Page 3 of New Poems

Ensheathed invulnerable with me, with seven

  Great seals upon your outgoings, and woven

  Chain of my mystic will wrapped perfectly

  Upon you, wrapped in indomitable me.

  READING A LETTER

  SHE sits on the recreation ground

  Under an oak whose yellow buds dot the pale

  blue sky.

  The young grass twinkles in the wind, and the sound

  Of the wind in the knotted buds in a canopy.

  So sitting under the knotted canopy

  Of the wind, she is lifted and carried away as in

  a balloon

  Across the insensible void, till she stoops to see

  The sandy desert beneath her, the dreary platoon.

  She knows the waste all dry beneath her, in one

  place

  Stirring with earth-coloured life, ever turning and

  stirring.

  But never the motion has a human face

  Nor sound, save intermittent machinery whirring.

  And so again, on the recreation ground

  She alights a stranger, wondering, unused to the

  scene;

  Suffering at sight of the children playing around,

  Hurt at the chalk-coloured tulips, and the even-

  ing-green.

  TWENTY YEARS AGO

  ROUND the house were lilacs and strawberries

  And foal-foots spangling the paths,

  And far away on the sand-hills, dewberries

  Caught dust from the sea's long swaths.

  Up the wolds the woods were walking,

  And nuts fell out of their hair.

  At the gate the nets hung, balking

  The star-lit rush of a hare.

  In the autumn fields, the stubble

  Tinkled the music of gleaning.

  At a mother's knees, the trouble

  Lost all its meaning.

  Yea, what good beginnings

  To this sad end!

  Have we had our innings?

  God forfend!

  INTIME

  RETURNING, I find her just the same,

  At just the same old delicate game.

  Still she says: "Nay, loose no flame

  To lick me up and do me harm!

  Be all yourself!--for oh, the charm

  Of your heart of fire in which I look!

  Oh, better there than in any book

  Glow and enact the dramas and dreams

  I love for ever!--there it seems

  You are lovelier than life itself, till desire

  Comes licking through the bars of your lips

  And over my face the stray fire slips,

  Leaving a burn and an ugly smart

  That will have the oil of illusion. Oh, heart

  Of fire and beauty, loose no more

  Your reptile flames of lust; ah, store

  Your passion in the basket of your soul,

  Be all yourself, one bonny, burning coal

  That stays with steady joy of its own fire.

  But do not seek to take me by desire.

  Oh, do not seek to thrust on me your fire!

  For in the firing all my porcelain

  Of flesh does crackle and shiver and break in pain,

  My ivory and marble black with stain,

  My veil of sensitive mystery rent in twain,

  My altars sullied, I, bereft, remain

  A priestess execrable, taken in vain--"

  So the refrain

  Sings itself over, and so the game

  Re-starts itself wherein I am kept

  Like a glowing brazier faintly blue of flame

  So that the delicate love-adept

  Can warm her hands and invite her soul,

  Sprinkling incense and salt of words

  And kisses pale, and sipping the toll

  Of incense-smoke that rises like birds.

  Yet I've forgotten in playing this game,

  Things I have known that shall have no name;

  Forgetting the place from which I came

  I watch her ward away the flame,

  Yet warm herself at the fire--then blame

  Me that I flicker in the basket;

  Me that I glow not with content

  To have my substance so subtly spent;

  Me that I interrupt her game.

  I ought to be proud that she should ask it

  Of me to be her fire-opal--.

  It is well

  Since I am here for so short a spell

  Not to interrupt her?--Why should I

  Break in by making any reply!

  TWO WIVES

  I

  INTO the shadow-white chamber silts the white

  Flux of another dawn. The wind that all night

  Long has waited restless, suddenly wafts

  A whirl like snow from the plum-trees and the pear,

  Till petals heaped between the window-shafts

  In a drift die there.

  A nurse in white, at the dawning, flower-foamed

  pane

  Draws down the blinds, whose shadows scarcely

  stain

  The white rugs on the floor, nor the silent bed

  That rides the room like a frozen berg, its crest

  Finally ridged with the austere line of the dead

  Stretched out at rest.

  Less than a year the fourfold feet had pressed

  The peaceful floor, when fell the sword on their rest.

  Yet soon, too soon, she had him home again

  With wounds between them, and suffering like a

  guest

  That will not go. Now suddenly going, the pain

  Leaves an empty breast.

  II

  A tall woman, with her long white gown aflow

  As she strode her limbs amongst it, once more

  She hastened towards the room. Did she know

  As she listened in silence outside the silent door?

  Entering, she saw him in outline, raised on a pyre

  Awaiting the fire.

  Upraised on the bed, with feet erect as a bow,

  Like the prow of a boat, his head laid back like the

  stern

  Of a ship that stands in a shadowy sea of snow

  With frozen rigging, she saw him; she drooped like

  a fern

  Refolding, she slipped to the floor as a ghost-white

  peony slips

  When the thread clips.

  Soft she lay as a shed flower fallen, nor heard

  The ominous entry, nor saw the other love,

  The dark, the grave-eyed mistress who thus dared

  At such an hour to lay her claim, above

  A stricken wife, so sunk in oblivion, bowed

  With misery, no more proud.

  III

  The stranger's hair was shorn like a lad's dark poll

  And pale her ivory face: her eyes would fail

  In silence when she looked: for all the whole

  Darkness of failure was in them, without avail.

  Dark in indomitable failure, she who had lost

  Now claimed the host,

  She softly passed the sorrowful flower shed

  In blonde and white on the floor, nor even turned

  Her head aside, but straight towards the bed

  Moved with slow feet, and her eyes' flame steadily

  burned.

  She looked at him as he lay with banded cheek,

  And she started to speak

  Softly: "I knew it would come to this," she said,

  "I knew that some day, soon, I should find you thus.

  So I did not fight you. You went your way instead

  Of coming mine--and of the two of us

  I died the first, I, i
n the after-life

  Am now your wife."

  IV

  "'Twas I whose fingers did draw up the young

  Plant of your body: to me you looked e'er sprung

  The secret of the moon within your eyes!

  My mouth you met before your fine red mouth

  Was set to song--and never your song denies

  My love, till you went south."

  "'Twas I who placed the bloom of manhood on

  Your youthful smoothness: I fleeced where fleece

  was none

  Your fervent limbs with flickers and tendrils of new

  Knowledge; I set your heart to its stronger beat;

  I put my strength upon you, and I threw

  My life at your feet."

  "But I whom the years had reared to be your bride,

  Who for years was sun for your shivering, shade for

  your sweat,

  Who for one strange year was as a bride to you--you

  set me aside

  With all the old, sweet things of our youth;--and

  never yet

  Have I ceased to grieve that I was not great enough

  To defeat your baser stuff."

  V

  "But you are given back again to me

  Who have kept intact for you your virginity.

  Who for the rest of life walk out of care,

  Indifferent here of myself, since I am gone

  Where you are gone, and you and I out there

  Walk now as one."

  "Your widow am I, and only I. I dream

  God bows his head and grants me this supreme

  Pure look of your last dead face, whence now is gone

  The mobility, the panther's gambolling,

  And all your being is given to me, so none

  Can mock my struggling."

  "And now at last I kiss your perfect face,

  Perfecting now our unfinished, first embrace.

  Your young hushed look that then saw God ablaze

  In every bush, is given you back, and we

  Are met at length to finish our rest of days

  In a unity."

  HEIMWEH

  FAR-OFF the lily-statues stand white-ranked in the

  garden at home.

  Would God they were shattered quickly, the cattle

  would tread them out in the loam.

  I wish the elder trees in flower could suddenly heave,

  and burst

  The walls of the house, and nettles puff out from

  the hearth at which I was nursed.

  It stands so still in the hush composed of trees and

  inviolate peace,

  The home of my fathers, the place that is mine, my

  fate and my old increase.

  And now that the skies are falling, the world is

  spouting in fountains of dirt,

  I would give my soul for the homestead to fall with

  me, go with me, both in one hurt.

  DEBACLE

  THE trees in trouble because of autumn,

  And scarlet berries falling from the bush,

  And all the myriad houseless seeds

  Loosing hold in the wind's insistent push

  Moan softly with autumnal parturition,

  Poor, obscure fruits extruded out of light

  Into the world of shadow, carried down

  Between the bitter knees of the after-night.

  Bushed in an uncouth ardour, coiled at core

  With a knot of life that only bliss can unravel,

  Fall all the fruits most bitterly into earth

  Bitterly into corrosion bitterly travel.

  What is it internecine that is locked,

  By very fierceness into a quiescence

  Within the rage? We shall not know till it burst

  Out of corrosion into new florescence.

  Nay, but how tortured is the frightful seed

  The spark intense within it, all without

  Mordant corrosion gnashing and champing hard

  For ruin on the naked small redoubt.

  Bitter, to fold the issue, and make no sally;

  To have the mystery, but not go forth;

  To bear, but retaliate nothing, given to save

  The spark in storms of corrosion, as seeds from

  the north.

  The sharper, more horrid the pressure, the harder

  the heart

  That saves the blue grain of eternal fire

  Within its quick, committed to hold and wait

  And suffer unheeding, only forbidden to expire.

  NARCISSUS

  WHERE the minnows trace

  A glinting web quick hid in the gloom of the brook,

  When I think of the place

  And remember the small lad lying intent to look

  Through the shadowy face

  At the little fish thread-threading the watery nook--

  It seems to me

  The woman you are should be nixie, there is a pool

  Where we ought to be.

  You undine-clear and pearly, soullessly cool

  And waterly

  The pool for my limbs to fathom, my soul's last

  school.

  Narcissus

  Ventured so long ago in the deeps of reflection.

  Illyssus

  Broke the bounds and beyond!--Dim recollection

  Of fishes

  Soundlessly moving in heaven's other direction!

  Be

  Undine towards the waters, moving back;

  For me

  A pool! Put off the soul you've got, oh lack

  Your human self immortal; take the watery track.

  AUTUMN SUNSHINE

  THE sun sets out the autumn crocuses

  And fills them up a pouring measure

  Of death-producing wine, till treasure

  Runs waste down their chalices.

  All, all Persephone's pale cups of mould

  Are on the board, are over-filled;

  The portion to the gods is spilled;

  Now, mortals all, take hold!

  The time is now, the wine-cup full and full

  Of lambent heaven, a pledging-cup;

  Let now all mortal men take up

  The drink, and a long, strong pull.

  Out of the hell-queen's cup, the heaven's pale wine--

  Drink then, invisible heroes, drink.

  Lips to the vessels, never shrink,

  Throats to the heavens incline.

  And take within the wine the god's great oath

  By heaven and earth and hellish stream

  To break this sick and nauseous dream

  We writhe and lust in, both.

  Swear, in the pale wine poured from the cups of the

  queen

  Of hell, to wake and be free

  From this nightmare we writhe in,

  Break out of this foul has-been.

  ON THAT DAY

  ON that day

  I shall put roses on roses, and cover your grave

  With multitude of white roses: and since you were

  brave

  One bright red ray.

  So people, passing under

  The ash-trees of the valley-road, will raise

  Their eyes and look at the grave on the hill, in

  wonder,

  Wondering mount, and put the flowers asunder

  To see whose praise

  Is blazoned here so white and so bloodily red.

  Then they will say: "'Tis long since she is dead,

  Who has remembered her after many days?"

  And standing there

  They will consider how you went your ways

  Unnoticed among them, a still queen lost in the

  m
aze

  Of this earthly affair.

  A queen, they'll say,

  Has slept unnoticed on a forgotten hill.

  Sleeps on unknown, unnoticed there, until

  Dawns my insurgent day.

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