Complete Poems

by Cecil Day-Lewis

A tragic fall: if deaths have happened

  In him, through him, he never preached at the funeral.

  It’s friendship we return to in the end:

  Past selves are kept alive in it, a living

  Communion flows from their dead languages. A home

  Enlarged by absences, mellowed by custom,

  Undemanding, simply taking and giving,

  Is he, our sixty-year-old friend.

  My Mother’s Sister1

  I see her against the pearl sky of Dublin

  Before the turn of the century, a young woman

  With all those brothers and sisters, green eyes, hair

  She could sit on; for high life, a meandering sermon

  (Church of Ireland) each Sunday, window-shopping

  In Dawson Street, picnics at Killiney and Howth …

  To know so little about the growing of one

  Who was angel and maid-of-all-work to my growth!

  – Who, her sister dying, took on the four-year

  Child, and the chance that now she would never make

  A child of her own; who, mothering me, flowered in

  The clover-soft authority of the meek.

  Who, exiled, gossiping home chat from abroad

  In roundhand letters to a drift of relations –

  Squires’, Goldsmiths, Overends, Williams’ – sang the songs

  Of Zion in a strange land. Hers the patience

  Of one who made no claims, but simply loved

  Because that was her nature, and loving so

  Asked no more than to be repaid in kind.

  If she was not a saint, I do not know

  What saints are … Buying penny toys at Christmas

  (The most a small purse could afford) to send her

  Nephews and nieces, she’d never have thought the shop

  Could shine for me one day in Bethlehem splendour.

  Exiled again after ten years, my father

  Remarrying, she faced the bitter test

  Of charity – to abdicate in love’s name

  From love’s contentful duties. A distressed

  Gentle woman housekeeping for strangers;

  Later, companion to a droll recluse

  Clergyman brother in rough-pastured Wexford,

  She lived for all she was worth – to be of use.

  She bottled plums, she visited parishioners.

  A plain habit of innocence, a faith

  Mildly forbearing, made her one of those

  Who, we were promised, shall inherit the earth.

  … Now, sunk in one small room of a Rathmines

  Old people’s home, helpless, beyond speech

  Or movement, yearly deeper she declines

  To imbecility – my last link with childhood.

  The battery’s almost done: yet if I press

  The button hard – some private joke in boyhood

  I teased her with – there comes upon her face

  A glowing of the old, enchanted smile.

  So, still alive, she rots. A heart of granite

  Would melt at this unmeaning sequel. Lord,

  How can this be justified, how can it

  Be justified?

  1 Agnes Squires, known as ‘Knos’.

  Madrigal for Lowell House1

  The crimson berry tree navelled upon this court

  Twinkles a coded message, a wind-sun tingling chord,

  Curious round her foot saunters one blue jay:

  Fallen leaves swarm and scurry – a game of running away

  Slides from play to panic.

  Young men pull the berries

  To pelt one another, or go their way to seminars

  On art and the organic.

  The crimson berry tree

  Has serious moments too – or we make-believe it so,

  Dubbing inspired comments on

  Her dumb but pretty show.

  ‘Jaywalker, stuttering leaves have little need to stay

  When I bleed berries over the snow. But oh, the gay

  Young men, the grave young men who feel the wind and sun

  Today are gone tomorrow, never come back again.’

  1 CDL lived in Lowell House, Harvard, when he held the Charles Eliot Norton Chair 1964–65.

  This Loafer

  In a sun-crazed orchard

  Busy with blossomings

  This loafer, unaware of

  What toil or weather brings,

  Lumpish sleeps – a chrysalis

  Waiting, no doubt, for wings.

  And when he does get active,

  It’s not for business – no

  Bee-lines to thyme or heather,

  No earnest to-and-fro

  Of thrushes: pure caprice tells him

  Where and how to go.

  All he can ever do

  Is to be entrancing,

  So that a child may think,

  Upon a chalk-blue chancing,

  ‘Today was special. I met

  A piece of the sky dancing.’

  Grey Squirrel: Greenwich Park

  You with the panache tail

  The dowdy old ash-bin fur –

  What are you for, zigzagging so sprucely

  And so obtusely

  Over the autumn leaves, stopping so dead

  The eye shoots ahead of you? What main chance

  Are you after, my prancing dear?

  You cover the autumn grass with a row

  Of lolloping shorthand signs and no

  Hesitation or apparent destination;

  Then pose upright, paws on chest

  Like a politician clasping his top-hat on

  A solemn occasion, or a hospital matron

  Attending some lord of the wards.

  They say you are vermin, but I cannot determine

  What no good you’re up to. Possibly the odium

  Attaches to you for ganging so thoroughly

  Your own mad, felicitous gait, not doing

  A hand’s turn for State, Church, Union, or Borough.

  Squirrel, go climb a tree.

  You are too like me.

  Terns

  Sunlit over the shore

  Terns – a flock of them – flew,

  With swordplay supple as light

  Criss-crossing the charmed blue.

  They seemed one bird, not a score –

  One bird of ubiquitous flight,

  One blade so swift in the fence

  It flickers like twenty men’s,

  Letting no thought of a scar,

  No fatal doubt pierce through.

  Oh whirl and glide, the cut

  And thrust of the dazzling terns,

  Weaving from joy or need

  Such quick, momentous patterns!

  If we shall have opted out

  Of nature, may she breed

  Something more tern-like, less

  Inept for togetherness

  Than we, who have lost the art

  Of dancing to her best tunes.

  Apollonian Figure

  Careful of his poetic p’s and q’s,

  This self-possessed master of circumspection

  Enjoyed a mariage blanc with the Muse,

  Who never caught his verse in an erection.

  Some praise the lapidary figure: but

  With due respect to the attendant’s spiel,

  That fig-leaf there, so elegantly cut –

  Just what, if anything, does it conceal?

  A Relativist

  He raged at critic, moralist – all

  That gang who with almightiest gall

  Lay claim to the decisive vote

  In separating sheep from goat.

  So on the last day, when he’s got

  His breath back again, it will not

  Be goats or sheep that rouse his dudgeon

  But the absurdity of judging.

  Moral

  ‘Moral education is impossible apart from the habitual vision of greatness.’

>   A. N. WHITEHEAD

  Saints and heroes, you dare say,

  Like unicorns, have had their day.

  Unlaurel the compulsive tough!

  All pierced feet are feet of clay.

  Envy – and paucity – of what

  Men lived by to enlarge their lot,

  Diminishing your share in them,

  Downgrade you and not the great.

  The saint falls down, the hero’s treed

  Often, we know it. Still we need

  The vision that keeps burning from

  Saintly trust, heroic deed.

  Accept the flawed self, but aspire

  To flights beyond it: wiser far

  Lifting our eyes unto the hills

  Than lowering them to sift the mire.

  The Voyage

  Translated from Baudelaire

  I

  Children, in love with maps and gravings, know

  A universe the size of all they lack.

  How big the world is by their lamps’ clear glow!

  But ah, how small to memory looking back!

  One morning we set out, our heads on fire,

  Our yearning hearts sulky with sour unease,

  Following the waves’ rhythm, nursing our desire

  For the unbounded on those earth-bound seas.

  Some glad to leave an infamous birthplace: some

  To escape the cradle’s nightmare; and a few –

  Star-gazers drowned in a woman’s eyes – it’s from

  The scent and power of Circe that they flew.

  Not to be changed to beasts, they drug their minds

  With space and the large light and burning sky:

  The ice that bites them and the suns that bronze

  Efface the scar of kisses gradually.

  But the true travellers are those who go

  For going’s sake: hearts light as a balloon,

  They never slip their fate: why it is so

  They cannot tell, but the word is ‘Fare on!’

  With longings shaped like hazy clouds, they dream –

  As a recruit of gunfire – there impend

  Huge pleasures, changeful and untried, whose fame

  Is past the wit of man to comprehend.

  II

  God, that we should behave like top and ball

  Bouncing and twirling! Even in our sleep

  The Unknown we seek gives us no rest at all,

  Like suns tormented by an Angel’s whip.

  Strange game, whose goal is always on the move

  And being nowhere, may be any place;

  And Man, whose hope no setbacks will disprove,

  Keeps running madly just to catch repose.

  The soul is a three-master, Ithaca-bound.

  ‘Keep your eyes skinned!’ a sea voice will implore;

  From the maintop a keen, mad voice resound

  ‘Love … glory … luck!’ Oh hell, we’ve run ashore!

  Each little isle hailed by the look-out man

  Is the Promised Land, golden beyond belief:

  Such revels he imagines, but he’ll scan

  By the cold light of dawn only a reef.

  Fairytale lands – that they should craze him so!

  Clap him in irons? Pitch him overboard? –

  This bold Columbus, drunken matelot,

  Whose mirage makes our sea more hard to abide.

  So the old tramp goes pounding through the shit

  And, nose in air, dreams up a paradise;

  The meanest shanties where a candle’s lit

  Are Pleasure-Domes to his enchanted eyes.

  III

  Amazing voyagers, what splendid tales

  Your sea-deep eyes have printed on them. Rare

  The jewel caskets of your chronicles:

  Show us those gems, fashioned from stars and air.

  We’d voyage, but we have no sail or screw.

  Liven our spirits, that are canvas-taut.

  Breathe your horizon memories, view on view,

  Over the boredom of our prisoned thought.

  Tell us, what have you seen?

  IV

  We’ve seen some stars,

  Some waves; and we have met with sand-banks too:

  For all the uncharted hazards and the jars

  We suffered, we were often bored, like you.

  Splendour of sunlight on a violet sea,

  Splendour of townships in the setting sun

  Kindled in us a burning wish to be

  Deep in a sky whose mirror lured us on.

  Rich towns and landscapes lovely to the gaze

  Had never the mysterious appeal

  Of those that chance created out of haze

  And our impassioned wanting made so real.

  Enjoying gives desire more potency –

  Desire that feeds on pleasure: the bark grows

  Thicker and tougher on the ageing tree,

  But its boughs strain to see the sun more close.

  Will you be growing still, great tree, who soared

  Higher than cypress?… Well, since you rejoice

  To swallow anything far-fetched, we’ve worked hard

  And brought these sketches for your album, boys.

  There we have greeted trumpeting effigies,

  Thrones of star-clustered gems dazzling to view,

  Palaces wrought by fairy artifice –

  Dreams that would bankrupt millionaires like you;

  Dresses which stagger you like drunkenness,

  Women with nails and teeth vermilion-stained,

  Magicians conjuring a snake’s caress.

  V

  Yes, yes! Go on! And then?

  VI

  You baby-brained!

  Lest we should miss the great, the unique thing,

  Ubiquitous and unconcealed we’ve seen

  On the predestined ladder’s every rung

  The tedious sight of man’s inveterate sin:

  Woman, bitch slave, stupid and overweening,

  Vain without humour, and without disgust

  Self-loving; man, slave to a slave, a stream in

  A sewer, all grab and foulness, greed, power, lust:

  The thug who loves his work, the sobbing martyr,

  The feast that seasons and perfumes the blood;

  The prince whom power corrupts into self-murder,

  The mob who kiss the brutalizing rod:

  Several religions, just like our own following,

  Bulldoze their path to heaven; the austere,

  While dissolute types on feather beds are wallowing,

  Gratify their own taste with nails and hair:

  Gabbling mankind, drunk on its own nature

  And mad today as in all previous years,

  Raving with agony bawls to its Maker

  ‘My lord, oh my twin-brother, it’s you I curse!’

  And the least mad, tough lovers of Alienation,

  Fleeing the herd whom fate has corralled in,

  Takes refuge with a limitless Illusion …

  Such is our globe’s unchanging bulletin

  VII

  Acid the knowledge travellers draw. The world,

  Little and dull, today, tomorrow and

  Tomorrow makes you see yourself – an appalled

  Oasis in a tedium of sand.

  Should we then go, or stay? If you can, stay:

  Go, if you must. One races: one shams death

  To cheat the watchful enemy of his prey.

  Some runners Time allows no pause for breath –

  The wandering Jew, the apostles, who can neither

  Escape this gladiator and his net

  By ship nor car nor any means: another

  Can kill Time without stirring from his cot.

  And when he sets his foot upon our spine

  At last, we shall cry hopefully ‘Let’s be going!’

  Just as in old days when we left for China,

  Eyes fixed on distance
s and our hair blowing,

  We shall embark upon the sea of Shade,

  Light-hearted as a young enthusiast.

  Now do you hear those voices, sweet and sad,

  Singing, ‘This way, all you who want to taste

  The fragrant lotus! Here we shall let you savour

  Those miracle fruits, for which your souls were famished:

  Come and transport yourselves with the strange flavour

  Of a long afternoon that’s never finished’?

  What’s grown unreal, we guess from its usual tone.

  Dear friends stretch out their arms; and ‘Swim this way,

  Take new life from my loyal heart,’ cries one

  Whose knees we kissed – but that was yesterday.

  VIII

  Old Captain Death, it’s time to go. We’re sick

  Of this place. Weigh anchor! Set the course, and steer!

  Maybe the sky and sea are inky black,

  But in our hearts – you know them – all is clear.

  Pour us the cordial that kills and cheers.

  We wish, for our whole beings burn and burn,

  To sound the abyss – heaven or hell, who cares? –

  And find the secret wombed in the Unknown.

  1965

  THE WHISPERING ROOTS

  FOR SEAN AND ANNA

  ‘The House where I was Born’ first appeared in Pegasus and Other Poems (1957), and ‘Fishguard to Rosslare’ first appeared in The Room and Other Poems (1965). They are repeated here, so that all the Irish poems can be kept together.

  PART ONE

  The House Where I Was Born

  An elegant, shabby, white-washed house

  With a slate roof. Two rows

  Of tall sash windows. Below the porch, at the foot of

  The steps, my father, posed

  In his pony trap and round clerical hat.

  This is all the photograph shows.

  No one is left alive to tell me

  In which of those rooms I was born,

  Or what my mother could see, looking out one April

  Morning, her agony done,

  Or if there were pigeons to answer my cooings

  From that tree to the left of the lawn.