New Collected Poems
Page 21
In which it is not known which tree will be
First to disturb the silent sultry grove
With crack of doom, dead crackling and dread roar –
Will be infallibly to learn that first
One always owes a duty to oneself;
This much at least is certain: one must live.
And one may reach, without having to search
For much more lore than this, a shrewd maturity,
Equipped with adult aptitude to ape
All customary cant and current camouflage;
Nor be a whit too squeamish where the soul’s concerned,
But hold out for the best black market price for it
Should need remind one that one has to live.
Yet just as sweetly, where no markets are,
An unkempt rose may for a season still
Trust its own beauty and disclose its heart
Even to the woodland shade, and as in sacrifice
Renounce its ragged petals one by one.
p. 1950
THE OTHER LARRY
Inwardly corrosive, but to eyes outside most bland,
Chubby and blonde and chuckling: O sardonic friend,
Easily reconciled with, you are sorry after
The black flicked barb has stung
Some tiresome feeble person’s too exposed,
Too tender epidermis, though not very and not long:
Exacerbated not yet middle-aged patrician,
Exiled by futile circumstances, ever too well-bred
To make a show of bitterness except in smooth-tongued verse.
Such comment can but seem inept, coming from one
Who’s never seen the South of which you sing
But still believes that you will not succeed
In finally convincing all of those
Whom your performance entertains
And makes uncomfortable
That you were meant to grow into a gargoyle
Uttering artful chains of occult smoke-rings
Outside a disbelieved-in anti-god’s abode.
c. 1950
EROS ABSCONDITUS
‘Wo aber sind die Freunde? Bellarmin
Mit dem Gefahrten …’
HÖLDERLIN
Not in my lifetime, the love I envisage:
Not in this century, it may be. Nevertheless inevitable.
Having experienced a foretaste of its burning
And of its consolation, although locked in my aloneness
Still, although I know it cannot come to be
Except in reciprocity, I know
That true love is gratuitous, and will race through
The veins of the reborn world’s generations, free
And sweet, like, a new kind of electricity.
The love of heroes and of men like gods
Has been for long a strange thing on the earth
And monstrous to the mediocre. They
In whom such love is luminous can but transcend
The squalid inhibitions of those only half alive.
In blind content they breed who never loved a friend.
p. 1949
THE GOOSE-GIRL
She at whose feet I’ll finally fall down
With all my niggardly belated offering
Of real emotion, is a lonely silent girl
Who knows no more than I about love’s boon
But sits and wonders – feeling at a loss
Among the queens and conquerors who stroll
So poised and pleased about the social scene –
Waiting for no one from an old wives’ tale,
But for a childless father and her father’s unborn son.
p. 1949
BEWARE BEELZEBUB
Listen, lover of the glistening peril,
The lure lascive and wistful, the sweet pain
Young lacing limbs delight in: the Devil
Will never after smile at you again
When once your easy acquiescence
To his swift-reckoned bargain has put you
Within the power of his swarming lieutenants,
Who lurk in dull disguise the world’s mart through
Like fellow fallen men, until the sign
By which the lustless single out a sinner
Bids them to batten, faithful flock of flies,
Dutiful doggers, buzz and drone and whine,
Upon fresh ill-famed flesh for their King’s dinner,
Rich-riddled with the worm that never dies.
p. 1949
RONDEL FOR THE FOURTH DECADE
The mind if not the heart turns cold
Seeing the calendar’s leaves flying;
Still dare not yet cease trying
To reconcile the heart with growing old.
However often heart’s fortune be told
By sceptic mind, the pulse beats on relying
On sanguine heat for hope to hold
Fast to for help when age comes sighing.
But autumn’s leaves must cease defying
Grave law and fall like Danae’s gold
To stuff blind mouths when, as they turn to mould,
The heart’s remains lie still denying
Mind ever knew the truth while dying.
p. 1949
SEPTEMBER SUN: 1947
Magnificent strong sun! in these last days
So prodigally generous of pristine light
That’s wasted only by men’s sight who will not see
And by self-darkened spirits from whose night
Can rise no longer orison or praise:
Let us consume in fire unfed like yours
And may the quickened gold within me come
To mintage in due season, and not be
Transmuted to no better end than dumb
And self-sufficient usury. These days and years
May bring the sudden call to harvesting,
When if the fields Man labours only yield
Glitter and husks, then with an angrier sun may He
Who first with His gold seed the sightless field
Of Chaos planted, all our trash to cinders bring.
1981
Those days and years! Glitter and husks: what more
Have we to show now that the doomsday clock
Implacably moves onwards to what may
Well prove to be that dreaded final war
So many faithful prophets have foretold? What shock
Can wake to vigil rulers and ruled today?
p. 1949, updated 1983
THE POST-WAR NIGHT
No, nowadays at night the flush of light
Reflected anxiously by urban skies, impresses eyes
In quest of soothing space between the stars, as with a sense
Of guilt, not reassurance. This is Peace,
Our nightly black-out dream; yet back to black skies fly
Our eyes disheartened by futility, to seek
Some sterner strength in the unmoonlit midnight’s zenith
Above our heads rebuking light’s illusions … In our time
We have had vision. Now our seeing tries
Not to find blindness everywhere it peers,
Relinquishing belief in any sight surpassing this.
We must see how to justify ourselves
Always. Perhaps indeed that is for ever all
Our eyes are used to look for: We must stand
Justified: – if not before the whole world then before
Ourselves: if not before the candid inmost heart,
Blandly at least before shrewd common-sense
Sole supreme tribunal in this business-driven world,
Still so remote from all the innate sense
Of human destiny that we are born with knows
To be truly our aim on earth: one God-ruled globe,
Finally unified, at peace, free to create! That sense
Is dull in all but few today … They are not listened to.
>
They seldom speak. And how absurd they sound
To such as do hear them, how like a child’s
Sublime simplicity and sweet ineptitude,
To talk of Brotherhood and of the beautiful
Smooth-running Great Society that might tomorrow mean
Our paradise regained! How well our guilt,
Long versed in all the necessary lies
Required to run the world in practice knows
How always to remain the same calm, sane
Comfortably compromised collusionists, still safe and sound
At least as long as this false peacetime lasts.
p. 1949
DEMOS IN OXFORD STREET
The Ages of the World, since Adam delved
And Eve remained the perfect lady, still
As innocent of culture as her spouse of apron-string,
Having devolved, have brought us the mature
And really average population passing by, away
And onward down this thoroughfare, of all surely the most
Average in any average modern capital. O Sting!
Where is our life? Where is my neighbour, Love?
We have hardened our faces against each other’s weariness
Who walk this way; we are not bound to one another
By bomb panic or famine and it is not Christmas Day.
We are aware of Socialists in power at Westminster
Who seem to be making a pretty mess of things: This evening’s Star
Has bills that tell of Scandal and Enquiry being made
Much in the interest of the Public (i.e. We,
The People) by such as have its interest at heart …
We too, while quite disinterested, have of course got hearts.
The latter are as good as most; but who would dare
Risk giving good away each day with maybe no returns?
Besides, we have our families to think of,
And our families have not got too much to spare
Of time or money, tears or trouble. Stare
As boldly as you like into our faces, we’ll not turn
Aside out of your way. We’re not the Working-Class.
p. 1949
EVENING AGAIN
Evening again.
The lurid fuming light
That red sky’s smouldering alkali spreads on reflecting stone
Façades of ageing buildings seeming now to slant and strain
Backwards against the leaden East, sheer haggard cliffs
Pitted with windows, baffles with its glare
Those gazing panes. They see nothing but the wrath
Of still prolonged and future conflagrations. With the stain
Of night arising stealthily behind them, fresh leaves shake
Back on their rigid branches, shudder brusquely back and show
How underneath their sparkling green profusion there are hung
Shadows, dull undertone of mourning. Die down, die
Away, brisk wind, let the lit leaves lie still.
Let them with tranquil glitter once more hide
Their secret. Heavy beneath all that is seen
Hangs the forgotten.
Heavily night falls.
When shall I desire
No more for rest from restlessness as evening ends?
When no more into silence sinks the sigh that asks for joy.
p. 1949
THREE VENETIAN NOCTURNES
1. BARCAROLLE
Each blue sun-floodlit day floats through a green evening till Night
Releases flows of indigo to stain sea, sky and shore;
And deep into dark velvet folds are absorbed from the air
The orchestrated murmurs of the crowd and bursts of bright
Abruptly ebbing brassy music bruited from the Square.
On the Lagoon drift shreds of serenade from lanterned boats
That bob more quickly like a pulse when from the Lido steers
Close past them the returning vaporetto; the heart beats
More quickly for a moment, lifted on a wave of tears
Upwelling but not breaking in the eyes of one who floats
Reclining in a gondola alone and with the tide
Being borne across the Bacino towards where all the stars
In heaven like spilt pearls blur on the black robe Venice wears
Slackly undulating round her when as a nocturnal bride
She mourns her morning glory long drowned in the sea of years.
2. LIDO GALA FIREWORKS
Rockets released tonight rush up to rape the grapebloom sky:
Rainbows of gelid jewellery smashed to flashlit smithereens
And moulting molten-crystal plumes of birds of paradise
Spontaneously splintering their mixed Murano tints
Into a slowly dropping drift of dust of opals, Milky Way
Stained with a long dynasty of fire-peacocks’ last blood;
Till all night’s spark-sprayed dome is stunned with quick airquakes of gold,
Precipitous ephemerae and crepitations, streaked
With shivering scars of wounds stabbed by the rays of soaring stars,
Stars piercing scarlet holes, holes bleeding light,
Light strained through silk, silk blobbed with black,
Black blurred with sea-water, blue …
3. ON THE GRAND CANAL
The palaces are sombre cliffs by night;
Some pierced with square-hewn caves,
Grottoes where chandeliers like stalactites
Frosted with electricity blaze dangling in the midst
Of sad high-ceilinged salons’ tepid haze;
Or semi-concealed by casement shutter-slats
The twilight velvet cloister-cells of lives
Upon whose intimacy we may gaze
As we slide by, nor stir to any flutter
At solitary privacy intruded on
The page-perusing half-glimpsed inmates’ eyes.
Others among these wave-lapped marble fortresses
Within which the patrician past lies passively besieged,
Long before midnight look already left unoccupied
Except by somnolent and unseen soldiery,
As from their blank embrasures only blackness
Broods on the glimmering oracle of the tides
That slowly rise and fall about their feet.
One summer night a passenger upon a steamer, I
While we were floating past before them, tried
To read the mystery of the city’s palaces
In the framed scenes and silhouettes displayed
To all that sail down the Canal, and when we paused
A minute at a stazione raft, looked up and saw
And seized on instantly, a young girl’s head
In a near window, her sweet fresh-coloured face
Vividly lit with eagerness, whose aspect made
Me wonder what it was she held before her
And seemed to read from, what the text and page
Of Goldoni or Shakespeare she rehearsed.
But as the steamer stirred again I saw
It was a fan of playing-cards she held,
A lucky hand, as her expression showed …
I wished that lovely face good luck in love,
Though my excitement at the glimpse of her
Swiftly became an elegiac feeling
As the boat’s motion swept her from my sight.
p. 1950
BIRTH OF A PRINCE
Many of us remember, too, how very young
And unlike the naïve idea of parents, our own were,
(Though many also may have been less fortunate), when we
Proudly were brought by them into a world of care –
Such genuine gentle care and such brave faith
In the great future which they knew that we should see.
Many also were born within sound of the wind
That can b
low no man good, the howling wind of war,
National adversity and Winter. In the historic park
A horn like Herne’s was heard; the times were dark;
And the great royal oak creaked in the blast
With grief, its branches cracking, though unshakable it stood.
Another daybreak, and behold with dripping boughs
Uprise after that storm a tree that stands because it stands
For true Peace rooted in the right, from which no wind that blows
Shall shake the many birds whose song is still heard in these lands.
No bird but very bat is he who cannot see
A smile best recognized in solitude
In this momentous birth, nor hear another tongue
Than that of public oratory still speaking through the roar
Of loyal multitudes, asking God grant that we
Give birth to the world’s only Prince, Puer Aeternus, He
Whose swordlike Word comes not to bring us peace but war
Within forever against falsehood and all fratricidal War.
p. 1949
REX MUNDI
I heard a herald’s note announce the coming of a king.
He who came sounding his approach was a small boy;
The household trumpet that he flourished a tin toy.
Then from a bench beneath the boughs that lately Spring
Had hung again with green across the avenue, I rose
To render to the king who came the homage subjects owe.
And as I waited, wondered why it was that such a few
Were standing there with me to see him pass; but understood
As soon as he came into sight, this was a monarch no
Crowds of this world can recognize, to hail him as they should.
He drove past in a carriage that was drawn by a white goat;
King of the world to come where all that shall be now is new,
Calmly he gazed on our pretentious present that is not.
Of morals, classes, business, war, this child
Knew nothing. We were pardoned when he smiled.
If you hear it in the distance, do not scorn the herald’s note.
p. 1949
FRAGMENTS TOWARDS A RELIGIO POETAE
‘Given that a man has genuine experience of the interior life, then let him boldly drop all outward disciplines, even those practices which thou art vowed to and from which neither pope nor prelate can release thee.’