Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme)

  At a soldier’s mess, shortly before Retreat,

  East, a pretended trooper, stepping in,

  Glanced round the room, shortly discerning West,

  Who sat dejected at a corner table.

  East moved by curiosity or compassion

  Pulled out his cards, offering West the cut,

  And West, disguised as a travelling ballad-man,

  Took and cut; they played together then

  For half an hour or more; then went their ways.

  Never believe such credulous annalists

  As tell you, West for sign of recognition,

  Greatness to greatness, wit to dexterous wit,

  With sleight of magic most extraordinary

  Alters the Duty of his Ace of Spades,

  Making three-pence, three-halfpence; East, it’s said,

  For a fantastic sly acknowledgement,

  While his grave eyes betoken no surprise,

  Makes magic too; presto, the Knave of Hearts

  Nims the Queen’s rose and cocks it in his cap

  Furtively, so that only West remarks it.

  But such was not the fact; contrariwise,

  When Proteus meets with Proteus, each annuls

  The variability of the other’s mind;

  Single they stand, casting their mutable cloaks.

  So for this present chance, I take my oath

  That leaning across and watching the cards close

  I caught no hint of prestidigitation.

  Never believe approved biographers

  Who’ll show a sequence of the games then played,

  Explaining that the minds of these two princes

  Were of such subtlety and such nimbleness

  That Whipperginny on the fall of a card

  Changed to Bézique or Cribbage or Piquet,

  Euchre or Écarté, then back once more,

  Each comprehending with no signal shown

  The opposing fancies of the other’s mind.

  It’s said, spectators of this play grew dazed,

  They turned away, thinking the gamesters drunk,

  But I, who sat there watching, keeping score,

  Say they observed the rules of but one game

  The whole bout, playing neither well nor ill

  But slowly, with their thoughts in other channels,

  Serene and passionless like wooden men.

  Neither believe those elegant essayists

  Who reconstruct the princes’ conversation

  From grotesque fabrics of their own vain brains.

  I only know that East gave West a nod,

  Asking him careless questions about trade;

  West gave the latest rumours from the front,

  Raising of sieges, plots and pillages.

  He told a camp-fire yarn to amuse the soldiers,

  Whereat they all laughed emptily (East laughed too).

  He sang a few staves of the latest catch,

  And pulling out his roll of rhymes, unfurled it –

  Ballads and songs, measured by the yard-rule.

  But do not trust the elegant essayists

  Who’d have you swallow all they care to tell

  Of the riddling speech in painful double entendre

  That West and East juggled across the cards,

  So intricate, so exquisitely resolved

  In polished antithetical periods

  That by comparison, as you must believe,

  Solomon himself faced with the Queen of Sheba,

  And Bishop Such preaching before the King,

  Joined in one person would have seemed mere trash.

  I give my testimony beyond refutal,

  Nailing the lie for all who ask the facts.

  Pay no heed to those vagabond dramatists

  Who, to present this meeting on the stage,

  Would make my Prince, stealthily drawing out

  A golden quill and stabbing his arm for blood,

  Scratch on a vellum slip some hasty sentence

  And pass it under the table; which West signs

  With his blood, so the treaty’s made between them

  All unobserved and two far nations wedded

  While enemy soldiers loll, yawning, around.

  I was there myself, I say, seeing everything.

  Truly, this is what passed, that East regarding

  West with a steady look and knowing him well,

  For an instant let the heavy soldier-mask,

  His best protection, a dull cast of face,

  Light up with joy, and his eyes shoot out mirth.

  West then knew East, checked, and misdealt the cards.

  Nothing at all was said, on went the game.

  But East bought from West’s bag of ballads, after,

  Two sombre histories, and some songs for dancing.

  Also distrust those allegorical

  Painters who treating of this famous scene

  Are used to splash the skies with lurching Cupids,

  Goddesses with loose hair, and broad-cheeked Zephyrs;

  They burnish up the soldiers’ breastplate steel,

  Rusted with languor of their long campaign,

  To twinkling high-lights of unmixed white paint,

  Giving them buskins and tall plumes to wear,

  While hard by, in a wanton imagery,

  Aquatic Triton thunders on his conch

  And Satyrs gape from behind neighbouring trees.

  I who was there, sweating in my shirt-sleeves,

  Felt no divinity brooding in that mess,

  For human splendour gave the gods rebuff.

  Do not believe them, seem they never so wise,

  Credibly posted with all new research,

  Those elegant essayists, vagabond dramatists,

  Authentic and approved biographers,

  Solemn annalists, allegorical

  Painters, each one misleading or misled.

  One thing is true, that of all sights I have seen

  In any quarter of this world of men,

  By night, by day, in court, field, tavern, or barn,

  That was the noblest, East encountering West,

  Their silent understanding and restraint,

  Meeting and parting like the Kings they were

  With plain indifference to all circumstance;

  Saying no good-bye, no handclasp and no tears,

  But letting speech between them fade away,

  In casual murmurs and half compliments,

  East sauntering out for fresh intelligence,

  And West shuffling away, not looking back;

  Though each knew well that this chance meeting stood

  For turning movement of world history.

  And I? I trembled, knowing these things must be.

  THE SEWING BASKET

  (Accompanying a wedding present from Jenny Nicholson to Winifred Roberts)

  To Winifred

  The day she’s wed

  (Having no gold) I send instead

  This sewing basket,

  And lovingly

  Demand that she,

  If ever wanting help from me,

  Will surely ask it.

  Which being gravely said,

  Now to go straight ahead

  With a cutting of string,

  An unwrapping of paper,

  With a haberdasher’s flourish,

  The airs of a draper,

  To review

  And search this basket through.

  Here’s one place full

  Of coloured wool,

  And various yarn

  With which to darn;

  A sampler, too,

  I’ve worked for you,

  Lettered from A to Z,

  The text of which

  In small cross-stitch

  Is ‘Love to Winifred’.

  Here’s a rag-doll wherein

  To thrust the casual pin.

  His name in Benjamin

  For his ingenuo
us face;

  Be sure I’ve not forgotten

  Black thread or crochet cotton;

  While Brussels lace

  Has found a place

  Behind the needle-case.

  (But the case for the scissors?

  Empty, as you see;

  Love must never be sundered

  Between you and me.)

  Winifred Roberts,

  Think of me, do,

  When the friends I am sending

  Are working for you.

  The song of the thimble

  Is, ‘Oh, forget her not.’

  Says the tape-measure,

  ‘Absent but never forgot.’

  Benjamin’s song

  He sings all day long

  Though his voice is not strong:

  He hoarsely holloas

  More or less as follows: –

  ‘Button boxes

  Never have locks-es,

  For the keys would soon disappear.

  But here’s a linen button

  With a smut on,

  And a big bone button

  With a cut on,

  A pearly and a fancy

  Of small significancy,

  And the badges of a Fireman and a Fusilier.’

  Which song he’ll alternate

  With sounds like a Turkish hubble-bubble

  Smoked at a furious rate,

  The words are scarcely intelligible: –

  (Prestissimo)

  ‘Needles and ribbons and packets of pins,

  Prints and chintz and odd bod-a-kins,

  They’d never mind whether

  You laid ’em together

  Or one from the other in pockets and tins.

  ‘For packets of pins and ribbons and needles

  Or odd bod-a-kins and chintz and prints,

  Being birds of a feather,

  Would huddle together

  Like minnows on billows or pennies in mints.’

  He’ll learn to sing more prettily

  When you take him out to Italy

  On your honeymoon,

  (Oh come back soon!)

  To Florence or to Rome,

  The prima donnas’ home,

  To Padua or to Genoa

  Where tenors all sing tra-la-la….

  Good-bye, Winifred,

  Bless your heart, Ben.

  Come back happy

  And safe agen.

  AGAINST CLOCK AND COMPASSES

  ‘Beauty dwindles into shadow,

  Beauty dies, preferred by Fate,

  Past the rescue of bold thought.

  Sentries drowsed,’ they say, ‘at Beauty’s gate.’

  ‘Time duteous to his hour-glass,

  Time with unerring sickle

  Garners to a land remote

  Where your vows of true love are proved fickle.’

  ‘Love chill upon her forehead

  Love fading from her cheek,

  Love dulled in either eye,

  With voice of love,’ they say, ‘no more to speak.’

  I deny to Time his terror;

  Come-and-go prevails not here;

  Spring is constant, loveless winter

  Looms, but elsewhere, for he comes not near.

  I deny to Space the sorrow;

  No leagues measure love from me;

  Turning boldly from her arms,

  Into her arms I shall come certainly.

  Time and Space, folly’s wonder,

  Three-card shufflers, magic-men!

  True love is, that none shall say

  It ever was, or ever flowers again.

  THE AVENGERS

  Who grafted quince on Western may?

  Sharon’s mild rose on Northern briar?

  In loathing since that Gospel day

  The two saps flame, the tree’s on fire.

  The briar-rose weeps for injured right,

  May sprouts up red to choke the quince.

  With angry throb of equal spite

  Our wood leaps maddened ever since.

  Then mistletoe, of gods not least,

  Kindler of warfare since the Flood,

  Against green things of South and East

  Voices the vengeance of our blood.

  Crusading ivy Southward breaks

  And sucks your lordly palms upon,

  Our island oak the water takes

  To war with cedared Lebanon.

  Our slender ash-twigs feathered fly

  Against your vines; bold buttercup

  Pours down his legions; malt of rye

  Inflames and burns your lentils up….

  For bloom of quince yet caps the may,

  The briar is held by Sharon’s rose,

  Monsters of thought through earth we stray,

  And how remission comes, God knows.

  THE POET’S BIRTH

  A page, a huntsman, and a priest of God,

  Her lovers, met in jealous contrariety,

  Equally claiming the sole parenthood

  Of him the perfect crown of their variety.

  Then, whom to admit, herself she could not tell;

  That always was her fate, she loved too well.

  ‘But, many-fathered little one,’ she said,

  ‘Whether of high or low, of smooth or rough,

  Here is your mother whom you brought to bed.

  Acknowledge only me, be this enough,

  For such as worship after shall be told

  A white dove sired you or a rain of gold.’

  THE TECHNIQUE OF PERFECTION

  Said hermit monk to hermit monk,

  ‘Friend, in this island anchorage

  Our life has tranquilly been sunk

  From pious youth to pious age,

  ‘In such clear waves of quietness,

  Such peace from argument or brawl

  That one prime virtue I confess

  Has never touched our hearts at all.

  ‘Forgiveness, friend! who can forgive

  But after anger or dissent?

  This never-pardoning life we live

  May earn God’s blackest punishment.’

  His friend, resolved to find a ground

  For rough dispute between the two

  That mutual pardons might abound,

  With cunning from his wallet drew

  A curious pebble of the beach

  And scowled, ‘This treasure is my own’:

  He hoped for sharp unfriendly speech

  Or angry snatching at the stone.

  But honeyed words his friend outpours,

  ‘Keep it, dear heart, you surely know

  Even were it mine it still were yours,

  This trifle that delights you so.’

  The owner, acting wrath, cries, ‘Brother,

  What’s this? Are my deserts so small

  You’d give me trifles?’ But the other

  Smiles, ‘Brother, you may take my all.’

  He then enraged with one so meek,

  So unresponsive to his mood,

  Most soundly smites the martyr cheek

  And rends the island quietude.

  The martyr, who till now has feigned

  In third degree of craftiness

  That meekness is so deep ingrained

  No taunt or slight can make it less,

  Spits out the tooth in honest wrath,

  ‘You hit too hard, old fool,’ cried he.

  They grapple on the rocky path

  That zigzags downward to the sea.

  In rising fury strained and stiff

  They lunge across the narrow ground;

  They topple headlong from the cliff

  And murderously embraced are drowned.

  Here Peter sits: two spirits reach

  To sound the knocker at his Gate.

  They shower forgiveness each on each,

  Beaming triumphant and elate.

  But oh, their sweats, their secret fears

  Lest clod-souled witnesses may rise
br />   To set a tingling at their ears

  And bar the approach to Paradise!

  THE SIBYL

  Her hand falls helpless: thought amazements fly

  Far overhead, they leave no record mark –

  Wild swans urged whistling across dazzled sky,

  Or Gabriel hounds* in chorus through the dark

  Yet when she prophesies, each spirit swan,

  Each spectral hound from memory’s windy zones,

  Flies back to inspire one limb-strewn skeleton

  Of thousands in her valley of dry bones.

  There as those life-restored battalions shout,

  Succession flags and Time goes maimed in flight:

  From each live gullet twenty swans glide out

  With hell-packs loathlier yet to amaze the night.

  A CRUSADER

  Death, eager always to pretend

  Himself my servant in the land of spears,

  Humble allegiance at the end

  Broke where the homeward track your castle nears:

  Let his white steed before my red steed press

  And rapt you from me into quietness.

  A NEW PORTRAIT OF JUDITH OF BETHULIA

  She trod the grasses grey with dew,

  She hugged the unlikely head;

  Avenging where the warrior Jew

  Incontinent had fled.

  The bearded lips writhed ever more

  At this increase of shame –

  Killed by a girl, pretending whore,

  Gone scatheless as she came!

  His doom yet loathlier that he knew

  Hers was no nation-pride,

  No high religion snatched and slew

  Where he lay stupefied.

  Nebuchadnezzar’s duke enticed

  To pay a megrim’s fee?

  Assyrian valour sacrificed

  For a boudoir dignity?

  ‘Only for this, that some tall knave

  Had scorned her welcoming bed,

  For this, the assault, the stroke, the grave,’

  Groaned Holofernes’ head.

  A REVERSAL

  The old man in his fast car

  Leaves Achilles lagging,

  The old man with his long gun

  Outshoots Ulysses’ bow,

  Nestor in his botched old age

  Rivals Ajax bragging,

  To Nestor’s honeyed courtship

  Could Helen say ‘No’?

  Yet, ancient, since you borrow

  From youth the strength and speed,

  Seducing as an equal

  His playmates in the night,

  He, robbed, assumes your sceptre,

  He overgoes your rede,

  And with his brown and lively hairs

  Out-prophesies your white.

  THE MARTYRED DECADENTS: A SYMPATHETIC SATIRE