Trees in the Garden

Ah in the thunder air
how still the trees are!


And the lime-tree, lovely and tall, every leaf silent
hardly looses even a last breath of perfume.


And the ghostly, creamy coloured little tree of leaves
white, ivory white among the rambling greens
how evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates on the green grass
as if, in another moment, she would disappear
with all her grace of foam!


And the larch that is only a column, it goes up too tall to see:
and the balsam-pines that are blue with the grey-blue blueness of
things from the sea,
and the young copper beech, its leaves red-rosy at the ends
how still they are together, they stand so still
in the thunder air, all strangers to one another
as the green grass glows upwards, strangers in the silent garden.

Tortoise Family Connections

On he goes, the little one,
Bud of the universe,
Pediment of life.
Setting off somewhere, apparently.
Whither away, brisk egg?


His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were no more than droppings,
And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an old rusty tin.


A mere obstacle,
He veers round the slow great mound of her --
Tortoises always foresee obstacles.


It is no use my saying to him in an emotional voice:
'This is your Mother, she laid you when you were an egg.'


He does not even trouble to answer: 'Woman, what have I to do with thee?'
He wearily looks the other way,
And she even more wearily looks another way still,
Each with the utmost apathy,
Incognisant,
Unaware,
Nothing.


As for papa,
He snaps when I offer him his offspring,
Just as he snaps when I poke a bit of stick at him,
Because he is irascible this morning, an irascible tortoise
Being touched with love, and devoid of fatherliness.


Father and mother,
And three little brothers,
And all rambling aimless, like little perambulating pebbles scattered in the garden,
Not knowing each other from bits of earth or old tins.


Except that papa and mama are old acquaintances, of course,
Though family feeling there is none, not even the beginnings.


Fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless
Little tortoise.


Row on then, small pebble,
Over the clods of the autumn, wind-chilled sunshine,
Young gaiety.


Does he look for a companion?


No, no, don't think it.
He doesn't know he is alone;
Isolation is his birthright,
This atom.



To row forward, and reach himself tall on spiny toes,
To travel, to burrow into a little loose earth, afraid of the night,
To crop a little substance,
To move, and to be quite sure that he is moving:
Basta!
To be a tortoise!
Think of it, in a garden of inert clods
A brisk, brindled little tortoise, all to himself --
Adam!


In a garden of pebbles and insects
To roam, and feel the slow heart beat
Tortoise-wise, the first bell sounding
From the warm blood, in the dark-creation morning.


Moving, and being himself,
Slow, and unquestioned,
And inordinately there, O stoic!
Wandering in the slow triumph of his own existence,
Ringing the soundless bell of his presence in chaos,
And biting the frail grass arrogantly,
Decidedly arrogantly.

Thought


Thought, I love thought.
But not the juggling and twisting of already existent ideas
I despise that self-important game.
Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness,
Thought is the testing of statements on the touchstone of consciousness,
Thought is gazing onto the face of life, and reading what can be read,
Thought is pondering over experience, and coming to conclusion.
Thought is not a trick, or an exercise, or a set of dodges,
Thought is a man in his wholeness, wholly attending.

The Virgin Mother

My little love, my darling,
You were a doorway to me;
You let me out of the confines
Into this strange countrie,
Where people are crowded like thistles,
Yet are shapely and comely to see.


My little love, my dearest
Twice have you issued me,
Once from your womb, sweet mother,
Once from myself, to be
Free of all hearts, my darling,
Of each heart’s home-life free.


And so, my love, my mother,
I shall always be true to you;
Twice I am born, my dearest,
To life, and to death, in you;
And this is the life hereafter
Wherein I am true.


I kiss you good-bye, my darling,
Our ways are different now;
You are a seed in the night-time,
I am a man, to plough
The difficult glebe of the future
For God to endow.


I kiss you good-bye, my dearest,
It is finished between us here.
Oh, if I were calm as you are,
Sweet and still on your bier!
O God, if I had not to leave you
Alone, my dear!


Let the last word be uttered,
Oh grant the farewell is said!
Spare me the strength to leave you
Now you are dead.
I must go, but my soul lies helpless
Beside your bed.

The Ship of Death

I


Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.


The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.


And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one's own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.


II


Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.


The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.


And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can't you smell it?
And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.


III


And can a man his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?


With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?


Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder
ever a quietus make?


IV


O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!


How can we this, our own quietus, make?


V


Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.


And die the death, the long and painful death



that lies between the old self and the new.


Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised,
already our souls are oozing through the exit
of the cruel bruise.


Already the dark and endless ocean of the end
is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,
Already the flood is upon us.


Oh build your ship of death, your little ark
and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine
for the dark flight down oblivion.


VI


Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.


We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying
and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us
and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.


We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying
and our strength leaves us,
and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood,
cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.


VII


We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.


A little ship, with oars and food
and little dishes, and all accoutrements
fitting and ready for the departing soul.


Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food and little cooking pans
and change of clothes,
upon the flood's black waste
upon the waters of the end
upon the sea of death, where still we sail
darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.


There is no port, there is nowhere to go
only the deepening blackness darkening still
blacker upon the soundless, ungurgling flood
darkness at one with darkness, up and down



and sideways utterly dark, so there is no direction any more
and the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Nowhere!


VIII


And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower,
between them the little ship
is gone


It is the end, it is oblivion.


IX


And yet out of eternity a thread
separates itself on the blackness,
a horizontal thread
that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.


Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume
A little higher?
Ah wait, wait, for there's the dawn
the cruel dawn of coming back to life
out of oblivion


Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashy grey
of a flood-dawn.


Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.


A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.


X


The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
filling the heart with peace.


Swings the heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.


Oh build your ship of death. Oh build it!



for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.

The Mystic Blue

Out of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping,
Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping
To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping.


Sometimes the darkness trapped within a wheel
Runs into speed like a dream, the blue of the steel
Showing the rocking darkness now a-reel.


And out of the invisible, streams of bright blue drops
Rain from the showery heavens, and bright blue crops
Surge from the under-dark to their ladder-tops.


And all the manifold blue and joyous eyes,
The rainbow arching over in the skies,
New sparks of wonder opening in surprise.


All these pure things come foam and spray of the sea
Of Darkness abundant, which shaken mysteriously,
Breaks into dazzle of living, as dolphins that leap from the sea
Of midnight shake it to fire, so the secret of death we see.

The Punisher

I have fetched the tears up out of the little wells,
Scooped them up with small, iron words,
Dripping over the runnels.


The harsh, cold wind of my words drove on, and still
I watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys
Glitter and spill.


Cringing Pity, and Love, white-handed, came
Hovering about the Judgment which stood in my eyes,
Whirling a flame.

. . . . . . .


The tears are dry, and the cheeks’ young fruits are fresh
With laughter, and clear the exonerated eyes, since pain
Beat through the flesh.


The Angel of Judgment has departed again to the Nearness.
Desolate I am as a church whose lights are put out.
And night enters in drearness.


The fire rose up in the bush and blazed apace,
The thorn-leaves crackled and twisted and sweated in anguish;
Then God left the place.


Like a flower that the frost has hugged and let go, my head
Is heavy, and my heart beats slowly, laboriously,
My strength is shed.

The Enkindled Spring

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.


I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.


And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.

The Hands of the Betrothed

Her tawny eyes are onyx of thoughtlessness,
Hardened they are like gems in ancient modesty;
Yea, and her mouth’s prudent and crude caress
Means even less than her many words to me.


Though her kiss betrays me also this, this only
Consolation, that in her lips her blood at climax clips
Two wild, dumb paws in anguish on the lonely
Fruit of my heart, ere down, rebuked, it slips.


I know from her hardened lips that still her heart is
Hungry for me, yet if I put my hand in her breast
She puts me away, like a saleswoman whose mart is
Endangered by the pilferer on his quest.


But her hands are still the woman, the large, strong hands
Heavier than mine, yet like leverets caught in steel
When I hold them; my still soul understands
Their dumb confession of what her sort must feel.


For never her hands come nigh me but they lift
Like heavy birds from the morning stubble, to settle
Upon me like sleeping birds, like birds that shift
Uneasily in their sleep, disturbing my mettle.


How caressingly she lays her hand on my knee,
How strangely she tries to disown it, as it sinks
In my flesh and bone and forages into me,
How it stirs like a subtle stoat, whatever she thinks!


And often I see her clench her fingers tight
And thrust her fists suppressed in the folds of her skirt;
And sometimes, how she grasps her arms with her bright
Big hands, as if surely her arms did hurt.


And I have seen her stand all unaware
Pressing her spread hands over her breasts, as she
Would crush their mounds on her heart, to kill in there
The pain that is her simple ache for me.


Her strong hands take my part, the part of a man
To her; she crushes them into her bosom deep
Where I should lie, and with her own strong span
Closes her arms, that should fold me in sleep.


Ah, and she puts her hands upon the wall,
Presses them there, and kisses her bright hands,
Then lets her black hair loose, the darkness fall
About her from her maiden-folded bands.


And sits in her own dark night of her bitter hair
Dreaming—God knows of what, for to me she’s the same



Betrothed young lady who loves me, and takes care
Of her womanly virtue and of my good name.

The Elephant Is Slow to Mate

The elephant, the huge old beast,
is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
they wait


for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
and drink and browse


and dash in panic through the brake
of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
together, without a word.


So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
hiding their fire.


Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
for the full repast.


They do not snatch, they do not tear;
their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
till they touch in flood.