Part 2

What words that move on wings in a long drift Can waft this silence into weary ears, And steal into the veins and fingertips Of restless bodies, like magnificent ships Proud from the seas that calmly sail through fears, Mean streets, and miseries, with passage swift. What words pricked from the stars and shimmering together, Or swept like little winds through leaves alert, Can filter through the chinks of bolted doors Deaf to the clamours knocking without pause, Steeled with indifference against all hurt, Deaf to the cry of man, and rack of weather: To sing the hubbub of this glittering night, Where all the lamps each with a separate soul Throb to the ecstasies of dancing life; And Beauty, gleaming high her magic knife Cuts free the tethered heart from long control And flings it like a ball with mad delight Into the silver lap of the young moon. What needles quick, what threads, what fingers fine Can broider tapestries as rich as these, Stranger than dreams and drifting melodies, Transparent as the gods we half divine, Frail as the thoughts that dwindle in a swoon Ghostly before begetting. Tinged with pain That glimmers pale on hands we cannot find, And visioned faces that our dreams create Born in the land forbidden us of fate And longed for all our lives ... What words can bind Forever Joy, that never comes again!

1915

I think myself The fool of tragedy strutting upon the stage Where murder creeps and whispers. The jester clad in piebald tights Half black, half golden, with no company Save bells that jingle, And an effigy, The grinning image painted like myself Upon a stick....

I think myself The fool of comedy mournfully straying Amid the revellers, Loving the moon and my own shadow With its strange solemn gestures-- Loving the painted moon That lets me play with shadows.

I am the jester on an empty stage Playing a pantomime To spectres in the stalls, Listening at last For ghostly mirth and phantom hands applauding, And for some king with decadent tired fingers To fling a white gardenia at my feet.

1918

The adored, wild, strange, irresistible, How they fail one at the last! What is there in your faces That we should worship with our souls? Most lovable, perfidious, Vague-- Molesting even our visions With treacherous pathos. O vulgarity, mediocrity, stupidity, What is it in you that makes us lavish our love, Covering your meagre bodies With our passionate mantle, dyed with blood and dreams? Life and its grey days, and time Are a thin curtain through which you shadow, Or a dim glass through which you peer. You climb in at the windows of our souls With ladders and stratagems, You mope in corners with reproachful eyes. But what do you do for us Lute players, dancers, deceivers, Other than lie with red lips And cajole with tears of beryl? People-- Men and women with laughable, tragic faces Winking at love, Treading our songs and illusions Under petulant feet!

1917

A ROSE

What do you ask of me with your beauty, what are you urging Of labour and painful aspiring to flatter your perfection? What secretness of love with terrible blushes surging Unseen, have found in you at last their passionate reflection?

What dreams that lovers knew, as sleep with subtle magic Tore off the rags of life and made her dance with body spangled, Drew back the vacant hours, the tedious and the tragic, And showed the glittering souls from bodies we had mangled;--

What visions made you, emblem of longing and love that has died unrequited, And all lost joys, and tears, and beauty passionately given, Winked at by folly, skewered by the butcher, danced on and slighted, That now spring up from death, showing their slayers the colours of Heaven?

You have burst from the ground with your joy, you are pining and bleeding, Your scent is heavy with sorrowful love; oh, memories clinging, What do you ask of my soul with such fierceness of pleading, I that was glad to forget ... What do you need of my singing?

1916

Like flocks of tired birds when autumn comes, My spirit flags across the darkening fields And melts into the drabness of the sky And falls like dust upon the huddled corn. But many wizened faces brown and sad Peer from the bushes as I wander past,-- They tell me all those things that old men say As youth looks up through tears with pallid cheek. "When you are grey and crooked as ourselves, When you have bowed before all other gods, And found them false, then shall you come at last To that dark King of grief, and he shall bless Your bread with tears, and manacle your hands, And call you slave and lover." ... Shall not a child take Pain for company And share her loneliness with him? Does not a youth know tears In the first bitterness of broken love? Is Grief so proud a king that none shall come To seek him save the blind, the halt, the lame? ... He is a tramp, a beggar, and a clown, He sits a jester at the feet of kings And scurries with the leaves in Autumn's train. He rides the wooden horses at a fair, And dances with the jiggers on the stage. Led by the violins of discontent That whine their music to my listening soul, I dance with him the dance of withered leaves, We dance together to the tunes of rain Played on one note upon the only string.

1913

Oh, just beyond the curve of ideal quest That changes as a sea wave to the wind, Beyond the cloud that folds around a star, And dawn, that stands ajar to let us in, Lies that to which our loves and dreams have gone, The paradise of all we might have been, While we are washed back downwards in the dark Where tides recede, to dwindle with the foam.

1917

Ah! you, from the small high-walled acre of your lives, Your windows only looking upon gardens, Only perceiving love and death and truth As facts that come to pass, That pass and leave you still Within your safe small prisons, Older, duller, To walk and talk among the evergreens. You have never known Delight of dying slowly, Poisoned with raptures In many hues from the slim-cut decanters of death-- The tunes That dishevel and smooth, Cajole and melancholize-- The dance Which is a whirling of leaves In their last scorn of sorrow Flung upwards by the wind Into the haggard face of winter-- Nor felt your souls go blowing like balloons Tossed by impulsive hands; Nor slid as skaters swiftly Over the crackling crystals of perilous ice, Buffeted with bouquets and blinded with confetti ... You have not felt the abandon Of light love Dragged by the hair across a slippery floor....

1916

Mouth of the dust I kiss, corruption absolute, Worm, that shall come at last to be my paramour, Envenomed, unseen wanderer who alone is mute, Yet greater than gods or heroes that have gone before.

For you I sheave the harvest of my hair, For you the whiteness of my flesh, my passion's valour, For you I throw upon the grey screen of the air My prism-like conceptions, my gigantic colour.

For you the delicate hands that fashion to make great Clay, and white paper, plant a tongue in silence, For you the battle-frenzy, and the might of hate, Science for giving wounds, and healing science.

For you the heart's wild love, beauty, long care, Virginity, passionate womanhood, perfected wholeness, For you the unborn child that I prepare, You, flabby, boneless, brainless, senseless, soulless!

1913

The curtains are drawn as though it still were night, A slip of dawn between them is a dangling silver ribbon; And all about the room is quietness--Each patient chair Erect, alert, in place. A letter on the table and a book Lie as you left them, now bereft of purpose-- Garish a little in the room's sedateness, you Returning dressed so frivolously in all your coloured clothes! How grey and sober, full of placid wit The furniture, the pictures on the wall; How steely swift the light, stabbing you to the heart As you stand at the window, bright as rushing blood. Garish your hair, your shoes, your startling chalky face And white, white gloves ... What time is it? ... Still ticks the tireless clock, With face grimacing ... nearly six it is.... Yet hurries not nor lingers, like our hearts, For in its dial eternity is housed-- A cock should crow ... there are no cocks in town! But a water cart with surly noise below Grates unconcerned along the disconsolate street. How cold and how familiar all these things, To you so lonely in the enormous dawn Slowly unfastening that vermilion dress ...

1916

BLACK VELVET

The darkness of the trees at deep midnight And sombreness of shadows in the lake; A mountain in the starlight wide awake Dreaming to Heaven with imperial might Of lifted shoulders, huge against the bright Bespattered jewelry of stars--the ache Of silence, and the sobbing tides that break From music. Slumbering cities--candle light Snuffed in the flooding darkness, and the train Of Queens that go to scaffold for a sin-- Or splash of blackness manifest of pain, Hamlet among his court, a Harlequin Of tragedies ... Mysterious ... And again Venetian masks against a milky skin.

1917

NERVES

These curious looms where we have spun our fancies, These intricate webs where our desires are threaded, These weird trapezes that our passion frenzies Strange acrobats to catch them dizzy headed. These tightening strings upon our spirit's fiddles Tuneful or out of tune where music hungers From writhing bow, these intertwining riddles Mazes and labyrinths and storms and languors. These colours twinging on a prism's edges, These speckled patterns of fanatic madness From glittering eyeballs, these unresting dredges For pearls within the depths of sadness and of gladness-- O tortuous thoughts, what are you seeking after As flies around a carcass with a humming dreary, Gibing the silent dead with treacherous laughter, Molesting quietness and waking up the weary! What then, what then, can sleep not crush you to forgetting With all her body's beauty, cannot peace submerge you O wrangling, juggling, jangling, pirouetting-- What hope can drag you from the small desires that urge you? You have lassoed the moon and trapped the sun's bright lion, And trodden out the red stars into ashes, Destroyed night's temple and broken the pillars of iron, And striped the snowy horses of the clouds with zebra gashes ... You have debauched the world! And as I sit here weary, Deafened with your demands and torn in tatters, The world seems suddenly most passionless and dreary, A poor bewildered clown--and nothing matters.

1916

My pain has all the patience of a nun Who kneels and prays for Heaven on the stone, In some chill cellar where the amens moan, Ave Maria, the long penance spun Forever. And the tapers one by one Stand like cold angels round the Virgin's throne. My soul is tired from kneeling all alone, Its little candles yearning to the sun.

Long have I dreamed of Paradise and seen Bright mirages of glory on the grey Of sad horizons; I have kept the green Surprise of spring through winter and dismay, Tasting within the bitter dregs of spleen Drugs that bring peace, and wine that maketh gay.

1917

The scandal-monger after all is right-- The old and cunning voice with weary repetition Is justified in all dull words and warnings. I see at last how you, Spendthrift of passion In love's bankruptcy, Borrow new beauty from each passing face-- How being too lavish you did steal From generous hands-- You are the idol builder and the robber of temples, Praising with passionate psalms The thing you cannot worship-- And yet your prayers have stirred Belief in us-- We see beyond the false and weary face Into your haggard soul and trust from pity-- We hear beyond the idle music of your voice, A wisdom taught by cruelty And a tired scorn of treachery and guile-- We see your wounds and weep, You meet our pity with a traitor's kiss-- For, you are schooled in suffering and schooled In teaching pain to others-- And all that mob of furious accusation To which you turn the cheek, or curse so well, Are but the ghosts of bodies you have murdered, That drive you on in vengeance to fresh crime.

1917

Woods of brown gloom sombring with the hush of death, Wind's lassitude that sets the tired leaves shivering, Starved yellow leaves sighing beneath the feet, a breath Consumptive, old, and fever-red leaves quivering, As with an earthward flutter like a ghostly butterfly Listless they perish, wavering and hovering. Skeleton branches where the rooks flap wings and cry, Perched upon ribs and fingers; and the white mists covering The far-off hills and bloodless visage of the sun. No noise save the meandering dribble of a rivulet, No noise save of the slow hours dropping one by one As embers, no colour save Time's ashen coverlet.... How melancholy here the gayest tunes would sound From shrill carousers riotous and merry all, As echoes of lost joy their dancing feet upon the ground, As funeral bagpipes at a burial. And I who wander passionless and forlorn, A leaf-forsaken tree symbolic of dejection, In rags of old desires, dispirited and torn, See in the stagnant glass of Time my soul's reflection.

1916

I feel so much alone, And yet I know that many hopes are storming My shut heart; For I am bolted fast in my own house. I pace distracted through its corridors To the music of Love's knocking hands Against the gate, Or silence when they sleep. I cannot find the key to let them in, I, my own host and guest and ghost, Imprisoned in myself!

1917

THE COMPLEX LIFE

I know it to be true that those who live As do the grasses and the lilies of the field Receiving joy from Heaven, sweetly yield Their joy to Earth, and taking Beauty, give.

But we are gathered for the looms of Fate That Time with ever-turning multiplying wheels Spins into complex patterns and conceals His huge invention with forms intricate.

Each generation blindly fills the plan, A sorry muddle or an inspiration of God With many processes from out the sod, The Earth and Heaven are mingled and made man.

We must be tired and sleepless, gaily sad, Frothing like waves in clamorous confusion, A chemistry of subtle interfusion, Experiments of genius that the ignorant call mad.

We spell the crimes of our unruly days, We see a fabled Arcady in our mind, We crave perfection that we may not find. Time laughs within the clock and Destiny plays.

You peasants and you hermits, simple livers! So picturesquely pure, all unconcerned While we give up our bodies to be burned, And dredge for treasure in the muddy rivers.

We drink and die and sell ourselves for power, We hunt with treacherous steps and stealthy knife, We make a gaudy havoc of our life And live a thousand ages in an hour.

Our loves are spoilt by introspective guile, We vivisect our souls with elaborate tools, We dance in couples to the tune of fools, And dream of harassed continents the while.

Subconscious visions hold us and we fashion Delirious verses, tortured statues, spasms of paint, Make cryptic perorations of complaint, Inverted religion, and perverted passion.

But since we are children of this age, In curious ways discovering salvation, I will not quit my muddled generation, But ever plead for Beauty in this rage.

Although I know that Nature's bounty yields Unto simplicity a beautiful content, Only when battle breaks me and my strength is spent Will I give back my body to the fields.

1917

Shall we be christened poets, children of God, For blowing sighs into the listeners' ears, For tugging at the moaning bells of death, And coming as the autumn grave-digger To close the eyes of flowers, and shut the fingers Of wind upon the rushes, Of music upon silence? Shall we be given wreathes of bay and laurel For forcing tragedy into a rhyme As a gaunt beggar in a spangled vest? The poet ever wanders after Death, The flunkey on a funeral chariot Pouring the wine at feasts of burial; And all the roses that he plucks from summer Are carried to the crypts to deck a corpse.... How shall the world learn how to laugh again When all its songs have only learnt to weep?

1919

When I am weary at the antic chance, The hobby-horses and the wooden lance, The hope and fear in jugglery, and see How starved the juggler, mean and miserly, And life a laboured trick--the years advance A shrilling chorus in affected dance With lust of many eyes that watch and wink Fixed on them; or a clown in feverish pink Will draw gross laughter by a hideous prance-- Vulgarity and sin and souls askance, Where fiddles squeal and all the follies spin-- Till, when the stage is empty, Harlequin Through curtained silence trips as from a trance With blushing flowers for Columbine--Romance.

1917

MOODS

I

I crouched upon cushions and wallowed in their somnolent caresses, And--listening with dread for the moment of my own silence Rending the flimsy lace of whisperings-- My gnome dances before me Behind a fan of smoke, My dwarf squats on my shoulders Tweeking their moulted wings, My ape peers in the mirror of my face Mimicking my soul's gaunt gestures-- My wolf bays through my moonly loneliness Blotching the night with howls-- My laughter goes whining away on the wind, Laughs that are whipped by a soul too sick with merriment, Too satiate with humour's emptiness!...

II

Ah! loveliness with little pointed feet Dancing across the leer of ugliness, Skimming like a gold thread Through a necklace of vile masks-- Lifting with lotus fingers The blue arras of nightmare-- Loveliness like a delicate silver flute Pressed to a negro's lips--

III

Do you then wish for all those griefs Whose snarling hands you kiss, Kneeling in adoration to a dagger As saints before a cross? You who have tossed all flowers away, Coveting the drenched red peonies of blood Their javelin-petals wet with slaughter,-- Do you then crave your own blood's offering, Your own breast's pallor pierced with knives of flame? In your ears are the pattering of the hunter's feet, Softer than death, and omens mouthed by winds of twilight, You lean across the precipice of time Calling and crying For the last abyssmal passion of self-slaughter--

IV

Waiting, Like grey cloud-giants climbing the hills of Heaven Carrying vast burdens over the crags of chaos-- Waiting, Like trees that hear the far-off moan of winds, Like listening trees that hug their branches round them, Their leaves whispering lividly the rumour of storms, Waiting like a vast arch of quietness Through which a screaming messenger shall dart-- Like a dense hood of silence Pierced by a sword of music-- Waiting, like the deathly stillness of a pool Reflecting the diver poised before he plunges....

1919

SMOKE

Now is the evening dipped knee-deep in blood And the dun hills stand fearful in their places. Cunning in sin, we shuffle down the streets With burdens of vainglory on our backs, Spinning with spider-hands the miser's web Or sitting placid, gay and fat with ease. But out beyond, the armies of the world March doomwards to the rhythm of the drum Under the thirsting sun. Death holds his state:

His skeleton hands are filled with scarlet spoil: He stands on flaming ramparts, waving high The ensign of decay. All his bones are dressed With livid roses; all his pillars black Are girt in ashen poppies, and on dust He raises up his awful golden throne.

Oh! your fierce shrieks have fainted on deaf ears; Your tears have flowed on feet of carven stone; Your blood is spilt for the boiling-pot of God Where good and evil mix; and all your rage Is but a thin smoke wafted in His face.

1914

Blow upon blow they bruise the daylight wan, Scar upon scar they rend the quiet shore; They ride on furious, leaving every man Crushed like a maggot by the hoofs of war: Gods that grow tired of paradisial water And fill their cups with steaming wine of slaughter.

I fear a thing more terrible than death: The glamour of the battle grips us yet-- As crowds before a fire that hold their breath Watching the burning houses, and forget All they will lose, but marvel to behold Its dazzling strength, the glamour of its gold.

I fear the time when slow the flame expires, When this kaleidoscope of roaring color Fades, and rage faints; and of the funeral-fires That shone with battle, nothing left of valour Save chill ignoble ashes for despair To strew with widowed hands upon her hair.

Livid and damp unfolds the winding-sheet, Hiding the mangled body of the Earth: The slow grey aftermath, the limping feet Of days that shall not know the sound of mirth, But pass in dry-eyed patience, with no trust Save to end living and be heaped with dust.

That stillness that must follow where Death trod, The sullen street, the empty drinking-hall, The tuneless voices cringing praise to God, Deaf gods, that did not heed the anguished call, Now to be soothed with humbleness and praise, With fawning kisses for the hand that slays.

Across the world from out the fevered ground Decay from every pore exhales its breath; A cloak of penance winding close around The bright desire of spring. And unto Death, As to a conquering king, we yield the keys Of Beauty's gates upon our bended knees.

The maiden loverless shall go her ways, And child unfathered feed on crust and husk; The sun that was the glory of our days Shining as tinsel till the moody dusk Into our starving outstretched arms shall lay Her silent sleep, the only boon we pray.

1914

A ragged drummer rides along the street, And at his coming The silence fills with tunes and rustling feet And voices humming. He rode a year ago from far away, On charger prancing, With bright new buttons and with ribbons gay, And banners dancing. Oh, he was fatter than the bursting drum He bore so proudly, His roaring music woke the silence dumb To thunder loudly. And by his side the old men and the young Had followed cheering Into the sunset smiling as they sung, Nor thought of fearing. They left their lovers and their mothers' lap, Their homes demolish, "For, look, I have a ribbon for my cap, A sword to polish!" And so the town was silent once again, Though tunes of battle Beat fearful in the wind, or in the rain Ghost drums would rattle. But at the chuckling dice or careful loom, Or candled churches A few forgot or prayed or followed doom With drunken lurches.... Now loom and bar and church disgorge the throng, In huddled masses They stand aghast to hear the drummer's song As back he passes-- Palsied and drear and bent he turns alone In rags and tatters, And on a soundless barrel with a bone He beats and batters. "Where march your feet so gaily, careless crowd, That we may kiss them? Where sound your little songs that rang so loud To us that miss them?" There are no songs, no happy marching feet, No favours flying: The drummer passes ... on the quiet street The sun is dying. Sun that must bleed to death so red and brave!... Have done with weeping, But put your ribbons on a soldier's grave As he lies sleeping.

1914

ZEPPELINS

MIDNIGHT