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Complete Works of Isaac Rosenberg

Page 9

by Isaac Rosenberg


  10 Our spirits tread your eyes’ infinities.

  In the wrecking waves of your tumultuous locks

  Do you not hear the moaning of our pulses?

  Queen! Goddess! animal!

  In sleep do your dreams battle with our souls?

  15 When your hair is spread like a lover on the pillow,

  Do not our jealous pulses wake between?

  You have dethroned the ancient God.

  You have usurped his sabbath, his common days,

  Yea! every moment is delivered to you.

  20 Our Temple, our Eternal, our one God.

  Our souls have passed into your eyes

  Our days into your hair.

  And you, our rose-deaf prison, are very pleased with the world.

  Your world.

  1914

  HER FABLED MOUTH

  Her fabled mouth, love hath from fables made.

  She tells the same old marvels and sweet stories.

  Chaos within her eyes his jewels laid.

  Our lips and eyes dig up the antique glories.

  The wonder of her heavy coloured hair

  Still richly wears the hues of faded Eden;

  There, where primeval dream hath made its lair,

  Joy subtly smiles, in his arms sorrow hidden.

  O! as her eyes grow wide and starlight wanes,

  Wanes from our hearts that grow into her splendour,

  We melt with wronging of love’s fabled pains,

  Her eyes so kind, her bosom white and tender.

  1914

  A BIRD TRILLING ITS GAY HEART OUT

  A bird trilling its gay heart out

  Made my idle heart a cage for it

  Just as the sunlight makes a cage

  Of the lampless world its song has lit.

  I was half happy and half vexed

  Because the song flew in unasked

  Just as the dark might angry be

  If sudden light her face unmasked.

  I could not shut my spirit’s doors

  I was so naked and alone,

  I could not hide and it saw that

  I would not to myself have shown.

  1914

  SUMMER’S LIPS ARE AGLOW

  Summer’s lips are aglow, afresh

  For our old lips to kiss,

  The tingling of the flesh

  Makes life aware of this.

  Whose eyes are wild with love?

  Whose hair a blowing flame

  I feel around and above

  Laughing my dreams to shame?

  My dreams like stars gone out

  Were blossoms for your day;

  Red flower of mine I will shout,

  I have put my dreams away.

  I HAVE LIVED IN THE UNDERWORLD TOO LONG

  I have lived in the underworld too long

  For you, O creature of light,

  To hear without terror the dark spirit’s song

  And unmoved hear what moves in night.

  I am a spirit that yours has found

  Strange, undelightful, obscure,

  Created by some other God, and bound

  In terrible darkness impure.

  Creature of light and happiness,

  Deeper the darkness when you

  With your bright terror eddying the distress

  Grazed the dark waves and shivering further flew.

  1914

  I AM THE BLOOD

  I am the blood

  Streaming the veins of sweetness; sharp and sweet,

  Beauty has pricked the live veins of my soul

  And sucked all being in.

  I am the air

  Prowling the room of beauty, climbing her soft

  Walls of surmise, her ceilings that close in.

  She breathes me as her breath.

  I am the death

  Whose monument is beauty, and forever

  Although I lie unshrouded in life’s tomb,

  She is my cenotaph.

  BEAUTY I

  An angel’s chastity

  Unfretted by an earthly angel’s lures.

  The occult lamp of beauty

  Which holds? Is truth? Whose spreaded wing endures?

  5 Say — beauty springs and grows

  From the flushed night of the nun solitude

  And the deep spirit’s throes.

  Unconscious as in Eden — chaste and nude.

  His self-appointed aim

  10 Whose bloodless brows bloom with austere delight,

  O’er his entombed fame,

  Whose ghost, an unseen glory, walks in hidden light.

  Her sire and her lover.

  He burns the world to gloat on the bright flame,

  15 Her absence doth him cover.

  Her silence is a voice that calls his name.

  From the womb’s antechambers

  He list’ning, moves through life’s wide presence-hall,

  Blindly its turret clambers,

  20 Then searches his own soul for the flying bacchanal.

  Is she an earthly care

  Moulding our needs unto her gracious ends,

  Making the rough world fair,

  With softer meanings than its rude speech lends?

  1914

  BEAUTY II

  Far and near, and now, from never,

  My calm beauty burns for ever,

  Through the forests deep and old

  Which loose their miser secrets hold,

  5 Unto the fountains of the sky,

  Whose showers of radiant melody

  Delight the laughter-burdened ways,

  And dress the hours to light the days,

  While hand in hand they reel their round;

  10 For the burning bush is found.

  Joy has blossomed, joy has burst;

  And earth’s parched lips and dewy thirst

  Have found a shroud of summer mirth,

  And Eden covers all the earth

  15 Whose lips love’s kisses did anoint,

  And straight our ashes fell away.

  Our lives are now a burning point,

  And faded are their walls of clay,

  Purged of the flames that loved the wind

  20 Is the pure glow that has not sinned.

  1914

  AUGURIES

  Fading fire that does not fade

  Only changing its nest,

  Sky-blown words of cloudlike breath

  Live in another sky.

  5 Days that are scrawled hieroglyphs

  On thunder stricken barks,

  First our souls have plucked the fruit.

  Here are Time’s granaries.

  Were we not fed of summer, but warmth and summer sang to us.

  10 Has my soul plucked all the fruit?

  Not all the fruit that hung thereon —

  The trees whose barks were pictured days,

  One waits somewhere for me

  Holding fresh the fruit I left,

  15 And I hold fruit for one.

  What screen hid us gathering

  And lied unto our thirst,

  While two faces looked singly to the moon?

  But the moon was secret and chill.

  20 Will my eyes know the fruit I left?

  Will her eyes know her own?

  This broken stem will surely know

  And leap unto its leaf.

  No blossom bursts before its time

  25 No angel passes by the door

  But from old Chaos shoots the bough

  While we grow ripe for heaven.

  1914

  ON RECEIVING NEWS OF THE WAR

  Snow is a strange white word;

  No ice or frost

  Have asked of bud or bird

  For Winter’s cost.

  5 Yet ice and frost and snow

  From earth to sky

  This Summer land doth know,

  No man knows why.

  In all men’s hearts it is.

  10 Some spirit
old

  Hath turned with malign kiss

  Our lives to mould.

  Red fangs have torn His face.

  God’s blood is shed.

  15 He mourns from His lone place

  His children dead.

  O! ancient crimson curse!

  Corrode, consume.

  Give back this universe

  20 Its pristine bloom.

  Cape Town, 1914

  THE FLEA

  A flea whose body shone like bead

  Gave me delight as I gave heed.

  A spider whose legs like stiff thread

  Made me think quaintly as I read.

  10 A rat whose droll shape would dart and flit

  Was like a torch to light my wit.

  A fool whose narrow forehead hung

  A wooden target for my tongue.

  A meagre wretch in whose generous scum

  15 Himself was lost — his — (dirty living)tomb.

  But the flea crawled too near

  His blood the smattered wall doth smear

  And the spider being too brave

  No doctor now can him save.

  20 And when the rat would rape my cheese

  He signed the end of his life’s lease.

  O cockney who maketh negatives,

  You negative of negatives.

  1914

  A WOMAN’S BEAUTY

  A woman’s beauty is a strong tree’s roots.

  The tree is space, its branches hidden lutes,

  Wherefrom such music spreads into the air

  That all it breathes on doth its spirit share,

  5 And all men’s souls are drawn beneath and lie

  Mixed into her as words mix with the sky.

  And as some words before they mix are stayed

  And old thoughts live new spirits by their aid,

  So souls of some men meet the spirit of love

  10 That sentinels.

  A woman’s beauty is like kisses shed,

  A colour heard, or thoughts that have been said.

  It covers, with infinity between.

  The memory sees, but ‘twixt you and that seen

  15 A million ages lie. It is a wave

  That in old time swept Gods, and did enslave

  As the broad sea imprisons, savage lands.

  It is a wind that blows from careful hands

  The grains of gathered wheat, and golden grains

  20 To others bears.

  It is a diver into seas more strange

  Than fishes know. No poison makes such change

  As her swift subtle alchemy.

  BUT I AM THROWN WITH BEAUTY’S BREATH

  But I am thrown with beauty’s breath

  Climbing my soul, driven in

  Like a music wherein is pressed

  All the power that withers the mountain

  And maketh trees to grow.

  From the neck of a God your hands are odorous.

  Now I am made a God and he without you is none.

  Your eyes still wear the looks of Paradise.

  I look upon its shining fields and mourn for the outcast angels

  Who have no Eden now since it shines in your eyes.

  * * *

  My soul is a molten cup with brimming music of your mouth;

  Somewhere is a weeping silence and I feel a happy thief.

  1914

  IN HALF DELIGHT OF SHY DELIGHT

  In half delight of shy delight,

  In a sweetness thrilled with fears,

  Her eyes on the rich storied night,

  Reads love and strangely hears

  Love guests with wintered years.

  We know the summer-plaited hours,

  O maiden still plaiting

  Your men-unruffled curls

  For fierce loving and hating —

  No trap to keep you girls.

  She walks so delicately grave

  As lovely as her unroofed fancies

  Of love’s far-linked dances

  In waters of soft night they lave

  Through measureless expanses.

  1914

  PAST DAYS ARE HIEROGLYPHS

  Past days are hieroglyphs

  Scrawled behind the brows

  Scarred deep with iron blows,

  Upon the thundered tree

  Of memory.

  Marvellous mad beliefs

  (To believe that you believed!),

  Plain and time-unthieved,

  Scratched and scrawled on the tree

  Of memory.

  Time, good graver of griefs,

  Those words sapped with my soul,

  That I read as of old and whole,

  What eye in the world shall see

  On this covered tree?

  1915

  WHO LOSES THE HOUR OF THE WIND?

  Who loses the hour of the wind

  Where the outer silence swings?

  But frail — but pale are the things

  We seek and the seekers blind.

  They seek us on broken wings.

  No cold kiss blown from the surge

  Of the dark tides of the night.

  We sleep and blind is their flight

  The dreams of whose kisses urge

  The soul to endure its plight.

  Blown words, whose root is the brain,

  Live over your ruined root.

  For other mouths is the fruit

  And the songs so rich with pain

  Of a splendour whose lips were mute.

  1915

  DUSK AND THE MIRROR

  Where the room seems pondering,

  Shadowy hovering,

  Pictured walls and dove-dim ceiling,

  Edgeless, lost and spectral,

  5 In a quaint half farewell

  Away the things familiar fall

  In some limbo to a spell.

  Mutation of slipped moment

  When nothing and solid is blent,

  10 O! dusk palpitant!

  Prank fantastical!

  You hide and steal from morning

  What you give back from hiding,

  You prank before the dawning

  15 And run from her frail chiding,

  And all my household Gods

  When he who worships nods

  You tweak and pinch and hide

  And dabble under your side

  20 To drop upon the shores

  Of an old tomorrow

  Shut with the same old doors

  Of sleep and shame and sorrow.

  But naked you have left

  25 One jewel, dripping still

  From plundering plashless fingers.

  Lying in a cleft

  Of your own surging bosomed hill,

  It dreams of dreams bereft

  30 And warm dishevelled singers,

  Safe from your placeless will.

  Or you are like a tree now,

  And that is like a lake,

  Sinister to thee now

  35 Its glimmer is awake.

  Like vague undrowning boughs

  Above the pool

  You float your gloom in its low light

  Where Narcissian augurs browse,

  40 Dreaming from its cool

  Apparition a fear;

  Behind the wall of hours you hear

  The tread of the arch light.

  1915

  THE MIRROR

  It glimmers like a wakeful lake in the dusk narrowing room.

  Like drowning vague branches in its depth floats the gloom,

  The night shall shudder at its face by gleams of pallid light

  Whose hands build the broader day to break the husk of night.

  No shade shall waver there when your shadowless soul shall pass,

  The green shakes not the air when your spirit drinks the grass,

  So in its plashless water falls, so dumbly lies therein

  A fervid rose whose fragrance sweet lies hidden and shut within.

&nbs
p; Only in these bruised words the glass dim-showing my spirit’s face,

  Only a little colour from a fire I could not trace,

  To glimmer through eternal days like an enchanted rose,

  The potent dreamings of whose scent are wizard-locked beneath its glows.

  SIGNIFICANCE

  The cunning moment curves its claws

  Round the body of our curious wish,

  But push a shoulder through its straitened laws —

  Then are you hooked to wriggle like a fish.

  5 Lean in high middle ‘twixt two tapering points,

  Yet rocks and undulations control

  The agile brain, the limber joints

  The sinews of the soul.

  Chaos that coincides, form that refutes all sway,

  10 Shapes to the eye quite other to the touch,

  All twisted things continue to our clay

  Like added limbs and hair dispreaded overmuch.

  And after it draws in its claws

  The rocks and unquiet sink to a flat ground.

  15 Then follow desert hours, the vacuous pause

  Till some mad indignation unleashes the hound.

  And those flat hours and dead unseeing things

  Cower and crowd and burrow for us to use,

  Where sundry gapings spurn and preparing wings —

  20 And O! our hands would use all ere we lose.

  WEDDED

  They leave their love-lorn haunts,

  Their sigh-warm floating Eden;

  And they are mute at once;

  Mortals by God unheeden;

  5 By their past kisses chidden.

  But they have kist and known

  Clear things we dim by guesses —

  Spirit to spirit grown —

  Heaven, born in hand caresses —

  10 Love, fall from sheltering tresses.

  And they are dumb and strange;

  Bared trees bowed from each other.

  Their last green interchange

  What lost dreams shall discover?

  15 Dead, strayed, to love-stranged lover.

  MIDSUMMER FROST II.

  A July ghost, aghast at the strange winter,

  Wonders, at burning noon, (all summer seeming),

  How, like a sad thought buried in light words,

  Winter, an alien presence, is ambushed here.

  5 See, from the fire-fountained noon there creep

  Lazy yellow ardours towards pale evening,

 

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