Collected Poems 1931-74

by Lawrence Durrell

  1973/1973

  BY THE SEA

  Thumb quantum

  Thumb quantum

  The fingerdrum drubs, the fingerdrum taps,

  We rise into the navy sky

  The islands booming with skulls.

  With her a feast of white figs,

  Cold water crystal on sand beaches,

  A late moonrise seeming impromptu.

  One could happily die here, perhaps one has,

  Too little said about these matters.

  One almond-eyed medusa nods

  Her fine blond Circassian hair

  Twisted up in the shape of an acorn.

  With eyes pistachio green to grey,

  Like an enamel medal of ancient Greece,

  But verifiable and kind to touch.

  1973/1973

  CICADA

  Transparent sheath of the dead cicada,

  The eyes stay open like a dead Jap,

  Financially no spongy parts to putrefy

  Simply snap off the scaly integument of mica.

  You could make a tiny violin of such a body,

  Lanterns for elves, varnish into brooches

  And wear by lamplight this transparent stare of noon,

  In gold or some such precious allegorical metal,

  Which spells out the dead wine which follows soon.

  1973/1973

  THE MUSES

  Time spillers, pain killers, all such pretty women,

  Whose tribal name so nearly rhymes with semen.

  In dull male dough they infiltrate their leaven,

  Which, though the spawn of hell, tastes like pure heaven.

  Time wasters, food tasters, bachelor haters,

  They hunt with the science of the great predators.

  In their mad dreams of one-and-onliness

  They feel the self-murder of Kant’s loneliness.

  Critics of Pure Reason they don’t reck,

  The quivering kiss, the bullet in the neck.

  1973/1973

  CERTAIN LANDFALLS

  That last summer quite definitely the dead

  Began to outnumber the living in his village.

  He would always remember the month exactly,

  Hopes capsized and grey hairs abounding.

  And so the dead with all their precious talk

  Stacked up inside them, loaves of whole wit,

  Long roes of gossip or pomegranate seeds

  Of poetry peeping out of wounds, decamped.

  Gone the vainglory of beautiful

  Skin and regular teeth when the sun brought out

  The wine’s brown perfume on the rocks

  Of old blood mellowed in Adam’s evils.

  In this small walled garden, apricots falling,

  He stirred about in the embers of his time

  Under a sky the colour of elephant hide.

  He now knew she did not like his house

  Nor his style of life buried in the hills,

  With monotony, the artist’s only aliment.

  Silences bruised by the echoes of dead talk,

  Foliage of voices, fists of forgotten applause.

  No, she did not like the place at all.

  Cold will be the wind now, dark the storms,

  Ending of a visionary delight. Why to care?

  His art would marry the image it deserved,

  As a sculptor’s hand breaking the soft clay

  Of old desires; mind you, the very same hand

  That broke the dark bread to model hunger,

  A presage of the faultless child in him.

  1980/1974

  A PATCH OF DUST

  In all this summer dust O Vincent

  You passed through my loyal mind,

  And I saw the candlepower of stored light,

  Like water in the humps of camels or in

  Canopies of fire smouldering in volcanoes

  Like ancient prostitutes or doges.

  Memory giving the ikon of love a morbid kiss!

  It doesn’t matter; in the silent night

  Fragrant with the death of so many friends, poets,

  The major darkness comes and art beckons

  With its quiet seething of the writer’s mind.

  Your great canvas humming like a top.

  But the terror for me is that you didn’t realise

  That love, even in inferior versions, is a kind

  Of merciful self-repair. O Vincent you were blind.

  Like some great effluent performer

  Discharging whole rivers into hungry seas.

  I do not mean the other kind of love,

  Born in newspapers like always exchanging

  Greasy false teeth. Not of that kind.

  In these shining canvases I commend

  A fatal diagnosis of light, more light;

  Famous last words to reach the inessential.

  They seem to assume that death is unnecessary

  And in discreet images make ethical strife stationary,

  Signposting always desires at bay.

  Goodness! It is canny in its way.

  Because the irritation of light leads onwards

  Towards blindness which is truth, an unknowing,

  And the constraints of unlucky companionship

  Hinder like a foolish marriage. One must act.

  It is no good explaining things with unction,

  You will never get beyond their primal function.

  But you directly saw the splendour of the

  Dying light redeemed. Have mercy on us!

  You went mad, they say, the companionship

  Of angels grew too loud to bear. You felt

  That what was done was quite beyond repair.

  So madness, why not? An irrational respect

  For tin or pincushions, a whole architecture.

  The girl you loved was grave yet debonair

  Like the French whore I live with I suppose.

  And dying of self-importance is the usual thing;

  The creed of loneliness is all that’s left,

  And art, the jack o’lantern to console and punish.

  All this I saw in a patch of dust at St Remy

  During the fatal year of 1974.

  1980/1974

  POSTMARK

  So back to a Paris grubby as a bowel

  Where mated to some second-hand man

  In foreign loves recycled by the moon

  You’ll be some night the countess of somewhat;

  A cocktail face beheaded by the smile.

  Wanted as orchids may be in a season

  Then left as cool as the perfumed marbles of Rome.

  In some default of reason you may hurt

  For tunes the small particulars recall.

  The globe is mighty but not limitless

  And fame will prevent him from being ever loved,

  While age will stare you out of ownership.

  Allowance made for all self-pitying muses

  Stare from the wide shipwreck of your bed

  And stealthily awake, your version make,

  Count down the stars towards the death of time.

  1980/1974

  IN DEEP GRASS

  A reptile of ancient stars winking,

  The rectangles of lost casements

  But in which country now, remember.

  Such simple conceptions can capsize.

  It would cost heavy postage to signal.

  Yet the magnitude of the sky,

  The Pleiades arise in frozen spray,

  The magnitude of the night sky,

  The magnitude is never: it’s simply all here.

  So lying alone, thinking, in deep grass

  It doesn’t matter much if the mind is

  Howling at the moon, or the old

  Jackal of a fading earth: expressing sorrow.

  Lonely product of a ninepenny womb,

  Full of a fierce psychic reticence

  One gladiator of the simple sense<
br />
  Carving out poetry for his tomb.

  Listen, the cloud-stampede goes south

  In the lumber of a sunset red,

  The skeleton keys of fireflies soon

  Will prick the ancient dark again—

  Deforming logic which was once

  Harmonious but now out of tune.

  You make me feel all loose at the roots;

  Then comes illness, the most acute form

  Of mental laziness to hide oneself in;

  The very precious icy feeling for

  One person, issue of matter, breathing,

  And wearing a final skin, will trade

  Everything for it always, even reason.

  1980/1974

  Index of First Lines

  A Coptic deputation, going to Ethiopia, 1

  A falling mulberry stained this page 1

  A girl has four partners in heraldry, 1

  ‘A penny for your thoughts. I wasn’t joking.’ 1

  A philosopher in search of human values 1

  A reptile of ancient stars winking, 1

  A song in the valley of Nemea: 1

  A thirst for green, because too long deprived 1

  A treatise of the subtle Body, 1

  A winter night again, and the moon 1

  About loving, and such kindred matters 1

  Absent from you, I say: 1

  ‘After a lifetime of writing acrostics …’ 1

  After twenty years another meeting, 1

  Ah! French poet, confrere, who remaineth so 1

  ‘Alexander was in love with Athens.’ 1

  All airs and graces, their prevailing wind 1

  All cities plains and people 1

  All my favourite characters have been 1

  All our religions founder, you 1

  All summer watch the children in the public garden, 1

  All the religions of the dust can tell— 1

  America America 1, 2

  An old man tamed his garden with wet clay 1

  And all this standing butter-coloured flood 1

  And dost thou then, Roderick, once more raising 1

  And, if I smile 1

  And later, Spring, which compels these separations 1

  And so at last goodbye, 1

  And to-day death comes to the house. 1

  Anonymous hand, record one afternoon, 1

  Aphros Aphrodite the sperm-born one 1

  ‘Arcadia is original in a particular sense.’ 1

  ‘Art adorns.’ Thus Galbo. 1

  As for him, he’ll die one day for sure. 1

  As husband is laid down beside the lute, 1

  Ash-heap of four cultures, 1

  At Corinth one has forgiven 1

  At four the dawn mistral usually 1

  At Funchal the blackish yeast 1

  At insular café tables under awnings 1

  At last the serious days of summer, 1

  At last with four peroxide whores 1

  At long last the wind has decided for itself, 1

  At the hub of Empire little Eros stands 1

  At this the last yet second meeting, 1

  Aunt Prudence, she was the eye of the needle. 1

  Banished from the old roof-tree Patmos 1

  Be silent, old frog. 1

  Beseech the great horned toad 1

  Bombers bursting like pods go down 1

  Born of torpid country-folk 1

  Bosnia. November. And the mountain roads 1

  Bound here to the great axis of the sex, 1

  Bowed like a foetus at the long bar sit, 1

  By divination came the Dorians, 1

  By maunding and imposture Helen came, 1

  By the waters of Buda 1

  Call back the stars. They are too many, Lord. 1

  Can you remember, oh so long ago, 1

  Capacities in doubt and lovers failing? 1

  Capes hereabouts and promontories hold 1

  Chemists might compare their properties: 1

  Child, in the first few hours I lived with you, 1

  Colours have no memory, friend, 1

  Commission silence for a line or two, 1

  Come, meet me in some dead café— 1

  Connive, Connive, 1

  Cornelia, dry your cheek, poor shade, 1

  Crude man in his coat of nerves and hair, 1

  curled like a hoop in sleep 1

  Cut from the joints of this immense 1

  Dark birds in nature redevise 1

  Darkness, divulge my share in light 1

  Dear, behind the choking estuaries 1

  Deep waters hereabouts. 1

  Delicate desire, 1

  DESPATCH ADGENERAL PUBLICS EXTHE WEST 1

  Deus loci your provinces extend 1

  Down the wide shadow-streets of the city, 1

  Down there below the temple 1

  Early one morning unremarked 1

  Even then was he somehow able 1

  Faces may settle sadly 1

  Fangbrand was here once, 1

  Far away once, in Avignon, the Grey Penitents 1

  Finally I am here. Conon in exile on Andros 1

  Find time hanging, cut it down 1

  First come the Infantry in scented bodices, 1

  First draw the formal circle O 1

  For how long now have we not nibbled 1

  Four card-players: an ikon of the saint 1

  Four small nouns I put to pasture, 1

  Fraudulent perhaps in that they gave 1

  Friends, Humans, Englishmen! 1

  Friends, Romans, countrymen, 1

  From a winter of vampires he selects one, 1

  From recollection’s fund 1

  From the dark viands of the church 1

  From the intellect’s grosser denominations 1

  From this glass gallows in famous entertainment, 1

  From Travancore to Tripoli 1

  Further from him whose head of woman’s hair 1

  Garcia, when you drew off those two 1

  Guilt can lie heavier than house of tortoise. 1

  Gum, oats and syrup 1

  Hatch me a gorilla’s egg 1

  He is the man who makes notes, 1

  Heloise and Abelard 1

  Her dust has pawned kings of gold, 1

  Her sea limps up here twice a day 1

  Here in the hollow curvature of the world, 1

  Here is a man who says: Let there be light. 1

  Here on the curve of the embalming winter, 1

  How can we find the substance of the lie; 1

  How elapsing our women 1

  How loud the perfume of common gin 1

  Huit heures… honte heures… supper will be cold. 1

  Hush the old bones their vegetable sleep, 1

  I, a slave, chained to an oar of poem, 1

  I am this spring, 1

  I built a house, far in a wilderness, 1

  I cannot fix the very moment or the hour, 1

  I cannot read Pliny without terror. 1

  I close an hinge on the memorial days. 1

  I found your Horace with the writing in it; 1

  I have brought my life to this point, 1

  I have buried my wife under a dolmen, 1

  I have nibbled the mystical fruit. Cover me. 1

  I have set my wife’s lip under the bandage, 1

  I have sipped from the flask of resurrection, 1

  I have tasted my quantum of misfortune, 1, 1

  I like to see so much the old man’s loves, 1

  I, per se I, I sing on 1

  I recall her by a freckle of gold 1

  I shall die one day I suppose 1

  I should set about memorising this little room, 1

  I turned and found a new-moon at my feet: 1

  I was a vagabond; sunset and moon 1

  I who have lived in death, hemmed by the spears, 1

  I would be rid of you who bind me so, 1

  If I say what I honestly mean 1


  If seen by many minds at once your image 1

  If space curves how much the more thought, 1

  If there was a cake you’d take it 1

  Image, Image, Image answer 1

  Image of our own dust in wine! 1

  Imagine we are the living who inhabit 1

  In all the sad seduction of your ways 1

  In all this summer dust O Vincent 1

  In an island of bitter lemons 1

  In the museums you can find her, 1

  In youth the decimal days for spending: 1

  Incision of a comb in hair: lips stained 1

  Indifferent history! In such a place 1

  Instead of this or that fictitious woman 1

  It would be untrue to say that The Art of Marriage 1

  Jupiter, so lucky when he lay 1

  Katharine, Queen Eleanor’s shadow hovers over you 1

  Known before the expurgation of gods 1

  Ladies and gentlemen: or better still, 1

  Land of Doubleday and Dutton 1

  Last night I bowed before a destiny, 1

  Last of the great autumnal capitals 1

  Late seventeenth, a timepiece rusted by dew, 1

  Later Ariadne read of The Universe, 1

  Later some of these heroic worshippers 1

  Le saltimbanque is coming with 1

  Left like an unknown’s breath on mirrors, 1

  Livin’ in a functional greenhouse 1

  Look, on that hill we met 1

  Lost, you may not smile upon me now: 1

  Love on a leave-of-absence came, 1

  Madness confides its own theology, 1

  Mark has crossed over to Mount Olivet, 1

  Miss Willow, secretly known as ‘tit’… 1

  Monday escapes destruction. 1

  Mothers and sculptors work 1

  My love on Wednesday letting fall her body 1

  My lovely left-handed lover 1