WHALES WEEP NOT!
THEY say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.
All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of
the sea!
And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas,
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep of the sea
as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and
comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale’s fathomless body.
And over the bridge of the whale’s strong phallus, linking the
wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and forth,
keep passing archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of
the sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.
And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale —
tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters
of the beginning and the end.
And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of love,
and all this happiness in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!
and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.
INVOCATION TO THE MOON
You beauty, O you beauty
you glistening garmentless beauty!
great lady, great glorious lady
greatest of ladies
crownless and jewelless and garmentless
because naked you are more wonderful than anything we can stroke.
Be good to me, lady, great lady of the nearest
heavenly mansion, and last!
Now I am at your gate, you beauty, you lady of all nakedness!
Now I must enter your mansion, and beg your gift
Moon, O Moon, great lady of the heavenly few.
Far and forgotten is the Villa of Venus the glowing
and behind me now in the gulfs of space lies the golden house
of the sun,
and six have given me gifts, and kissed me god-speed
kisses of four great lords, beautiful, as they held me to their
bosom in farewell,
and kiss of the far-off lingering lady who looks over the distant
fence of the twilight,
and one warm kind kiss of the lion with golden paws.
Now, lady of the Moon, now open the gate of your silvery house
and let me come past the silver bells of your flowers and the cockle-shells
into your house, garmentless lady of the last great gift:
who will give me back my lost limbs
and my lost white fearless breast
and set me again on moon-remembering feet
a healed, whole man, O Moon!
Lady, lady of the last house down the long, long street of the stars
be good to me now, as I beg you, as you’ve always been good
to men
who begged of you and gave you homage
and watched for your glistening feet down the garden path!
BUTTERFLY
BUTTERFLY, the wind blows sea-ward, strong beyond the
garden wall!
Butterfly, why do you settle on my shoe, and sip the dirt on
my shoe,
Lifting your veined wings, lifting them? big white butterfly!
Already it is October, and the wind blows strong to the sea
from the hills where the snow must have fallen, the wind is
polished with snow.
Here in the garden, with red geraniums, it is warm, it is warm
but the wind blows strong to sea-ward, white butterfly, content
on my shoe!
Will you go, will you go from my warm house?
Will you climb on your big soft wings, black-dotted,
as up an invisible rainbow, an arch
till the wind slides you sheer from the arch-crest
and in a strange level fluttering you go out to sea-ward, white speck!
Farewell, farewell, lost soul!
you have melted in the crystalline distance,
it is enough! I saw you vanish into air.
BAVARIAN GENTIANS
NOT every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.
Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the day-time torch-like with the smoking blueness
of Pluto’s gloom,
ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of
white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto’s dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dio, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter’s pale lamps
give off light,
lead me then, lead me the way.
Reach me a gentian, give me a torch
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness.
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted
September
to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding darkness
on the lost bride and her groom.
LUCIFER
ANGELS are bright still, though the brightest fell.
But tell me, tell me, how do you know
he lost any of his brightness in the falling?
In the dark-blue depths, under layers and layers of darkness
I see him more like the ruby, a gleam from within
of his own magnificence
coming like the ruby in the invisible dark, glowing
with his own annunciation, towards us.
THE BREATH OF LIFE
THE breath of life is in the sharp winds of change
mingled with the breath of destruction.
But if you want to breathe deep, sumptuous life
breathe all alone, in silence, in the dark,
and see nothing.
SILENCE
COME, holy Silence, come
great bride of all creation.
Come, holy Silence! reach, reach
from the presence of God, and envelop us.
Let the sea heave no more in
sound,
hold the stars still, lest we hear the heavens dimly ring with
their commotion!
fold up all sounds.
Lo! the laugh of God!
Lo! the laugh of the creator!
Lo! the last of the seven great laughs of God!
Lo! the last of the seven great laughs of creation!
Huge, huge roll the peals of the thundrous laugh
huge, huger, huger and huger pealing
till they mount and fill and all is fulfilled of God’s last and
greatest laugh
till all is soundless and senseless, a tremendous body of silence
enveloping even the edges of the thought-waves
enveloping even me, who hear no more,
who am embedded in a shell of silence,
of silence, lovely silence
of endless and living silence
of holy silence
the silence of the last of the seven great laughs of God.
Ah! the holy silence — it is meet!
It is very fitting! there is nought beside!
For now we are passing through the gate, stilly,
in the sacred silence of gates
in the silence of passing through doors,
in the great hush of going from this into that,
in the suspension of wholeness, in the moment of division
within the whole!
Lift up your heads, O ye Gates!
for the silence of the last great thundrous laugh
screens us purely, and we can slip through.
THE HANDS OF GOD
IT is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
But it is a much more fearful thing to fall out of them.
Did Lucifer fall through knowledge?
oh then, pity him, pity him that plunge!
Save me, O God, from falling into the ungodly knowledge
of myself as I am without God.
Let me never know, O God
let me never know what I am or should be
when I have fallen out of your hands, the hands of the living
God.
That awful and sickening endless sinking, sinking
through the slow, corruptive levels of disintegrative knowledge
when the self has fallen from the hands of God
and sinks, seething and sinking, corrupt
and sinking still, in depth after depth of disintegrative con- sciousness
sinking in the endless undoing, the awful katabolism into the abyss!
even of the soul, fallen from the hands of God!
Save me from that, O God!
Let me never know myself apart from the living God!
PAX
ALL that matters is to be at one with the living God
to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.
Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.
Sleeping on the hearth of the living world
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of the master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.
ABYSMAL IMMORTALITY
IT is not easy to fall out of the hands of the living God
They are so large, and they cradle so much of a man.
It is a long time before a man can get himself away.
Even through the greatest blasphemies, the hands of the
living God still continue to cradle him.
And still through knowledge and will, he can break away
man can break away, and fall from the hands of God
into himself alone, down the godless plunge of the abyss,
a god-lost creature turning upon himself
in the long, long fall, revolving upon himself
in the endless writhe of the last, the last self-knowledge
which he can never reach till he touch the bottom of the abyss
which he can never touch, for the abyss is bottomless.
And there is nothing else, throughout time and eternity
but the abyss, which is bottomless,
and the fall to extinction, which can never come,
for the abyss is bottomless,
and the turning down plunge of writhing of self-knowledge, self-analysis
which goes further and further, and yet never finds an end
for there is no end,
it is the abyss of the immortality
of those that have fallen from God.
ONLY MAN
ONLY man can fall from God
Only man.
No animal, no beast nor creeping thing
no cobra nor hyaena nor scorpion nor hideous white ant
can slip entirely through the fingers of the hands of god
into the abyss of self-knowledge,
knowledge of the self-apart-from-god.
For the knowledge of the self-apart-from-God
is an abyss down which the soul can slip
writhing and twisting in all the revolutions
of the unfinished plunge
of self-awareness, now apart from God, falling
fathomless, fathomless, self-consciousness wriggling
writhing deeper and deeper in all the minutiae of self-knowledge
downwards, exhaustive,
yet never, never coming to the bottom, for there is no bottom
zigzagging down like the fizzle from a finished rocket
the frizzling falling fire that cannot go out, dropping wearily,
neither can it reach the depth
for the depth is bottomless,
so it wriggles its way even further down, further down
at last in sheer horror of not being able to leave off
knowing itself, knowing itself apart from God, falling.
RETURN OF RETURNS
GOME in a week
Yes, yes, in the seven-day-week!
for how can I count in your three times three
of the sea-blown week of nine.
Come then, as I say, in a week,
when the planets have given seven nods
“ It shall be! It shall be! “ assented seven times
by the great seven, by Helios the brightest
and by Artemis the whitest
by Hermes and Aphrodite, flashing white glittering words,
by Ares and Kronos and Zeus,
the seven great ones, who must all say yes.
When the moon from out of the darkness
has come like a thread, like a door just opening
opening, till the round white doorway of delight
is half open.
Come then!
Then, when the door is half open.
In a week!
The ancient river week, the old one.
Come then!
STOIC
GROAN then, groan.
For the sun is dead, and all that is in heaven
is the pyre of blazing gas.
And the moon that went
so queenly, shaking her glistening beams
is dead too, a dead orb wheeled once a month round the park.
And the five others, the travellers
they are all dead!
In the hearse of night you see their tarnished coffins
travelling, travelling still, still travelling
to the end, for they are not yet buried.
Groan then, groan!
Groan then, for even the maiden earth
is dead, we run wheels across her corpse.
Oh groan
groan with mighty
groans!
But for all that, and all that
“ in the centre of your being, groan not.”
In the centre of your being, groan not, do not groan.
For perhaps the greatest of all illusions
is this illusion of the death of the undying.
IN THE CITIES
IN the cities
there is even no more any weather
the weather in town is always benzine, or else petrol fumes
lubricating oil, exhaust gas.
As over some dense marsh, the fumes
thicken, miasma, the fumes of the automobile
densely thicken in the cities.
In ancient Rome, down the thronged streets
no wheels might run, no insolent chariots.
Only the footsteps, footsteps
of people
and the gentle trotting of the litter-bearers.
In Minos, in Mycenae
in all the cities with lion gates
the dead threaded the air, lingering
lingering in the earth’s shadow
and leaning towards the old hearth.
In London, New York, Paris
in the bursten cities
the dead tread heavily through the muddy air
through the mire of fumes
heavily, stepping weary on our hearts.
LORD’S PRAYER
FOR thine is the kingdom
the power, and the glory.
Hallowed be thy name, then
Thou who art nameless.
Give me, Oh give me
besides my daily bread
my kingdom, my power, and my glory.
All things that turn to thee
have their kingdom, their power, and their glory.
Like the kingdom of the nightingale at twilight
whose power and glory I have often heard and felt.
Like the kingdom of the fox in the dark
yapping in his power and his glory
which is death to the goose.
Like the power and the glory of the goose in the mist
hawking over the lake.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 863