The cliffs it seemed had shaken out their ridges,
The ridges had shuddered off their stones like houses
And anything rubbed finer than house-size
Hurled away quick by water or wind-torrent.
So nothing grew, like a beach of pebbles
And they nits on a mouseskin. Seventy miles
Of this from the camp they reached a peak
Where they could see a green tree-clad mountain
Higher and more thunderous than the rest
With jungle at its roots and temperate pine
In broad bands up its flanks
And scudding misty snowland at its crown,
The peak missing in the sky.
The jungle was cleft in gorges full of water
Rushing along like busy traffic
The trees seemed full of people in bright colours
Chattering and laughing among the man-sized leaves,
The boles marched away among the undergrowth of bushes
Linked to the tree-tops with swinging vines
And there seemed a flow of shapes just out of sight
Where the beasts slunk or the sunlight scattered,
They couldn’t tell. They had to build bridges
And toiled easily being men of war
With faces set at midnight, up, till it was cooler
To the temperate terraces, and the tang of pine.
There by a cliff and a new swinging bridge
They set camp for a day and rested
Having been a week up on these slopes
And glad to have high level ground beneath them.
And rested, and yet could not rest,
Not for worry of their commander’s bride
Untouched except by pleasant jests
But for something just out of hearing
A sort of pipe like bats or twitter in the ears
A tinkling like hanging shapes of glass
And to straining eyes a flutter through the trees,
A waterfall perhaps on a gusty ledge,
A broad, spasmodic waterfall, or a plantation
Of flowering bushes, maybe, whose colours
Turned over, appeared or disappeared in wind,
In the soft wind through the warm pines,
And, yes, just at the edge of scent too
Perhaps, just, a new perfume?
It tickled at their senses all that night
As though they saw and heard and smelt
Through a deep silver bowl of reflections
And just at the rim something moved
Glimpsed stretching, hinting and – teasing?
But being the men they were all obeyed
And got a good night’s sleep among the needles
With the portable shrine set up among them
And the veiled god watching over their prayers
And watching through the night of – tickling?
Night and their dreams and long soldierly celibacy
Gave them the answer by guessing long before
The wooden fretted houses and broad walks
Of avenues trained in shade; the second guess too
Of flowering bushes had been correct but
In such profusion and piled high
In banks and cloudworks of perfume
And many flowers to their amazed
And eye-rubbing senses had detached
And glided in shapes between their bushes,
Thronged avenues with their scent and with
Their high flower-speech talked. They sang
And laughed too; this took all their surprise
From them as well for none showed through
When the band of men went up to a dawdling group
That had stopped to stare and explained their business.
‘Your wife has been here over a month,’
The first words, and no surprise,
‘Just now resting in bed for the child
Is strong and tires her with his jumping,
But you can go and look at her.’
He had lost his anger with surprise,
His senses were so full perhaps
And let himself be led across a courtyard
And through a stone door and through wooden gates
Through an enclosure open to the pine-patterned sky
Where flowers in banks and flower-patterned couches
Vied in profusion with all their colours.
Their air was heavy with all their colours
And the cries of rejoicing of the bees
And among them all in that enclosure
One white flower raised her head eating
And smiled over creamy plums and gourds
And signed for him to leave.
The first woman said:
‘Some of us have been here ten years already,
While your wife has only just arrived.
This is where our master lives. He is a match
Face to face for a hundred armed men even.
We must go behind his back, where his shadow is.
Slip away before he comes back but let us have
Forty gallons of strong wine, several dozen
Catties of hemp, and ten dogs
For him to eat. That will hold him.
Come at noon, no earlier, ten days from now.
Now leave quickly.’
Back to their camp on the lowest terrace
To be over-rested and tormented,
Tinklings and flashes through the trees,
Thoughts at night how they might send down a party
Of flowered silken night-visitors,
And thunder growling from the summit
And the nature of the god keeping them back.
At last ten days had moved along the pine-needle floor
In sunblades, and quiet-walking they returned
With strong liquor, dogs and skeins of hemp.
The woman said:
‘Our master is very wise and godlike
And a great drinker and likes
To try out stupidity by drinking.
He loves to test his strength when he is silly
And gets us, laughing at us, to tie him down
To his couch with silks all twisted
Then he frees himself with a leap.
But once we bound him
In silks twisted in threes together
And it took him two leaps to get up.
His body is like iron, but he protects his groin.
We think hemp within the silk will keep him down.’
She pointed to a gorge: ‘Hide there – it is the food-store.
Be patient and quiet. Put the wine by the flowers
And tether all ten dogs
At the fringes of the forest-walk.’
They crouched under cheeses, salted joints and bales,
And did not like the salted joints, nor waiting
Like food among food. Late that afternoon
A something like a streamer of white silk
That seemed painted across with black letters
Fluttered from a distant peak
Straight to a cave just there on the hillside.
After a pause a fine old man
Six foot with a long white beard
Emerged all dressed in white robes
With a peeled staff in his hand
Walking firmly and with dignity
And attended by the women.
At the sight of the dogs he gave a great start
Then leapt on one tearing it limb from limb
Amid the squealing barks and bounding pack
Tethers cracking like whips but holding
Stuffing his mouth full of slippery flesh
Spitting the fur out stuffing the pink
Dog after dog until they’d gone
Then rounded on the women grinning
Patting a new paunch, laughing.
The smiling women offered him wine from jade cups
Beard black as a young man’s with it
Clotted to the sleeves, and the women
Gathered around and sat down with the wine-jugs
Joking and laughing as they must have done
At many feasts of this kind. When in the sun
He’d drunk several pints of wine, they helped
Him in, the women, deep into the cave
And sounds of merriment and laughter
Singing and the gong-sound
Of the master’s voice wound out. He seemed
To speak like a chorus of clear frosty deep voices,
Like a chime of gongs. He laughed to split their ears,
A boulder fell and bounded off down the mountain,
The women chimed and tinkled, against his,
It seemed, very far away and faint.
The cave-mouth like a pool of ink.
The cave-mouth like a pool of ink, and soon
Shadows and lights gathered in it
And round the corner torch-bearing women
Their shadows bending like leathern shapes
Appeared, beckoning them in.
They drew swords and walked cautiously
Through the rock, shadows flexing over its wall.
Around the turn the tunnel fattened suddenly
And was a blaze of light and warm air
And here were flowers in banks too, cut flowers
Withering a little in the heat, and on a flowered couch
Tied by silk garments caught in stout knots
Tied by the corded arms by cords as thick
Cords of flowers that bulged and strained
Glaring, an ape, a white-skinned ape.
Or looked like an ape. In his prime
At the height of his powers whatever it was
Presented to their senses stiff with their limits
A hale old man, and now, declining, an ape
With white lips spread thin on its great jaws
And sparkling teeth, and the beard that rolled to its chest
Abundant fur, now entwined with flowers Crushed by his heavy straining.
The soldiers fell on it with their blades driving
Their brows set at blackest midnight
But the blades rebounded as though they had
Attacked boulders – one laid his own shoulder open
With clanging and ringing. Alas
They remembered as the ape strained like the mountainside
Itself in its basketwork of torrents
And he, the husband, sighted along his blade
And plunged it to the roots in the only softness
Through the groin, deep into the bone.
The gentle blood spurted and fell with a patter
On the flowered silk of the bed.
The ape gave a long sigh and said to the husband
‘The will of heaven, the will of heaven –
Otherwise I am immortal. Your wife, your wife
Is pregnant, don’t kill the child, he is
Mine, will be great,’ and died.
That was that. The great body lay like a rock
Ready to crumble to soil, and stiffened fast.
They heaved it outside and down the hill
It rolled faster and faster like a great peeled tree-trunk
Bounded off a cliff into the river
Was whirled away. His caves were full
Of treasure and perfume, weapons and silks,
His women all beauties who feted the men,
And helped them carry the Ape’s goods down the mountain,
A hundred women, all beauties, enough for a small army.
The village was left to rot in the flowers,
The flowers to fruit and reseed and fight the small pines,
The white strong talons sliding from the husk,
And the tinkling of women passed down the mountain,
And left the houses silent and empty.
He had had them all to himself. He wore white silk.
He would not sleep but took his women
Night after night over and over
Bouncing and dashing between the beds. There was but one child,
From the most recent.
The only fruiting, by it he knew
He was to die. He read from a scroll
That went under a stone.
On a clear day he would practice sword-play,
Encircling himself like flashes of fire,
Then a moon-halo. He loved the rich blood of dogs.
He would fly up in the hot noon
As far as the snow-crests, and circle there.
When autumn showed in the flowers, the child leapt,
He knew it was the end. Lightning struck the stone step
And singed his fingers and burnt the scroll.
He looked down at the bride and shed tears a while.
The mountain was his and men had never been there,
The beasts in the jungle had kept them away,
The deep gorges and torrents,
But the beasts were all scared and the men could build bridges,
And this must be the will of heaven.
HUSH! THE SUN
A warm tawny street. Houses buried in trees,
Broad hollow sunshafts, leaves plump as fruit,
Bright russet walls. Hush burns from the heat,
You can see it, it spreads,
Great cars draw away, like threads in silk.
Up through our window, hung on this hush,
The silences rise, and we fall quiet.
Green mowers spray a deep whitening hay-hush,
Boys play in the street, skip and call out.
One trips in a knee a knock down to the quick;
It lets red silence fall like an idling flag.
He is strung on his cry, tongue high in the mouth
Stretched like a mast; his mouth at full gasp
Brimmed with the hush. The air is too thick,
The summer too broad, too easy, too sweet,
It coils down his throat, he hangs crook’d in its honey,
It glints at his lids, he is strung on its flow
Too golden and sunny, too rolling and hazy
For mere blood to shake, too heavy, too lazy.
Great cars draw away, like threads in silk.
QUASIMODO’S MANY BEDS19
My teeth are very bad, but I am not to be blamed for that.
I dreamed darkness until I raised my head
And saw the river flowing away from my mouth.
Dearest, your dress seems to be yellow in this sunshine.
I take the ashes of our bonfire and scoop them
Carefully into letters that say this. You run,
And your skirt, swirling, disturbs the script.
How bad are my teeth? Only as evil as an autumn forest.
Should I have them pulled, and gain gums
Pink as a baby’s, mouth appropriately searching?
The rain rinses my ashes into the turf and
We have a muddy grey paddock. The rain it is
Consecrates a muddy grey bed, I want you to wear grey and ashes.
You stand there still in astonishment
And thus your dress is no longer yellow in the sunshine
But translucent with the rain over the light of your body.
Your great straw hat droops so! Fling it away,
Let’s see you snaky, with the rain hissing.
You are in grey, your hands, your head, are ashy.
I caper in front of you over the sodden sheets
With a banana in my mouth. I am a grey bird, with a yellow beak, whistling.
I offer you my bill, which you decline with white teeth
In an ashen face. You look crippled.
So I pull my beak in imitation down to its creamy flesh.
It is so easy to look crippled. Here is couched black mud
In rich satin cushions. It is washable disfigurement.
We are all mire, and we are all clean, and this is a Quasimodo’s bed.
Great things, like you, or water or sun, mire or ashes,
Or any little thing, pull my heart out of shape
Which is no deformity. I sit, enthroned in mud
Like an opulent person watching. Lounge through your wardrobe.
And come, never fear. I like you far better in black than red.
VII
DR FAUST’S SEA-SPIRAL SPIRIT
(1972)
CHRISTIANA20
for Barbara
That day in the Interpreter’s house, in one of his Significant Rooms,
There was naught but an ugly spider hanging by her hands on the wall,
And it was a spacious room, the best in all the house.
‘Is there but one spider in all this spacious room?’
And then the water stood in my eyes
And I thought how like an ugly creature I looked
In what fine room soever I was,
And my heart crept like a spider.
And my heart crept like a spider into the centre of my web
And I sat bell-tongued there and my sound
Was the silvery look of my rounds and radii,
And I bent and sucked some blood, but I did it
With care and elegance like a crane unloading vessels;
I set myself on damask linen and I was lost to sight there,
And I hugged my legs astride it, wrapping the pearl-bunch round;
I skated on the water with legs of glass, and with candystriped legs
Ran through the dew like green racks of glass cannonball;
And I saw myself hanging with trustful hands
In any room in every house, hanging on by faith
Like wolfhounds that were dwarfs, or stout shaggy oats,
And I wept to have found so much of myself ugly
In the trustful beasts that are jewel-eyed and full of clean machinery,
And thought that many a spacious heart was ugly
And empty without its tip-toe surprise of spiders
Running like cracks in the universe of a smooth white ceiling,
And how a seamless heart is like a stone.
And the Interpreter saw
The stillness of the water standing in her eyes,
And said,
Now you must work on Beelzebub’s black flies for Me.
MINERALS OF CORNWALL, STONES OF CORNWALL
A case of samples
Splinters of information, stones of information,
Drab stones in a drab box, specimens of a distant place,
Granite, galena, talc, lava, kaolin, quartz,
Landscape in a box, under the dull sky of Leeds –
Collected Poems Page 10
