The Complete Poems

  THE CHINK

  A sunbeam on the well-waxed oak,

  In shape resembling not at all

  The ragged chink by which it broke

  Into this darkened hall,

  Swims round and golden over me,

  The sun’s plenipotentiary.

  So may my round love a chink find:

  With such address to break

  Into your grief-occluded mind

  As you shall not mistake

  But, rising, open to me for truth’s sake.

  COUNTING THE BEATS

  You, love, and I,

  (He whispers) you and I,

  And if no more than only you and I

  What care you or I?

  Counting the beats,

  Counting the slow heart beats,

  The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,

  Wakeful they lie.

  Cloudless day,

  Night, and a cloudless day,

  Yet the huge storm will burst upon their heads one day

  From a bitter sky.

  Where shall we be,

  (She whispers) where shall we be,

  When death strikes home, O where then shall we be

  Who were you and I?

  Not there but here,

  (He whispers) only here,

  As we are, here, together, now and here,

  Always you and I.

  Counting the beats,

  Counting the slow heart beats,

  The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,

  Wakeful they lie.

  THE JACKALS’ ADDRESS TO ISIS

  Grant Anup’s children this:

  To howl with you, Queen Isis,

  Over the scattered limbs of wronged Osiris.

  What harder fate than to be woman?

  She makes and she unmakes her man.

  In Jackal-land it is no secret

  Who tempted red-haired, ass-eared Set

  To such bloody extreme; who most

  Must therefore mourn and fret

  To pacify the unquiet ghost.

  And when Horus your son

  Avenges this divulsion,

  Sceptre in fist, sandals on feet,

  We shall return across the sand

  From loyal Jackal-land

  To gorge five nights and days on ass’s meat.

  THE DEATH ROOM

  Look forward, truant, to your second childhood.

  The crystal sphere discloses

  Wall-paper roses mazily repeated

  In pink and bronze, their bunches harbouring

  Elusive faces, under an inconclusive

  Circling, spidery, ceiling craquelure,

  And, by the window-frame, the well-loathed, lame,

  Damp-patch, cross-patch, sleepless L-for-Lemur

  Who, puffed to giant size,

  Waits jealously till children close their eyes.

  THE YOUNG CORDWAINER

  She: Love, why have you led me here

  To this lampless hall,

  A place of despair and fear

  Where blind things crawl?

  He: Not I, but your complaint

  Heard by the riverside

  That primrose scent grew faint

  And desire died.

  She: Kisses had lost virtue

  As yourself must know;

  I declared what, alas, was true

  And still shall do so.

  He: Mount, sweetheart, this main stair

  Where bandogs at the foot

  Their crooked gilt teeth bare

  Between jaws of soot.

  She: I loathe them, how they stand

  Like prick-eared spies.

  Hold me fast by the left hand;

  I walk with closed eyes.

  He: Primrose has periwinkle

  As her mortal fellow:

  Five leaves, blue and baleful,

  Five of true yellow.

  She: Overhead, what’s overhead?

  Where would you take me?

  My feet stumble for dread,

  My wits forsake me.

  He: Flight on flight, floor above floor,

  In suspense of doom

  To a locked secret door

  And a white-walled room.

  She: Love, have you the pass-word,

  Or have you the key,

  With a sharp naked sword

  And wine to revive me?

  He: Enter: here is starlight,

  Here the state bed

  Where your man lies all night

  With blue flowers garlanded.

  She: Ah, the cool open window

  Of this confessional!

  With wine at my elbow,

  And sword beneath the pillow,

  I shall perfect all.

  YOUR PRIVATE WAY

  Whether it was your way of walking

  Or of laughing moved me,

  At sight of you a song wavered

  Ghostly on my lips; I could not voice it,

  Uncertain what the notes or key.

  Be thankful I am no musician,

  Sweet Anonymity, to madden you

  With your own private walking-laughing way

  Imitated on a beggar’s fiddle

  Or blared across the square on All Fools’ Day.

  MY NAME AND I

  The impartial Law enrolled a name

  For my especial use:

  My rights in it would rest the same

  Whether I puffed it into fame

  Or sank it in abuse.

  Robert was what my parents guessed

  When first they peered at me,

  And Graves an honourable bequest

  With Georgian silver and the rest

  From my male ancestry.

  They taught me: ‘You are Robert Graves

  (Which you must learn to spell),

  But see that Robert Graves behaves,

  Whether with honest men or knaves,

  Exemplarily well.’

  Then though my I was always I,

  Illegal and unknown,

  With nothing to arrest it by –

  As will be obvious when I die

  And Robert Graves lives on –

  I cannot well repudiate

  This noun, this natal star,

  This gentlemanly self, this mate

  So kindly forced on me by fate,

  Time and the registrar;

  And therefore hurry him ahead

  As an ambassador

  To fetch me home my beer and bread

  Or commandeer the best green bed,

  As he has done before.

  Yet, understand, I am not he

  Either in mind or limb;

  My name will take less thought for me,

  In worlds of men I cannot see,

  Than ever I for him.

  CONVERSATION PIECE

  By moonlight

  At midnight,

  Under the vines,

  A hotel chair

  Settles down moodily before the headlines

  Of a still-folded evening newspaper.

  The other chair

  Of the pair

  Lies on its back,

  Stiff as in pain,

  Having been overturned with an angry crack;

  And there till morning, alas, it must remain.

  On the terrace

  No blood-trace,

  No sorry glitter

  Of a knife, nothing:

  Not even the fine-torn fragments of a letter

  Or the dull gleam of a flung-off wedding-ring.

  Still stable

  On the table

  Two long-stemmed glasses,

  One full of drink,

  Watch how the rat among the vines passes

  And how the moon trembles on the crag’s brink.

  THE GHOST AND THE CLOCK

  About midnight my heart began

  To trip again and knock.

  The tattered ghost of a tall man

  Looked fierce a
t me as in he ran,

  But fiercer at the clock.

  It was, he swore, a long, long while

  Until he’d had the luck

  To die and make his domicile

  On some ungeographic isle

  Where no hour ever struck.

  ‘But now, you worst of clocks,’ said he,

  ‘Delayer of all love,

  In vengeance I’ve recrossed the sea

  To jerk at your machinery

  And give your hands a shove.’

  So impotently he groped and peered

  That his whole body shook!

  I could not laugh at him; I feared

  This was no ghost but my own weird,

  And closer dared not look.

  ADVICE ON MAY DAY

  Never sing the same song twice

  Lest she disbelieve it.

  Though reproved as over-nice,

  Never sing the same song twice –

  Unobjectionable advice,

  Would you but receive it:

  Never sing the same song twice

  Lest she disbelieve it.

  Never sing a song clean through,

  You might disenchant her;

  Venture on a verse or two

  (Indisposed to sing it through),

  Let that seem as much as you

  Care, or dare, to grant her;

  Never sing your song clean through,

  You might disenchant her.

  Make no sermon on your song

  Lest she turn and rend you.

  Fools alone deliver long

  Sermons on a May-day song;

  Even a smile may put you wrong,

  Half a word may end you:

  Make no sermon on your song

  Lest she turn and rend you.

  FOR THE RAIN IT RAINETH EVERY DAY

  Arabs complain – or so I have been told –

  Interminably of heat, as Lapps complain

  Even of seasonable Christmas cold;

  Nor are the English yet inured to rain

  Which still, my angry William, as of old

  Streaks without pause your birthday window pane.

  But you are English too;

  How can I comfort you?

  Suppose I said: ‘Those gales that eastward ride

  (Their wrath portended by a sinking glass)

  With good St George of England are allied’?

  Suppose I said: ‘They freshen the Spring grass,

  Arab or Lapp would envy a fireside

  Where such green-fingered elementals pass’?

  No, you are English too;

  How could that comfort you?

  QUESTIONS IN A WOOD

  The parson to his pallid spouse,

  The hangman to his whore,

  Do both not mumble the same vows,

  Both knock at the same door?

  And when the fury of their knocks

  Has waned, and that was that,

  What answer comes, unless the pox

  Or one more parson’s brat?

  Tell me, my love, my flower of flowers,

  True woman to this man,

  What have their deeds to do with ours

  Or any we might plan?

  Your startled gaze, your restless hand,

  Your hair like Thames in flood,

  And choked voice, battling to command

  The insurgence of your blood:

  How can they spell the dark word said

  Ten thousand times a night

  By women as corrupt and dead

  As you are proud and bright?

  And how can I, in the same breath,

  Though warned against the cheat,

  Vilely deliver love to death

  Wrapped in a rumpled sheet?

  Yet, if from delicacy of pride

  We choose to hold apart,

  Will no blue hag appear, to ride

  Hell’s wager in each heart?

  THE PORTRAIT

  She speaks always in her own voice

  Even to strangers; but those other women

  Exercise their borrowed, or false, voices

  Even on sons and daughters.

  She can walk invisibly at noon

  Along the high road; but those other women

  Gleam phosphorescent – broad hips and gross fingers –

  Down every lampless alley.

  She is wild and innocent, pledged to love

  Through all disaster; but those other women

  Decry her for a witch or a common drab

  And glare back when she greets them.

  Here is her portrait, gazing sidelong at me,

  The hair in disarray, the young eyes pleading:

  ‘And you, love? As unlike those other men

  As I those other women?’

  DARIEN

  It is a poet’s privilege and fate

  To fall enamoured of the one Muse

  Who variously haunts this island earth.

  She was your mother, Darien,

  And presaged by the darting halcyon bird

  Would run green-sleeved along her ridges,

  Treading the asphodels and heather-trees

  With white feet bare.

  Often at moonrise I had watched her go,

  And a cold shudder shook me

  To see the curved blaze of her Cretan axe.

  Averted her set face, her business

  Not yet with me, long-striding,

  She would ascend the peak and pass from sight.

  But once at full moon, by the sea’s verge,

  I came upon her without warning.

  Unrayed she stood, with long hair streaming,

  A cockle-shell cupped in her warm hands,

  Her axe propped idly on a stone.

  No awe possessed me, only a great grief;

  Wanly she smiled, but would not lift her eyes

  (As a young girl will greet the stranger).

  I stood upright, a head taller than she.

  ‘See who has come,’ said I.

  She answered: ‘If I lift my eyes to yours

  And our eyes marry, man, what then?

  Will they engender my son Darien?

  Swifter than wind, with straight and nut-brown hair,

  Tall, slender-shanked, grey-eyed, untameable;

  Never was born, nor ever will be born

  A child to equal my son Darien,

  Guardian of the hid treasures of your world.’

  I knew then by the trembling of her hands

  For whom that flawless blade would sweep:

  My own oracular head, swung by its hair.

  ‘Mistress,’ I cried, ‘the times are evil

  And you have charged me with their remedy.

  O, where my head is now, let nothing be

  But a clay counterfeit with nacre blink:

  Only look up, so Darien may be born!

  ‘He is the northern star, the spell of knowledge,

  Pride of all hunters and all fishermen,

  Your deathless fawn, an eaglet of your eyrie,

  The topmost branch of your unfellable tree,

  A tear streaking the summer night,

  The new green of my hope.’

  Lifting her eyes,

  She held mine for a lost eternity.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ said I, ‘strike now, for Darien’s sake!’

  THE SURVIVOR

  To die with a forlorn hope, but soon to be raised

  By hags, the spoilers of the field, to elude their claws

  And stand once more on a well-swept parade-ground,

  Scarred and bemedalled, sword upright in fist

  At head of a new undaunted company:

  Is this joy? – to be doubtless alive again,

  And the others dead? Will your nostrils gladly savour

  The fragrance, always new, of a first hedge-rose?

  Will your ears be charmed by the thrush’s melody

  Sung as though he had himself devised it?

/>   And is this joy: after the double suicide

  (Heart against heart) to be restored entire,

  To smooth your hair and wash away the life-blood,

  And presently seek a young and innocent bride,

  Whispering in the dark: ‘for ever and ever’?

  PROMETHEUS

  Close bound in a familiar bed

  All night I tossed, rolling my head;

  Now dawn returns in vain, for still

  The vulture squats on her warm hill.

  I am in love as giants are

  That dote upon the evening star,

  And this lank bird is come to prove

  The intractability of love.

  Yet still, with greedy eye half shut,

  Rend the raw liver from its gut:

  Feed, jealousy, do not fly away –

  If she who fetched you also stay.

  SATIRES

  QUEEN-MOTHER TO NEW QUEEN

  Although only a fool would mock

  The secondary joys of wedlock

  (Which need no recapitulation),

  The primary’s the purer gold,

  Even in our exalted station,

  For all but saint or hoary cuckold.

  Therefore, if ever the King’s eyes

  Turn at odd hours to your sleek thighs,

  Make no delay or circumvention

  But do as you should do, though strict

  To guide back his bemused attention

  Towards privy purse or royal edict,

  And stricter yet to leave no stain

  On the proud memory of his reign –

  You’ll act the wronged wife, if you love us.

  Let them not whisper, even in sport:

  ‘His Majesty’s turned parsimonious

  And keeps no whore now but his Consort.’

  SECESSION OF THE DRONES

  These drones, seceding from the hive,

  In self-felicitation

  That henceforth they will throng and thrive

  Far from the honeyed nation,

  Domesticate an old cess-pit,

  Their hairy bellies warming

  With buzz of psychologic wit

  And homosexual swarming.

  Engrossed in pure coprophily,

  Which makes them mighty clever,

  They fabricate a huge King Bee

  To rule all hives for ever.

  DAMOCLES

  Death never troubled Damocles,

  Nor did the incertitude

  When the sword, swung by a light breeze,

  Cast shadows on his food –

  ‘A thread is spun

  For every son,’

  Said he, ‘of Pyrrha’s brood.’