Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme)

by Robert Graves

  My hawks were lightning darted from my fist.

  Time was my chronicler, my deeds age-new,

  And death no peril, nor decay of powers.

  Glory sat firmly in my body’s thrones.

  Only, at midnight, rose another crown

  That drained the wholesome colour from my realm,

  That stilled the wind and froze the headlong stream.

  I said: A challenge not to be endured,

  A shadow clouding the sweet drunken hour

  When with my queens in love I company.

  I left the palace sleeping, I rode out,

  I flew my hawk at that thin, mocking crown,

  I emptied my full quiver at the sky.

  Where went my hawk? He came not home again.

  What ailed my horse? He cast me like a sack.

  The crown moved ghostly off against the dawn.

  And from that hour, though the sun burned as fierce,

  Though the wind brought me frequency of spice,

  Glory was gone, and numb was all my flesh.

  Whose weakling is the vanquished of the Moon?

  His own heart’s weakling: thievishly he longs

  To diadem his head with stolen light.

  The Moon’s the crown of no high-walled domain

  Conquerable by angry reach of pride:

  Her icy lands welcome no soldiery.

  Thus I was shamed, I wandered in the fields,

  I let my nails grow long and my hair long,

  Neglecting all the business of my day.

  No lovely queen nor wisest minister

  Could medicine me out of my wretchedness:

  The palace fell in ruins, the land smoked.

  In my lost realm, if grass or flower yet grew,

  It sprouted from the shade of broken walls.

  I threw the walls flat, crushing flower and grass.

  At length in my distemper’s latest hour

  I rose up shuddering, reckless to live

  An idiot pawn of that inhuman power.

  Over the mountain peak I watched her glide

  And stood dumbfoundered by her reasoned look.

  With answering reason my sick heart renewed.

  So peace fell sudden, and in proof of peace

  There sat my flown hawk, hooded on my fist,

  And with my knees I gripped my truant horse.

  Toward that most clear, unscorching light I spurred.

  Whiter and closer shone the increasing disc,

  Until it filled the sky, scattering my gaze.

  When I might see once more, the day had come

  And I was riding through gold harvest-fields,

  Toward a rebuilded city, and my home.

  Here then in majesty I rule again,

  And grassflesh pays me tribute as of old;

  In wind and sun and stream my joys I take,

  Bounded by white horizons beyond touch.

  TO THE SOVEREIGN MUSE

  Debating here one night we reckoned that

  Between us we knew all the poets

  Who bore that sacred name: none bore it clear,

  Not one. Some we commended

  For being all they might be in a day

  To which poetry was a shrouded emblem,

  And some we frowned upon for lawyers’ clerks

  Drafting conveyances on moral sheepskin,

  Or for pantomimists making parody

  Of a magnificence they feared to acclaim.

  This was to praise you, Sovereign muse,

  And to your love our pride devote,

  Who pluck the speech-thread from a jargon-tangled

  Fleece of a thousand tongues, wills, voices,

  To be a single speech, twisted fine;

  Snapping it short like Fate then –

  ‘Thus much, no more –’

  Thereafter, in acknowledgement of you

  We might no longer feign and stutter

  As poets of the passionate chance,

  Nor claim the indulgence of the hour.

  Our tongues must prompter be than those

  That wagged with modish lamentation –

  Or lost men, otherwise, and renegades

  To our confession, maudlin-sane must die

  Suicides on the stair of yesterday.

  THE AGES OF OATH

  To find a garden-tulip growing

  Among wild primroses of a wild field,

  Or a cuckoo’s egg in a blackbird’s nest,

  Or a giant mushroom, a whole basketful –

  The memorable feats of childhood!

  Once, by the earthworks, scratching in the soil,

  My stick turned up a Roman amber bead….

  The lost, the freakish, the unspelt

  Drew me: for simple sights I had no eye.

  And did I swear allegiance then

  To wildness, not (as I thought) to truth –

  Become a virtuoso, and this also,

  Later, of simple sights, when tiring

  Of unicorn and upas?

  Did I forget how to greet plainly

  The especial sight, how to know deeply

  The pleasure shared by upright hearts?

  And is this to begin afresh, with oaths

  On the true book, in the true name,

  Now stammering out my praise of you,

  Like a boy owning his first love?

  LIKE SNOW

  She, then, like snow in a dark night,

  Fell secretly. And the world waked

  With dazzling of the drowsy eye,

  So that some muttered ‘Too much light’,

  And drew the curtains close.

  Like snow, warmer than fingers feared,

  And to soil friendly;

  Holding the histories of the night

  In yet unmelted tracks.

  THE CLIMATE OF THOUGHT

  The climate of thought has seldom been described.

  It is no terror of Caucasian frost,

  Nor yet that brooding Hindu heat

  For which a loin-rag and a dish of rice

  Suffice until the pestilent monsoon.

  But, without winter, blood would run too thin;

  Or, without summer, fires would burn too long.

  In thought the seasons run concurrently.

  Thought has a sea to gaze, not voyage, on;

  And hills, to rough the edge of the bland sky,

  Not to be climbed in search of blander prospect;

  Few birds, sufficient for such caterpillars

  As are not fated to turn butterflies;

  Few butterflies, sufficient for such flowers

  As are the luxury of a full orchard;

  Wind, sometimes, in the evening chimneys; rain

  On the early morning roof, on sleepy sight;

  Snow streaked upon the hilltop, feeding

  The fond brook at the valley-head

  That greens the valley and that parts the lips;

  The sun, simple, like a country neighbour;

  The moon, grand, not fanciful with clouds.

  END OF PLAY

  We have reached the end of pastime, for always,

  Ourselves and everyone, though few confess it

  Or see the sky other than, as of old,

  A foolish smiling Mary-mantle blue;

  Though life may still seem to dawdle golden

  In some June landscape among giant flowers,

  The grass to shine as cruelly green as ever,

  Faith to descend in a chariot from the sky –

  May seem only: a mirror and an echo

  Mediate henceforth with vision and sound.

  The cry of faith, no longer mettlesome,

  Sounds as a blind man’s pitiful plea of ‘blind’.

  We have at last ceased idling, which to regret

  Were as shallow as to ask our milk-teeth back;

  As many forthwith do, and on their knees

  Call lugubriously upon chaste Christ.

  We te
ll no lies now, at last cannot be

  The rogues we were – so evilly linked in sense

  With what we scrutinized that lion or tiger

  Could leap from every copse, strike and devour us.

  No more shall love in hypocritic pomp

  Conduct its innocents through a dance of shame,

  From timid touching of gloved fingers

  To frantic laceration of naked breasts.

  Yet love survives, the word carved on a sill

  Under antique dread of the headsman’s axe;

  It is the echoing mind, as in the mirror

  We stare on our dazed trunks at the block kneeling.

  THE FALLEN TOWER OF SILOAM

  Should the building totter, run for an archway!

  We were there already – already the collapse

  Powdered the air with chalk, and shrieking

  Of old men crushed under the fallen beams

  Dwindled to comic yelps. How unterrible

  When the event outran the alarm

  And suddenly we were free –

  Free to forget how grim it stood,

  That tower, and what wide fissures ran

  Up the west wall, how rotten the under-pinning

  At the south-eastern angle. Satire

  Had curled a gentle wind around it,

  As if to buttress the worn masonry;

  Yet we, waiting, had abstained from satire.

  It behoved us, indeed, as poets

  To be silent in Siloam, to foretell

  No visible calamity. Though kings

  Were crowned and gold coin minted still and horses

  Still munched at nose-bags in the public streets,

  All such sad emblems were to be condoned:

  An old wives’ tale, not ours.

  THE GREAT-GRANDMOTHER

  That aged woman with the bass voice

  And yellowing white hair: believe her.

  Though to your grandfather, her son, she lied

  And to your father disingenuously

  Told half the tale as the whole,

  Yet she was honest with herself,

  Knew disclosure was not yet due,

  Knows it is due now.

  She will conceal nothing of consequence

  From you, her great-grandchildren

  (So distant the relationship,

  So near her term),

  Will tell you frankly, she has waited

  Only for your sincere indifference

  To exorcize that filial regard

  Which has estranged her, seventy years,

  From the folk of her house.

  Confessions of old distaste

  For music, sighs and roses –

  Their false-innocence assaulting her,

  Breaching her hard heart;

  Of the pleasures of a full purse,

  Of clean brass and clean linen,

  Of being alone at last;

  Disgust with the ailing poor

  To whom she was bountiful;

  How the prattle of young children

  Vexed more than if they whined;

  How she preferred cats.

  She will say, yes, she acted well,

  Took such pride in the art

  That none of them suspected, even,

  Her wrathful irony

  In doing what they asked

  Better than they could ask it….

  But, ah, how grudgingly her will returned

  After the severance of each navel-cord,

  And fled how far again,

  When again she was kind!

  She has outlasted all man-uses,

  As was her first resolve:

  Happy and idle like a port

  After the sea’s recession,

  She does not misconceive the nature

  Of shipmen or of ships.

  Hear her, therefore, as the latest voice;

  The intervening generations (drifting

  On tides of fancy still), ignore.

  NO MORE GHOSTS

  The patriarchal bed with four posts

  Which was a harbourage of ghosts

  Is hauled out from the attic glooms

  And cut to wholesome furniture for wholesome rooms;

  Where they (the ghosts) confused, abused, thinned,

  Forgetful how they sighed and sinned,

  Cannot disturb our ordered ease

  Except as summer dust tickles the nose to sneeze.

  We are restored to simple days, are free

  From cramps of dark necessity,

  And one another recognize

  By an immediate love that signals at our eyes.

  No new ghosts can appear. Their poor cause

  Was that time freezes, and time thaws;

  But here only such loves can last

  As do not ride upon the weathers of the past.

  LEAVING THE REST UNSAID

  Finis, apparent on an earlier page,

  With fallen obelisk for colophon,

  Must this be here repeated?

  Death has been ruefully announced

  And to die once is death enough,

  Be sure, for any life-time.

  Must the book end, as you would end it,

  With testamentary appendices

  And graveyard indices?

  But no, I will not lay me down

  To let your tearful music mar

  The decent mystery of my progress.

  So now, my solemn ones, leaving the rest unsaid,

  Rising in air as on a gander’s wing

  At a careless comma,

  From No More Ghosts

  (1940)

  THE GLUTTON

  Beyond the Atlas roams a glutton

  Lusty and sleek, a shameless robber,

  Sacred to Aethiopian Aphrodite;

  The aborigines harry it with darts,

  And its flesh is esteemed, though of a fishy tang

  Tainting the eater’s mouth and lips.

  Ourselves once, wandering in mid-wilderness

  And by despair drawn to this diet,

  Before the meal was over sat apart

  Loathing each other’s carrion company.

  A LOVE STORY

  The full moon easterly rising, furious,

  Against a winter sky ragged with red;

  The hedges high in snow, and owls raving –

  Solemnities not easy to withstand:

  A shiver wakes the spine.

  In boyhood, having encountered the scene,

  I suffered horror: I fetched the moon home,

  With owls and snow, to nurse in my head

  Throughout the trials of a new Spring,

  Famine unassuaged.

  But fell in love, and made a lodgement

  Of love on those chill ramparts.

  Her image was my ensign: snows melted,

  Hedges sprouted, the moon tenderly shone,

  The owls trilled with tongues of nightingale.

  These were all lies, though they matched the time,

  And brought me less than luck: her image

  Warped in the weather, turned beldamish.

  Then back came winter on me at a bound,

  The pallid sky heaved with a moon-quake.

  Dangerous it had been with love-notes

  To serenade Queen Famine.

  In tears I recomposed the former scene,

  Let the snow lie, watched the moon rise, suffered the owls,

  Paid homage to them of unevent.

  THE THIEVES

  Lovers in the act dispense

  With such meum-tuum sense

  As might warningly reveal

  What they must not pick or steal,

  And their nostrum is to say:

  ‘I and you are both away.’

  After, when they disentwine

  You from me and yours from mine,

  Neither can be certain who

  Was that I whose mine was you.

  To the act again they go

&nbs
p; More completely not to know.

  Theft is theft and raid is raid

  Though reciprocally made.

  Lovers, the conclusion is

  Doubled sighs and jealousies

  In a single heart that grieves

  For lost honour among thieves.

  TO SLEEP

  The mind’s eye sees as the heart mirrors:

  Loving in part, I did not see you whole,

  Grew flesh-enraged that I could not conjure

  A whole you to attend my fever-fit

  In the doubtful hour between a night and day

  And be Sleep that had kept so long away.

  Of you sometimes a hand, a brooch, a shoe

  Wavered beside me, unarticulated –

  As the vexed insomniac dream-forges;

  And the words I chose for your voice to speak

  Echoed my own voice with its dry creak.

  Now that I love you, now that I recall

  All scattered elements of will that swooped

  By night as jealous dreams through windows

  To circle above the beds like bats,

  Or as dawn-birds flew blindly at the panes

  In curiosity rattling out their brains –

  Now that I love you, as not before,

  Now you can be and say, as not before:

  The mind clears and the heart true-mirrors you

  Where at my side an early watch you keep

  And all self-bruising heads loll into sleep.

  From Work in Hand

  (1942)

  DAWN BOMBARDMENT

  Guns from the sea open against us:

  The smoke rocks bodily in the casemate

  And a yell of doom goes up.

  We count and bless each new, heavy concussion –

  Captives awaiting rescue.

  Visiting angel of the wild-fire hair

  Who in dream reassured us nightly

  Where we lay fettered,

  Laugh at us, as we wake – our faces

  So tense with hope the tears run down.

  THE WORMS OF HISTORY

  On the eighth day God died; his bearded mouth

  That had been shut so long flew open.

  So Adam’s too in a dismay like death –

  But the world still rolled on around him,

  Instinct with all those lesser powers of life

  That God had groaned against but not annulled.

  ‘All-Excellent’, Adam had titled God,

  And in his mourning now demeaned himself

  As if all excellence, not God, had died;