Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme)

  And me below, sharpening my quill again.

  This body is now yours; therefore I own it.

  Your body is now mine; therefore you own it.

  As for our single heart, let it stay ours

  Since neither may disown it

  While still it flowers in the same dream of flowers.

  THE CRAB-TREE

  Because of love’s infallibility,

  Because of love’s insistence –

  And none can call us liars –

  Spring heaps your lap with summer buds and flowers

  And lights my mountain peaks with Beltane fires.

  The sea spreads far below; its blue whale’s-back

  Forcing no limit on us;

  We watch the boats go by

  Beyond rain-laden ranks of olive trees

  And, rising, sail in convoy through clear sky.

  Never, yet always. Having at last perfected

  Utter togetherness

  We meet nightly in dream

  Where no voice interrupts our confidences

  Under the crab-tree by the pebbled stream.

  THREE LOCKED HOOPS

  Yourself, myself and our togetherness

  Lock like three hoops, exempt from time and space.

  Let preachers preach of sovereign trinities,

  Yet can such ancient parallels concern us

  Unless they too spelt He and She and Oneness?

  CLIFF AND WAVE

  Since first you drew my irresistible wave

  To break in foam on your immovable cliff,

  We occupy the same station of being –

  Not as in wedlock harboured close together,

  But beyond reason, co-identical.

  Now when our bodies hazard an encounter,

  They dread to engage the fury of their senses,

  And only in the brief dismay of parting

  Will your cliff shiver or my wave falter.

  PART II

  THOSE BLIND FROM BIRTH

  Those blind from birth ignore the false perspective

  Of those who see. Their inward-gazing eyes

  Broaden or narrow no right-angle;

  Nor does a far-off mansion fade for them

  To match-box size.

  Those blind from birth live by their four sound senses.

  Only a fool disguises voice and face

  When visiting the blind. Smell, tread and hand-clasp

  Announce just why, and in what mood, he visits

  That all-observant place.

  FOOLS

  There is no fool like an old fool,

  Yet fools of middling age

  Can seldom teach themselves to reach

  True folly’s final stage.

  Their course of love mounts not above

  Some five-and-forty years,

  Though God gave men threescore and ten

  To scald with foolish tears.

  THE GATEWAY

  After three years of constant courtship

  Each owes the other more than can be paid

  Short of a single bankruptcy.

  Both falter

  At the gateway of the garden; each advances

  One foot across it, hating to forgo

  The pangs of womanhood and manhood;

  Both turn about, breathing love’s honest name,

  Too strictly tied by bonds of miracle

  And lasting magic to be easily lured

  Into acceptance of concubinage:

  Its deep defraudment of their regal selves.

  ADVICE FROM A MOTHER

  Be advised by me, darling:

  If you hope to keep my love,

  Do not marry that man!

  I cannot be mistaken:

  There is murder on his conscience

  And fear in his heart.

  I knew his grandparents:

  The stock is good enough,

  Clear of criminal taint.

  And I find no vice in him,

  Only a broken spirit

  Which the years cannot heal;

  And gather that, when younger,

  He volunteered for service

  With a secret police;

  That one day he had orders

  From a number and a letter

  Which had to be obeyed,

  And still cannot confess,

  In fear for his own life,

  Nor make reparation.

  The dead in their bunkers

  Call to him every night:

  ‘Come breakfast with us!’

  No gentleness, no love,

  Can cure a broken spirit;

  I forbid you to try.

  A REDUCED SENTENCE

  They were confused at first, being well warned

  That the Governor forbade, by a strict rule,

  All conversation between long-term prisoners –

  Except cell-mates (who were his own choice);

  Also, in that mixed prison, the two sexes

  Might catch no glimpse whatever of each other

  Even at fire-drill, even at Church Service.

  Yet soon – a most unusual case – this pair

  Defied the spirit, although not the letter,

  Of his harsh rules, using the fourth dimension

  For passage through stone walls and cast-iron doors

  As coolly as one strolls across Hyde Park:

  Bringing each other presents, kisses, news.

  By good behaviour they reduced their sentence

  From life to a few years, then out they went

  Through three-dimensional gates, gently embraced…

  And walked away together, arm in arm….

  But, home at last, halted abashed and shaking

  Where the stairs mounted to a double bed.

  THE GENTLEMAN

  That he knows more of love than you, by far,

  And suffers more, has long been his illusion.

  His faults, he hopes, are few– maybe they are

  With a life barred against common confusion;

  But that he knows far less and suffers less,

  Protected by his age, his reputation,

  His gentlemanly sanctimoniousness,

  Has blinded him to the dumb grief that lies

  Warring with love of love in your young eyes.

  COMPLAINT AND REPLY

  I

  After our death, when scholars try

  To arrange our letters in due sequence,

  No one will envy them their task,

  You sign your name so lovingly

  So sweetly and so neatly

  That all must be confounded by

  Your curious reluctance,

  Throughout this correspondence,

  To answer anything I ask

  Though phrased with perfect prudence…

  Why do you wear so blank a mask,

  Why always baulk at a reply

  Both in and out of sequence,

  Yet sign your name so lovingly,

  So sweetly and so neatly?

  II

  Oh, the dark future! I confess

  Compassion for your scholars – yes.

  Not being myself incorrigible,

  Trying most gallantly, indeed,

  To answer what I cannot read,

  With half your words illegible

  Or, at least, any scholar’s guess.

  SONG: RECONCILIATION

  The storm is done, the sun shines out,

  The blackbird calls again

  With bushes, trees and long hedgerows

  Still twinkling bright with rain.

  Sweet, since you now can trust your heart

  As surely as I can,

  Be still the sole woman I love

  With me for your sole man.

  For though we hurt each other once

  In youthful blindness, yet

  A man must learn how to forgive

  What women soon forget.

  KNOBS AND LEVERS

  Before God died, sh
ot while running away,

  He left mankind His massive hoards of gold:

  Which the Devil presently appropriated

  With the approval of all major trusts

  As credit for inhumanizable

  Master-machines and adequate spare-parts.

  The Green-Sailed Vessel

  Men, born no longer in God’s holy image,

  Were graded as ancillary knobs or levers

  With no Law to revere nor faith to cherish.

  ‘You are free, Citizens,’ old Satan crowed;

  And all felicitated one another

  As quit of patriarchal interference.

  This page turns slowly: its last paragraph

  Hints at a full-scale break-down implemented

  By famine and disease. Nevertheless

  The book itself runs on for five more chapters.

  God died; clearly the Devil must have followed.

  But was there not a Goddess too, God’s mother?

  THE VIRUS

  We can do little for these living dead

  Unless to help them bury one another

  By an escalation of intense noise

  And the logic of computers.

  They are, we recognize, past praying for –

  Only among the moribund or dying

  Is treatment practical.

  Faithfully we experiment, assuming

  That death is a still undetected virus

  And most contagious where

  Men eat, smoke, drink and sleep money:

  Its monstrous and unconscionable source.

  DRUID LOVE

  No Druid can control a woman’s longing

  Even while dismally foreboding

  Death for her lover, anguish for herself

  Because of bribes accepted, pledges broken,

  Breaches hidden.

  More than this, the Druid

  May use no comminatory incantations

  Against either the woman or her lover,

  Nor ask what punishment she herself elects.

  But if the woman be herself a Druid?

  The case worsens: he must flee the land.

  Hers is a violence unassessable

  Save by herself – ultimate proof and fury

  Of magic power, dispelling all restraint

  That princely laws impose on those who love.

  PROBLEMS OF GENDER

  Circling the Sun, at a respectful distance,

  Earth remains warmed, not roasted; but the Moon

  Circling the Earth, at a disdainful distance,

  Will drive men lunatic (should they defy her)

  With seeds of wintry love, not sown for spite.

  Mankind, so far, continues undecided

  On the Sun’s gender – grammars disagree –

  As on the Moon’s. Should Moon be god, or goddess:

  Drawing the tide, shepherding flocks of stars

  That never show themselves by broad daylight?

  Thus curious problems of propriety

  Challenge all ardent lovers of each sex:

  Which circles which at a respectful distance,

  Or which, instead, at a disdainful distance?

  And who controls the regal powers of night?

  CONFESS, MARPESSA

  Confess, Marpessa, who is your new lover?

  Could he be, perhaps, that skilful rough-sea diver

  Plunging deep in the waves, curving far under

  Yet surfacing at last with controlled breath?

  Confess, Marpessa, who is your new lover?

  Is he some ghoul, with naked greed of plunder

  Urging his steed across the gulf of death,

  A brood of dragons tangled close beneath?

  Or could he be the fabulous Salamander,

  Courting you with soft flame and gentle ember?

  Confess, Marpessa, who is your new lover?

  JUS PR1MAE NOCTIS

  Love is a game for only two to play at,

  Nor could she banish him from her soft bed

  Even on her bridal night, jus primae noctis

  Being irreversibly his. He took the wall-side

  Long ago granted him. Her first-born son

  Would claim his name, likeness and character.

  Nor did we ask her why. The case was clear:

  Even though that lover had been nine years dead

  She could not banish him from her soft bed.

  WORK DRAFTS

  I am working at a poem, pray excuse me,

  Which may take twenty drafts or more to write

  Before tomorrow night,

  But since no poem should be classed with prose,

  I must not call it ‘work’, God knows –

  Again, excuse me!

  My poem (or non-poem) will come out

  In the New Statesman first, no doubt,

  And in hard covers gradually become

  A handsome source of supplementary income,

  Selected for Great Poems– watch the lists–

  And by all subsequent anthologists.

  Poems are not, we know, composed for money

  And yet my work (or play)-drafts carefully

  Hatched and cross-hatched by puzzling layers of ink

  Are not the detritus that you might think:

  They fetch from ten to fifty bucks apiece

  In sale to Old Gold College Library

  Where swans, however black, are never geese –

  Excuse me and excuse me, pray excuse me!

  From Poems 1970-1972

  (1972)

  HER BEAUTY

  Let me put on record for posterity

  The uniqueness of her beauty:

  Her black eyes fixed unblinking on my own,

  Cascading hair, high breasts, firm nose,

  Soft mouth and dancer’s toes.

  Which is, I grant, cautious concealment

  Of a new Muse by the Immortals sent

  For me to honour worthily–

  Her eyes brimming with tears of more than love,

  Her lips gentle, moving secretly–

  And she is also the dark hidden bride

  Whose beauty I invoke for lost sleep:

  To last the whole night through without dreaming–

  Even when waking is to wake in pain

  And summon her to grant me sleep again.

  ALWAYS

  Slowly stroking your fingers where they lie,

  Slowly parting your hair to kiss your brow –

  For this will last for always (as you sigh),

  Whatever follows now.

  Always and always – who dares disagree

  That certainty hangs upon certainty?

  Yet who ever encountered anywhere

  So unendurably circumstanced a pair

  Clasped heart to heart under a blossoming tree

  With such untamable magic of despair,

  Such childlike certainty?

  DESERT FRINGE

  When a live flower, a single name of names,

  Thrusts with firm roots into your secret heart

  Let it continue ineradicably

  To scent the breeze not only on her name-day

  But on your own: a hedge of roses fringing

  Absolute desert strewn with ancient flints

  And broken shards and shells of ostrich eggs –

  Where no water is found, but only sand,

  And yet one day, we swear, recoverable.

  THE TITLE OF POET

  Poets are guardians

  Of a shadowy island

  With granges and forests

  Warmed by the Moon.

  Come back, child, come back!

  You have been far away,

  Housed among phantoms,

  Reserving silence.

  Whoever loves a poet

  Continues whole-hearted,

  Her other loves or loyalties

  Distinct and clear.

  She is young, he is old

  And endures for
her sake

  Such fears of unease

  As distance provokes.

  Yet how can he warn her

  What natural disasters

  Will plague one who dares

  To neglect her poet?…

  For the title of poet

  Comes only with death.

  DEPTH OF LOVE

  Since depth of love is never gauged

  By proof of appetites assuaged,

  Nor dare you set your body free

  To take its passionate toll of me –

  And with good reason –

  What now remains for me to do

  In proof of perfect love for you

  But as I am continue,

  The ecstatic bonds of monk or nun

  Made odious by comparison?

  BREAKFAST TABLE

  Breakfast peremptorily closes

  The reign of Night, her dream extravagances

  Recalled for laughter only.

  Yet here we sit at our own table,

  Brooding apart on spells of midnight love

  Long irreversible:

  Spells that have locked our hearts together,

  Never to falter, never again to stray

  Into the fierce dichotomy of Day;

  Night has a gentler laughter.

  THE HALF-FINISHED LETTER

  One day when I am written off as dead –

  My works widely collected, rarely read

  Unless as Literature (examiners

  Asking each student which one he prefers

  And how to classify it), my grey head

  Slumped on the work-desk – they will find your name

  On a half-finished letter, still the same

  And in my characteristic characters:

  That’s one thing will have obdurately lasted.

  THE HAZEL GROVE

  To be well loved,

  Is it not to dare all,

  Is it not to do all,

  Is it not to know all?

  To be deep in love?

  A tall red sally

  Had stood for seventy

  Years by the pool

  (And that was plenty)

  Before I could shape

  My harp from her poll.

  Now seven hundred

  Years will be numbered

  In our hazel grove

  Before this vibrant