THE FIRST POEM
No, not for me the lute or lyre!
A knight, I’ll ride my thoughts of fire
And fly on wings for ever and aye
Through an unresisting starry sky,
Where the gleaming aether turns and sings
Its strange slow song of the Birth of Things.
And I cry: ‘Oh, if I had never known
The cares of this petty world! Alone,
Alone I’d fly, unfettered, free,
Through the Garden of God, Infinity.’
And there lie paths that none have trod
And none again shall tread,
But I alone, with Rapture shod
With Triumph garlanded –
NIGHTMARE
Oh, some warlock’s spell has bound me,
Myriad torches flare around me.
The warlock’s shroud,
A misty cloud,
Swims before me. Sudden, loud,
In my ear some creature cries,
Something flutters in my eyes.
Up stands my hair,
I clutch at air,
I must wake. It’s the nightmare!
No, some warlock’s spell has bound me,
Creatures hop around, around me,
Hop and scream – it is a dream.
Dream and Life like brothers seem.
I must make the holy sign:
Warlocks waste away and pine
At the sign – they waste and pine.
Are these fingers thine or mine?
Move, you fingers, do my will;
Mark the sign for good or ill,
On my breast the crosses make.
At the sign, they waste, they pine.
God be praised! I am awake.
THE DRAGON-FLY
Who’d drag the yet unopened lily-bud
Slim stalk far-trailing, from the lake-floor up,
To desecrate the gold and silver cup
With oozy slime and black befouling mud?
Not I, by Hera! Like the dragon-fly
In blue and sable would I skim instead
Where lap the waves around the lily-bed,
Desiring nought but only to be nigh.
BOY-MORALITY
I have apples in a very pleasant orchard
But I may not eat thereof.
I have shining fish in a blue-watered lake:
They are easily taken in the meshes of a net,
But their flesh is poison.
I have deer in a scented pine-forest
It is good sport hunting them with bows:
Their venison is tender as the flesh of young lambs,
But whoso eateth, dyeth.
The load that I dragged uphill has slipped backward:
The rope has run scorching through my hands.
I must now return to the hill’s very bottom,
And the toil upward will be harder than ever before.
When to this spot I have again dragged my burden,
I shall remember my former folly, and all that ensued.
I shall strengthen my heart with a high endeavour,
And with my hands shall I take a surer hold.
I have apples in a very pleasant orchard,
I have shining fish in a blue-watered lake,
I have deer in a pine-scented forest,
But I may not eat lest I die.
THE CORACLE
The youngest poet launched his boat
A wattle-laboured coracle,
He sang for joy to feel it float:
‘A miracle! A coracle!
I have launched a boat, I feel it float,
And all the waves cry miracle.
‘I wrenched the wattles from their tree
For the weaving of my coracle,
I thumped the slimy clay, and see!
A miracle! A coracle!
I have built a boat, I feel it float,
And all the land cries miracle.
‘With patient care her ribs I wove,
My beautiful new coracle,
With clumsy fingers taught by love –
A miracle, my coracle!
I have built a boat, I feel it float,
And all the air cries miracle.’
THE LAST DROP
The fires are heated, watch Old Age
Crowd up to hear the torture-cry:
In sacrifice for private rage
He has sentenced Youth to die.
But Youth in love with fire and smoke
Hugs the hot coals to his heart,
And dies still laughing at the joke
That his delight shall make Age smart.
A moral, gentle sirs, who stop
At home and fight to the last drop!
For look, Old Age weeps for the dead,
Shivers and coughs and howls ‘Bread, Bread!’
TRENCH LIFE
Fear never dies, much as we laugh at fear
For pride’s sake and for other cowards’ sakes,
And when we see some new Death, bursting near,
Rip those that laugh in pieces, God! it shakes
Sham fortitude that went so proud at first,
And stops the clack of mocking tongues awhile
Until (o pride, pride!) at the next shell-burst
Cowards dare mock again and twist a smile.
Yet we who once, before we came to fight,
Drowned our prosperity in a waste of grief,
Contrary now find such perverse delight
In utter fear and misery, that Belief
Blossoms from mud, and under the rain’s whips,
Flagellant-like we writhe with laughing lips.
THROUGH THE PERISCOPE†
Trench stinks of shallow-buried dead
Where Tom stands at the periscope,
Tired out. After nine months he’s shed
All fear, all faith, all hate, all hope.
Sees with uninterested eye
Beyond the barbed wire, a gay bed
Of scarlet poppies and the lie
Of German trench behind that red: –
Six poplar trees…a rick…a pond
A ruined hamlet and a mine…
More trees, more houses and beyond
La Bassée spire in gold sunshine.
The same thoughts always haunt his brain,
Two sad, one scarcely comforting,
First second third and then again
The first and the second silly thing.
The first ‘It’s now nine months and more
Since I’ve drunk British beer’ the second
‘The last few years of this mad war
Will be the cushiest, I’ve reckoned’
The third ‘The silly business is
I’ll only die in the next war,
Suppose by luck I get thro’ this,
Just ‘cause I wasn’t killed before.’
Quietly laughs, and at that token
The first thought should come round again
But crack!
The weary circle’s broken
And a bullet tears thro’ the tired brain.
MACHINE GUN FIRE: CAMBRIN
(September 25 1915)
The torn line wavers, breaks, and falls.
‘Get up, come on!’ the captain calls
‘Get up, the Welsh, and on we go!’
(Christ, that my lads should fail me so!)
A dying boy grinned up and said:
‘The whole damned company, sir; it’s dead.’
‘Come on! Cowards!’ bawled the captain, then
Fell killed, among his writhing men.
THE FUSILIER – (For Peter)
I left the heated mess-room, the drinkers and the cardplayers
My jolly brother officers all laughing and drinking
And giving them goodnight, I shut the door behind me
Stepped quickly past the corner and came upon the wind.
A strong wind a steady wind a cool wind was blowing
And flowed like a waterflood about the steamy windows
And washed against my face, and bore on me refreshfully:
Its good to step out into the beautiful wind!
But giving goodnight to that gallant hearty company
And walking all alone through the greyness of evening
The sparkle of wine and the quick fire went out of me
My gay whistle faded and left me heavy hearted
Remembering the last time I’d seen you and talked with you –
(Its seldom the Fusilier goes twice across the parapet
Twice across the parapet, returning safe again)
Yet Life’s the heated messroom and when I go under
That cool wind will blow away the Fusilier, the furious
The callous rough ribald-tongue the Fusilier captain
The gallant merry Fusilier that drank in the messroom
He’ll drain his glass, nod good-night and out into the wind,
While the quiet one the poet the lover remaining
Will meet you little singer and go with you and keep you
And turn away bad women and spill the cup of poison
And fill your heart with beauty and teach you to love.
Forget, then, the Fusilier: you’ll never understand him,
You’ll never love a Regiment as he has learned to love one
Forget the Fusilier: there are others will remember him
In the jolly old mess-room, the pleasant idle messroom
But for you let the strong sea wind blow him away.
O
What is that colour on the sky
Remotely hinting long-ago,
That splendid apricot-silver? Why,
That was the colour of my ‘O’ –
It’s strange I can’t forget –
In my first alphabet.
TO MY UNBORN SON†
A Dream
Last night, my son, your pretty mother came
Bravely into the forest of my dreams:
I laughed, and sprang to her with feet of flame,
And kissed her on the lips: how queer it seems
That the first power of woman-love should leap
So sudden on a grown man in his sleep!
She smiled, and kissed me back, a lovely thing
Of slender limbs and yellow braided hair:
She set my slow heart madly fluttering,
Her silver beauty through the shadowed air.
But oh, I wish she’d told me at first sight,
Why she was breaking on my dreams last night!
For tears to kisses suddenly succeeded,
And she was pleading, pleading, son, for you:
‘Oh, let me have my little child,’ she pleaded,
‘Give me my child, as you alone can do.’
And, oh, it hurt me, turning a deaf ear,
To say ‘No, no!’ and ‘No, no, no!’ to her.
I was most violent, I was much afraid
She’d buy my freedom with a kiss or curl,
And when she saw she’d die a sad old maid,
She wept most piteously, poor pretty girl –
But still, if Day, recalling Night’s romance
Should write a sequel, child, you’ve got a chance.
RETURN
‘Farewell,’ the Corporal cried, ‘La Bassée trenches!
No Cambrins for me now, no more Givenchies,
And no more bloody brickstacks – God Almighty,
I’m back again at last to dear old Blighty.’
But cushy wounds don’t last a man too long,
And now, poor lad, he sings this bitter song:
‘Back to La Bassée, to the same old hell,
Givenchy, Cuinchey, Cambrin, Loos, Vermelles.’
THE SAVAGE STORY OF CARDONETTE†
To Cardonette, to Cardonette,
Back from the Marne the Bosches came
With hearts like lead, with feet that bled
To Cardonette in the morning.
They hurry fast through Cardonette:
No time to stop or ask the name,
No time to loot or rape or shoot
In Cardonette this morning.
They hurry fast through Cardonette,
But close behind with eyes of flame
The Turco steals upon their heels
Through Cardonette in the morning.
And half a mile from Cardonette
He caught those Bosches tired and lame,
He charged and broke their ranks like smoke
By Cardonette in the morning.
At Cardonette, at Cardonette,
He taught the Bosche a pretty game:
He cut off their ears for souvenirs
At Cardonette in the morning.
DIED OF WOUNDS†
And so they marked me dead, the day
That I turned twenty-one?
They counted me as dead, did they,
The day my childhood slipped away
And manhood was begun?
Oh, that was fit and that was right!
Now, Daddy Time, with all your spite,
Buffet me how you can,
You’ll never make a man of me
For I lie dead in Picardy,
Rather than grow to man.
Oh that was the right day to die
The twenty-fourth day of July!
God smiled
Beguiled
By a wish so wild,
And let me always stay a child.
FOREWORD†
Here is a patchwork lately made
Of antique silk and flower-brocade
Old faded scraps in memory rich
Sewn each to each with featherstitch.
But when you stare aghast perhaps
At certain muddied khaki scraps
And trophy fragments of field-grey
Clotted and stained that shout dismay
At broidered birds and silken flowers;
Blame these black times: their fault, not ours.
LETTER TO S.S. FROM BRYN-Y-PIN†
Poor Fusilier aggrieved with fate
That lets you lag in France so late,
When all our friends of two years past
Are free of trench and wire at last
Dear lads, one way or the other done
With grim-eyed War and homeward gone
Crippled with wounds or daft or blind,
Or leaving their dead clay behind,
Where still you linger, lone and drear,
Last of the flock, poor Fusilier.
Now your brief letters home pretend
Anger and scorn that this false friend
This fickle Robert whom you knew
To writhe once, tortured just like you,
By world-pain and bound impotence
Against all Europe’s evil sense
Now snugly lurks at home to nurse
His wounds without complaint, and worse
Preaches ‘The Bayonet’ to Cadets
On a Welsh hill-side, grins, forgets.
That now he rhymes of trivial things
Children, true love and robins’ wings
Using his tender nursery trick.
Though hourly yet confused and sick
From those foul shell-holes drenched in gas
The stumbling shades to Lethe pass –
‘Guilty’ I plead and by that token
Confess my haughty spirit broken
And my pride gone; now the least chance
Of backward thought begins a dance
Of marionettes that jerk cold fear
Against my sick mind: either ear
Rings with dark cries, my frightened nose
Smells gas in scent of hay or rose,
I quake dumb horror, till again
I view that dread La Bassée plain
Drifted with smoke and groaning under
The echoing strokes of rival thunder
That crush surrender from me now.
Twelve months ago, on an oak bough
I hung, absolved of further task,
My dinted helmet, my gas mask,
My torn trench tunic with grim scars
Of war; so tamed the wrath of Mars
With votive gifts and one short prayer.
‘Spare me! Let me forget, O spare!’
‘Guilty’ I’ve no excuse to give
While in such cushioned ease I live
With Nancy and fresh flowers of June
And poetry and my young platoon,
Daring how seldom search behind
In those back cupboards of my mind
Where lurk the bogeys of old fear,
To think of you, to feel you near
By our old bond, poor Fusilier.
NIGHT MARCH†
Evening: beneath tall poplar trees
We soldiers eat and smoke and sprawl,
Write letters home, enjoy our ease,
When suddenly comes a ringing call.
‘Fall in!’ A stir, and up we jump,
Fold the love letter, drain the cup,
We toss away the Woodbine stump,
Snatch at the pack and jerk it up.
Soon with a roaring song we start,
Clattering along a cobbled road,
The foot beats quickly like the heart,
And shoulders laugh beneath their load.
Where are we marching? No one knows,
Why are we marching? No one cares.
For every man follows his nose,
Towards the gay West where sunset flares.
An hour’s march: we halt: forward again,
Wheeling down a small road through trees.
Curses and stumbling: puddled rain
Shines dimly, splashes feet and knees.
Silence, disquiet: from those trees
Far off a spirit of evil howls.
‘Down to the Somme’ wail the banshees
With the long mournful voice of owls.
The trees are sleeping, their souls gone,
But in this time of slumbrous trance
Old demons of the night take on
Their windy foliage, shudder and dance.
Out now: the land is bare and wide,
A grey sky presses overhead.
Down to the Somme! In fields beside
Our tramping column march the dead.
Our comrades who at Festubert
And Loos and Ypres lost their lives,
In dawn attacks, in noonday glare,
On dark patrols from sudden knives.
Like us they carry packs, they march
In fours, they sling their rifles too,
But long ago they’ve passed the arch
Of death where we must yet pass through.
Seven miles: we halt awhile, then on!
I curse beneath my burdening pack
Like Sinbad when with sigh and groan
He bore the old man on his back.
A big moon shines across the road,
Ten miles: we halt: now on again
Drowsily marching; the sharp goad
Blunts to a dumb and sullen pain.
A man falls out: we others go
Ungrudging on, but our quick pace
Full of hope once, grows dull, and slow:
No talk: nowhere a smiling face.
Above us glares the unwinking moon,
Beside us march the silent dead:
My train of thought runs mazy, soon
Curious fragments crowd my head.
I puzzle old things learned at school,
Half riddles, answerless, yet intense,
A date, an algebraic rule,
A bar of music with no sense.
We win the fifteenth mile by strength
‘Halt!’ the men fall, and where they fall,
Sleep. ‘On!’ the road uncoils its length;
Hamlets and towns we pass them all.
False dawn declares night nearly gone:
We win the twentieth mile by theft.
We’re charmed together, hounded on,
By the strong beat of left, right, left.
Pale skies and hunger: drizzled rain:
The men with stout hearts help the weak,
Add a new rifle to their pain
Of shoulder, stride on, never speak.
We win the twenty-third by pride:
My neighbour’s face is chalky white.
Red dawn: a mocking voice inside
‘New every morning’, ‘Fight the good fight’.
Now at the top of a rounded hill
We see brick buildings and church spires.
Nearer they loom and nearer, till
We know the billet of our desires.
Here the march ends, somehow we know.
The step quickens, the rifles rise
To attention: up the hill we go
Shamming new vigour for French eyes.
So now most cheerily we step down
The street, scarcely withholding tears
Of weariness: so stir the town
With all the triumph of Fusiliers.
Breakfast to cook, billets to find,
Scrub up and wash (down comes the rain),
And the dark thought in every mind
‘To-night they’ll march us on again.’
POETIC INJUSTICE†
A Scottish fighting man whose wife
Turned false and tempted his best friend,
Finding no future need for life
Resolved he’d win a famous end.
Bayonet and bomb this wild man took,
And Death in every shell-hole sought,
Yet there Death only made him hook
To dangle bait that others caught.
A hundred German wives soon owed
Their widows’ weeds to this one man
Who also guided down Death’s road
Scores of the Scots of his own clan.
Seventeen wounds he got in all
And jingling medals four or five.
Often in trenches at night-fall
He was the one man left alive.
But fickle wife and paramour
Were strangely visited from above,
Were lightning-struck at their own door
About the third week of their love.
‘Well, well’ you say, ‘man wife and friend
Ended as quits’ but I say not:
While that false pair met a clean end
Without remorse, how fares the Scot?
THE SURVIVOR COMES HOME†
Despair and doubt in the blood:
Autumn, a smell rotten-sweet:
What stirs in the drenching wood?
What drags at my heart, my feet?
What stirs in the wood?
Nothing stirs, nothing cries.
Run weasel, cry bird for me,
Comfort my ears, soothe my eyes!
Horror on ground, over tree!
Nothing calls, nothing flies.
Once in a blasted wood,
A shrieking fevered waste,
We jeered at Death where he stood:
I jeered, I too had a taste
Of Death in the wood.
Am I alive and the rest
Dead, all dead? sweet friends
With the sun they have journeyed west;
For me now night never ends,
A night without rest.
Death, your revenge is ripe.
Spare me! but can Death spare?
Must I leap, howl to your pipe
Because I denied you there?
Your vengeance is ripe.
Death, ay, terror of Death:
If I laughed at you, scorned you, now
You flash in my eyes, choke my breath…
‘Safe home.’ Safe? Twig and bough
Drip, drip, drip with Death!
THE PUDDING
‘Eat your pudding Alexander.’
‘’Tis too sour to eat.’
‘Take it quickly, Alexander.’
‘Now ’tis far too sweet.’
And now ’tis thin and slippy-sloppy
And now ’tis tough as leather,
Now too hot and now too cold,
And now ’tis all together.
MOTHER’S SONG IN WINTER
The cat is by the fire,
The dog is on the mat:
The dog has his desire,
So also has the cat.
The cat is white
The dog is black,
The year’s delight
Will soon come back.
The kettle sings, the loud bell rings
And fast my baby clings.
TO JEAN AND JOHN
What shall we offer you, Jean and John?
The softest pillows to sleep upon,
The happiest house in the whole of Wales,
Poodle puppies with wingle tails,
Caldicott pictures, coloured toys
The best ever made for girls or boys
Plenty to drink, plenty to eat
A big green garden with flowers complete
A kind Scotch nurse, a Father and Mother
Doesn’t this tempt you?
All right, don’t bother.
FROM AN UPPER WINDOW
Dark knoll, where distant furrows end
In rocks beyond the river-bend,
I make my visionary stand
In your secure well-wooded land
Where idle paths of idle fancy tend.
The charts that threaten all things free
With bondage of geography
That loop you with a road way round
Or pin you to some parish bound
Cannot withdraw your loveliness from me.
Nor though I went with hound and stick
With compass and arithmetic
To gain myself a closer view
Could I in space come up with you
Your glades with moving shades and colours quick.
You are remote in space and time
As inenarrable in rhyme,
Yet by this very rareness doubt
That you are you is blotted out –
Hill of green hopes with slopes no foot may climb.
DRINK AND FEVER
In fever the mind leaps three paces forward;
In drink the mind draws back the same three paces.
It turns about and sees the face twitching;
Stares ahead and sees the back stiffening.
It hears the voice auguring monstrously;
Hears the voice arguing meticulously.
Man is located then as man sleep-walking
Midmost between delirious and drunken.
So drink and fever touch and are combined
In the clear space where should be man’s mind.
VESTRY
My parents were debtors,
And flung out of doors,
My brothers were eunuchs,
My sisters were whores;
If I tell the whole story,
You’ll laugh till you cry,
That I am what I am
None knows better than I.
My breath smelt of garlic,
My body was lean,
My lovelocks were lousy,
My garments not clean;
When I strolled in the desert
Or dozed by the sea,
There was no one gainsaid me
In all Galilee.
I was all things to all men
But death to the rich;
I coaxed the dung-fire
And made cakes in the ditch;
My proverbs came pat,
And my features were flame,
And I paid the tax-penny
When quarter-day came.
I drove my disciples
With daily advice
About rubies and talents
And pearls of great price,
About laying up treasure
And profit and loss.
It was what my mind ran on
From manger to cross.
When my hearers went hungry
I bade them sit down,
And I fed them with fables
Of white bread and brown,
Of old wine and new wine,
Of herrings and salt;
And what happened after
Was never my fault.
THE END
Who can pretend
To spy to the very end
The ultimate confusion
Of belief and reason,
Perfection of all progress?
But I say, nevertheless:
That when instead of chairs
The altars of the martyrs
Are taken by philosophers
As vessels of reality;
When Cardinals devoutly
Canonize in curia
Some discarded formula
Of mad arithmetician
Or mad geometrician
Now seated in a swivel-chair
Widowed of its philosopher,
In that General Post
Down will come Pepper’s Ghost
And proclaim Utopia,
The final synthesis,
With a cornucopia
And halitosis.
The dogs will bark,
The cats will cry,
And the Angel of Death go drumming by.
THE SAND GLASS
The sand-glass stands in frame both ways the same, Single broad based; but so enclosed the glass Alters in action, most revengeful, trickling
Minute by minute, minute-minus-moment,
By broken minute, nervous time,
Narrowing time,
Nearly time,
No time,
Time!
Upend,
Equilibrize
Eyes near maddened,
Sand-roped nonsensically:
Now sense, sight, sand, no nonsense.
Turn, suicide, from the wasp-waist, while time runs A new five minutes: then view once more with calm The base root-firm, each base, solid in time.
THIS WHAT-I-MEAN
A close deduction about close deduction.
Or, starting at an earlier point than that
With any pavement-rainbow after rain,
First, the experience of an easy pleasure,
Then the close observation ‘filmed with oil’,
Then qualification of that easy pleasure,
Then close deduction about doubtful pleasure,
Then close deduction about close deduction.
How to outgo this vistaed close deduction,
To find if anything is behind or not?
If not, no matter; no matter either way.
We are not collecting worms for the Museum.
And we are not taking Cat’s Cradle, say,
Beyond the ninth, or is it the nineteenth, stage,
The last stage that the oldest experts know.
(That would be physical and scientific,
A progress further into the same close vista)
And we are not leaping the unknown gap;
Any poor fugitive does that with razor
Or lysol as the spring-board, and he knows
One brink of the gap at least before he jumps.
This what-I-mean is searching out the gap
Under all closeness and improving on it
And the new gaps above and every which way,
Gradually loosening everything up
So nothing sticks to anything but itself –
A world of rice cooked Indian fashion
To be eaten with whatever sauce we please.
THE FINGERHOLD
He himself
Narrowed the rock shelf
To only two shoes’ width,
And later by
A willing poverty
To half that width and breadth.
He shrank it then
By angry discipline
To a mere fingerhold,
Which was the occasion
Of his last confusion:
He was not so bold
As to let go
At last and throw
Himself on air that would uphold.
He wept
Self-pityingly and kept
That finger crooked and strained
Until almost
His life was lost
And death not gained.
THEN WHAT?
If I rise now and put my straw hat on
Against the strong sun lying in wait outside
Scorching the flowers and over the flat stone
Making the air dance – what? The prospect’s wide:
The sea swimming to nowhere, the near hills
Incredible of ascent and horned with crags,
The blank sky darted through with the sun’s quills,
The pleasant poplar grove where the eye drags.
Then what? The path curves to the gate, from which
A dusty road curves to my neighbour’s gate:
Then turn, slowly, as granting leave to fate
Stroll past it, pausing at the boundary ditch
To exploit this chance in grossness of event,
Then what? Then gladly home with nothing spent.
HISTORICAL PARTICULARS
And if at last the anecdotal world
Records my name among ten million more
In the long-drawn-out story of itself
(O tediousness) and far from the last page? –
‘English poet and miscellaneous writer,
Eccentric of the Later Christian era,
Sometime a subject of King George the Fifth,
(While the ninth, eighth and seventh Popes of Rome
Before the last were reigning). It was the time
Of the World War – he served throughout – the time
Of airships and top-hats and communism,
Passports and gangsters, breach of promise cases,
When coal was burned in grates and gold coin minted,
When radio was a novelty and horses
Still ran with vans about the city streets…’
And if with such quaint temporal statistics
They date me in their books and bury me,
Could I protest an honest alibi
Who dreamed ill dreams one night and woke, staring,
In those too populous and wealthy streets
And wandered there, as it were dreaming still,
Out at heels and my heart heavy in me,
And drank with strangers in the bright saloons
And gossiped there of politics and futures?
My alibi’s the future: there I went
And in the idle records found my record,
And left my spectre fast between the pages
As a memorial and a mockery
Where they shall find it when they come to be.
And as I am, I am, the visit over.
What name, what truth? Unbiographical.
The fixity of one who has no spectre.
I learn slowly, but I may not wander.
ADDRESS TO SELF
Our loves are cloaked, our times are variable,
We keep our rooms and meet only at table.
But come, dear self, agree that you and I
Shall henceforth court each other’s company
And bed in peace together now and fall
In loving discourse, as were natural,
With open heart and mind, both alike bent
On a just verdict, not on argument,
And hide no private longings, each from each,
And wear one livery and employ one speech.
I worked against you with my intellect,
You against me with folly and neglect,
Making a pact with flesh, the alien one:
Which brought me into strange confusion
For as mere flesh I spurned you, slow to see
This was to acknowledge flesh as part of me.
PROSPERITY OF POETS
Several instances in time occur
When, numbers reckoned, there appears a quorum
Sufficient to explain the way of the world
To the world, in plural singularity.
The agenda, often, has been mass conversion
From sin, often mass resort to reason,
Rarely poems, and then what an array
Of unrelated beauties marshalled!
Mutual indulgence, each to each,
Among these poets being the arbiter
Of what shall stand. The world, noting
A harmless literary renascence,
Snatches up certain poems (as a sample)
Where the indulgence has been strained
To exclude poetry and include world,
And flutes them under academic escort
To that Glass Palace where the Great consort.
DIOTIMA DEAD
Diotima’s dead – how could she die?
Or what says Socrates, now she is dead?
Diotima’s wisdom he might credit
While still she looked at him with eyes of love:
He could his life commit to Diotima,
Clear vessel of the Word’s divinity,
Until she cloaked herself in deathward pride
And ruin courted by equivocation –
Did he not swear then, she had always lied?
Scholars, the truth was larger than herself.
The truth it was she had told Socrates
(Though peevish in her immortality
And starving for what meats the God forbade)
Until her vision clouded, her voice altered,
And two lives must have ended, had he stayed.
THE HEARTH
The cat purrs out because it must,
So does the cricket call;
The crackling fire in which they trust
Cares not for them at all.
Though cat-and-cricket-like we cry
Around a fatal fire,
And give ‘because we must’ for ‘why’,
As children of desire,
Care is our reading of that glow
Which to repay is wise:
Who will not yet his distance know
For his own folly fries.
IN THE LION HOUSE
That chance what traveller would not bless
In midday glare to see
Lion and tawny lioness
At lust beneath a tree?
Here, superannuated bones
Of leathery bull or horse,
An ailing panther’s muffled moans
And Monday’s dismal course –
Who would not turn his head aside
From this connubial show
Of Felis Leo and his bride,
Half-hearted, smug and slow?
AN APPEAL
Though I may seem a fool with money, Lord,
To spend and lend more than I can afford,
Why should my creditors and debtors scoff
When tearfully I urge them to pair off,
Yet booze together at one bar; and why
Should all sport newer coats and hats than I?
A GHOST FROM ARAKAN
He was not killed. The dream surprise
Sets tears of joy pricking your eyes.
So cheated, you awake:
A castigation to accept
After twelve years in which you’ve kept
Dry-eyed, for honour’s sake.
His ghost, be sure, is watching here
To count each liberated tear
And smile a crooked smile:
Still proud, still only twenty-four,
Stranded in his green jungle-war
That’s lasted all this while.
ROBIN AND MARIAN
He has one bowstring, and from the quiver takes
An only shaft. Should Robin miss his aim
He cannot care whether that bowstring breaks,
Being then undone and Sherwood put to shame.
Smile, Marian, smile: resolve all doubt,
Speed Robin’s goosequill to the clout.
NEVER YET
For History’s disagreeable sake
I could review the year and make
A long list of your cruelties
As they appear in the world’s eyes
(And even, maybe, in your own),
Until it shamed me to have grown,
By culling so much strength therefrom,
The sagest fool in Christendom.
But what would the world think if I
Declared your love for me a lie,
Courting renown in my old age
As Christendom’s least foolish sage?
Or if in anger, close to hate,
Your truth you dared repudiate –
A truth long fastened with a fine
Unbreakable red thread of mine –
And called what seemed a final curse
Upon the tottering universe?
Nothing can change us; you know this.
The never-yet of our first kiss
Prognosticated such intense
Perfection of coincidence.
TANKA
Apricot petals on the dark pool fallen
Tassel both flanks of a broken cane:
Our Poet Emperor himself extols them
In five brief lines confounding
All foolish commentary.
HOUSE ON FIRE
The crowd’s heart is in the right place:
Everyone secretly backs a fire
Against massed murderous jets of water
Trained on a burning house by the city’s hoses –
While he still swears it cannot spread to his.
THE LILAC FROCK
How I saw her last, let me tell you. I heard screams
In a dream, four times repeated. It was Grimaut Castle.
She wore a lilac frock, her diamond ring,
Gold beads and the dove brooch.
‘Escape!’ she whispered.
‘Emilio’s mad again.’
He came from behind her
Flourishing a sharp Mexican machete.
Nonchalantly, I turned my back on him
And asked her: ‘Could a young witch, taking the veil,
Count on the Mother Superior’s connivance
If she kept a toad-familiar in her cell?’
She faltered: ‘Yesterday I tried to join you –
I had even bought my ticket and packed my bags
But seeing a mist of sorrow cloud his eyes
How could I desert him? He had a painful boil.
I decided to eat beans with Emilio
Rather than suffer happiness with you…
So keep my paint box and my paint brushes,
I shall never have occasion to use them now:
Women born under Cancer lead hard lives.’
Sun blotted out sun, dogs howled, and a silver coffin
Went sailing past over the woods and hedges
With a dead girl inside. The man who saw it
Pointed in which direction the coffin flew,
Should I ever be drawn to pilgrimage.
DEPARTURE
With a hatchet, a clasp-knife and a bag of nails
He walked out boldly to meet the rising sun.
His step was resolute and his hair white.
Granted, death was lurking under that roof
And his funeral planned, down to the last speech.
But why not face it honourably, in comfort?
Neighbours looked glum, grandchildren whimpered.
‘He has no right to leave us,’ everyone said,
‘He belongs here, our most familiar landmark.’
Visitors had flocked from a great distance
To inspect the forge and watch him tirelessly
Beating red-hot iron on his anvil.
It was hoped to keep it up, when he had died,
As a museum, with a small entrance fee,
And the grave, of course, would be refreshed with flowers.
Why did he defy them? And yet his bearing
Suggested no defiance – on the contrary,
He wore an innocent and engaging smile.
‘I have given your own town back to you,’
Said he, ‘though I had not thought myself the thief,
And with no choice but to start work elsewhere.’
NORTH SIDE
On the north side of every tree
Snow clings and moss thrives;
The Sun himself can never see
So much of women’s lives;
But we who in this knowledge steer
Through pathless woods find the way clear.
A-
va Gardner brought me á
One winged angel yesterday
To kneel beside me when I pray
And guide me through the U.S.A. –
With one wing she won’t fly away
Thank you, dearest Ava!
SONG: JOHN TRUELOVE
The surnames from our parents had
Are seldom a close fit:
There’s Matthew Good who’s truly bad,
And Dicky Dull’s a wit.
There’s Colonel Staid who’s far from staid,
There’s glum old Farmer Bright
And Parson Bold who’s much afraid
Of burglars in the night.
So though my name be John Truelove,
Take warning, maidens all,
I shall keep true to none of you
Unless the worst befall.
REQUIREMENTS FOR A POEM†
Terse, Magyar, proud, all on its own,
Competing with itself alone,
Guiltless of greed
And winged by its own need.
THE ATOM
Within each atom lurks a sun,
Which if its host releases,
Opening a foolish mouth for fun,
The world must fly in pieces.
THE CUPID
A cupid with a crooked face
Peered into Laura’s jewel-case:
‘Emerald, diamond, ruby, moonstone,
Jacinth, agate, pearl, cornelian,
Red and black garnet, sapphire, beryl,
Topaz, amethyst and opal,
Pure rock-crystal.’
‘These are hers, Cupid, for instruction
In love’s variety, to have and hold.
No common glass intrudes among them
And all are set in gold.’
‘But if she fails you?’ asks the mannerless cupid.
‘Will she return them? Will she sell them?
Will they be mine when sold?’
Dear God, how stupid can a cupid be,
Asking such mercenary questions of me?
OLIVES OF MARCH
Olives of March are large and blue, but few,
Peering like sapphires from the thick grass,
Yet none has ever known them to take root.
Pallas Athene sent an owl to wrench
A grey-green sprig from the sole Nubian stock:
Grafting it on an ancient oleaster
At her Acropolis, for distribution
Of olive-grafts by the Archimorius
To every city of Greece. Who dares neglect
An olive harvest must incur despair,
Starvation, haplessness and rootlessness.
THE UNDYING WORM
‘The damned in their long drop from Earth to Hell,
Meaning no fewer than ten thousand miles
At headlong speed – Hell may be nowhere
Yet friction of the fall causes rope-burns –
Take only a few hours,’ our verger smiles.
Return by Act of Mercy takes far longer
And though an angel’s kiss is often praised
As balm for penitents, you may be sure
That those red scars will glow again in sullen
Resentment of their cure.
The damned are rendered down eventually
To clinker or a fine white ash. Yet what
Of throats from which no cry of guilt is wrenched?
Can it be there that the worm dieth not
And the fire is not quenched?
SONG: THOUGH TIME CONCEALS MUCH
Though time conceals much,
Though distance alters much,
Neither will ever part me
From you, or you from me,
However far we be.
So let your dreaming body
Naked, proud and lovely –
There is no other such,
So wholesome or so holy –
Accept my dream touch.
One kiss from you will surely
Amend and restore me
To what I still can be –
Though distance alters much,
Though time conceals much.
ALWAYS AND FOR EVER
Come, share this love again
Without question or pain,
Not only for a while
With quick hug and sweet smile
But always and for ever
In unabated fever
Without guess, without guile.
THE SNAPPED ROPE†
When the rope snaps, when the long story’s done
Not for you only but for everyone,
These praises will continue fresh and true
As ever, cruelly though the Goddess tricked you,
And lovers (it may be) will bless you for
Your blindness, grieved that you could praise no more.
THE GOLDSMITHS†
And yet the incommunicable sea
Proves less mysterious to you and me
Than how, through dream, we run together nightly
And hammer out gold cups in a dancing fury
Patterned with birds of prey, with tangled trees,
Lions, acanthus, wild anemones;
And that these cups are master-works is proved
By the deep furrows on our foreheads grooved;
And to sip wine from them is to be drunk
With powers of destiny, this mad world shrunk
To bean or walnut size, its ages flown
To enlarge the love-hour that remains our own.
ADAM IN HELL†
From the pit of Hell a whisper of pure love
Rises through crooked smoking crannies
To the lawns of Paradise.
Adam lies fettered by his basalt pillar:
A lodestone of male honour,
A moral for the damned.
So proud a lover, suffering no woman
To endure the torments that are his:
It was not Eve who sinned but the bright Serpent
Conspiring against man –
Tomorrow she will bruise her enemy’s head
And raise up Adam from the loveless dead.
THE CARDS ARE WILD†
Tell me, how do you see me? Ring the changes
On father, lover, brother, friend and child –
A hand is dealt you, but the cards are wild.
You spoil me with a doubled span of years;
Having already overspent my due
Should I, or should I not, be grateful to you?
This cruel world grows crueller day by day,
And you more silent, more withdrawn and wise.
I watch its torments mirrored in your eyes –
Sweetheart, what must I say?
With you still here I dare not move away.
UNLESS†
Ink, pen, a random sheet of writing paper,
A falling inescapably in love
With you who long since fell in love with me…
But where is the poem, where my moving hand?
And if I am flung full length on a bed of thorns
How can I hope to retrieve lost memory,
Lost pride and lost motion,
Unless, defying the curse long laid upon me,
You prove the unmatchable courage of your kind?
THE POISED PENT†
Love, to be sure, endures for ever,
Scorning the hour
That ends untimely in a hurried kiss
And a breach of power.
Must I then sit here still, my pen poised
As though in disgrace,
Plotting to draw strength from the single grief
That we still dare face?
Or must I set my song of gratitude
In a minor key,
To confess that you and I compound a truth
That is yet to be?
[FRAGMENT]†
A smoothly rolling distant sea,
A broad well-laden olive tree,
A summer sky, gulls wheeling by
With raucous noise, and here sit I
For seven years, not yet set free.
[HOW IS IT A MAN DIES?]†
How is it a man dies
Before his natural death?
He dies from telling lies
To those who trusted him.
He dies from telling lies –
With closed ears and shut eyes.
Or what prolongs men’s lives
Beyond their natural death?
It is their truth survives
Treading remembered streets
Rallying frightened hearts
In hordes of fugitives.
GREEN FLASH†
Watch now for a green flash, for the last moment
When the Sun plunges into sea;
And breathe no wish (most wishes are of weakness)
When green, Love’s own heraldic tincture,
Leads in the mystagogues of Mother Night:
Owls, planets, dark oracular dreams.
Nightfall is not mere failure of daylight.
PEISINOˆ
So too the Siren
Under her newly rounded moon
Metamorphoses naked men
To narwhale or to dolphin:
Fodder for long Leviathan
Or for his children
Deep in the caves of Ocean.
ACROSS THE GULF†
Beggars had starved at Dives’ door
But Lazarus his friend
Watched him lose hope, belayed a rope
And flung him the loose end,
Sighing: ‘Poor sinner, born to be
Proud, loveless, rich and Sadducee!’
TO HIS TEMPERATE MISTRESS†
You could not hope to love me more,
Nor could I hope to love you less,
Both having often found before
That I was cursed with such excess,
Even the cuckold’s tragic part
Would never satisfy my heart.
FOOT-HOLDER-ROYAL†
As Court foot-holder to the Queen of Fishes
I claim prescriptive right
To press the royal instep when she wishes
And count her toes all night.
Some find me too assiduous in my task.
That is for her to say; they need but ask.
THE PRESSURE GAUGE†
Quoth the King of Poland
To his gipsy Roland:
‘Wretch, go fetch my idle pages –
Ask them where my pressure-gauge is!’
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!
‘Sire,’ replied the gipsy,
‘Thou art wondrous tipsy,
In these Polish Middle Ages
No one’s heard of pressure-gauges –’
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!