Collected Earlier Poems (3 page)

                         And the broken wall

    Is only itself, deeply accepting

               The sun’s warmth to its bricks.

The puddles blink; a snail marches the Roman

               Road of its own adopting.

The marble nymph is stripped to the flush of sex

    As if in truth this timeless, human

                         Instant were all.

                         Is it the bird’s

    Voice, the delicious voice of water,

               Addresses us on the splendid

Topic of love? And promises to youth

               Still livelier forms and whiter?

Here are quick freshes, here is the body suspended

    In its firm blessing, here the mouth

                         Finds out its words.

                         
See, they arise

    In the sign of ivy, the young males

               To their strength, the meadows restored;

Concupiscence of eye, and the world’s pride;

               Of love, the naked skills.

At the pool’s edge, the rippled image cleared,

    That face set among leaves is glad,

                         Noble and wise.

                         What was begun,

    The mastered force, breeds and is healing.

               Pebbles and clover speak.

Each hanging waterdrop burns with a fierce

               Bead of the sun’s instilling.

But softly, beneath the flutesong and volatile shriek

    Of birds, are to be heard discourse

                         Mother and son.

                         “If there were hushed

    To us the images of earth, its poles

               Hushed, and the waters of it,

And hushed the tumult of the flesh, even

               The voice intrinsic of our souls,

Each tongue and token hushed and the long habit

    Of thought, if that first light, the given

                         To us were hushed,

                         So that the washed

    Object, fixed in the sun, were dumb,

               And to the mind its brilliance

Were from beyond itself, and the mind were clear

               As the unclouded dome

Wherein all things diminish, in that silence

    Might we not confidently hear

                         God as he wished?”

                         
Then from the grove

    Suddenly falls a flight of bells.

               A figure moves from the wood,

Darkly approaching at the hour of vespers

               Along the ruined walls.

And bearing heavy articles of blood

    And symbols of endurance, whispers,

                         “This is love.”

for Andrews Wanning

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl

With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,

And he said to her, “Try to be true to me,

And I’ll do the same for you, for things are bad

All over, etc., etc.”

Well now, I knew this girl. It’s true she had read

Sophocles in a fairly good translation

And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,

But all the time he was talking she had in mind

The notion of what his whiskers would feel like

On the back of her neck. She told me later on

That after a while she got to looking out

At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,

Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds

And blandishments in French and the perfumes.

And then she got really angry. To have been brought

All the way down from London, and then be addressed

As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort

Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.

Anyway, she watched him pace the room

And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,

And then she said one or two unprintable things.

But you mustn’t judge her by that. What I mean to say is,

She’s really all right. I still see her once in a while

And she always treats me right. We have a drink

And I give her a good time, and perhaps it’s a year

Before I see her again, but there she is,

Running to fat, but dependable as they come.

And sometimes I bring her a bottle of
Nuit d’Amour
.

for Allen Tate

Madonna, mistress, I shall build for you

An altar of my misery, and hew

Out of my heart’s remote and midnight pitch,

Far from all worldly lusts and sneers, a niche

Enamelled totally in gold and blue

Where I shall set you up and worship you.

And of my verse, like hammered silver lace

Studded with amethysts of rhyme, I’ll place

A hand-wrought crown upon your head, and I’ll

Make you a coat in the barbaric style,

Picked out in seedling tears instead of pearl,

That you shall wear like mail, my mortal girl,

Lined with suspicion, made of jealousy,

Encasing all your charms, that none may see.

As for the intimate part of your attire,

Your dress shall be composed of my desire,

Rising and falling, swirling from your knees

To your round hills and deep declivities.

Of the respect I owe you I shall make

A pair of satin shoes that they may take—

Though most unworthily prepared to do it—

The authentic shape and imprint of your foot.

And if I fail, for all my proffered boon,

To make a silver footstool of the moon,

Victorious queen, I place beneath your heel

The head of this black serpent that I feel

Gnawing at my intestines all the time,

Swollen with hate and venomous with crime.

You shall behold my thoughts like tapers lit

Before your flowered shrine, and brightening it,

Reflected in the semi-dome’s clear skies

Like so many fierce stars or fiery eyes.

And I shall be as myrrh and frankincense,

Rising forever in a smoky trance,

And the dark cloud of my tormented hopes

Shall lift in yearning toward your snowy slopes.

And finally, to render you more real,

I shall make seven blades of Spanish steel

Out of the Seven Deadly Sins, and I

Shall mix my love with murderous savagery,

And like a circus knife-thrower, I’ll aim

At the pure center of your gentle frame,

And plunge those blades into your beating heart,

Your bleeding, suffering, palpitating heart.

(
AFTER BAUDELAIRE
)

Powder and scent and silence. The young dwarf

Shoulders his lute. The moon is Levantine.

It settles its pearl in every glass of wine.

Harlequin is already at the wharf.

The gallant is masked. A pressure of his thumb

Communicates cutaneous interest.

On the smooth upward swelling of a breast

A small black heart is fixed with spirit gum.

The thieving moment is now. Deftly, Pierrot

Exits, bearing a tray of fruits and coins.

A monkey, chained by his tiny loins,

Is taken aboard. They let their moorings go.

Silence. Even the god shall soon be gone.

Shadows, in their cool, tidal enterprise,

Have eaten away his muscular stone thighs.

Moonlight edges across the empty lawn.

Taffeta whispers. Someone is staring through

The white ribs of the pergola. She stares

At a small garnet pulse that disappears

Steadily seaward. Ah, my dear, it is you.

But you are not alone. A gardener goes

Through the bone light about the dark estate.

He bows, and, cheerfully inebriate,

Admires the lunar ashes of a rose,

And sings to his imaginary loves.

Wait. You can hear him. The familiar notes

Drift toward the old moss-bottomed fishing boats:

“
Happy the heart that thinks of no removes
.”

This is your nightmare. Those cold hands are yours.

The pain in the drunken singing is your pain.

Morning will taste of bitterness again.

The heart turns to a stone, but it endures.

for George and Mary Dimock

He rushed out of the temple

And for all his young good looks,

Excellence at wrestling,

High and manly pride,

The giddy world’s own darling,

He thought of suicide.

(The facts are clear and simple

But are not found in books.)

Think how the young suppose

That any minute now

Some darkly beautiful

Stranger’s leg or throat

Will speak out in the taut

Inflections of desire,

Will choose them, will allow

Each finger its own thought

And whatever it reaches for.

A vision without clothes

Tickles the genitalia

And makes blithe the heart.

But in this most of all

He was cut out for failure.

That morning smelled of hay.

But all that he found tempting

Was a high, weathered cliff.

Now at a subtle prompting

He hesitated. If

He ended down below

He had overcome the Fates;

The oracle was false;

The gods themselves were blind.

A fate he could contravene

Was certainly not Fate.

All lay in his power.

(How this came to his mind

No child of man can say.

The clear, rational light

Touches on less than half,

And “he who hesitates …”

For who could presume to know

The decisive, inward pulse

Of things?)

                         After an hour

He rose to his full height,

The master of himself.

That morning smelled of hay,

The day was clear. A moisture

Cooled at the tips of leaves.

The fields were overlaid

With light. It was harvest time.

Three swallows appraised the day,

And bearing aloft their lives,

Sailed into a wild climb,

Then spilled across the pasture

Like water over tiles.

One could have seen for miles

The sun on a knife-blade.

And there he stood, the hero,

With a lascivious wind

Sliding across his chest,

(The sort of thing that women,

Who are fools the whole world over,

Would fondle and adore

And stand before undressed.)

But deep within his loins

A bitterness is set.

He is already blind.

The faceless powers summon

To their eternal sorrow

The handsome, bold, and vain,

And those dark things are met

At a place where three roads join.

They touch with an open sore

The lips that he shall kiss.

And some day men may call me,

Because I’m old and plain

And never had a lover,

The authoress of this.

CLOTHO: OR, THE PRESENT

Well, there he stands, surrounded

By all his kith and kin,

Townspeople and friends,

As the evidence rolls in,

And don’t go telling me

The spectacle isn’t silly.

A prince in low disguise,

Moving among the humble

With kingly purposes

Is an old, romantic posture,

And always popular.

He started on this career

By overthrowing Fate

(A splendid accomplishment,

And all done in an hour)

That crucial day at the temple

When the birds crossed over the pasture

As was said by my sister, here.

Which goes to show that an omen

Is a mere tissue of lies

To please the superstitious

And keep the masses content.

From this initial success

He moved on without pause

To outwit and subdue a vicious

Beast with lion’s paws,

The wings of a great bird,

And the breasts and face of a woman.

This meant knowing no less

Than the universal state

Of man. Which is quite a lot.

(Construe this as you please.)

Now today an old abuse

Raises its head and festers

To the scandal and disease

Of all. He will weed it out

And cleanse the earth of it.

Clearly, if anyone could,

He can redeem these lands;

To doubt this would be absurd.

The finest faculties,

Courage and will and wit

He has patiently put to use

For Truth and the Common Good,

And lordly above the taunts

Of his enemies, there he stands,

The father of his sisters,

His daughters their own aunts.

Some sentimental fool

Invented the Tragic Muse.

She doesn’t exist at all.

For human life is composed

In reasonably equal parts

Of triumph and chagrin,

And the parts are so hotly fused

As to seem a single thing.

This is true as well

Of wisdom and ignorance

And of happiness and pain:

Nothing is purely itself

But is linked with its antidote

In cold self-mockery—

A fact with which only those

Born with a Comic sense

Can learn to content themselves.

While heroes die to maintain

Some part of existence clean

And incontaminate.