Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme)

  Has never viewed your northern paradise

  Nor watched its queen tending her jewelled boughs,

  But always from the same sick quarter blows.

  DANCE OF WORDS

  To make them move, you should start from lightning

  And not forecast the rhythm: rely on chance,

  Or so-called chance for its bright emergence

  Once lightning interpenetrates the dance.

  Grant them their own traditional steps and postures

  But see they dance it out again and again

  Until only lightning is left to puzzle over –

  The choreography plain, and the theme plain.

  A BLIND ARROW

  Though your blind arrow, shot in time of need

  Among the shadowy birches, did indeed

  Strike, as you knew it must, the assassin’s heart,

  Never disparage a trained bowman’s art.

  THE OLEASTER

  Each night for seven nights beyond the gulf

  A storm raged, out of hearing, and crooked flashes

  Of lightning animated us. Before day-break

  Rain fell munificently for the earth’s need….

  No, here they never plant the sweet olive

  As some do (bedding slips in a prepared trench),

  But graft it on the club of Hercules

  The savage, inexpugnable oleaster

  Whose roots and bole bunching from limestone crannies

  Sprout impudent shoots born only to be lopped

  Spring after Spring. Theirs is a loveless berry….

  By mid-day we walk out, with naked feet,

  Through pools on the road, gazing at waterfalls

  Or a line of surf, but mostly at the trees

  Whose elegant branches rain has duly blackened

  And pressed their crowns to a sparkling silver.

  Innumerable, plump with promise of oil,

  The olives hang grass-green, in thankfulness

  For a bitter sap and bitter New Year snows

  That cleansed their bark….

  Forgive me, dearest love,

  If nothing I can say be strange or new.

  I am no child of the hot South like you,

  Though in rock rooted like an oleaster.

  THE SEPTUAGENARIAN

  Youth is the ruggedest burden that can score

  Your septuagenarian shoulder:

  If you should threaten, as before, to powder

  Rocks with bare heels, or rend the oak asunder

  With naked fingers, you can now no more

  Plead youthful benefit of metaphor.

  Such unsubstantiated boasts will be

  Substantial evidence of senility.

  NON COGUNT ASTRA

  Come, live in Now and occupy it well.

  Prediction’s no alternative to forethought

  Despite at least four hundred arts of scrying

  The dubious future, such as to study birds,

  Or bull’s guts, or sheep droppings, or wine lees

  In an alabaster cup. True, the most ancient,

  Most exact discipline, astrology,

  Comes hallowed by a college of gowned mantics

  Who still cast horoscopes only by stars

  Apparent to the still unaided eye –

  And of whom a few, the best, focus their powers

  On exact horary configurations, then

  At an agreed moment brusquely sweep away

  Zodiacal signs, conjunctions, trines,

  And reinduce a pure, archaic vision;

  Yet disregard all false astrologers

  Who dare lay greedy or compulsive hands

  On the stars you sped at your nativity

  Along their courses and forbad to canker

  The rose of love or blunt the blade of honour:

  No public hangmen these, but servants chosen

  To wear bright livery at your house gate;

  And favour you the more, the less you fear them.

  SONG: SWORD AND ROSE

  The King of Hearts a broadsword bears,

  The Queen of Hearts, a rose –

  Though why, not every gambler cares

  Or cartomancer knows.

  Be beauty yours, be honour mine,

  Yet sword and rose are one:

  Great emblems that in love combine

  Until the dealing’s done;

  For no card, whether small or face,

  Shall overtrump our two

  Except that Heart of Hearts, the Ace,

  To which their title’s due.

  ENDLESS PAVEMENT

  In passage along an endless, eventless pavement,

  None but the man in love, as he turns to stare

  At the glazed eyes flickering past, will remain aware

  Of his own, assured, meticulous, rustic tread –

  As if pavement were pebbles, or rocks overgrown by grasses;

  And houses, trees with birds flying overhead.

  IN DISGUISE

  Almost I welcome the dirty subterfuges

  Of this unreal world closing us in,

  That present you as a lady of high fashion

  And me as a veteran on the pensioned list.

  Our conversation is infinitely proper,

  With a peck on either cheek as we meet or part –

  Yet the seven archons of the heavenly stair

  Tremble at the disclosure of our seals.

  A MEASURE OF CASUALNESS

  Too fierce the candlelight; your gentle voice

  Roars as in dream: my shoulder-nooks flower;

  A scent of honeysuckle invades the house,

  And my fingertips are so love-enhanced

  That sailcloth feels like satin to them.

  Teach me a measure of casualness

  Though you stalk into my room like Venus naked.

  IN TIME OF ABSENCE

  Lovers in time of absence need not signal

  With call and answering call:

  By sleight of providence each sends the other

  A clear, more than coincidental answer

  To every still unformulated puzzle,

  Or a smile at a joke harboured, not yet made,

  Or power to be already wise and unafraid.

  THE GREEN CASTLE

  The first heaven is a flowery plain;

  The second, a glass mountain;

  The third, likewise terrestrial,

  Is an orchard-close unclouded

  By prescience of death or change

  Or the blood-sports of desire:

  Our childhood paradise.

  The next three heavens, known as celestial,

  Are awkward of approach.

  Mind is the prudent rider; body, the ass

  Disciplined always by a harsh bit,

  Accepts his daily diet of thorns

  And frugal, brackish water;

  Holds converse with archangels.

  The seventh heaven, most unlike those others,

  We once contrived to enter

  By a trance of love; it is a green castle

  Girdled with ramparts of blue sea

  And silent but for the waves’ leisured wash.

  There Adam rediscovered Eve:

  She wrapped him in her arms.

  An afterglow of truth, still evident

  When we had fallen earthward,

  Astonished all except the born blind.

  Strangers would halt us in the roadway:

  ‘Confess where you have been.’

  And, at a loss, we replied stumblingly:

  ‘It was here, it was nowhere –

  Last night we lodged at a green castle,

  Its courtyard paved with gold.’

  NOT TO SLEEP

  Not to sleep all the night long, for pure joy,

  Counting no sheep and careless of chimes,

  Welcoming the dawn confabulation

  Of birds, her children, who discuss idly

  Fanciful details o
f the promised coming –

  Will she be wearing red, or russet, or blue,

  Or pure white? – whatever she wears, glorious:

  Not to sleep all the night long, for pure joy,

  This is given to few but at last to me,

  So that when I laugh and stretch and leap from bed

  I shall glide downstairs, my feet brushing the carpet

  In courtesy to civilized progression,

  Though, did I wish, I could soar through the open window

  And perch on a branch above, acceptable ally

  Of the birds still alert, grumbling gently together.

  THE HEARTH

  Here it begins: the worm of love breeding

  Among red embers of a hearth-fire

  Turns to a chick, is slowly fledged,

  And will hop from lap to lap in a ring

  Of eager children basking at the blaze.

  But the luckless man who never sat there,

  Nor borrowed live coals from the sacred source

  To warm a hearth of his own making,

  Nor bedded lay under pearl-grey wings

  In dutiful content,

  How shall he watch at the stroke of midnight

  Dove become phoenix, plumed with green and gold?

  Or be caught up by jewelled talons

  And haled away to a fastness of the hills

  Where an unveiled woman, black as Mother Night,

  Teaches him a new degree of love

  And the tongues and songs of birds?

  THAT OTHER WORLD

  Fatedly alone with you once more

  As before Time first creaked:

  Sole woman and sole man.

  Others admire us as we walk this world:

  We show them kindliness and mercy,

  So be it none grow jealous

  Of the truth that echoes between us two,

  Or of that other world, in the world’s cradle,

  Child of your love for me.

  THE BEDS OF GRAINNE AND DIARMUID

  How many secret nooks in copse or glen

  We sained for ever with our pure embraces,

  No man shall know; though indeed master poets

  Reckon one such for every eve of the year,

  To sain their calendar.

  But this much is true:

  That children stumbling on our lairs by chance

  In quest of hazel-nuts or whortleberries

  Will recognize the impress of twin bodies

  On the blue-green turf, starred with diversity

  Of alien flowers, and shout astonishment.

  Yet should some amorous country pair, presuming

  To bask in joy on any bed of ours,

  Offend against the love by us exampled,

  Long ivy roots will writhe up from beneath

  And bitterly fetter ankle, wrist and throat.

  RAIN OF BRIMSTONE

  Yet if they trust by lures or spells

  To exorcize the tall angel,

  Love, from this ancient keep by us

  Now long frequented,

  And if frustration turns their wits,

  So that they bawl in hell’s fury

  Battering at our gate all night

  With oaken cudgels,

  Are we to blame for sparing them

  The voice of truth which they deny us?

  Should we not darkly leave the town

  To its rain of brimstone?

  CONSORTIUM OF STONES

  The stones you have gathered, of diverse shapes,

  Chosen from sea strand, lake strand, mountain gully:

  Lay them all out on a basalt slab together

  But allow intervals for light and air,

  These being human souls; and reject any

  With crumpled calceous edges and no feature

  That awakes loving correspondence.

  Start at this pair: blue flint, grey ironstone,

  Which you ring around with close affinities

  In every changeless colour, hatched, patched, plain –

  Curve always answering curve; and angle, angle.

  Gaps there may be, which next year or the next

  Will fill to a marvel: never jog Time’s arm,

  Only narrow your eyes when you walk about

  Lest they miss what is missing. The agreed intent

  Of each consortium, whether of seven stones,

  Or of nineteen, or thirty-three, or more,

  Must be a circle, with firm edges outward,

  Each various element aware of the sum.

  THE BLACK GODDESS

  Silence, words into foolishness fading,

  Silence prolonged, of thought so secret

  We hush the sheep-bells and the loud cicada.

  And your black agate eyes, wide open, mirror

  The released firebird beating his way

  Down a whirled avenue of blues and yellows.

  Should I not weep? Profuse the berries of love,

  The speckled fish, the filberts and white ivy

  Which you, with a half-smile, bestow

  On your delectable broad land of promise

  For me, who never before went gay in plumes.

  BROKEN NECK

  ‘Some forty years ago or maybe more,’

  Pronounced the radiologist, ‘you broke

  Your neck: that is to say, contrived to fracture

  Your sixth cervical vertebra – see here,

  The picture’s clear – and between sixth and seventh

  Flattened this cartilage to uselessness:

  Hence rheumatism. Surely you recall

  Some incident? We all do foolish things

  While young, and obstinately laugh them off –

  Till they catch up with us in God’s good time.

  Let me prescribe you a Swiss analgesic

  Which should at least….’

  Love, I still laugh it off

  And all Swiss mercenary alleviations,

  For though I broke my neck in God’s good time

  It is in yours alone I choose to live.

  O

  ‘O per se O, O per se O!’,

  The moribund grammarian cried

  To certain scholars grouped at his bedside,

  Spying the round, dark pit a-gape below:

  ‘O per se O!’

  WOMAN OF GREECE

  By your knees they rightly clasp you,

  Strong sons of your bed,

  Whom you get, kneeling; and bear, kneeling;

  Kneeling, mourn for dead.

  THE COLOURS OF NIGHT

  The Moon never makes use of the Sun’s palette.

  Admire her silvery landscapes, but abstain

  From record of them: lest you be later tempted

  To counterfeit the dangerous colours of Night

  Which are man’s blood spurted on moving cloud.

  BETWEEN TRAINS

  Arguing over coffee at the station,

  Neither of us noticed her dark beauty,

  Though she sat close by, until suddenly

  Three casual words – does it matter what they were? –

  Spoken without remarkable intonation

  Or accent, so bewildered him and me,

  As it were catching the breath of our conversation,

  That each set down his coffee-cup, to stare.

  ‘You have come for us?’ my lips cautiously framed –

  Her eyes were almost brighter than I could bear –

  But she rose and left, unready to be named.

  TO THE TEUMESSIAN VIXEN

  Do not mistake me: I was never a rival

  Of that poor fox who pledged himself to win

  Your heart by gnawing away his brush. Who ever

  Proved love was love except by a whole skin?

  THE HUNG WU VASE

  With women like Marie no holds are barred.

  Where do they get the gall? How can they do it?

  She stormed out, slamming the hall door so ha
rd

  That a vase on the gilt shelf above – you knew it,

  Loot from the Summer Palace at Pekin

  And worth the entire contents of my flat –

  Toppled and fell….

  I poured myself straight gin,

  Downing it at a gulp. ‘So that was that!’

  The bell once more…. Marie walked calmly in,

  Observed broken red porcelain on the mat,

  Looked up, looked down again with condescension,

  Then, gliding past me to retrieve a glove

  (Her poor excuse for this improper call),

  Muttered: ‘And one thing I forgot to mention:

  Your Hung Wu vase was phoney, like your love!’

  How can they do it? Where do they get the gall?

  LA MEJICANA

  Perfect beneath an eight-rayed sun you lie,

  Rejoiced at his caresses. Yours is a land

  For pumas, chillis, and men dark of eye;

  Yet summon me with no derisive hand

  From these remote moon-pastures drenched in dew –

  And watch who burns the blacker: I or you.

  LAMIA IN LOVE

  Need of this man was her ignoble secret:

  Desperate for love, yet loathing to deserve it,

  She wept pure tears of sorrow when his eyes

  Betrayed mistrust in her impeccable lies.

  AFTER THE FLOOD

  Noah retrieves the dove again,

  Which bears him in its bill

  A twig of olive to explain

  That, if God sends them no more rain,

  The world may prosper still.

  Shem, Ham and Japheth raise a shout,

  But weeks on end must wait

  Till Father Noah, venturing out,

  Can view the landscape all about

  And prophesy their fate.

  ‘Where have the waters of God’s Flood

  Dispersed?’ God only knew.

  What Noah saw was miles of mud,

  Drowned rogues, and almond trees in bud

  With blossom peeping through.

  ‘Bold lads, in patience here abide!

  This mire around the ark

  By wind or sun must well be dried