Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme)

And the shadowy ape

  Which a lady, weeping,

  Leads by a string

  From first twilight

  Until past midnight

  Through the Castle yard –

  ‘Blow winds, blow hard!’

  So the Devil snaps his chain

  And renews his reign

  To the little joy

  Of Berry Pomeroy.

  REPROACH TO JULIA

  Julia: how Irishly you sacrifice

  Love to pity, pity to ill-humour,

  Yourself to love, still haggling at the price.

  DETHRONEMENT

  With pain pressing so close about your heart,

  Stand (it behoves you), head uncovered,

  To watch how she enacts her transformations –

  Bitch, vixen, sow – the laughing, naked queen

  Who has now dethroned you.

  Hymns to her beauty or to her mercy

  Would be ill-conceived. Your true anguish

  Is all that she requires. You, turned to stone,

  May not speak nor groan, shall stare dumbly,

  Grinning dismay.

  But as the play ends, or in its after-hush,

  O then, deluded, flee! Her red-eared hounds

  Scramble upon your track; past either cheek

  Swan-feathered arrows whistle, or cruelly comb

  Long furrows in your scalp.

  Run, though you hope for nothing: to stay your foot

  Would be ingratitude, a sour denial

  That the life she bestowed was sweet.

  Therefore be fleet, run gasping, draw the chase

  Up the grand defile.

  They will rend you to rags assuredly

  With half a hundred love-bites –

  Your hot blood an acceptable libation

  Poured to Persephone, in whose domain

  You shall again find peace.

  CAT-GODDESSES

  A perverse habit of cat-goddesses –

  Even the blackest of them, black as coals

  Save for a new moon blazing on each breast,

  With coral tongues and beryl eyes like lamps,

  Long-leggèd, pacing three by three in nines –

  This obstinate habit is to yield themselves,

  In verisimilar love-ecstasies,

  To tatter-eared and slinking alley-toms

  No less below the common run of cats

  Than they above it; which they do for spite,

  To provoke jealousy – not the least abashed

  By such gross-headed, rabbit-coloured litters

  As soon they shall be happy to desert.

  THE BLUE-FLY

  Five summer days, five summer nights,

  The ignorant, loutish, giddy blue-fly

  Hung without motion on the cling peach,

  Humming occasionally: ‘O my love, my fair one!’

  As in the Canticles.

  Magnified one thousand times, the insect

  Looks farcically human; laugh if you will!

  Bald head, stage-fairy wings, blear eyes,

  A caved-in chest, hairy black mandibles,

  Long spindly thighs.

  The crime was detected on the sixth day.

  What then could be said or done? By anyone?

  It would have been vindictive, mean and what-not

  To swat that fly for being a blue-fly,

  For debauch of a peach.

  Is it fair, either, to bring a microscope

  To bear on the case, even in search of truth?

  Nature, doubtless, has some compelling cause

  To glut the carriers of her epidemics –

  Nor did the peach complain.

  RHEA

  On her shut lids the lightning flickers,

  Thunder explodes above her bed,

  An inch from her lax arm the rain hisses;

  Discrete she lies,

  Not dead but entranced, dreamlessly

  With slow breathing, her lips curved

  In a half-smile archaic, her breast bare,

  Hair astream.

  The house rocks, a flood suddenly rising

  Bears away bridges: oak and ash

  Are shivered to the roots – royal green timber.

  She nothing cares.

  (Divine Augustus, trembling at the storm,

  Wrapped sealskin on his thumb; divine Gaius

  Made haste to hide himself in a deep cellar,

  Distraught by fear.)

  Rain, thunder, lightning: pretty children.

  ‘Let them play,’ her mother-mind repeats;

  ‘They do no harm, unless from high spirits

  Or by mishap.’

  THE HERO

  This prince’s immortality was confirmed

  With envious rites paid him by such poor souls

  As, dying, were condemned to flit like bats

  In endless caverns of oblivion:

  For he alone, amid excessive keening,

  Might voyage to that island paradise,

  In the red West,

  Where bees come thronging to the apple flow

  And thrice three damsels in a tall house

  Tend the mead-vat of inspiration.

  They feel no envy now, those poor souls.

  Did not some bald Cilician sell them

  Mansions in Heaven, and at a paltry price:

  Offering crowns of gold for scabbed heads,

  Robes of state for vitiliginous backs?

  No blood is poured now at the hero’s tomb,

  No prayers intoned,

  The island paradise is unfrequented,

  And neither Finn, nor Ogier, nor Arthur,

  Returns to prophesy our common doom.

  MARGINAL WARNING

  Prejudice, as the Latin shows,

  Means that you follow your own nose

  Like an untutored spaniel; hence,

  A nose being no good evidence

  That Farmer Luke hangs from a limb

  With cart-rope tightly trussing him,

  Till twelve unblinking pairs of eyes

  Can view the corpse and authorize

  A coroner to shake his head

  For: ‘Gentlemen, this man is dead’,

  Your blind prognostication is

  Roundly condemned as prejudice;

  And should you further speculate,

  Snuffing once more, upon what date

  His cowman strung him to the tree:

  The case being now sub judice,

  Contempt of court will be the cry

  To challenge and arrest you by –

  What will your children think of you,

  Docked of your nose and your ears too?

  THE ENCOUNTER

  Soon after dawn in hottest June (it may

  For all I know, have been Midsummer’s Day)

  An hour at which boulevardiers are few,

  From either end of the grand avenue

  Flanked with basilicas and palaces

  And shaded by long rows of ancient trees,

  A man drew near, his lips in rage compressed,

  Marching alone, magnificently dressed –

  This, rose on green; that, mulberry on gold –

  Two tall unyielding men of the same mould

  Who wore identical helmets, cloaks and shoes

  And long straight swords they had well learned to use,

  Both being luckless fellows, paired by fate

  In bonds of irremediable hate.

  Closer they steered: although the walk was wide,

  A scant inch served as margin to their pride.

  The encounter surely could but end in blows;

  Yet neither thought to tweak his enemy’s nose,

  Or jostle him, or groan, or incur guilt

  By a provocative grasp at the sword hilt,

  Each setting such reliance on mischance

  He sauntered by without a sidelong glance.

  I’M THROUGH WITH YOU FOR EVER

  The oddest,
surely, of odd tales

  Recorded by the French

  Concerns a sneak thief of Marseilles

  Tried by a callous Bench.

  His youth, his innocency, his tears –

  No, nothing could abate

  Their sentence of ‘One hundred years

  In galleys of the State.’

  Nevertheless, old wives affirm

  And annalists agree,

  He sweated out the whole damned term,

  Bowed stiffly, and went free.

  Then come, my angry love, review

  Your sentence of today.

  ‘For ever’ was unjust of you,

  The end too far away.

  Give me four hundred years, or five –

  Can rage be so intense? –

  And I will sweat them out alive

  To prove my impenitence.

  WITH HER LIPS ONLY

  This honest wife, challenged at dusk

  At the garden gate, under a moon perhaps,

  In scent of honeysuckle, dared to deny

  Love to an urgent lover: with her lips only,

  Not with her heart. It was no assignation;

  Taken aback, what could she say else?

  For the children’s sake, the lie was venial;

  ‘For the children’s sake’, she argued with her conscience.

  Yet a mortal lie must follow before dawn:

  Challenged as usual in her own bed,

  She protests love to an urgent husband,

  Not with her heart but with her lips only;

  ‘For the children’s sake’, she argues with her conscience,

  ‘For the children’ – turning suddenly cold towards them.

  THE BLOTTED COPY-BOOK

  He broke school bounds, he dared defy

  The Master’s atrabilious eye,

  Diced, swigged raw brandy, used foul oaths,

  Wore shamelessly Corinthian clothes,

  And taught St Dominic’s to mock

  At gown and hood and whipping-block.

  The boy’s a nabob now, retired

  With wealth enough to be admired

  Even by the School Governors

  (Benignly sycophantic bores)

  Who call on him to give away

  Prize-medals on Foundation Day.

  Will he at last, or will he not,

  His yellowing copy-book unblot:

  Accede, and seriously confess

  A former want of seriousness,

  Or into a wild fury burst

  With: ‘Let me see you in Hell first!’?

  THE SACRED MISSION

  The ungainsayable, huge, cooing message

  Hurtles suddenly down the dawn streets:

  Twenty loudspeakers, twenty lovesick voices

  Each zealous to enlarge his own range

  And dominate the echoing border-zones.

  Now the distressed whimper of little children,

  The groans of sick men cheated in their hope

  Of snatching a light sleep from the jaws of pain,

  The curses, even, of the unregenerate –

  All are submerged in the rising sea of noise

  Which floods each room and laps round every pillow,

  Roaring the mercy of Christ’s limitless love.

  FROM THE EMBASSY

  I, an ambassador of Otherwhere

  To the unfederated states of Here and There

  Enjoy (as the phrase is)

  Extra-territorial privileges.

  With heres and theres I seldom come to blows

  Or need, as once, to sandbag all my windows.

  And though the Otherwhereish currency

  Cannot be quoted yet officially,

  I meet less hindrance now with the exchange

  Nor is my garb, even, considered strange;

  And shy enquiries for literature

  Come in by every post, and the side door.

  SIROCCO AT DEYÁ

  How most unnatural-seeming, yet how proper;

  The sea like a cat with fur rubbed the wrong way,

  As the sirocco with its furnace flavor

  Dashes at full tilt around the village

  [‘From every-which-a-way, hot as a two-buck pistol’]

  Stripping green olives from the blown-back boughs,

  Scorching the roses, blinding the eyes with sand;

  While slanderous tongues in the small cafés

  And in the tightly-shuttered limestone houses

  Clack defamation, incite and invite

  Knives to consummate their near-murders….

  Look up, a great grey cloud broods nonchalant

  On the mountain-top nine hundred feet above us,

  Motionless and turgid, blotting out the sun,

  And from it sneers a supercilious Devil:

  ‘Mere local wind: no messenger of mine!’

  From Collected Poems 1955

  (1955)

  PENTHESILEIA

  Penthesileia, dead of profuse wounds,

  Was despoiled of her arms by Prince Achilles

  Who, for love of that fierce white naked corpse,

  Necrophily on her committed

  In the public view.

  Some gasped, some groaned, some bawled their indignation,

  Achilles nothing cared, distraught by grief,

  But suddenly caught Thersites’ obscene snigger

  And with one vengeful buffet to the jaw

  Dashed out his life.

  This was a fury few might understand,

  Yet Penthesileia, hailed by Prince Achilles

  On the Elysian plain, pauses to thank him

  For avenging her insulted womanhood

  With sacrifice.

  POETS’ CORNER

  De ambobus mundis ille

  Convoravit diligens…

  The Best of Both Worlds being Got

  Between th’Evangel and the Pot,

  He, though Exorbitantly Vice’d,

  Had Re-discover’d Thirst for Christ

  And Fell a Victim (Young as This)

  To Ale, God’s Love and Syphilis.

  Here then in Triumph See Him Stand,

  Laurels for Halo, Scroll in Hand,

  Whyle Ganymeds and Cherubim

  And Squabby Nymphs Rejoyce with Him:

  Aye, Scroll Shall Fall and Laurels Fade

  Long, Long before his Debts are Pay’d.

  CORONATION ADDRESS

  I remember, Ma’am, a frosty morning

  When I was five years old and brought ill news,

  Marching solemnly upstairs with the paper

  Like an angel of doom; knocked gently.

  ‘Father, the Times has a black border. Look!

  The Queen is dead.’

  Then I grew scared

  When big tears started, ran down both his cheeks

  To hang glistening in the red-grey beard –

  A sight I had never seen before.

  My mother thought to comfort him, leaned closer,

  Whispering softly: ‘It was a ripe old age…

  She saw her century out.’ The tears still flowed,

  He could not find his voice. My mother ventured:

  ‘We have a King once more, a real King.

  “God Save the King” is in the Holy Bible.

  Our Queen was, after all, only a woman.’

  At that my father’s grief burst hoarsely out.

  ‘Only a woman! You say it to my face?

  Queen Victoria only a woman! What?

  Was the orb nothing? Was the sceptre nothing?

  To cry “God Save the King” is honourable,

  But to serve a Queen is lovely. Listen now:

  Could I have one wish for this son of mine… ’

  A wish fulfilled at last after long years.

  Think well, Ma’am, of your great-great-grandmother

  Who earned love, who bequeathed love to her sons,

  Yet left one crown in trust for you alone.

  BEAUTY
IN TROUBLE

  Beauty in trouble flees to the good angel

  On whom she can rely

  To pay her cab-fare, run a steaming bath,

  Poultice her bruised eye;

  Will not at first, whether for shame or caution,

  Her difficulty disclose;

  Until he draws a cheque book from his plumage,

  Asking how much she owes.

  (Breakfast in bed: coffee and marmalade,

  Toast, eggs, orange-juice,

  After a long, sound sleep – the first since when? –

  And no word of abuse.)

  Loves him less only than her saint-like mother,

  Promises to repay

  His loans and most seraphic thoughtfulness

  A million-fold one day.

  Beauty grows plump, renews her broken courage

  And, borrowing ink and pen,

  Writes a news-letter to the evil angel

  (Her first gay act since when?):

  The fiend who beats, betrays and sponges on her,

  Persuades her white is black,

  Flaunts vespertilian wing and cloven hoof;

  And soon will fetch her back.

  Virtue, good angel, is its own reward:

  Your guineas were well spent.

  But would you to the marriage of true minds

  Admit impediment?

  A LOST JEWEL

  Who on your breast pillows his head now,

  Jubilant to have won

  The heart beneath on fire for him alone,

  At dawn will hear you, plagued by nightmare,

  Mumble and weep

  About some blue jewel you were sworn to keep.

  Wake, blink, laugh out in reassurance,

  Yet your tears will say:

  ‘It was not mine to lose or give away.

  ‘For love it shone – never for the madness

  Of a strange bed –

  Light on my finger, fortune in my head.’

  Roused by your naked grief and beauty,

  For lust he will burn:

  ‘Turn to me, sweetheart! Why do you not turn?’

  THE WINDOW SILL

  Presage and caveat not only seem

  To come in dream,

  But do so come in dream.

  When the cock crew and phantoms floated by,

  This dreamer I

  Out of the house went I,

  Down long unsteady streets to a queer square;

  And who was there,

  Or whom did I know there?