That fall forever, knowing none
Of this land whereon the wrong road goes.
BOMBARDMENT
THE TOWN has opened to the sun.
Like a flat red lily with a million petals
She unfolds, she comes undone.
A sharp sky brushes upon
The myriad glittering chimney-tips
As she gently exhales to the sun.
Hurrying creatures run
Down the labyrinth of the sinister flower.
What is it they shun?
A dark bird falls from the sun.
It curves in a rush to the heart of the vast
Flower: the day has begun.
WINTER-LULL
Because of the silent snow, we are all hushed
Into awe.
No sound of guns, nor overhead no rushed
Vibration to draw
Our attention out of the void wherein we are crushed.
A crow floats past on level wings
Noiselessly.
Uninterrupted silence swings
Invisibly, inaudibly
To and fro in our misgivings.
We do not look at each other, we hide
Our daunted eyes.
White earth, and ruins, ourselves, and nothing beside.
It all belies
Our existence; we wait, and are still denied.
We are folded together, men and the snowy ground
Into nullity.
There is silence, only the silence, never a sound
Nor a verity
To assist us; disastrously silence-bound!
THE ATTACK
WHEN we came out of the wood
Was a great light!
The night uprisen stood
In white.
I wondered, I looked around
It was so fair. The bright
Stubble upon the ground
Shone white
Like any field of snow;
Yet warm the chase
Of faint night-breaths did go
Across my face!
White-bodied and warm the night was,
Sweet-scented to hold in my throat.
White and alight the night was.
A pale stroke smote
The pulse through the whole bland being
Which was This and me;
A pulse that still went fleeing,
Yet did not flee.
After the terrible rage, the death,
This wonder stood glistening?
All shapes of wonder, with suspended breath,
Arrested listening
In ecstatic reverie.
The whole, white Night! —
With wonder, every black tree
Blossomed outright.
I saw the transfiguration
And the present Host.
Transubstantiation
Of the Luminous Ghost.
OBSEQUIAL ODE
SURELY you’ve trodden straight
To the very door!
Surely you took your fate
Faultlessly. Now it’s too late
To say more.
It is evident you were right,
That man has a course to go
A voyage to sail beyond the charted seas.
You have passed from out of sight
And my questions blow
Back from the straight horizon that ends all one sees.
Now like a vessel in port
You unlade your riches unto death,
And glad are the eager dead to receive you there.
Let the dead sort
Your cargo out, breath from breath
Let them disencumber your bounty, let them all share.
I imagine dead hands are brighter,
Their fingers in sunset shine
With jewels of passion once broken through you as a
prism
Breaks light into jewels; and dead breasts whiter
For your wrath; and yes, I opine
They anoint their brows with your blood, as a perfect
chrism.
On your body, the beaten anvil,
Was hammered out
That moon-like sword the ascendant dead unsheathe
Against us; sword that no man will
Put to rout;
Sword that severs the question from us who breathe.
Surely you’ve trodden straight
To the very door.
You have surely achieved your fate;
And the perfect dead are elate
To have won once more.
Now to the dead you are giving
Your last allegiance.
But what of us who are living
And fearful yet of believing
In your pitiless legions.
SHADES
SHALL I tell you, then, how it is? —
There came a cloven gleam
Like a tongue of darkened flame
To flicker in me.
And so I seem
To have you still the same
In one world with me.
In the flicker of a flower,
In a worm that is blind, yet strives,
In a mouse that pauses to listen
Glimmers our
Shadow; yet it deprives
Them none of their glisten.
In every shaken morsel
I see our shadow tremble
As if it rippled from out of us hand in hand.
As if it were part and parcel,
One shadow, and we need not dissemble
Our darkness: do you understand?
For I have told you plainly how it is.
BREAD UPON THE WATERS.
SO you are lost to me!
Ah you, you ear of corn straight lying,
What food is this for the darkly flying
Fowls of the Afterwards!
White bread afloat on the waters,
Cast out by the hand that scatters
Food untowards,
Will you come back when the tide turns?
After many days? My heart yearns
To know.
Will you return after many days
To say your say as a traveller says,
More marvel than woe?
Drift then, for the sightless birds
And the fish in shadow-waved herds
To approach you.
Drift then, bread cast out;
Drift, lest I fall in doubt,
And reproach you.
For you are lost to me!
RUINATION
THE sun is bleeding its fires upon the mist
That huddles in grey heaps coiling and holding
back.
Like cliffs abutting in shadow a drear grey sea
Some street-ends thrust forward their stack.
On the misty waste-lands, away from the flushing grey
Of the morning the elms are loftily dimmed, and tall
As if moving in air towards us, tall angels
Of darkness advancing steadily over us all.
RONDEAU OF A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR.
THE hours have tumbled their leaden, mono —
tonous sands
And piled them up in a dull grey heap in the
West.
I carry my patience sullenly through the waste lands;
To-morrow will pour them all back, the dull hours I
detest.
I force my cart through the sodden filth that is pressed
Into ooze, and the sombre dirt spouts up at my hands
As I make my way in twilight now to rest.
The hours have tumbled their leaden, monotonous
sands.
A twisted thorn-tree still in the evening stands
Defending the memory of leaves and the happy round
nest.
But mud has flooded the homes of these weary lands
And piled them up in a dull grey heap in the West.
All day has the clank
of iron on iron distressed
The nerve-bare place. Now a little silence expands
And a gasp of relief. But the soul is still compressed:
I carry my patience sullenly through the waste lands.
The hours have ceased to fall, and a star commands
Shadows to cover our stricken manhood, and blest
Sleep to make us forget: but he understands:
To-morrow will pour them all back, the dull hours
I detest.
TOMMIES IN THE TRAIN
THE SUN SHINES,
The coltsfoot flowers along the railway banks
Shine like flat coin which Jove in thanks
Strews each side the lines.
A steeple
In purple elms, daffodils
Sparkle beneath; luminous hills
Beyond — and no people.
England, Oh Danaë
To this spring of cosmic gold
That falls on your lap of mould!
What then are we?
What are we
Clay-coloured, who roll in fatigue
As the train falls league by league
From our destiny?
A hand is over my face,
A cold hand. I peep between the fingers
To watch the world that lingers
Behind, yet keeps pace.
Always there, as I peep
Between the fingers that cover my face!
Which then is it that falls from its place
And rolls down the steep?
Is it the train
That falls like meteorite
Backward into space, to alight
Never again?
Or is it the illusory world
That falls from reality
As we look? Or are we
Like a thunderbolt hurled?
One or another
Is lost, since we fall apart
Endlessly, in one motion depart
From each other.
WAR-BABY
THE CHILD like mustard-seed
Rolls out of the husk of death
Into the woman’s fertile, fathomless lap.
Look, it has taken root!
See how it flourisheth.
See how it rises with magical, rosy sap!
As for our faith, it was there
When we did not know, did not care;
It fell from our husk like a little, hasty seed.
Sing, it is all we need.
Sing, for the little weed
Will flourish its branches in heaven when we
slumber beneath.
NOSTALGIA
THE WANING MOON looks upward; this
grey night
Slopes round the heavens in one smooth curve
Of easy sailing; odd red wicks serve
To show where the ships at sea move out of sight.
The place is palpable me, for here I was born
Of this self-same darkness. Yet the shadowy house
below
Is out of bounds, and only the old ghosts know
I have come, I feel them whimper in welcome, and
mourn.
My father suddenly died in the harvesting corn
And the place is no longer ours. Watching, I hear
No sound from the strangers, the place is dark, and fear
Opens my eyes till the roots of my vision seems torn.
Can I go no nearer, never towards the door?
The ghosts and I we mourn together, and shrink
In the shadow of the cart-shed. Must we hover on
the brink
Forever, and never enter the homestead any more?
Is it irrevocable? Can I really not go
Through the open yard-way? Can I not go past the
sheds
And through to the mowie? — Only the dead in their
beds
Can know the fearful anguish that this is so.
I kiss the stones, I kiss the moss on the wall,
And wish I could pass impregnate into the place.
I wish I could take it all in a last embrace.
I wish with my breast I here could annihilate it all.
BIRDS BEASTS AND FLOWERS
CONTENTS
FRUITS
POMEGRANATE
PEACH
MEDLARS AND SORB-APPLES
FIGS
GRAPES
THE REVOLUTIONARY
THE EVENING LAND
PEACE
TREES
CYPRESSES
BARE FIG-TREES
BARE ALMOND-TREES
TROPIC
SOUTHERN NIGHT
FLOWERS
ALMOND BLOSSOM
PURPLE ANEMONES
SICILIAN CYCLAMENS
HIBISCUS AND SALVIA FLOWERS
THE EVANGELISTIC BEASTS
ST MATTHEW
ST MARK
ST LUKE
ST JOHN
CREATURES
THE MOSQUITO
FISH
BAT
MAN AND BAT
REPTILES
SNAKE
BABY TORTOISE
TORTOISE SHELL
TORTOISE FAMILY CONNECTIONS
LUI ET ELLE
TORTOISE GALLANTRY
TORTOISE SHOUT
BIRDS
TURKEY-COCK
HUMMING-BIRD
EAGLE IN NEW MEXICO
THE BLUE JAY
ANIMALS
THE ASS
HE-GOAT
SHE GOAT
ELEPHANT
KANGAROO
BIBBLES
MOUNTAIN LION
THE RED WOLF
GHOSTS
MEN IN NEW MEXICO
AUTUMN AT TAOS
SPIRITS SUMMONED WEST
THE AMERICAN EAGLE
The first edition
FRUITS
POMEGRANATE
YOU tell me I am wrong.
Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong?
I am not wrong.
In Syracuse, rock left bare by the viciousness of Greek
women.
No doubt you have forgotten the pomegranate-trees in
flower,
Oh so red, and such a lot of them.
Whereas at Venice
Abhorrent, green, slippery city
Whose Doges were old, and had ancient eyes,
In the dense foliage of the inner garden
Pomegranates like bright green stone,
And barbed, barbed with a crown.
Oh, crown of spiked green metal
Actually growing!
Now in Tuscany,
Pomegranates to warm, your hands at;
And crowns, kingly, generous, tilting crowns
Over the left eyebrow.
And, if you dare, the fissure!
Do you mean to tell me you will see no fissure?
Do you prefer to look on the plain side?
For all that, the setting suns are open.
The end cracks open with the beginning:
Rosy, tender, glittering within the fissure.
Do you mean to tell me there should be no fissure?
No glittering, compact drops of dawn?
Do you mean it is wrong, the gold-filmed skin, integument,
shown ruptured?
For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken.
It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.
San Gervasio in Tuscany.
PEACH
WOULD you like to throw a stone at me?
Here, take all that’s left of my peach.
Blood-red, deep;
Heaven knows how it came to pass.
Somebody’s pound of flesh rendered up.
Wrinkled with secrets?
And hard with the intention to keep them.
Why, from silvery peach-bloom,
From that shallow-silvery wine-glass on a short stem
This
rolling, dropping, heavy globule?
I am thinking, of course, of the peach before I ate it.
Why so velvety, why so voluptuous heavy?
Why hanging with such inordinate weight?
Why so indented?
Why the groove?
Why the lovely, bivalve roundnesses?
Why the ripple down the sphere?
Why the suggestion of incision?
Why was not my peach round and finished like a billiard
ball?
It would have been if man had made it.
Though I’ve eaten it now.
But it wasn’t round and finished like a billiard ball.
And because I say so, you would like to throw something
at me.
Here, you can have my peach stone.
San Gervasio.
MEDLARS AND SORB-APPLES
I LOVE you, rotten,
Delicious rottenness.
I love to suck you out from your skins
So brown and soft and coming suave,
So morbid, as the Italians say.
What a rare, powerful, reminiscent flavour
Comes out of your falling through the stages of decay:
Stream within stream.
Something of the same flavour as Syracusan muscat wine
Or vulgar Marsala.
Though even the word Marsala will smack of preciosity
Soon in the pussy-foot West.
What is it?
What is it, in the grape turning raisin,
In the medlar, in the sorb-apple.
Wineskins of brown morbidity,
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 837