Complete Poems and Plays (27 page)

Evil the wind, and bitter the sea, and grey the sky, grey grey grey.

O Thomas, return, Archbishop; return, return to France.

Return. Quickly. Quietly. Leave us to perish in quiet.

You come with applause, you come with rejoicing, but you come bringing death into Canterbury:

A doom on the house, a doom on yourself, a doom on the world.

We do not wish anything to happen.

Seven years we have lived quietly,

Succeeded in avoiding notice,

Living and partly living.

There have been oppression and luxury,

There have been poverty and licence,

There has been minor injustice.

Yet we have gone on living,

Living and partly living.

Sometimes the corn has failed us,

Sometimes the harvest is good,

One year is a year of rain,

Another a year of dryness,

One year the apples are abundant,

Another year the plums are lacking.

Yet we have gone on living,

Living and partly living.

We have kept the feasts, heard the masses,

We have brewed beer and cider,

Gathered wood against the winter,

Talked at the corner of the fire,

Talked at the corners of streets,

Talked not always in whispers,

Living and partly living.

We have seen births, deaths and marriages,

We have had various scandals,

We have been afflicted with taxes,

We have had laughter and gossip,

Several girls have disappeared

Unaccountably, and some not able to.

We have all had our private terrors,

Our particular shadows, our secret fears.

But now a great fear is upon us, a fear not of one but of many,

A fear like birth and death, when we see birth and death alone

In a void apart. We

Are afraid in a fear which we cannot know, which we cannot face,

which none understands,

And our hearts are torn from us, our brains unskinned like the

layers of an onion, our selves are lost lost

In a final fear which none understands. O Thomas Archbishop,

O Thomas our Lord, leave us and leave us be, in our humble and

tarnished frame of existence, leave us; do not ask us

To stand to the doom on the house, the doom on the Archbishop,

the doom on the world.

Archbishop, secure and assured of your fate, unaffrayed among the

shades, do you realise what you ask, do you realise what it

means

To the small folk drawn into the pattern of fate, the small folk who

live among small things.

The strain on the brain of the small folk who stand to the doom of

the house, the doom of their lord, the doom of the world?

O Thomas, Archbishop, leave us, leave us, leave sullen Dover, and

set sail for France. Thomas our Archbishop still

our Archbishop even in France. Thomas Archbishop, set the

white sail between the grey sky and the bitter sea, leave

us, leave us for France.

S
ECOND
P
RIEST
.
What a way to talk at such a juncture!

You are foolish, immodest and babbling women.

Do you not know that the good Archbishop

Is likely to arrive at any moment?

The crowds in the streets will be cheering and cheering,

You go on croaking like frogs in the treetops:

But frogs at least can be cooked and eaten.

Whatever you are afraid of, in your craven apprehension,

Let me ask you at the least to put on pleasant faces,

And give a hearty welcome to our good Archbishop.

[
Enter
T
HOMAS
]

T
HOMAS
.
Peace. And let them be, in their exaltation.

They speak better than they know, and beyond your understanding.

They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer.

They know and do not know, that action is suffering

And suffering is action. Neither does the agent suffer

Nor the patient act. But both are fixed

In an eternal action, an eternal patience

To which all must consent that it may be willed

And which all must suffer that they may will it,

That the pattern may subsist, for the pattern is the action

And the suffering, that the wheel may turn and still

Be forever still.

S
ECOND
P
RIEST
.
O my Lord, forgive me, I did not see you coming,

Engrossed by the chatter of these foolish women.

Forgive us, my Lord, you would have had a better welcome

If we had been sooner prepared for the event.

But your Lordship knows that seven years of waiting,

Seven years of prayer, seven years of emptiness,

Have better prepared our hearts for your coming,

Than seven days could make ready Canterbury.

However, I will have fires laid in all your rooms

To take the chill off our English December,

Your Lordship now being used to a better climate.

Your Lordship will find your rooms in order as you left them.

T
HOMAS
.
And will try to leave them in order as I find them.

I am more than grateful for all your kind attentions.

These are small matters. Little rest in Canterbury

With eager enemies restless about us.

Rebellious bishops, York, London, Salisbury,

Would have intercepted our letters,

Filled the coast with spies and sent to meet me

Some who hold me in bitterest hate.

By God’s grace aware of their prevision

I sent my letters on another day,

Had fair crossing, found at Sandwich

Broc, Warenne, and the Sheriff of Kent,

Those who had sworn to have my head from me

Only John, the Dean of Salisbury,

Fearing for the King’s name, warning against treason,

Made them hold their hands. So for the time

We are unmolested.

F
IRST
P
RIEST
.
               But do they follow after?

T
HOMAS
.
For a little time the hungry hawk

Will only soar and hover, circling lower,

Waiting excuse, pretence, opportunity.

End will be simple, sudden, God-given.

Meanwhile the substance of our first act

Will be shadows, and the strife with shadows.

Heavier the interval than the consummation.

All things prepare the event. Watch.

[
Enter
F
IRST
T
EMPTER
]

F
IRST
T
EMPTER
.
You see, my Lord, I do not wait upon ceremony:

Here I have come, forgetting all acrimony,

Hoping that your present gravity

Will find excuse for my humble levity

Remembering all the good time past.

Your Lordship won’t despise an old friend out of favour?

Old Tom, gay Tom, Becket of London,

Your Lordship won’t forget that evening on the river

When the King, and you and I were all friends together?

Friendship should be more than biting Time can sever.

What, my Lord, now that you recover

Favour with the King, shall we say that summer’s over

Or that the good time cannot last?

Fluting in the meadows, viols in the hall,

Laughter and apple-blossom floating on the water,

Singing at nightfall, whispering in chambers,

Fires devouring the winter season,

Eating up the darkness, with wit and wine and wisdom!

Now that the King and you are in amity,

Clergy and laity may return to gaiety,

Mirth and sportfulness need not walk warily.

T
HOMAS
.
You talk of seasons that are past. I remember

Not worth forgetting.

T
EMPTER
.
                         And of the new season.

Spring has come in winter. Snow in the branches

Shall float as sweet as blossoms. Ice along the ditches

Mirror the sunlight. Love in the orchard

Send the sap shooting. Mirth matches melancholy.

T
HOMAS
.
We do not know very much of the future

Except that from generation to generation

The same things happen again and again.

Men learn little from others’ experience.

But in the life of one man, never

The same time returns. Sever

The cord, shed the scale. Only

The fool, fixed in his folly, may think

He can turn the wheel on which he turns.

T
EMPTER
.
My Lord, a nod is as good as a wink.

A man will often love what he spurns.

For the good times past, that are come again

I am your man.

T
HOMAS
.
               Not in this train

Look to your behaviour. You were safer

Think of penitence and follow your master.

T
EMPTER
.
Not at this gait!

If you go so fast, others may go faster.

Your Lordship is too proud!

The safest beast is not the one that roars most loud,

This was not the way of the King our master!

You were not used to be so hard upon sinners

When they were your friends. Be easy, man!

The easy man lives to eat the best dinners.

Take a friend’s advice. Leave well alone,

Or your goose may be cooked and eaten to the bone.

T
HOMAS
.
You come twenty years too late.