Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme)

  To know our destiny is to know the horror

  Of separation, dawn oppressed by night:

  Is, between hyssop and axe, boldly to prove

  That gifted, each, with singular need for freedom

  And haunted, both, by spectres of reproach,

  We may yet house together without succumbing

  To the low fever of domesticity

  Or to the lunatic spin of aimless flight.

  GOLD AND MALACHITE

  After the hour of illumination, when the tottering mind

  Has been by force delivered from its incubus of despair,

  When all the painted, papier mâché, Mexican faces

  Of demons grinning at you from hell’s vaulted roof

  Fade and become angelic monitors of wisdom –

  Slowly the brisk intelligence wakes, to mutter questions

  Of when, where, how; and which should be the first step forward….

  Now is the crucial moment you were forewarned against.

  Stop your ears with your fingers, guard unequivocal silence

  Lest you discuss wisdom in the language of unwisdom;

  Roam instead through the heaped treasury of your heart:

  You will find her, from whom you have been so long estranged,

  Chin to knees, brooding apart on gold and malachite.

  But beware again: even a shy embrace would be too explicit –

  Let her learn by your gait alone that you are free at last.

  AMBIENCE

  The nymph of the forest, only in whose honour

  These birds perform, provides an ambience

  But never leads the chorus: even at dawn

  When we awake to whistle, flute and pipe,

  Astonished they can so extemporize

  Their own parts, as it were haphazard

  Each in his own time, yet avoid discordance

  Or domineering, however virtuose

  Or long sustained each voluntary of love.

  The rare silences, too, appear like sound

  Rather than pause for breath or meditation….

  Nor is the same piece ever given twice.

  THE VOW

  No vow once sworn may ever be annulled

  Except by a higher law of love or mercy –

  Search your heart well: is there a lie hidden

  Deep in its convolutions of resolve?

  For whom do you live? Can it be yourself?

  For whom then? Not for this unlovely world,

  Not for the rotting waters of mischance,

  Nor for the tall, eventual catafalque.

  You live for her who alone loves you,

  Whose royal prerogative can be denied

  By none observant of the awakening gasps

  That greet her progress down whatever hall.

  Your vow is to truth, not practicality;

  To honour, not to the dead world’s esteem;

  To a bed of rock, not to a swan’s-down pillow;

  To the tears you kiss away from her black eyes.

  They lament an uninstructible world of men

  Who dare not listen or watch, but challenge proof

  That a leap of a thousand miles is nothing

  And to walk invisibly needs no artifice.

  THE FROG AND THE GOLDEN BALL

  She let her golden ball fall down the well

  And begged a cold frog to retrieve it;

  For which she kissed his ugly, gaping mouth –

  Indeed, he could scarce believe it.

  And seeing him transformed to his princely shape,

  Who had been by hags enchanted,

  She knew she could never love another man

  Nor by any fate be daunted.

  But what would her royal father and mother say?

  They had promised her in marriage

  To a cousin whose wide kingdom marched with theirs,

  Who rode in a jewelled carriage.

  ‘Our plight, dear heart, would appear past human hope

  To all except you and me: to all

  Who have never swum as a frog in a dark well

  Or have lost a golden ball.’

  ‘What then shall we do now?’ she asked her lover.

  He kissed her again, and said:

  ‘Is magic of love less powerful at your Court

  Than at this green well-head?’

  THOSE WHO CAME SHORT

  Those who came short of love for me or you,

  Where are they now? Ill-starred and bitter-mouthed,

  Cursing us for their own contrariness,

  Each having fallen in turn, head over heels,

  From that illusive heaven at which they flew.

  Are we then poison of love-perfection

  To all but our own kind? Should we beware

  Of handling such intemperate shaggy creatures

  As leap on us like dogs to be cosseted

  And, after, claim full rights of jealousy?

  At once too simple and too various

  Except for ourselves, should we awhile conceal

  Our studies from the world, in cool forbearance

  Watching each night for another dawn to break

  And the last guest to straggle home?

  WHOLE LOVE

  Every choice is always the wrong choice,

  Every vote cast is always cast away –

  How can truth hover between alternatives?

  Then love me more than dearly, love me wholly,

  Love me with no weighing of circumstance,

  As I am pledged in honour to love you:

  With no weakness, with no speculation

  On what might happen should you and I prove less

  Than bringers-to-be of our own certainty.

  Neither was born by hazard: each foreknew

  The extreme possession we are grown into.

  THIS HOLY MONTH

  The demon who throughout our late estrangement

  Followed with malice in my footsteps, often

  Making as if to stumble, so that I stumbled

  And gashed my head against a live rock;

  Who tore my palms on butcher’s broom and thorn,

  Flung me at midnight into filthy ditches

  And multiplied the horrors of this house

  When back I limped again to a hard bed;

  Who simultaneously plagued you too

  With sleeplessness, dismay and darkness,

  Paralysed your hands, denied you air –

  We both know well he was the same demon,

  Arch-enemy of rule and calculation,

  Who lives for our love, being created from it,

  Astonishes us with blossom, silvers the hills

  With more than moonlight, summons bees in swarms

  From the Lion’s mouth to fill our hives with honey,

  Turns flesh into fire, and eyes into deep lakes;

  And so may do once more, this holy month.

  THE BLOW

  You struck me on the face and I, who strike

  Only to kill, stood in confusion like

  Death’s fool: your ugly blow

  Had fallen soft as snow.

  Love me for what I am, with liberty

  To curb my rage; I love you for what will be –

  Your urgent sun – therefore

  Acquitting you of error.

  Laughter becomes us: gift of the third eye

  That passes nothing by.

  THE IMPOSSIBLE

  Dear love, since the impossible proves

  Our sole recourse from this distress,

  Claim it: the ebony ritual-mask of no

  Cannot outstare a living yes.

  Claim it without despond or hate

  Or greed; but in your gentler tone

  Say: ‘This is ours, the impossible,’ and silence

  Will give consent it is ours alone.

  The impossible has wild-cat claws

  Which you would rather meet and die

  Than
commit love to time’s curative venom

  And break our oath; for so would I.

  THE FETTER

  Concerned, against our wish, with a sick world,

  Self-neglectful, tuned to knock or summons,

  We make amends for follies not our own.

  We have taken love through a thousand deaths;

  Should either try to slip our iron fetter,

  It bites yet deeper into neck and arm.

  As for that act of supererogation,

  The kiss in which we secretly concur,

  Let laughter mitigate its quiet excess.

  Could we only be a simple, bickering pair

  In the tied cottage of a small estate,

  With no tasks laid on us except to dig,

  Hoe, fatten geese and scrape the quarter’s rent,

  How admirable our close interdependence;

  Our insecurity how fortunate!

  IRON PALACE

  We stood together, side by side, rooted

  At the iron heart of circumambient hills,

  Parents to a new age, weeping in awe

  That the lot had fallen, of all mankind, on us

  Now sealed as love’s exemplars.

  We could not prevaricate or argue,

  Citing involvement in some alien scene,

  Nor plead unworthiness: none else would venture

  To live detached from force of circumstance

  As history neared its ending.

  We told no one. These were not strange dreams

  Recalled at breakfast with a yawning smile,

  Nor tales for children, on the verge of sleep,

  Who ask no questions. Our predicament

  Remained a silent burden.

  We had no token or proof, and needed none

  Of what we learned that day; but laughed softly

  Watching our hands engage, in co-awareness

  That these red hills warned us, on pain of death,

  Never to disengage them.

  Woman, wild and hard as the truth may be,

  Nothing can circumvent it. We stand coupled

  With chains, who otherwise might live apart

  Conveniently paired, each with another,

  And slide securely graveward.

  TRUE JOY

  Whoever has drowned and awhile entered

  The adamantine gates of afterwards,

  Stands privileged to reject heavenly joy

  (Though without disrespect for God’s archangels)

  With ‘never again’ – no moon, no herbs, no sea,

  No singular love of women.

  True joy, believe us, is to groan and wake

  From the hallelujah choir on Fiddler’s Green,

  With lungs now emptied of salt water,

  With gradual heat returning to clammed veins

  In the first flicker of reanimation,

  Repossession of now, awareness

  Of her live hands and lips, her playful voice,

  Her smooth and wingless shoulders.

  TOMORROW’S ENVY OF TODAY

  Historians may scorn the close engagement

  Of Moon with Lion that we have witnessed

  Here in this lair, here in this numinous grove,

  May write me down as imbecile, or presume

  A clot of madness festering in your heart –

  Such is tomorrow’s envy of today.

  Today we are how we are, and how we see:

  Alive, elate, untrimmed, without hazard

  Of supersession: flowers that never fade,

  Leaves that never shrivel, truth persistent

  Not as a prophecy of bliss to fall

  A thousand generations hence on lovers

  More fortunately circumstanced than we,

  But as a golden interlock of power

  Looped about every bush and branching tree.

  THE HIDDEN GARDEN

  Nor can ambition make this garden theirs,

  Any more than birds can fly through a window pane.

  When they hint at passwords, keys and private stairs,

  We are tempted often to open the front gate,

  Which has no lock, and haul them bodily in,

  Abashed that there they wait, disconsolate.

  And yet such pity would be worse than pride:

  Should we admit as love their vain self-pity,

  The gate must vanish and we be left outside.

  THE WEDDING

  When down I went to the rust-red quarry

  I was informed, by birds, of your resolve

  To live with me for ever and a day –

  The day being always new and antecedent.

  What could we ask of Nature? Nothing more

  Than to outdo herself in our behalf.

  Blossoms of caper, though they smell sweet,

  Have never sailed the air like butterflies

  Circling in innocent dance around each other

  Over the cliff and out across the bay;

  Nor has broom-blossom scorched a man’s finger

  With golden fire, kindled by sun.

  Come, maids of honour and pages chosen

  To attend this wedding, charged to perform

  Incomparable feats – dance, caper-blossom!

  Scorch, blossom of broom, our married fingers –

  Though crowds of almost-men and almost-women

  Howl for their lost immediacy.

  WHAT WILL BE, IS

  Manifest reason glared at you and me

  Thus ringed with love. Entire togetherness

  Became for us the sole redress.

  Together in heart, but our over-eager bodies

  Distrained upon for debt, we shifted ground;

  Which brought mistiming. Each cried out in turn,

  And with a complementary delusion:

  ‘I am free; but you? Are you still bound?’

  In blood the debts were paid. Hereafter

  We make no truce for manifest reason

  From this side of the broad and fateful stream

  Where wisdom rules from her dark cave of dream

  And time is corrigible by laughter.

  Moon and Sun are one. Granted, they ride

  Paths unconformable to the calendar,

  And seldom does a New Moon coincide

  With a New Year; yet we agree:

  ‘What will be, is’ – rejoicing at a day

  Of dolphins jostling in the blue bay,

  Eagles in air, and flame on every tree.

  SON ALTESSE

  Alone, you are no more than many another

  Gay-hearted, greedy, passionate noblewoman;

  And I, alone, no more than a slow-witted

  Passionate, credulous knight, though skilled in fight.

  Then if I hail you as my Blessed Virgin

  This is no flattery, nor does it endow you

  With private magics which, when I am gone,

  May flatter rogues or drunken renegades.

  Name me your single, proud, whole-hearted champion

  Whose feats no man alive will overpass;

  But they must reverence you as I do; only

  Conjoined in fame can we grow legendary.

  Should I ride home, vainglorious after battle,

  With droves of prisoners and huge heaps of spoil,

  Make me dismount a half-mile from your door;

  To walk barefoot in dust, as a knight must.

  Yet never greet me carelessly or idly,

  Nor use the teasing manners learned at Court,

  Lest I be ambushed in a treacherous pass –

  And you pent up in shame’s black nunnery.

  EVERYWHERE IS HERE

  By this exchange of eyes, this encirclement

  You of me, I of you, together we baffle

  Logic no doubt, but never understanding;

  And laugh instead of choking back the tears

  When we say goodbye.

  Fog gathers thick about us

  Y
et a single careless pair of leaves, one green, one gold,

  Whirl round and round each other skippingly

  As though blown by a wind; pause and subside

  In a double star, the gold above the green.

  Everywhere is here, once we have shattered

  The iron-bound laws of contiguity,

  Blazoning love as an eagle with four wings

  (Their complementary tinctures counterchanged)

  That scorns to roost in any terrene crag.

  SONG: THE FAR SIDE OF YOUR MOON

  The far side of your moon is black,

  And glorious grows the vine;

  Ask anything of me you lack,

  But only what is mine.

  Yours is the great wheel of the sun,

  And yours the unclouded sky;

  Then take my stars, take every one,

  But wear them openly,

  Walking in splendour through the plain

  For all the world to see,

  Since none alive shall view again

  The match of you and me.

  DELIVERANCE

  Lying disembodied under the trees

  (Their slender trunks converged above us

  Like rays of a five-fold star) we heard

  A sudden whinnying from the dark hill.

  Our implacable demon, foaled by love,

  Never knew rein or saddle; though he drank

  From a stream winding by, his blue pastures

  Ranged far out beyond the stellar mill.

  He had seared us two so close together

  That death itself might not disjoin us;

  It was impossible you could love me less,

  It was impossible I could love you more.

  We were no calculating lovers

  But gasped in awe at our deliverance

  From a too familiar prison,

  And vainly puzzled how it was that now

  We should never need to build another,

  As each, time after time, had done before.

  CONJUNCTION

  What happens afterwards, none need enquire:

  They are poised there in conjunction, beyond time,

  At an oak-tree top level with Paradise:

  Its leafy tester unshaken where they stand

  Palm to palm, mouth to mouth, beyond desire,

  Perpetuating lark song, perfume, colour,

  And the tremulous gasp of watchful winds,