Collected Earlier Poems (13 page)

And with their Zeiss binoculars descry

                         Verduns and Waterloos,

The man-made mushroom’s deathly overplus,

               Caesars and heretics and Jews

Gone down in blood, without batting an eye,

As if all history were deciduous.

It’s when we come to shift the gears of tense

                         That suddenly we note

A curious excitement of the heart

               And slight catch in the throat:—

When, for example, from the confluence

That bears all things away I set apart

The inexpressible lineaments of your face,

                         Both as I know it now,

By heart, by sight, by reverent touch and study,

               And as it once was years ago,

Back in some inaccessible time and place,

Fixed in the vanished camera of somebody.

You are four years old here in this photograph.

                         You are turned out in style,

In a pair of bright red sneakers, a birthday gift.

               You are looking down at them with a smile

Of pride and admiration, half

Wonder and half joy, at the right and the left.

The picture is black and white, mere light and shade.

                         Even the sneakers’ red

Has washed away in acids. A voice is spent,

               Echoing down the ages in my head:

What is your substance, whereof are you made
,

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?

O my most dear, I know the live imprint

                         Of that smile of gratitude,

Know it more perfectly than any book.

               It brims upon the world, a mood

Of love, a mode of gladness without stint.

O that I may be worthy of that look.

Day peters out. Darkness wells up

    From wheelrut, culvert, vacant drain;

But still a rooster glints with life,

    High on a church’s weather-vane;

The sun flings Mycenaean gold

    Against a neighbor’s window-pane.

From the journals of John Clare

They take away our belts so that we must hold

Our trousers up. The truly mad don’t bother

And thus are oddly hobbled. Also our laces

So that our shoes do flop about our feet.

But I’m permitted exercise abroad

And feeling rather down and melancholy

Went for a forest walk. There I met gypsies

And sought their help to make good my escape

From the mad house. I confessed I had no money

But promised I should furnish them fifty pounds.

We fixed on Saturday. But when I returned

They had disappeared in their Egyptian way.

The sun set up its starlight in the trees

Which the breeze made to twinkle. They left behind

An old wide awake hat on which I battened

As it might advantage me some later time.

Calmly, as though I purposed to converse

With the birds, as I am sometimes known to do,

I walked down the lane gently and was soon

In Enfield Town and then on the great York Road

Where it was all plain sailing, where no enemy

Displayed himself and I was without fear.

I made good progress, and by the dark of night

Skirted a marsh or pond and found a hovel

Floored with thick bales of clover and laid me down

As on the harvest of a summer field,

Companion to imaginary bees.

But I was troubled by uneasy dreams.

I thought my first wife lay in my left arm

And then somebody took her from my side

Which made me wake to hear someone say, “Mary,”

But nobody was by. I was alone.

I’ve made some progress, but being without food,

It is slower now, and I must void my shoes

Of pebbles fairly often, and rest myself.

I lay in a ditch to be out of the wind’s way,

Fell into sleep for half an hour or so

And waked to find the left side of me soaked

With a foul scum and a soft mantling green.

I travel much at night, and I remember

Walking some miles under a brilliant sky

Almost dove-grey from closely hidden moonlight

Cast on the moisture of the atmosphere

Against which the tall trees on either side

Were unimaginably black and flat

And the puddles of the road flagstones of silver.

On the third day, stupid with weariness

And hunger, I assuaged my appetite

With eating grass, which seemed to taste like bread,

And seemed to do me good; and once, indeed,

It satisfied a king of Babylon.

I remember passing through the town of Buckden

And must have passed others as in a trance

For I recall none till I came to Stilton

Where my poor feet gave out. I found a tussock

Where I might rest myself, and as I lay down

I heard the voice of a young woman say,

“Poor creature,” and another, older voice,

“He shams,” but when I rose the latter said,

“O no he don’t,” as I limped quickly off.

I never saw those women, never looked back.

I was overtaken by a man and woman

Traveling by cart, and found them to be neighbors

From Helpstone where I used to live. They saw

My ragged state and gave me alms of fivepence

By which at the public house beside the bridge

I got some bread and cheese and two half-pints

And so was much refreshed, though scarcely able

To walk, my feet being now exceeding crippled

And I required to halt more frequently,

But greatly cheered at being in home’s way.

I recognized the road to Peterborough

And all my hopes were up when there came towards me

A cart with a man, a woman and a boy.

When they were close, the woman leaped to the ground,

Seized both my hands and urged me towards the cart

But I refused and thought her either drunk

Or mad, but when I was told that she was Patty,

My second wife, I suffered myself to climb

Aboard and soon arrived at Northborough.

But Mary was not there. Neither could I discover

Anything of her more than the old story

That she was six years dead, intelligence

Of a doubtful newspaper some twelve years old;

But I would not be taken in by blarney

Having seen her very self with my two eyes

About twelve months ago, alive and young

And fresh and well and beautiful as ever.

Come, let us praise this haven of strong horses,

unmatched, brilliant Kolonos, white with sunlight,

where the shy one, the nightingale, at evening

               flutes in the darkness,

the ivy dark, so woven of fruit and vine-leaves

no winter storms nor light of day can enter

this sanctuary of the dancing revels

               of Dionysos.

Here, under heaven’s dew, blooms the narcissus,

crown of life’s mother and her buried daughter,

of Earth and the Dark below; here, too, the sunburst

               flares of the crocus.

The river’s ample springs, cool and unfailing,

rove and caress this green, fair-breasted landscape.

Here have the Muses visited with dances,

               and Aphrodite

has reined her chariot here. And here is something

unheard of in the fabulous land of Asia,

unknown to Doric earth—a thing immortal;

               gift of a goddess,

beyond the control of hands, tough, self-renewing,

an enduring wealth, passing through generations,

here only: the invincible grey-leafed olive.

               Agèd survivor

of all vicissitudes, it knows protection

of the All-Seeing Eye of Zeus, whose sunlight

always regards it, and of Grey-Eyed Athena.

               I have another

tribute of praise for this city, our mother:

the greatest gift of a god, a strength of horses,

strength of young horses, a power of the ocean,

               strength and a power.

O Lord Poseidon, you have doubly blessed us

with healing skills, on these roads first bestowing

the bit that gentles horses, the controlling

               curb and the bridle,

and the carved, feathering oar that skims and dances

like the white nymphs of water, conferring mastery

of ocean roads, among the spume and wind-blown

               prancing of stallions.

From
SOPHOCLES
’
Oedipus at Kolonos

Here in this bleak city of Rochester,

Where there are twenty-seven words for “snow,”

Not all of them polite, the wayward mind

Basks in some Yucatan of its own making,

Some coppery, sleek lagoon, or cinnamon island

Alive with lemon tints and burnished natives,

And O that we were there. But here the natives

Of this grey, sunless city of Rochester

Have sown whole mines of salt about their land

(Bare ruined Carthage that it is) while snow

Comes down as if The Flood were in the making.

Yet on that ocean Marvell called the mind

An ark sets forth which is itself the mind,

Bound for some pungent green, some shore whose natives

Blend coriander, cayenne, mint in making

Roasts that would gladden the Earl of Rochester

With sinfulness, and melt a polar snow.

It might be well to remember that an island

Was a blessed haven once, more than an island,

The grand, utopian dream of a noble mind.

In that kind climate the mere thought of snow

Was but a wedding cake; the youthful natives,

Unable to conceive of Rochester,

Made love, and were acrobatic in the making.

Dream as we may, there is far more to making

Do than some wistful reverie of an island,

Especially now when hope lies with the Rochester

Gas and Electric Co., which doesn’t mind

Such profitable weather, while the natives

Sink, like Pompeians, under a world of snow.

The one thing indisputable here is snow,

The single verity of heaven’s making,

Deeply indifferent to the dreams of the natives

And the torn hoarding-posters of some island.

Under our igloo skies the frozen mind

Holds to one truth: it is grey, and called Rochester.

No island fantasy survives Rochester,

Where to the natives destiny is snow

That is neither to our mind nor of our making.

               Just as foretold, it all was there.

    Bone china columns gently fluted

Among the cypress groves, and the reputed

                         Clarity of the air,

               There was the sun-bleached skeleton

    Of History with all its sins

Withered away, the slaves and citizens

                         Mercifully undone.

               With here and there an armature

    Of iron or a wall of brick,

It lay in unhistoric peace, a trick

                         Of that contrived, secure,

               Arrested pterodactyl flight

    Inside the museum’s tank of glass;

And somehow quite unlike our Latin class

                         Sepias of the site,

               Discoursed upon by Mr. Fish

    In the familiar, rumpled suit,

Who tried to teach us the Ablative Absolute

                         And got part of his wish,

               But a small part, and never traveled

    On anything but the B. M. T.

Until the day of his death, when he would be,

                         At length, utterly graveled.

Over a crisp regatta of lights, or a school

Of bobbling spoons, ovals of polished black

Kiss, link, and part, wriggle and ride in place

On the lilt and rippling slide of the waterback,

And glints go skittering in a down-wind race

On smooth librations of the swimming pool,

While overhead on the tensile jut and spring

Of the highest board, a saffroned diver toes

The sisal edge, rehearsing throughout his limbs

The flight of himself, from the arching glee to the close

Of wet, complete acceptance, when the world dims

To nothing at all in the ear’s uproar and ring.

He backs away, and then, with a loping run

And leap of released ambition, lifts to a splendid

Realm of his own, a destined place in the air,

Where, in a wash of light, he floats suspended

Above the turquoise waters, the ravelled snare

Of snaking gold, the fractured, drunken sun,

And the squints of the foreshortened girls and boys

Below in a world of envies and desires,

Eying him rise on fonts of air to sheer

And shapely grace. His dream of himself requires

A flexed attention, emptiness, a clear

Uncumbered space and sleek Daedalian poise,

From which he bows his head with abrupt assent

And sails to a perfect sacrifice below—

To a scatter of flagstone shadows, a garbled flight

Of quavering anthelions, a slow

Tumult of haloes in green, cathedral light.

Behind him trails a bright dishevelment