Amores

But she is old.

  The plaits that lie along her pillow

  Are not gold,

  But threaded with filigree,

  And uncanny cold.

  She looks like a young maiden, since her brow

  Is smooth and fair,

  Her cheeks are very smooth, her eyes are closed,

  She sleeps a rare

  Still winsome sleep, so still, and so composed.

  Nay, but she sleeps like a bride, and dreams her

  dreams

  Of perfect things.

  She lies at last, the darling, in the shape of her dream,

  And her dead mouth sings

  By its shape, like the thrushes in clear evenings.

  THE VIRGIN MOTHER

  MY little love, my darling,

  You were a doorway to me;

  You let me out of the confines

  Into this strange countrie,

  Where people are crowded like thistles,

  Yet are shapely and comely to see.

  My little love, my dearest

  Twice have you issued me,

  Once from your womb, sweet mother,

  Once from myself, to be

  Free of all hearts, my darling,

  Of each heart's home-life free.

  And so, my love, my mother,

  I shall always be true to you;

  Twice I am born, my dearest,

  To life, and to death, in you;

  And this is the life hereafter

  Wherein I am true.

  I kiss you good-bye, my darling,

  Our ways are different now;

  You are a seed in the night-time,

  I am a man, to plough

  The difficult glebe of the future

  For God to endow.

  I kiss you good-bye, my dearest,

  It is finished between us here.

  Oh, if I were calm as you are,

  Sweet and still on your bier!

  God, if I had not to leave you

  Alone, my dear!

  Let the last word be uttered,

  Oh grant the farewell is said!

  Spare me the strength to leave you

  Now you are dead.

  I must go, but my soul lies helpless

  Beside your bed.

  AT THE WINDOW

  THE pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind

  as it mutters

  Something which sets the black poplars ashake with

  hysterical laughter;

  While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern

  shutters.

  Further down the valley the clustered tombstones

  recede,

  Winding about their dimness the mist's grey

  cerements, after

  The street lamps in the darkness have suddenly

  started to bleed.

  The leaves fly over the window and utter a word as

  they pass

  To the face that leans from the darkness, intent, with

  two dark-filled eyes

  That watch for ever earnestly from behind the window

  glass.

  DRUNK

  Too far away, oh love, I know,

  To save me from this haunted road,

  Whose lofty roses break and blow

  On a night-sky bent with a load

  Of lights: each solitary rose,

  Each arc-lamp golden does expose

  Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows

  Night blenched with a thousand snows.

  Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,

  White lilac; shows discoloured night

  Dripping with all the golden lees

  Laburnum gives back to light

  And shows the red of hawthorn set

  On high to the purple heaven of night,

  Like flags in blenched blood newly wet,

  Blood shed in the noiseless fight.

  Of life for love and love for life,

  Of hunger for a little food,

  Of kissing, lost for want of a wife

  Long ago, long ago wooed.

  . . . . . .

  Too far away you are, my love,

  To steady my brain in this phantom show

  That passes the nightly road above

  And returns again below.

  The enormous cliff of horse-chestnut trees

  Has poised on each of its ledges

  An erect small girl looking down at me;

  White-night-gowned little chits I see,

  And they peep at me over the edges

  Of the leaves as though they would leap, should

  I call

  Them down to my arms;

  "But, child, you're too small for me, too small

  Your little charms."

  White little sheaves of night-gowned maids,

  Some other will thresh you out!

  And I see leaning from the shades

  A lilac like a lady there, who braids

  Her white mantilla about

  Her face, and forward leans to catch the sight

  Of a man's face,

  Gracefully sighing through the white

  Flowery mantilla of lace.

  And another lilac in purple veiled

  Discreetly, all recklessly calls

  In a low, shocking perfume, to know who has hailed

  Her forth from the night: my strength has failed

  In her voice, my weak heart falls:

  Oh, and see the laburnum shimmering

  Her draperies down,

  As if she would slip the gold, and glimmering

  White, stand naked of gown.

  . . . . . .

  The pageant of flowery trees above

  The street pale-passionate goes,

  And back again down the pavement, Love

  In a lesser pageant flows.

  Two and two are the folk that walk,

  They pass in a half embrace

  Of linked bodies, and they talk

  With dark face leaning to face.

  Come then, my love, come as you will

  Along this haunted road,

  Be whom you will, my darling, I shall

  Keep with you the troth I trowed.

  SORROW

  WHY does the thin grey strand

  Floating up from the forgotten

  Cigarette between my fingers,

  Why does it trouble me?

  Ah, you will understand;

  When I carried my mother downstairs,

  A few times only, at the beginning

  Of her soft-foot malady,

  I should find, for a reprimand

  To my gaiety, a few long grey hairs

  On the breast of my coat; and one by one

  I let them float up the dark chimney.

  DOLOR OF AUTUMN

  THE acrid scents of autumn,

  Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear

  Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn

  And the snore of the night in my ear.

  For suddenly, flush-fallen,

  All my life, in a rush

  Of shedding away, has left me

  Naked, exposed on the bush.

  I, on the bush of the globe,

  Like a newly-naked berry, shrink

  Disclosed: but I also am prowling

  As well in the scents that slink

  Abroad: I in this naked berry

  Of flesh that stands dismayed on the bush;

  And I in the stealthy, brindled odours

  Prowling about the lush

  And acrid night of autumn;

  My soul, along with the rout,

  Rank and treacherous, prowling,

  Disseminated out.

  For the night, with a great breath intaken,

  Has taken my spirit outside

  M
e, till I reel with disseminated consciousness,

  Like a man who has died.

  At the same time I stand exposed

  Here on the bush of the globe,

  A newly-naked berry of flesh

  For the stars to probe.

  THE INHERITANCE

  SINCE you did depart

  Out of my reach, my darling,

  Into the hidden,

  I see each shadow start

  With recognition, and I

  Am wonder-ridden.

  I am dazed with the farewell,

  But I scarcely feel your loss.

  You left me a gift

  Of tongues, so the shadows tell

  Me things, and silences toss

  Me their drift.

  You sent me a cloven fire

  Out of death, and it burns in the draught

  Of the breathing hosts,

  Kindles the darkening pyre

  For the sorrowful, till strange brands waft

  Like candid ghosts.

  Form after form, in the streets

  Waves like a ghost along,

  Kindled to me;

  The star above the house-top greets

  Me every eve with a long

  Song fierily.

  All day long, the town

  Glimmers with subtle ghosts

  Going up and down

  In a common, prison-like dress;

  But their daunted looking flickers

  To me, and I answer, Yes!

  So I am not lonely nor sad

  Although bereaved of you,

  My little love.

  I move among a kinsfolk clad

  With words, but the dream shows through

  As they move.

  SILENCE

  SINCE I lost you I am silence-haunted,

  Sounds wave their little wings

  A moment, then in weariness settle

  On the flood that soundless swings.

  Whether the people in the street

  Like pattering ripples go by,

  Or whether the theatre sighs and sighs

  With a loud, hoarse sigh:

  Or the wind shakes a ravel of light

  Over the dead-black river,

  Or night's last echoing

  Makes the daybreak shiver:

  I feel the silence waiting

  To take them all up again

  In its vast completeness, enfolding

  The sound of men.

  LISTENING

  I LISTEN to the stillness of you,

  My dear, among it all;

  I feel your silence touch my words as I talk,

  And take them in thrall.

  My words fly off a forge

  The length of a spark;

  I see the night-sky easily sip them

  Up in the dark.

  The lark sings loud and glad,

  Yet I am not loth

  That silence should take the song and the bird

  And lose them both.

  A train goes roaring south,

  The steam-flag flying;

  I see the stealthy shadow of silence

  Alongside going.

  And off the forge of the world,

  Whirling in the draught of life,

  Go sparks of myriad people, filling

  The night with strife.

  Yet they never change the darkness

  Or blench it with noise;

  Alone on the perfect silence

  The stars are buoys.

  BROODING GRIEF

  A YELLOW leaf from the darkness

  Hops like a frog before me.

  Why should I start and stand still?

  I was watching the woman that bore me

  Stretched in the brindled darkness

  Of the sick-room, rigid with will

  To die: and the quick leaf tore me

  Back to this rainy swill

  Of leaves and lamps and traffic mingled before me.

  LOTUS HURT BY THE COLD

  How many times, like lotus lilies risen

  Upon the surface of a river, there

  Have risen floating on my blood the rare

  Soft glimmers of my hope escaped from prison.

  So I am clothed all over with the light

  And sensitive beautiful blossoming of passion;

  Till naked for her in the finest fashion

  The flowers of all my mud swim into sight.

  And then I offer all myself unto

  This woman who likes to love me: but she turns

  A look of hate upon the flower that burns

  To break and pour her out its precious dew.

  And slowly all the blossom shuts in pain,

  And all the lotus buds of love sink over

  To die unopened: when my moon-faced lover,

  Kind on the weight of suffering, smiles again.

  MALADE

  THE sick grapes on the chair by the bed lie prone;

  at the window

  The tassel of the blind swings gently, tapping the

  pane,

  As a little wind comes in.

  The room is the hollow rind of a fruit, a gourd

  Scooped out and dry, where a spider,

  Folded in its legs as in a bed,

  Lies on the dust, watching where is nothing to see

  but twilight and walls.

  And if the day outside were mine! What is the day

  But a grey cave, with great grey spider-cloths

  hanging

  Low from the roof, and the wet dust falling softly

  from them

  Over the wet dark rocks, the houses, and over

  The spiders with white faces, that scuttle on the

  floor of the cave!

  I am choking with creeping, grey confinedness.

  But somewhere birds, beside a lake of light, spread

  wings

  Larger than the largest fans, and rise in a stream

  upwards

  And upwards on the sunlight that rains invisible,

  So that the birds are like one wafted feather,

  Small and ecstatic suspended over a vast spread

  country.

  LIAISON

  A BIG bud of moon hangs out of the twilight,

  Star-spiders spinning their thread

  Hang high suspended, withouten respite

  Watching us overhead.

  Come then under the trees, where the leaf-cloths

  Curtain us in so dark

  That here we're safe from even the ermin-moth's

  Flitting remark.

  Here in this swarthy, secret tent,

  Where black boughs flap the ground,

  You shall draw the thorn from my discontent,

  Surgeon me sound.

  This rare, rich night! For in here

  Under the yew-tree tent

  The darkness is loveliest where I could sear

  You like frankincense into scent.

  Here not even the stars can spy us,

  Not even the white moths write

  With their little pale signs on the wall, to try us

  And set us affright.

  Kiss but then the dust from off my lips,

  But draw the turgid pain

  From my breast to your bosom, eclipse

  My soul again.

  Waste me not, I beg you, waste

  Not the inner night:

  Taste, oh taste and let me taste

  The core of delight.

  TROTH WITH THE DEAD

  THE moon is broken in twain, and half a moon

  Before me lies on the still, pale floor of the sky;

  The other half of the broken coin of troth

  Is buried away in the dark, where the still dead lie.

  They buried her half in the grave when they laid her

  away;

  I had pushed it
gently in among the thick of her hair

  Where it gathered towards the plait, on that very

  last day;

  And like a moon in secret it is shining there.

  My half shines in the sky, for a general sign

  Of the troth with the dead I pledged myself to keep;

  Turning its broken edge to the dark, it shines indeed

  Like the sign of a lover who turns to the dark of

  sleep.

  Against my heart the inviolate sleep breaks still

  In darkened waves whose breaking echoes o'er

  The wondering world of my wakeful day, till I'm

  lost

  In the midst of the places I knew so well before.

  DISSOLUTE

  MANY years have I still to burn, detained

  Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshrine

  A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps

  contained

  In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.

  And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of

  life,

  What matter the stuff I lick up in my living flame,

  Seeing I keep in the fire-core, inviolate,

  A night where she dreams my dreams for me, ever

  the same.

  SUBMERGENCE

  WHEN along the pavement,

  Palpitating flames of life,

  People flicker round me,

  I forget my bereavement,

  The gap in the great constellation,

  The place where a star used to be.

  Nay, though the pole-star

  Is blown out like a candle,

  And all the heavens are wandering in disarray,

  Yet when pleiads of people are

  Deployed around me, and I see

  The street's long outstretched Milky Way,

  When people flicker down the pavement,

  I forget my bereavement.

  THE ENKINDLED SPRING

  THIS spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,

  Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,

  Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between

  Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering

  rushes.

  I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration

  Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze

  Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,

  Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

  And I, what fountain of fire am I among

  This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is

  tossed

  About like a shadow buffeted in the throng

  Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.

  REPROACH

  HAD I but known yesterday,

  Helen, you could discharge the ache

  Out of the cloud;

  Had I known yesterday you could take

  The turgid electric ache away,

  Drink it up with your proud

  White body, as lovely white lightning

  Is drunk from an agonised sky by the earth,

  I might have hated you, Helen.

  But since my limbs gushed full of fire,

  Since from out of my blood and bone

  Poured a heavy flame

  To you, earth of my atmosphere, stone

  Of my steel, lovely white flint of desire,

  You have no name.

  Earth of my swaying atmosphere,

  Substance of my inconstant breath,

  I cannot but cleave to you.

  Since you have drunken up the drear

  Painful electric storm, and death

  Is washed from the blue

  Of my eyes, I see you beautiful.

  You are strong and passive and beautiful,

  I come like winds that uncertain hover;

  But you

  Are the earth I hover over.

  THE HANDS OF THE BETROTHED

  HER tawny eyes are onyx of thoughtlessness,

  Hardened they are like gems in ancient modesty;

  Yea, and her mouth's prudent and crude caress

  Means even less than her many words to me.

  Though her kiss betrays me also this, this only

  Consolation, that in her lips her blood at climax

  clips

  Two wild, dumb paws in anguish on the lonely

  Fruit of my heart, ere down, rebuked, it slips.

  I know from her hardened lips that still her heart is

  Hungry for me, yet if I put my hand in her breast

  She puts me away, like a saleswoman whose mart is

  Endangered by the pilferer on his quest.

  But her hands are still the woman, the large, strong

  hands

  Heavier than mine, yet like leverets caught in

  steel

  When I hold them; my still soul understands

  Their dumb confession of what her sort must feel.

  For never her hands come nigh me but they lift

  Like heavy birds from the morning stubble, to

  settle

  Upon me like sleeping birds, like birds that shift

  Uneasily in their sleep, disturbing my mettle.

  How caressingly she lays her hand on my knee,

  How strangely she tries to disown it, as it sinks

  In my flesh and bone and forages into me,

  How it stirs like a subtle stoat, whatever she

  thinks!

  And often I see her clench her fingers tight

  And thrust her fists suppressed in the folds of her

  skirt;

  And sometimes, how she grasps her arms with her

  bright

  Big hands, as if surely her arms did hurt.