The Complete Poems

  How bright her knocker shone – in readiness

  For my confident rap? – and the steps holystoned.

  I ran the last few paces, rapped and listened

  Intently for the rustle of her approach….

  No reply, no movement. I waited three long minutes,

  Then, in surprise, went down the path again

  To observe the chimney stacks. No smoke from either.

  And the curtains: were they drawn against the sun?

  Or against what, then? I glanced over a wall

  At her well-tended orchard, heavy with bloom

  (Easter fell late that year, Spring had come early),

  And found the gardener, bent over cold frames.

  ‘Her ladyship is not at home?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘She was expecting me. My name is Lion.

  Did she leave a note?’

  ‘No, sir, she left no note.’

  ‘I trust nothing has happened…?’

  ‘No, sir, nothing….

  And yet she seemed preoccupied: we guess

  Some family reason.’

  ‘Has she a family?’

  ‘That, sir, I could not say…. She seemed distressed –

  Not quite herself, if I may venture so.’

  ‘But she left no note?’

  ‘Only a verbal message:

  Her ladyship will be away some weeks

  Or months, hopes to return before midsummer,

  And, please, you are not to communicate.

  There was something else: about the need for patience.’

  The sun went in, a bleak wind shook the blossom,

  Dust flew, the windows glared in a blank row….

  And yet I felt, when I turned slowly away,

  Her eyes boring my back, as it might be posted

  Behind a curtain slit, and still in love.

  HORIZON

  On a clear day how thin the horizon

  Drawn between sea and sky,

  Between sea-love and sky-love;

  And after sunset how debatable

  Even for an honest eye.

  ‘Do as you will tonight,’

  Said she, and so he did

  By moonlight, candlelight,

  Candlelight and moonlight,

  While pillowed clouds the horizon hid.

  Knowing-not-knowing that such deeds must end

  In a curse which lovers long past weeping for

  Had heaped upon him: she would be gone one night

  With his familiar friend,

  Granting him leave her beauty to explore

  By moonlight, candlelight,

  Candlelight and moonlight.

  GOLDEN ANCHOR

  Gone: and to an undisclosed region,

  Free as the wind, if less predictable.

  Why should I grieve, who have no claim on her?

  My ring circles her finger, from her neck

  Dangles my powerful jade. All is not lost

  While still she wears those evident tokens

  And no debts lie between us except love.

  Or does the golden anchor plague her

  As a drag on woman’s liberty? Longing

  To cut the cable, run grandly adrift,

  Is she warned by a voice what wide misfortune

  Ripples from ill faith? – therefore temporizes

  And fears to use the axe, although consorting

  With lovelessness and evil?

  What should I say or do? It was she chose me,

  Not contrariwise. Moreover, if I lavished

  Extravagant praise on her, she deserved all.

  I have been honest in love, as is my nature;

  She secret, as is hers. I cannot grieve

  Unless for having vexed her by unmasking

  A jewelled virtue she was loth to use.

  LION LOVER

  You chose a lion to be your lover –

  Me, who in joy such doom greeting

  Dared jealously undertake

  Cruel ordeals long foreseen and known,

  Springing a trap baited with flesh: my own.

  Nor would I now exchange this lion heart

  For a less furious other,

  Though by the Moon possessed

  I gnaw at dry bones in a lost lair

  And, when clouds cover her, roar my despair.

  Gratitude and affection I disdain

  As cheap in any market:

  Your naked feet upon my scarred shoulders,

  Your eyes naked with love,

  Are all the gifts my beasthood can approve.

  IBYCUS IN SAMOS

  The women of Samos are lost in love for me:

  Nag at their men, neglect their looms,

  And send me secret missives, to my sorrow.

  I am the poet Ibycus, known by the cranes,

  Each slender Samian offers herself moon-blanched

  As my only bride, my heart’s belovèd;

  And when I return a calm salute, no more,

  Or a brotherly kiss, will heap curses upon me:

  Do I despise her warm myrrh-scented bosom?

  She whom I honour has turned her face away

  A whole year now, and in pride more than royal

  Lacerates my heart and hers as one.

  Wherever I wander in this day-long fever,

  Sprigs of the olive-trees are touched with fire

  And stones twinkle along my devious path.

  Who here can blame me if I alone am poet,

  If none other has dared to accept the fate

  Of death and again death in the Muse’s house?

  Or who can blame me if my hair crackles

  Like thorns under a pot, if my eyes flash

  As it were sheets of summer lightning?

  POSSESSED

  To be possessed by her is to possess –

  Though rooted in this thought

  Build nothing on it.

  Unreasonable faith becomes you

  And mute endurance

  Even of betrayal.

  Never expect to be brought wholly

  Into her confidence.

  Being natural woman

  She knows what she must do, not why;

  Balks your anticipation

  Of pleasure vowed;

  Yet, no less vulnerable than you,

  Suffers the dire pangs

  Of your self-defeat.

  THE WINGED HEART

  Trying to read the news, after your visit,

  When the words made little sense, I let them go;

  And found my heart suddenly sprouting feathers.

  Alone in the house, and the full honest rain

  After a devil’s own four-day sirocco

  Still driving down in sheets across the valley –

  How it hissed, how the leaves of the olives shook!

  We had suffered drought since earliest April;

  Here we were already in October.

  I have nothing more to tell you. What has been said

  Can never possibly be retracted now

  Without denial of the large universe.

  Some curse has fallen between us, a dead hand,

  An inhalation of evil sucking up virtue:

  Which left us no recourse, unless we turned

  Improvident as at our first encounter,

  Deriding practical care of how or where:

  Your certitude must be my certitude.

  And the tranquil blaze of sky etherializing

  The circle of rocks and our own rain-wet faces,

  Was that not worth a lifetime of pure grief?

  IN TRANCE AT A DISTANCE

  It is easy, often, and natural even,

  To commune with her in trance at a distance;

  To attest those deep confessionary sighs

  Otherwise so seldom heard from her;

  To be assured by a single shudder

  Wracking both hearts, and underneath the press

  Of clothes by a comm
on nakedness.

  Hold fast to the memory, lest a cold fear

  Of never again here, of nothing good coming,

  Should lure you into self-delusive trade

  With demonesses who dare masquerade

  As herself in your dreams, and who after a while

  Skilfully imitate her dancing gait,

  Borrow her voice and vocables and smile.

  It is no longer – was it ever? – in your power

  To catch her close to you at any hour:

  She has raised a wall of nothingness in between

  (Were it something known and seen, to be torn apart,

  You could grind its heartless fragments into the ground);

  Yet, taken in trance, would she still deny

  That you are hers, she yours, till both shall die?

  THE WREATH

  A bitter year it was. What woman ever

  Cared for me so, yet so ill-used me,

  Came in so close and drew so far away,

  So much promised and performed so little,

  So murderously her own love dared betray?

  Since I can never be clear out of your debt,

  Queen of ingratitude, to my dying day,

  You shall be punished with a deathless crown

  For your dark head, resist it how you may.

  IN HER PRAISE

  This they know well: the Goddess yet abides.

  Though each new lovely woman whom she rides,

  Straddling her neck a year or two or three,

  Should sink beneath such weight of majesty

  And, groping back to humankind, gainsay

  The headlong power that whitened all her way

  With a broad track of trefoil – leaving you,

  Her chosen lover, ever again thrust through

  With daggers, your purse rifled, your rings gone –

  Nevertheless they call you to live on

  To parley with the pure, oracular dead,

  To hear the wild pack whimpering overhead,

  To watch the moon tugging at her cold tides.

  Woman is mortal woman. She abides.

  THE ALABASTER THRONE

  This tall lithe Amazon armed herself

  With all the cunning of a peasant father

  Who, fled to Corinth from starved Taenarum,

  Had cherished her, the child of his new wealth,

  Almost as though a son.

  From Corinth she embarked for Paphos

  Where white doves, circling, settled on her palms

  And a sudden inspiration drew us

  To heap that lap with pearls, almost as though

  Ignorant of her antecedents.

  Which was the Goddess, which the woman?

  Let the philosophers break their teeth on it!

  She had seized an empty alabaster throne

  And for two summers, almost, could deny

  Both Taenarum and Corinth.

  A RESTLESS GHOST

  Alas for obstinate doubt: the dread

  Of error in supposing my heart freed,

  All care for her stone dead!

  Ineffably will shine the hills and radiant coast

  Of early morning when she is gone indeed,

  Her divine elements disbanded, disembodied

  And through the misty orchards in love spread –

  When she is gone indeed –

  But still among them moves her restless ghost.

  BETWEEN MOON AND MOON

  In the last sad watches of night

  Hardly a sliver of light will remain

  To edge the guilty shadow of a waned moon

  That dawn must soon devour.

  Thereafter, another

  Crescent queen shall arise with power –

  So wise a beauty never yet seen, say I:

  A true creature of moon, though not the same

  In nature, name or feature –

  Her innocent eye rebuking inconstancy

  As if Time itself should die and disappear.

  So was it ever. She is here again, I sigh.

  BEWARE, MADAM!

  Beware, madam, of the witty devil,

  The arch intriguer who walks disguised

  In a poet’s cloak, his gay tongue oozing evil.

  Would you be a Muse? He will so declare you,

  Pledging his blind allegiance,

  Yet remain secret and uncommitted.

  Poets are men: are single-hearted lovers

  Who adore and trust beyond all reason,

  Who die honourably at the gates of hell.

  The Muse alone is licensed to do murder

  And to betray: weeping with honest tears

  She thrones each victim in her paradise.

  But from this Muse the devil borrows an art

  That ill becomes a man. Beware, madam:

  He plots to strip you bare of woman-pride.

  He is capable of seducing your twin-sister

  On the same pillow, and neither she nor you

  Will suspect the act, so close a glamour he sheds.

  Alas, being honourably single-hearted,

  You adore and trust beyond all reason,

  Being no more a Muse than he a poet.

  THE CLIFF EDGE

  Violence threatens you no longer:

  It was your innocent temerity

  Caused us to tremble: veterans discharged

  From the dirty wars of life.

  Forgive us this presumption: we are abashed –

  As when a child, straying on the cliff’s edge,

  Turns about to ask her white-faced brothers:

  ‘Do you take me for a child?’

  ACROBATS

  Poised impossibly on the high tight-rope

  Of love, in spite of all,

  They still preserve their dizzying balance

  And smile this way or that,

  As though uncertain on which side to fall.

  OUZO UNCLOUDED

  Here is ouzo (she said) to try you:

  Better not drowned in water,

  Better not chilled with ice,

  Not sipped at thoughtfully,

  Nor toped in secret.

  Drink it down (she said) unclouded

  At a blow, this tall glass full,

  But keep your eyes on mine

  Like a true Arcadian acorn-eater.

  THE BROKEN GIRTH

  Bravely from Fairyland he rode, on furlough,

  Astride a tall bay given him by the Queen

  From whose couch he had leaped not a half-hour since,

  Whose lilies-of-the-valley shone from his helm.

  But alas, as he paused to assist five Ulstermen

  Sweating to raise a recumbent Ogham pillar,

  Breach of a saddle-girth tumbled Oisín

  To common Irish earth. And at once, it is said,

  Old age came on him with grief and frailty.

  St Patrick asked: would he not confess the Christ? –

  Which for that Lady’s sake he loathed to do,

  But northward loyally turned his eyes in death.

  It was Fenians bore the unshriven corpse away

  For burial, keening.

  Curse me all squint-eyed monks

  Who misconstrue the passing of Finn’s son:

  Old age, not Fairyland, was his delusion.

  INKIDOO AND THE QUEEN OF BABEL

  When I was a callant, born far hence,

  You first laid hand on my innocence,

  But sent your champion into a boar

  That my fair young body a-pieces tore.

  When I was a lapwing, crowned with gold,

  Your lust and liking for me you told,

  But plucked my feathers and broke my wing –

  Wherefore all summer for grief I sing.

  When I was a lion of tawny fell,

  You stroked my mane and you combed it well,

  But pitfalls seven you dug for me

  That from one or other I might not flee.
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  When I was a courser, proud and strong,

  That like the wind would wallop along,

  You bated my pride with spur and bit

  And many a rod on my shoulder split.

  When I was a shepherd that for your sake

  The bread of love at my hearth would bake,

  A ravening wolf did you make of me

  To be thrust from home by my brothers three.

  When I tended your father’s orchard close

  I brought you plum, pear, apple, and rose,

  But my lusty manhood away you stole

  And changed me into a grovelling mole.

  When I was simple, when I was fond,

  Thrice and thrice did you wave your wand,

  But now you vow to be leal and true

  And softly ask, will I wed with you?

  THREE SONGS FOR THE LUTE

  I

  TRUTH IS POOR PHYSIC

  A wild beast falling sick

  Will find his own best physic –

  Herb, berry, root of tree

  Or wholesome salt to lick –

  And so run free.

  But this I know at least

  Better than a wild beast:

  That should I fall love-sick

  And the wind veer to East,

  Truth is poor physic.

  II

  IN HER ONLY WAY

  When her need for you dies

  And she wanders apart,

  Never rhetoricize

  On the faithless heart,

  But with manlier virtue

  Be content to say

  She both loved you and hurt you

  In her only way.

  III

  HEDGES FREAKED WITH SNOW

  No argument, no anger, no remorse,

  No dividing of blame.

  There was poison in the cup – why should we ask

  From whose hand it came?

  No grief for our dead love, no howling gales

  That through darkness blow,

  But the smile of sorrow, a wan winter landscape,

  Hedges freaked with snow.

  THE AMBROSIA OF DIONYSUS AND SEMELE

  Little slender lad, toad-headed,

  For whom ages and leagues are dice to throw with,

  Smile back to where entranced I wander

  Gorged with your bitter flesh,

  Drunk with your Virgin Mother’s lullaby.