Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme)

However long the sentence passed on you,

  The term served here will, you assume, be taken

  Into consideration; you have proved,

  Surely, a model prisoner?

  The worst is finding where your fault lay

  In all its pettiness; do you regret

  It was not some cardinal, outrageous sin

  That drew crowds to the gibbet?

  THE STRAYED MESSAGE

  Characteristic, nevertheless strange:

  Something went badly wrong at the Exchange,

  And my private message to you, in full detail,

  Got broadcast over eleven frequencies

  With the usual, though disquieting, consequences

  Of a torrential amatory fan-mail.

  SONG: THE SUNDIAL’S LAMENT

  (Air: The Groves of Blarney)

  Since much at home on

  My face and gnomon,

  The sun refuses

  Daylight to increase;

  Yet certain powers dare

  Miscount my hours there

  Though sun and shadow

  Still collogue in peace.

  These rogues aspire

  To act Hezekiah

  For whom Isaiah

  In a day of trial,

  All for delaying

  His end by praying

  Turned back the shadow

  On my honest dial.

  Nay, Sirs, though willing

  To abase the shilling

  From noble twelvepence

  To the half of ten,

  Pray go no further

  On this path of murther:

  If hours be Dismalized,

  Sure, I’m finished then.

  POEM: A REMINDER

  Capital letters prompting every line,

  Lines printed down the centre of each page,

  Clear spaces between groups of these, combine

  In a convention of respectable age

  To mean: ‘Read carefully. Each word we chose

  Has rhythm and sound and sense. This is not prose.’

  poem: a reminder

  capitallett

  -ers prompting ev

  -eryline lines printed down the

  cen

  -tre of each page clear

  spaces between

  groups of these combine in a con

  of respectable age to mean read

  care

  -fully each word we chose has

  rhythm and

  sound and

  sense this is

  notprose

  ANTORCHA Y CORONA, 1968

  Píndaro no soy, sino caballero

  De San Patricio; y nuestro santo

  Siglos atrás se hizo mejicano.

  Todos aquí alaban las mujeres

  Y con razón, como divinos seres –

  Por eso entrará en mis deberes

  A vuestra Olimpiada mejicana

  El origen explicar de la corona:

  En su principio fué femenina….

  Antes que Hercules con paso largo

  Metros midiera para el estadio

  Miles de esfuerzos así alentado –

  Ya antes, digo, allí existia

  Otra carrera mas apasionada

  La cual presidia la Diosa Hera.

  La virgen que, a su fraternidad

  Supero con maxima velocidad

  Ganaba el premio de la santidad:

  La corona de olivo…. Me perdonará

  El respetable, si de Atalanta

  Sueño, la corredora engañada

  Con tres manzanas, pero de oro fino….

  Y si los mitos griegos hoy resumo

  Es que parecen de acuerdo pleno,

  A la inventora primeval del juego,

  A la Santa Madre, más honores dando

  Que no a su portero deportivo.

  En tres cientas trece Olimpiadas

  Este nego la entrada a las damas

  Amenazandolas, ai, con espadas!

  Aquí, por fin, brindemos por la linda

  Enriqueta de Basilio: la primera

  Que nos honra con antorcha y corona.*

  TORCH AND CROWN, 1968

  (English translation of the foregoing)

  No Pindar, I, but a poor gentleman

  Of Irish race. Patrick, our learned saint,

  Centuries past made himself Mexican.

  All true-bred Mexicans idolize women

  And with sound reason, as divine beings,

  I therefore owe it you as my clear duty

  At your Olympics, here in Mexico,

  To explain the origin of the olive crown:

  In the Golden Age women alone could wear it.

  Long before Hercules with his huge stride

  Paced out the circuit of a stadium,

  Provoking men to incalculable efforts,

  Long, long before, in Argos, had been run

  Even more passionately, a girls’ foot race

  Under the watchful eye of Mother Hera.

  The inspired runner who outstripped all rivals

  Of her sorority and finished first

  Bore off that coveted and holy prize –

  The olive crown. Ladies and gentlemen,

  Forgive me if I brood on Atalanta,

  A champion quarter-miler tricked one day

  By three gold apples tumbled on her track;

  And if I plague you with these ancient myths

  That is because none of them disagrees

  In paying higher honours to the foundress

  Of all competitive sport – the Holy Mother –

  Than to her sportive janitor, Hercules.

  Three hundred and thirteen Olympic Games

  Hercules held, though warning off all ladies,

  Even as audience, with the naked sword!

  So homage to Enriqueta de Basilio

  Of Mexico, the first girl who has ever

  Honoured these Games with torch and olive crown!

  ARMISTICE DAY, 1918

  What’s all this hubbub and yelling,

  Commotion and scamper of feet,

  With ear-splitting clatter of kettles and cans,

  Wild laughter down Mafeking Street?

  O, those are the kids whom we fought for

  (You might think they’d been scoffing our rum)

  With flags that they waved when we marched off to war

  In the rapture of bugle and drum.

  Now they’ll hang Kaiser Bill from a lamp-post,

  Von Tirpitz they’ll hang from a tree….

  We’ve been promised a ‘Land Fit for Heroes’ –

  What heroes we heroes must be!

  And the guns that we took from the Fritzes,

  That we paid for with rivers of blood,

  Look, they’re hauling them down to Old Battersea Bridge

  Where they’ll topple them, souse, in the mud!

  But there’s old men and women in corners

  With tears falling fast on their cheeks,

  There’s the armless and legless and sightless –

  It’s seldom that one of them speaks.

  And there’s flappers gone drunk and indecent

  Their skirts kilted up to the thigh,

  The constables lifting no hand in reproof

  And the chaplain averting his eye….

  When the days of rejoicing are over,

  When the flags are stowed safely away,

  They will dream of another wild ‘War to End Wars’

  And another wild Armistice day.

  But the boys who were killed in the trenches,

  Who fought with no rage and no rant,

  We left them stretched out on their pallets of mud

  Low down with the worm and the ant.

  THE MOTES

  You like to joke about young love

  Because (let me be just)

  In your dead courts and corridors

  Motes dance upon no sunbeams

  But settle down as dust.

&nbs
p; From Poems About Love

  (1969)

  IF AND WHEN

  She hates an if, know that for sure:

  Whether in cunning or self-torture,

  Your ifs anticipate the when

  That womankind conceals from men.

  From Poems 1968–1970

  (1970)

  SONG: THE SIGIL

  Stumbling up an unfamiliar stairway

  Between my past and future

  And overtaken by the shadowy mind

  Of a girl dancing for love,

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  She had read my secret name, that was no doubt,

  For which how could I blame her?

  Her future paired so gently with my own,

  Her past so innocently,

  It flung me in a fever.

  Thereupon, as on every strange occasion,

  The past relived its future

  With what outdid all hopes and fantasies –

  How could I not concede

  My sigil in its favour?

  SONG: TWINNED HEART

  Challenged once more to reunite,

  Perfect in every limb

  But screened against the intrusive light

  By ghosts and cherubim,

  I call your beauty to my bed,

  My pride you call to yours

  Though clouds run maniac overhead

  And cruel rain down pours,

  With both of us prepared to wake

  Each in a bed apart,

  True to a spell no power can break:

  The beat of a twinned heart.

  SONG: OLIVE TREE

  Call down a blessing

  On that green sapling,

  A sudden blessing

  For true love’s sake

  On that green sapling

  Framed by our window

  With her leaves twinkling

  As we lie awake.

  Two birds flew from her

  In the eye of morning

  Their folded feathers

  In the sun to shake.

  Augury recorded,

  Vision rewarded

  With an arrow flying

  With a sudden sting,

  With a sure blessing,

  With a double dart,

  With a starry ring,

  With music from the mountains

  In the air, in the heart

  This bright May morning

  Re-echoing.

  SONG: ONCE MORE

  These quiet months of watching for

  An endless moment of once more

  May not be shortened,

  But while we share them at a distance,

  In irreproachable persistence,

  Are strangely brightened.

  And these long hours of perfect sleep

  When company in love we keep,

  By time unstraitened,

  Yield us a third of the whole year

  In which to embrace each other here,

  Sleeping together, watching for

  An endless moment of once more

  By dreams enlightened.

  SONG: VICTIMS OF CALUMNY

  Equally innocent,

  Confused by evil,

  Pondering the event,

  Aloof and penitent,

  With hearts left sore

  By a cruel calumny,

  With eyes half-open now

  To its warped history,

  But undeceivably

  Both in love once more.

  LOVE GIFTS

  Though love be gained only by truth in love

  Never by gifts, yet there are gifts of love

  That match or enhance beauty, that indeed

  Fetch beauty with them. Always the man gives,

  Never the woman – unless flowers or berries

  Or pebbles from the shore.

  She welcomes jewels

  To ponder and pore over tremblingly

  By candlelight. ‘Why does he love me so,

  Divining my concealed necessities?’

  And afterwards (there is no afterwards

  In perfect love, nor further call for gifts)

  Writes: ‘How you spoil me!’, meaning: ‘You are mine’,

  But sends him cornflowers, pinks and columbine.

  MANKIND AND OCEAN

  You celebrate with kisses the good fortune

  Of a new and cloudless moon

  (Also the tide’s good fortune),

  Content with July fancies

  To brown your naked bodies

  On the slopes of a sea-dune.

  Mankind and Ocean, Ocean and mankind:

  Those fatal tricks of temper,

  Those crooked acts of murder

  Provoked by the wind –

  I am no Ocean lover,

  Nor can I love mankind.

  To love the Ocean is to taste salt,

  To drink the blood of sailors,

  To watch the waves assault

  Mast-high a cliff that shudders

  Under their heartless hammers….

  Is wind alone at fault?

  VIRGIN MIRROR

  Souls in virginity joined together

  Rest unassailable:

  Ours is no undulant fierce rutting fever

  But clear unbroken lunar magic able

  To mirror loves illimitable.

  When first we chose this power of being

  I never paused to warn you

  What ruinous charms the world was weaving;

  I knew you for a child fostered in virtue

  And swore no hand could hurt you.

  Then should I suffer nightmares now

  Lest you, grown somewhat older,

  Be lured to accept a worldly where and how,

  Carelessly breathing on the virgin mirror,

  Clouding love’s face for ever?

  SECRET THEATRE

  When from your sleepy mind the day’s burden

  Falls like a bushel sack on a barn floor,

  Be prepared for music, for natural mirages

  And for night’s incomparable parade of colour.

  Neither of us daring to assume direction

  Of an unforeseen and fiery entertainment,

  We clutch hands in the seventh row of the stalls

  And watch together, quivering, astonished, silent.

  It is hours past midnight now; a flute signals

  Far off; we mount the stage as though at random,

  Boldly ring down the curtain, then dance out our love:

  Lost to the outraged, humming auditorium.

  HOW IT STARTED

  It started, unexpectedly of course,

  At a wild midnight dance, in my own garden,

  To which indeed I was not invited:

  I read: ‘Teen-agers only.’

  In the circumstances I stayed away

  Until you fetched me out on the tiled floor

  Where, acting as an honorary teen-ager,

  I kicked off both my shoes.

  Since girls like you must set the stage always,

  With lonely men for choreographers,

  I chose the step, I even called the tune;

  And we both danced entranced.

  Here the narrator pauses circumspectly,

  Knowing me not unpassionate by nature

  And the situation far from normal:

  Two apple-seeds had sprouted….

  Recordable history began again

  With you no longer in your late teens

  And me socially (once more) my age –

  Yet that was where it started.

  BRIEF REUNION

  Our one foreboding was: we might forget

  How strangely close absence had drawn us,

  How close once more we must be drawn by parting –

  Absence, dark twin of presence!

  Nor could such closeness be attained by practice

  Of even the most heroic self-deceit:

  Only by inbred faculties far wiser

>   Than any carnal sense –

  Progress in which had disciplined us both

  To the same doting pride: a stoicism

  Which might confuse, at every brief reunion,

  Presence with pangs of absence.

  And if this pride should overshoot its mark,

  Forcing on us a raw indifference

  To what might happen when our hearts were fired

  By renewed hours of presence?

  Could we forget what carnal pangs had seized us

  Three summers past in a burst of moonlight,

  Making us more possessive of each other

  Than either dared concede? – a prescience

  Of the vast grief that each sublunary pair

  Transmits at last to its chance children

  With tears of violence.

  THE JUDGES

  Crouched on wet shingle at the cove

  In day-long search for treasure-trove –

  Meaning the loveliest-patterned pebble,

  Of any colour imaginable,

  Ground and smoothed by a gentle sea –

  How seldom, Julia, we agree

  On our day’s find: the perfect one

  To fetch back home when day is done,

  Splendid enough to stupefy

  The fiercest, most fastidious eye –

  Tossing which back we tell the sea:

  ‘Work on it one more century!’

  LOVE AND NIGHT

  Though your professions, ages and conditions

  Might seem to any sober person

  Irreconcilable,

  Yet still you claim the inalienable right

  To kiss in corners and exchange long letters

  Patterned with well-pierced hearts.

  When judges, dazzled by your blazing eyes,

  Mistake you both for Seventh Day Adventists

  (Heaven rest their innocent souls!)

  You smile impassively and say no word –

  The why and how of magic being tabu

  Even in courts of Law.

  Who could have guessed that your unearthly glow

  Conceals a power no judgement can subdue,

  Nor act of God, nor death?

  Your love is not desire but certainty,

  Perfect simultaneity,

  Inheritance not conquest;

  Long silences divide its delicate phases

  With simple absence, almost with unbeing,

  Before each new resurgence.

  Such love has clues to a riddling of the maze:

  Should you let fall the thread, grope for it,