YOURS is the shame and sorrowBut the disgrace is mine;Your love was dark and thorough,Mine was the love of the sun for a flowerHe creates with his shine.I was diligent to explore you,Blossom you stalk by stalk,Till my fire of creation bore youShrivelling down in the final dourAnguish—then I suffered a balk.I knew your pain, and it brokeMy fine, craftsman's nerve;Your body quailed at my stroke,And my courage failed to give you the lastFine torture you did deserve.You are shapely, you are adorned,But opaque and dull in the flesh,Who, had I but pierced with the thornedFire-threshing anguish, were fused and castIn a lovely illumined mesh.Like a painted window: the bestSuffering burnt through your flesh,Undrossed it and left it blestWith a quivering sweet wisdom of grace: butnowWho shall take you afresh?Now who will burn you freeFrom your body's terrors and dross,Since the fire has failed in me?What man will stoop in your flesh to ploughThe shrieking cross?A mute, nearly beautiful thingIs your face, that fills me with shameAs I see it hardening,Warping the perfect image of God,And darkening my eternal fame.
Now I am allOne bowl of kisses,Such as the tallSlim votaressesOf Egypt filledFor a God's excesses.I lift to youMy bowl of kisses,And through the temple'sBlue recessesCry out to youIn wild caresses.And to my lips'Bright crimson rimThe passion slips,And down my slimWhite body dripsThe shining hymn.And still beforeThe altar IExult the bowlBrimful, and cryTo you to stoopAnd drink, Most High.Oh drink me upThat I may beWithin your cupLike a mystery,Like wine that is stillIn ecstasy.Glimmering stillIn ecstasy,Commingled winesOf you and meIn one fulfilThe mystery.
A WIND comes from the northBlowing little flocks of birdsLike spray across the town,And a train, roaring forth,Rushes stampeding downWith cries and flying curdsOf steam, out of the darkening north.Whither I turn and setLike a needle steadfastly,Waiting ever to getThe news that she is free;But ever fixed, as yet,To the lode of her agony.
OH the green glimmer of apples in the orchard,Lamps in a wash of rain!Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stack-yard,Oh tears on the window pane!Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples,Full of disappointment and of rain,Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellowdapplesOf autumn tell the withered tale again.All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen,Cluck, and the rain-wet wings,Cluck, my marigold bird, and againCluck for your yellow darlings.For the grey rat found the gold thirteenHuddled away in the dark,Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick andkeen,Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark.Once I had a lover bright like running water,Once his face was laughing like the sky;Open like the sky looking down in all its laughterOn the buttercups, and the buttercups was I.What, then, is there hidden in the skirts of all theblossom?What is peeping from your wings, oh motherhen?'Tis the sun who asks the question, in a lovely hastefor wisdom;What a lovely haste for wisdom is in men!Yea, but it is cruel when undressed is all the blossom,And her shift is lying white upon the floor,That a grey one, like a shadow, like a rat, a thief, arain-storm,Creeps upon her then and gathers in his store.Oh the grey garner that is full of half-grown apples,Oh the golden sparkles laid extinct!And oh, behind the cloud-sheaves, like yellow autumndapples,Did you see the wicked sun that winked!
AT the open door of the room I stand and look atthe night,Hold my hand to catch the raindrops, that slant intosight,Arriving grey from the darkness above suddenly intothe light of the room.I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light,And be out in the bewildering darkness, which isalways fecund, which mightMate my hungry soul with a germ of its womb.I will go out to the night, as a man goes down to theshoreTo draw his net through the surfs thin line, at thedawn beforeThe sun warms the sea, little, lonely and sad, siftingthe sobbing tide.I will sift the surf that edges the night, with my net,the fourStrands of my eyes and my lips and my hands and myfeet, sifting the storeOf flotsam until my soul is tired or satisfied.I will catch in my eyes' quick netThe faces of all the women as they go past,Bend over them with my soul, to cherish the wetCheeks and wet hair a moment, saying: "Is ityou?"Looking earnestly under the dark umbrellas, heldfastAgainst the wind; and if, where the lamplightblewIts rainy swill about us, she answered meWith a laugh and a merry wildness that it was sheWho was seeking me, and had found me at last tofreeMe now from the stunting bonds of my chastity,How glad I should be!Moving along in the mysterious ebb of the nightPass the men whose eyes are shut like anemones in adark pool;Why don't they open with vision and speak to me,what have they in sight?Why do I wander aimless among them, desirousfool?I can always linger over the huddled books on thestalls,Always gladden my amorous fingers with the touchof their leaves,Always kneel in courtship to the shelves in thedoorways, where fallsThe shadow, always offer myself to one mistress,who always receives.But oh, it is not enough, it is all no good.There is something I want to feel in my runningblood,Something I want to touch; I must hold my face tothe rain,I must hold my face to the wind, and let it explainMe its life as it hurries in secret.I will trail my hands again through the drenched,cold leavesTill my hands are full of the chillness and touch ofleaves,Till at length they induce me to sleep, and to forget.
As a drenched, drowned beeHangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,So clings to meMy baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tearsAnd laid against her cheek;Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my armSwinging heavily to my movement as I walk.My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,Like a burden she hangs on me.She has always seemed so light,But now she is wet with tears and numb with painEven her floating hair sinks heavily,Reaching downwards;As the wings of a drenched, drowned beeAre a heaviness, and a weariness.
THE hoar-frost crumbles in the sun,The crisping steam of a trainMelts in the air, while two black birdsSweep past the window again.Along the vacant road, a redBicycle approaches; I waitIn a thaw of anxiety, for the boyTo leap down at our gate.He has passed us by; but is itRelief that starts in my breast?Or a deeper bruise of knowing that stillShe has no rest.
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 stillI watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boysGlitter and spill.Cringing Pity, and Love, white-handed, cameHovering about the Judgment which stood in myeyes,Whirling a flame.. . . . . . .The tears are dry, and the cheeks' young fruits arefreshWith laughter, and clear the exonerated eyes, sincepainBeat through the flesh.The Angel of Judgment has departed again to theNearness.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 inanguish;Then God left the place.Like a flower that the frost has hugged and let go,my headIs heavy, and my heart beats slowly, laboriously,My strength is shed.
IF I could have put you in my heart,If but I could have wrapped you in myself,How glad I should have been!And now the chartOf memory unrolls again to meThe course of our journey here, before we had topart.And oh, that you had never, never beenSome of your selves, my love, that someOf your several faces I had never seen!And still they come before me, and they go,And I cry aloud in the moments that intervene.And oh, my love, as I rock for you to-night,And have not any longer any hopeTo heal the suffering, or make requiteFor all your life of asking and despair,I own that some of me is dead to-night.
MY love looks like a girl to-night,But she is old.The plaits that lie along her pillowAre not gold,But threaded with filigree,And uncanny cold.She looks like a young maiden, since her browIs smooth and fair,Her cheeks are very smooth, her eyes are closed,She sleeps a rareStill winsome sleep, so still, and so composed.Nay, but she sleeps like a bride, and dreams herdreamsOf perfect things.She lies at last, the darling, in the shape of her dream,And her dead mouth singsBy its shape, like the thrushes in clear evenings.
MY little love, my darling,You were a doorway to me;You let me out of the confinesInto this strange countrie,Where people are crowded like thistles,Yet are shapely and comely to see.My little love, my dearestTwice have you issued me,Once from your womb, sweet mother,Once from myself, to beFree 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 hereafterWherein 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 ploughThe difficult glebe of the futureFor 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!God, if I had not to leave youAlone, my dear!Let the last word be uttered,Oh grant the farewell is said!Spare me the strength to leave youNow you are dead.I must go, but my soul lies helplessBeside your bed.
THE pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn windas it muttersSomething which sets the black poplars ashake withhysterical laughter;While slowly the house of day is closing its easternshutters.Further down the valley the clustered tombstonesrecede,Winding about their dimness the mist's greycerements, afterThe street lamps in the darkness have suddenlystarted to bleed.The leaves fly over the window and utter a word asthey passTo the face that leans from the darkness, intent, withtwo dark-filled eyesThat watch for ever earnestly from behind the windowglass.
Too far away, oh love, I know,To save me from this haunted road,Whose lofty roses break and blowOn a night-sky bent with a loadOf lights: each solitary rose,Each arc-lamp golden does exposeGhost beyond ghost of a blossom, showsNight blenched with a thousand snows.Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,White lilac; shows discoloured nightDripping with all the golden leesLaburnum gives back to lightAnd shows the red of hawthorn setOn high to the purple heaven of night,Like flags in blenched blood newly wet,Blood shed in the noiseless fight.Of life for love and love for life,Of hunger for a little food,Of kissing, lost for want of a wifeLong ago, long ago wooed.. . . . . .Too far away you are, my love,To steady my brain in this phantom showThat passes the nightly road aboveAnd returns again below.The enormous cliff of horse-chestnut treesHas poised on each of its ledgesAn erect small girl looking down at me;White-night-gowned little chits I see,And they peep at me over the edgesOf the leaves as though they would leap, shouldI callThem down to my arms;"But, child, you're too small for me, too smallYour little charms."White little sheaves of night-gowned maids,Some other will thresh you out!And I see leaning from the shadesA lilac like a lady there, who braidsHer white mantilla aboutHer face, and forward leans to catch the sightOf a man's face,Gracefully sighing through the whiteFlowery mantilla of lace.And another lilac in purple veiledDiscreetly, all recklessly callsIn a low, shocking perfume, to know who has hailedHer forth from the night: my strength has failedIn her voice, my weak heart falls:Oh, and see the laburnum shimmeringHer draperies down,As if she would slip the gold, and glimmeringWhite, stand naked of gown.. . . . . .The pageant of flowery trees aboveThe street pale-passionate goes,And back again down the pavement, LoveIn a lesser pageant flows.Two and two are the folk that walk,They pass in a half embraceOf linkèd bodies, and they talkWith dark face leaning to face.Come then, my love, come as you willAlong this haunted road,Be whom you will, my darling, I shallKeep with you the troth I trowed.
WHY does the thin grey strandFloating up from the forgottenCigarette between my fingers,Why does it trouble me?Ah, you will understand;When I carried my mother downstairs,A few times only, at the beginningOf her soft-foot malady,I should find, for a reprimandTo my gaiety, a few long grey hairsOn the breast of my coat; and one by oneI let them float up the dark chimney.
THE acrid scents of autumn,Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fearEverything, tear-trembling stars of autumnAnd the snore of the night in my ear.For suddenly, flush-fallen,All my life, in a rushOf shedding away, has left meNaked, exposed on the bush.I, on the bush of the globe,Like a newly-naked berry, shrinkDisclosed: but I also am prowlingAs well in the scents that slinkAbroad: I in this naked berryOf flesh that stands dismayed on the bush;And I in the stealthy, brindled odoursProwling about the lushAnd acrid night of autumn;My soul, along with the rout,Rank and treacherous, prowling,Disseminated out.For the night, with a great breath intaken,Has taken my spirit outsideMe, till I reel with disseminated consciousness,Like a man who has died.At the same time I stand exposedHere on the bush of the globe,A newly-naked berry of fleshFor the stars to probe.
SINCE you did departOut of my reach, my darling,Into the hidden,I see each shadow startWith recognition, and IAm wonder-ridden.I am dazed with the farewell,But I scarcely feel your loss.You left me a giftOf tongues, so the shadows tellMe things, and silences tossMe their drift.You sent me a cloven fireOut of death, and it burns in the draughtOf the breathing hosts,Kindles the darkening pyreFor the sorrowful, till strange brands waftLike candid ghosts.Form after form, in the streetsWaves like a ghost along,Kindled to me;The star above the house-top greetsMe every eve with a longSong fierily.All day long, the townGlimmers with subtle ghostsGoing up and downIn a common, prison-like dress;But their daunted looking flickersTo me, and I answer, Yes!So I am not lonely nor sadAlthough bereaved of you,My little love.I move among a kinsfolk cladWith words, but the dream shows throughAs they move.
SINCE I lost you I am silence-haunted,Sounds wave their little wingsA moment, then in weariness settleOn the flood that soundless swings.Whether the people in the streetLike pattering ripples go by,Or whether the theatre sighs and sighsWith a loud, hoarse sigh:Or the wind shakes a ravel of lightOver the dead-black river,Or night's last echoingMakes the daybreak shiver:I feel the silence waitingTo take them all up againIn its vast completeness, enfoldingThe sound of men.
I LISTEN to the stillness of you,My dear, among it all;I feel your silence touch my words as I talk,And take them in thrall.My words fly off a forgeThe length of a spark;I see the night-sky easily sip themUp in the dark.The lark sings loud and glad,Yet I am not lothThat silence should take the song and the birdAnd lose them both.A train goes roaring south,The steam-flag flying;I see the stealthy shadow of silenceAlongside going.And off the forge of the world,Whirling in the draught of life,Go sparks of myriad people, fillingThe night with strife.Yet they never change the darknessOr blench it with noise;Alone on the perfect silenceThe stars are buoys.
A YELLOW leaf from the darknessHops like a frog before me.Why should I start and stand still?I was watching the woman that bore meStretched in the brindled darknessOf the sick-room, rigid with willTo die: and the quick leaf tore meBack to this rainy swillOf leaves and lamps and traffic mingled before me.
How many times, like lotus lilies risenUpon the surface of a river, thereHave risen floating on my blood the rareSoft glimmers of my hope escaped from prison.So I am clothed all over with the lightAnd sensitive beautiful blossoming of passion;Till naked for her in the finest fashionThe flowers of all my mud swim into sight.And then I offer all myself untoThis woman who likes to love me: but she turnsA look of hate upon the flower that burnsTo break and pour her out its precious dew.And slowly all the blossom shuts in pain,And all the lotus buds of love sink overTo die unopened: when my moon-faced lover,Kind on the weight of suffering, smiles again.
THE sick grapes on the chair by the bed lie prone;at the windowThe tassel of the blind swings gently, tapping thepane,As a little wind comes in.The room is the hollow rind of a fruit, a gourdScooped out and dry, where a spider,Folded in its legs as in a bed,Lies on the dust, watching where is nothing to seebut twilight and walls.And if the day outside were mine! What is the dayBut a grey cave, with great grey spider-clothshangingLow from the roof, and the wet dust falling softlyfrom themOver the wet dark rocks, the houses, and overThe spiders with white faces, that scuttle on thefloor of the cave!I am choking with creeping, grey confinedness.But somewhere birds, beside a lake of light, spreadwingsLarger than the largest fans, and rise in a streamupwardsAnd upwards on the sunlight that rains invisible,So that the birds are like one wafted feather,Small and ecstatic suspended over a vast spreadcountry.
A BIG bud of moon hangs out of the twilight,Star-spiders spinning their threadHang high suspended, withouten respiteWatching us overhead.Come then under the trees, where the leaf-clothsCurtain us in so darkThat here we're safe from even the ermin-moth'sFlitting remark.Here in this swarthy, secret tent,Where black boughs flap the ground,You shall draw the thorn from my discontent,Surgeon me sound.This rare, rich night! For in hereUnder the yew-tree tentThe darkness is loveliest where I could searYou like frankincense into scent.Here not even the stars can spy us,Not even the white moths writeWith their little pale signs on the wall, to try usAnd set us affright.Kiss but then the dust from off my lips,But draw the turgid painFrom my breast to your bosom, eclipseMy soul again.Waste me not, I beg you, wasteNot the inner night:Taste, oh taste and let me tasteThe core of delight.
THE moon is broken in twain, and half a moonBefore me lies on the still, pale floor of the sky;The other half of the broken coin of trothIs buried away in the dark, where the still dead lie.They buried her half in the grave when they laid heraway;I had pushed it gently in among the thick of her hairWhere it gathered towards the plait, on that verylast day;And like a moon in secret it is shining there.My half shines in the sky, for a general signOf the troth with the dead I pledged myself to keep;Turning its broken edge to the dark, it shines indeedLike the sign of a lover who turns to the dark ofsleep.Against my heart the inviolate sleep breaks stillIn darkened waves whose breaking echoes o'erThe wondering world of my wakeful day, till I'mlostIn the midst of the places I knew so well before.
MANY years have I still to burn, detainedLike a candle flame on this body; but I enshrineA darkness within me, a presence which sleepscontainedIn my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.And through these years, while I burn on the fuel oflife,What matter the stuff I lick up in my living flame,Seeing I keep in the fire-core, inviolate,A night where she dreams my dreams for me, everthe same.
WHEN along the pavement,Palpitating flames of life,People flicker round me,I forget my bereavement,The gap in the great constellation,The place where a star used to be.Nay, though the pole-starIs blown out like a candle,And all the heavens are wandering in disarray,Yet when pleiads of people areDeployed around me, and I seeThe street's long outstretched Milky Way,When people flicker down the pavement,I forget my bereavement.
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 betweenWhere the wood fumes up and the watery, flickeringrushes.I am amazed at this spring, this conflagrationOf green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blazeOf growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,Faces of people streaming across my gaze.And I, what fountain of fire am I amongThis leaping combustion of spring? My spirit istossedAbout like a shadow buffeted in the throngOf flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.
HAD I but known yesterday,Helen, you could discharge the acheOut of the cloud;Had I known yesterday you could takeThe turgid electric ache away,Drink it up with your proudWhite body, as lovely white lightningIs drunk from an agonised sky by the earth,I might have hated you, Helen.But since my limbs gushed full of fire,Since from out of my blood and bonePoured a heavy flameTo you, earth of my atmosphere, stoneOf my steel, lovely white flint of desire,You have no name.Earth of my swaying atmosphere,Substance of my inconstant breath,I cannot but cleave to you.Since you have drunken up the drearPainful electric storm, and deathIs washed from the blueOf my eyes, I see you beautiful.You are strong and passive and beautiful,I come like winds that uncertain hover;But youAre the earth I hover over.
HER tawny eyes are onyx of thoughtlessness,Hardened they are like gems in ancient modesty;Yea, and her mouth's prudent and crude caressMeans even less than her many words to me.Though her kiss betrays me also this, this onlyConsolation, that in her lips her blood at climaxclipsTwo wild, dumb paws in anguish on the lonelyFruit of my heart, ere down, rebuked, it slips.I know from her hardened lips that still her heart isHungry for me, yet if I put my hand in her breastShe puts me away, like a saleswoman whose mart isEndangered by the pilferer on his quest.But her hands are still the woman, the large, stronghandsHeavier than mine, yet like leverets caught insteelWhen I hold them; my still soul understandsTheir dumb confession of what her sort must feel.For never her hands come nigh me but they liftLike heavy birds from the morning stubble, tosettleUpon me like sleeping birds, like birds that shiftUneasily in their sleep, disturbing my mettle.How caressingly she lays her hand on my knee,How strangely she tries to disown it, as it sinksIn my flesh and bone and forages into me,How it stirs like a subtle stoat, whatever shethinks!And often I see her clench her fingers tightAnd thrust her fists suppressed in the folds of herskirt;And sometimes, how she grasps her arms with herbrightBig hands, as if surely her arms did hurt.And I have seen her stand all unawarePressing her spread hands over her breasts, as sheWould crush their mounds on her heart, to kill inthereThe pain that is her simple ache for me.Her strong hands take my part, the part of a manTo her; she crushes them into her bosom deepWhere I should lie, and with her own strongspanCloses 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 fallAbout her from her maiden-folded bands.And sits in her own dark night of her bitter hairDreaming—God knows of what, for to me she'sthe sameBetrothed young lady who loves me, and takes careOf her womanly virtue and of my good name.
I WONDER, can the night go by;Can this shot arrow of travel flyShaft-golden with light, sheer into the skyOf a dawned to-morrow,Without ever sleep delivering usFrom each other, or loosing the dolorousUnfruitful sorrow!What is it then that you can seeThat at the window endlesslyYou watch the red sparks whirl and fleeAnd the night look through?Your presence peering lonelily thereOppresses me so, I can hardly bearTo share the train with you.You hurt my heart-beats' privacy;I wish I could put you away from me;I suffocate in this intimacy,For all that I love you;How I have longed for this night in the train,Yet now every fibre of me cries in painTo God to remove you.But surely my soul's best dream is stillThat one night pouring down shall swillUs away in an utter sleep, untilWe are one, smooth-rounded.Yet closely bitten in to meIs this armour of stiff reluctancyThat keeps me impounded.So, dear love, when another nightPours on us, lift your fingers whiteAnd strip me naked, touch me light,Light, light all over.For I ache most earnestly for your touch,Yet I cannot move, however muchI would be your lover.Night after night with a blemish of dayUnblown and unblossomed has withered away;Come another night, come a new night, sayWill you pluck me apart?Will you open the amorous, aching budOf my body, and loose the burning floodThat would leap to you from my heart?
HOLLOW rang the house when I knocked on the door,And I lingered on the threshold with my handUpraised to knock and knock once more:Listening for the sound of her feet across the floor,Hollow re-echoed my heart.The low-hung lamps stretched down the roadWith shadows drifting underneath,With a music of soft, melodious feetQuickening my hope as I hastened to meetThe low-hung light of her eyes.The golden lamps down the street went out,The last car trailed the night behind;And I in the darkness wandered aboutWith a flutter of hope and of dark-shut doubtIn the dying lamp of my love.Two brown ponies trotting slowlyStopped at a dim-lit trough to drink:The dark van drummed down the distance slowly;While the city stars so dim and holyDrew nearer to search through the streets.A hastening car swept shameful past,I saw her hid in the shadow,I saw her step to the curb, and fastRun to the silent door, where lastI had stood with my hand uplifted.She clung to the door in her haste to enter,Entered, and quickly castIt shut behind her, leaving the street aghast.