highways
Sing to your step,
Windows beckon,
Doorways open a square embrace.
Doors laugh gently
Swinging together
Behind you.
II. THE TOWER
There's a flag on my tower,
And my windows
Are orange to the night.
They are set in grey stone that frowns
At the black wind.
Inside, there's a guest at my hearth,
And a fire
Painting the grey stone gold.
My windows are black
With the hungry night peering through them.
Blackness lurks in corners,
Wind snatches the sparks,
Tongs and poker jangle together
Like the iron bones
Of a man that was hanged.
III. THEY WHO DANCE
The feet of dancers
Shine with mirth,
Their hearts are vibrant as bells:
The air flows by them
Divided like water
Cut by a gleaming ship.
Triumphantly their bodies sing,
Their eyes are blind
With music.
They move through threatening ghosts
Feeling them cool as mist
On their brows.
They who dance
Find infinite golden floors
Beneath their feet.
IV. PIANISSIMO
I took Night
Into my arms,
Night lay upon my breast.
If night had wings
She would have brought me
Stars for my hair.
The stars laughed
Lightly
From far away.
About my shoulders
White mist curled.
V. PORTRAIT BY ZULOAGA
Death lies in wait
For those who do not know
What they desire,
And Hell for those
Who fear what they have taken.
These hands are wrinkled
From stretching forth,
Brown
From the winds blowing upon them.
They are strong with seizing,
They do not tremble.
VI. GESTURES
