Blue


The earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over
The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide
Slowly into another day; slowly the rover
Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide.


I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting
Me who am issued amazed from the darkness, stripped
And quailing here in the sunshine, delivered from haunting
The night unsounded whereon our days are shipped.


Feeling myself undawning, the day’s light playing upon me,
I who am substance of shadow, I all compact
Of the stuff of the night, finding myself all wrongly
Among the crowds of things in the sunshine jostled and racked.


I with the night on my lips, I sigh with the silence of death;
And what do I care though the very stones should cry me unreal, though the clouds
Shine in conceit of substance upon me, who am less than the rain.
Do I know the darkness within them? What are they but shrouds?


The clouds go down the sky with a wealthy ease
Casting a shadow of scorn upon me for my share in death; but I
Hold my own in the midst of them, darkling, defy
The whole of the day to extinguish the shadow I lift on the breeze.


Yea, though the very clouds have vantage over me,
Enjoying their glancing flight, though my love is dead,
I still am not homeless here, I’ve a tent by day
Of darkness where she sleeps on her perfect bed.


And I know the host, the minute sparkling of darkness
Which vibrates untouched and virile through the grandeur of night,
But which, when dawn crows challenge, assaulting the vivid motes
Of living darkness, bursts fretfully, and is bright:


Runs like a fretted arc-lamp into light,
Stirred by conflict to shining, which else
Were dark and whole with the night.


Runs to a fret of speed like a racing wheel,
Which else were aslumber along with the whole
Of the dark, swinging rhythmic instead of a-reel.


Is chafed to anger, bursts into rage like thunder;
Which else were a silent grasp that held the heavens
Arrested, beating thick with wonder.


Leaps like a fountain of blue sparks leaping
In a jet from out of obscurity,
Which erst was darkness sleeping.


Runs into streams of bright blue drops,



Water and stones and stars, and myriads
Of twin-blue eyes, and crops

Of floury grain, and all the hosts of day,
All lovely hosts of ripples caused by fretting
The Darkness into play.

Belief


Forever nameless
Forever unknwon
Forever unconceived
Forever unrepresented
yet forever felt in the soul.

Beautiful Old Age

It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.


The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life
lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies
they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins
in their old age.


Soothing, old people should be, like apples
when one is tired of love.
Fragrant like yellowing leaves, and dim with the soft
stillness and satisfaction of autumn.


And a girl should say:
It must be wonderful to live and grow old.
Look at my mother, how rich and still she is! -


And a young man should think: By Jove
my father has faced all weathers, but it's been a life!

Baby Tortoise

You know what it is to be born alone,
Baby tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,
Not yet awake,
And remain lapsed on earth,
Not quite alive.


A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.


To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,


Like some iron door;
To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base
And reach your skinny little neck
And take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,
Alone, small insect,
Tiny bright-eye,
Slow one.


To take your first solitary bite
And move on your slow, solitary hunt.
Your bright, dark little eye,
Your eye of a dark disturbed night,
Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,
So indomitable.
No one ever heard you complain.


You draw your head forward, slowly, from your little wimple


And set forward, slow-dragging, on your four-pinned toes, Rowing slowly forward.
Whither away, small bird?
Rather like a baby working its limbs,
Except that you make slow, ageless progress
And a baby makes none.


The touch of sun excites you,
And the long ages, and the lingering chill
Make you pause to yawn,
Opening your impervious mouth,
Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly gaping pincers;
Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,
Then close the wedge of your little mountain front,
Your face, baby tortoise.


Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head in its wimple
And look with laconic, black eyes?
Or is sleep coming over you again,
The non-life?


You are so hard to wake.


Are you able to wonder?



Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of the first life
Looking round
And slowly pitching itself against the inertia
Which had seemed invincible?


The vast inanimate,
And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye,
Challenger.


Nay, tiny shell-bird,
What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must row against,
What an incalculable inertia.


Challenger,
Little Ulysses, fore-runner,
No bigger than my thumb-nail,
Buon viaggio.


All animate creation on your shoulder,
Set forth, little Titan, under your battle-shield.


The ponderous, preponderate,
Inanimate universe;
And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone.


How vivid your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine,
Stoic, Ulyssean atom;
Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes.


Voiceless little bird,
Resting your head half out of your wimple
In the slow dignity of your eternal pause.
Alone, with no sense of being alone,
And hence six times more solitary;
Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial ages
Your little round house in the midst of chaos.


Over the garden earth,
Small bird,
Over the edge of all things.


Traveller,
With your tail tucked a little on one side
Like a gentleman in a long-skirted coat.


All life carried on your shoulder,
Invincible fore-runner.

Bat


At evening, sitting on this terrace,
When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mountains of Carrara
Departs, and the world is taken by surprise ...


When the tired flower of Florence is in gloom beneath the glowing
Brown hills surrounding ...


When under the arches of the Ponte Vecchio
A green light enters against stream, flush from the west,
Against the current of obscure Arno ...


Look up, and you see things flying
Between the day and the night;
Swallows with spools of dark thread sewing the shadows together.


A circle swoop, and a quick parabola under the bridge arches
Where light pushes through;
A sudden turning upon itself of a thing in the air.
A dip to the water.


And you think:
'The swallows are flying so late!'


Swallows?


Dark air-life looping
Yet missing the pure loop ...
A twitch, a twitter, an elastic shudder in flight
And serrated wings against the sky,
Like a glove, a black glove thrown up at the light,
And falling back.


Never swallows!
Bats!
The swallows are gone.


At a wavering instant the swallows gave way to bats
By the Ponte Vecchio ...
Changing guard.


Bats, and an uneasy creeping in one's scalp
As the bats swoop overhead!
Flying madly.


Pipistrello!
Black piper on an infinitesimal pipe.
Little lumps that fly in air and have voices indefinite, wildly vindictive;


Wings like bits of umbrella.


Bats!



Creatures that hang themselves up like an old rag, to sleep;
And disgustingly upside down.


Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags
And grinning in their sleep.
Bats!


Not for me!

A Youth Mowing

There are four men mowing down by the Isar;
I can hear the swish of the scythe-strokes, four
Sharp breaths taken: yea, and I
Am sorry for what's in store.

The first man out of the four that's mowing
Is mine, I claim him once and for all;
Though it's sorry I am, on his young feet, knowing
None of the trouble he's led to stall.


As he sees me bringing the dinner, he lifts
His head as proud as a deer that looks
Shoulder-deep out of the corn; and wipes
His scythe-blade bright, unhooks


The scythe-stone and over the stubble to me.
Lad, thou hast gotten a child in me,
Laddie, a man thou'lt ha'e to be,
Yea, though I'm sorry for thee.

Anxiety


The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun,
The crisping steam of a train


Melts in the air, while two black birds
Sweep past the window again.


Along the vacant road, a red
Bicycle approaches; I wait


In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy
To leap down at our gate.


He has passed us by; but is it
Relief that starts in my breast?


Or a deeper bruise of knowing that still
She has no rest.

A Spiritual Woman

Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind;

They have taught you to see
Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things,
A cunning algebra in the faces of men,

And God like geometry
Completing his circles, and working cleverly.


I’ll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind;

If I can—if any one could.
Then perhaps in the dark you’ll have got what you want to find.
You’ve discovered so many bits, with your clever eyes,

And I’m a kaleidoscope
That you shake and shake, and yet it won’t come to your mind.
Now stop carping at me.—But God, how I hate you!

Do you fear I shall swindle you?
Do you think if you take me as I am, that that will abate you
Somehow?—so sad, so intrinsic, so spiritual, yet so cautious, you
Must have me all in your will and your consciousness—

I hate you.

A Passing Bell

Mournfully to and fro, to and fro the trees are waving;
What did you say, my dear?
The rain-bruised leaves are suddenly shaken, as a child
Asleep still shakes in the clutch of a sob—
Yes, my love, I hear.


One lonely bell, one only, the storm-tossed afternoon is braving,
Why not let it ring?
The roses lean down when they hear it, the tender, mild
Flowers of the bleeding-heart fall to the throb—
It is such a little thing!


A wet bird walks on the lawn, call to the boy to come and look,
Yes, it is over now.
Call to him out of the silence, call him to see
The starling shaking its head as it walks in the grass—
Ah, who knows how?


He cannot see it, I can never show it him, how it shook—
Don’t disturb him, darling.
—Its head as it walked: I can never call him to me,
Never, he is not, whatever shall come to pass.
No, look at the wet starling.

A Baby Running Barefoot

When the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind,
They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water;
And the sight of their white play among the grass
Is like a little robin’s song, winsome,
Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower
For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.


I long for the baby to wander hither to me
Like a wind-shadow wandering over the water,
So that she can stand on my knee
With her little bare feet in my hands,
Cool like syringa buds,
Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.