Complete Poems

by Cecil Day-Lewis

  Slowly they nosed ahead, while under the chill North-wester

  Nervous the sea crawled and twitched like the skin of a beast

  That dreams of the chase, the kill, the blood-beslavered feast:

  They too, the light-hearted sailors, dreamed of a fine fiesta,

  Flags and their children waving, when they won home from the east.

  Vague as images seen in a misted glass or the vision

  Of crystal-gazer, the ships huddled, receded, neared,

  Threading the weird fog-maze that coiled their funnels and bleared

  Day’s eye. They were glad of the fog till Galdames lost position

  – Their convoy, precious in life and metal – and disappeared.

  But still they held their course, the confident ear-ringed captains,

  Unerring towards the landfall, nor guessed how the land lay,

  How the guardian fog was a guide to lead them all astray.

  For now, at a wink, the mist rolled up like the film that curtains

  A saurian’s eye; and into the glare of an evil day

  Bizkaya, Guipuzkoa, Nabara, and the little

  Donostia stepped at intervals; and sighted, alas,

  Blocking the sea and sky a mountain they might not pass,

  An isle thrown up volcanic and smoking, a giant in metal

  Astride their path – the rebel cruiser, Canarias.

  A ship of ten thousand tons she was, a heavyweight fighter

  To the cocky bantam trawlers: and under her armament

  Of eight- and four-inch guns there followed obedient

  Towards Pasajes a prize just seized, an Estonian freighter

  Laden with arms the exporters of death to Spain had sent.

  A hush, the first qualm of conflict, falls on the cruiser’s burnished

  Turrets, the trawlers’ grimy decks: fiercer the lime-

  Light falls, and out of the solemn ring the late mists climb,

  And ship to ship the antagonists gaze at each other atonished

  Across the quaking gulf of the sea for a moment’s time.

  The trawlers’ men had no chance or wish to elude the fated

  Encounter. Freedom to these was natural pride that runs

  Hot as the blood, their climate and heritage, dearer than sons.

  Bizkaya, Guipuzkoa, knowing themselves outweighted,

  Drew closer to draw first blood with their pairs of four-inch guns.

  Aboard Canarias the German gun-layers stationed

  Brisk at their intricate batteries – guns and men both trained

  To a hair in accuracy, aimed at a pitiless end –

  Fired, and the smoke rolled forth over the unimpassioned

  Face of a day where nothing certain but death remained.

  PHASE TWO

  The sound of the first salvo skimmed the ocean and thumped

  Cape Machichaco’s granite ribs: it rebounded where

  The salt-sprayed trees grow tough from wrestling the wind: it jumped

  From isle to rocky isle: it was heard by women while

  They walked to shrine or market, a warning they must fear.

  But, beyond their alarm, as

  Though that sound were also a signal for fate to strip

  Luck’s last green shoot from the falling stock of the Basques, Galdames

  Emerged out of the mist that lingered to the west

  Under the reeking muzzles of the rebel battleship:

  Which instantly threw five shells over her funnel, and threw

  Her hundred women and children into a slaughter-yard panic

  On the deck they imagined smoking with worse than the foggy dew,

  So that Galdames rolled as they slipped, clawed, trampled, reeled

  Away from the gape of the cruiser’s guns. A spasm galvanic,

  Fear’s chemistry, shocked the women’s bodies, a moment before

  Huddled like sheep in a mist, inert as bales of rag,

  A mere deck-cargo; but more

  Than furies now, for they stormed Galdames’ bridge and swarmed

  Over her captain and forced him to run up the white flag.

  Signalling the Estonian, ‘Heave-to’, Canarias steamed

  Leisurely over to make sure of this other prize:

  Over-leisurely was her reckoning – she never dreamed

  The Estonian in that pause could be snatched from her shark-shape jaws

  By ships of minnow size.

  Meanwhile Nabara and Guipuzkoa, not reluctant

  For closer grips while their guns and crews were still entire,

  Thrust forward: twice Guipuzkoa with a deadly jolt was rocked, and

  The sea spat up in geysers of boiling foam, as the cruiser’s

  Heavier guns boxed them in a torrid zone of fire.

  And now the little Donostia who lay with her 75’s

  Dumb in the offing – her weapons against that leviathan

  Impotent as pen-knives –

  Witnessed a bold manœuvre, a move of genius, never

  In naval history told. She saw Bizkaya run

  Ahead of her consorts, a berserk atom of steel, audacious,

  Her signal-flags soon to flutter like banderillas, straight

  Towards the Estonian speeding, a young bull over the spacious

  And foam-distraught arena, till the sides of the freight-ship screen her

  From Canarias that will see the point of her charge too late.

  ‘Who are you and where are you going?’ the flags of Bizkaya questioned.

  ‘Carrying arms and forced to go to Pasajes,’ replied

  The Estonian. ‘Follow me to harbour.’ ‘Cannot, am threatened.’

  Bizkaya’s last word – ‘Turn at once!’ – and she points her peremptory guns

  Against the freighter’s mountainous flanks that blankly hide

  This fluttering language and flaunt of signal insolence

  From the eyes of Canarias. At last the rebels can see

  That the two ships’ talk meant a practical joke at their expense:

  They see the Estonian veering away, to Bermeo steering,

  Bizkaya under her lee.

  (To the Basques that ship was a tonic, for she carried some million rounds

  Of ammunition: to hearts grown sick with hope deferred

  And the drain of their country’s wounds

  She brought what most they needed in face of the aid evaded

  And the cold delay of those to whom freedom was only a word.)3

  Owlish upon the water sat the Canarias

  Mobbed by those darting trawlers, and her signals blinked in vain

  After the freighter, that still she believed too large to pass

  Into Bermeo’s port – a prize she fondly thought,

  When she’d blown the trawlers out of the water, she’d take again.

  Brisk at their intricate batteries the German gun-layers go

  About death’s business, knowing their longer reach must foil

  The impetus, break the heart of the government ships: each blow

  Deliberately they aim, and tiger-striped with flame

  Is the jungle mirk of the smoke as their guns leap and recoil.

  The Newfoundland trawlers feel

  A hail and hurricane the like they have never known

  In all their deep-sea life: they wince at the squalls of steel

  That burst on their open decks, rake them and leave them wrecks,

  But still they fight on long into the sunless afternoon.

  – Fought on, four guns against the best of the rebel navy,

  Until Guipuzkoa’s crew could stanch the fires no more

  That gushed from her gashes and seeped nearer the magazine. Heavy

  At heart they turned away for the Nervion that day:

  Their ship, Guipuzkoa, wore

  Flame’s rose on her heart like a decoration of highest honour

  As listing she reeled into Las Arenas; and in a row

&n
bsp; On her deck there lay, smoke-palled, the oriflamme’s crackling banner

  Above them, her dead – a quarter of the fishermen who had fought her –

  Men of the Basque country, the Mar Cantabrico.

  PHASE THREE

  And now the gallant Nabara was left in the ring alone,

  The sky hollow around her, the fawning sea at her side:

  But the ear-ringed crew in their berets stood to the guns, and cried

  A fresh defiance down

  The ebb of the afternoon, the battle’s darkening tide.

  Honour was satisfied long since; they had held and harried

  A ship ten times their size; they well could have called it a day.

  But they hoped, if a little longer they kept the cruiser in play,

  Galdames with the wealth of life and metal she carried

  Might make her getaway.

  Canarias, though easily she outpaced and out-gunned her,

  Finding this midge could sting

  Edged off, and beneath a wedge of smoke steamed in a ring

  On the rim of the trawler’s range, a circular storm of thunder.

  But always Nabara turned her broadside, manœuvring

  To keep both guns on the target, scorning safety devices.

  Slower now battle’s tempo, irregular the beat

  Of gunfire in the heart

  Of the afternoon, the distempered sky sank to the crisis,

  Shell-shocked the sea tossed and hissed in delirious heat.

  The battle’s tempo slowed, for the cruiser could take her time,

  And the guns of Nabara grew

  Red-hot, and of fifty-two Basque seamen had been her crew

  Many were dead already, the rest filthy with grime

  And their comrades’ blood, weary with wounds all but a few.

  Between two fires they fought, for the sparks that flashing spoke

  From the cruiser’s thunder-bulk were answered on their own craft

  By traitor flames that crawled out of every cranny and rift

  Blinding them all with smoke.

  At half-past four Nabara was burning fore and aft.

  What buoyancy of will

  Was theirs to keep her afloat, no vessel now but a sieve –

  So jarred and scarred, the rivets starting, no inch of her safe

  From the guns of the foe that wrapped her in a cyclone of shrieking steel!

  Southward the sheltering havens showed clear, the cliffs and the surf

  Familiar to them from childhood, the shapes of a life still dear:

  But dearer still to see

  Those shores insured for life from the shadow of tyranny.

  Freedom was not on their lips; it was what made them endure,

  A steel spring in the yielding flesh, a thirst to be free.

  And now from the little Donostia that lay with her 75’s

  Dumb in the offing, they saw Nabara painfully lower

  A boat, which crawled like a shattered crab slower and slower

  Towards them. They cheered the survivors, thankful to save these lives

  At least. They saw each rower,

  As the boat dragged alongside, was wounded – the oars they held

  Dripping with blood, a bloody skein reeled out in their wake:

  And they swarmed down the rope-ladders to rescue these men so weak

  From wounds they must be hauled

  Aboard like babies. And then they saw they had made a mistake.

  For, standing up in the boat,

  A man of that grimy boat’s-crew hailed them: ‘Our officer asks

  You give us your bandages and all your water-casks,

  Then run for Bermeo. We’re going to finish this game of pelota.’

  Donostia’s captain begged them with tears to escape: but the Basques

  Would play their game to the end.

  They took the bandages, and cursing at his delay

  They took the casks that might keep the fires on their ship at bay;

  And they rowed back to Nabara, trailing their blood behind

  Over the water, the sunset and crimson ebb of their day.

  For two hours more they fought, while Nabara beneath their feet

  Was turned to a heap of smouldering scrap-iron. Once again

  The flames they had checked a while broke out. When the forward gun

  Was hit, they turned about

  Bringing the after gun to bear. They fought in pain

  And the instant knowledge of death: but the waters filling their riven

  Ship could not quench the love that fired them. As each man fell

  To the deck, his body took fire as if death made visible

  That burning spirit. For two more hours they fought, and at seven

  They fired their last shell.

  Of her officers all but one were dead. Of her engineers

  All but one were dead. Of the fifty-two that had sailed

  In her, all were dead but fourteen – and each of these half killed

  With wounds. And the night-dew fell in a hush of ashen tears,

  And Nabara’s tongue was stilled.

  Southward the sheltering havens grew dark, the cliffs and the green

  Shallows they knew; where their friends had watched them as evening wore

  To a glowing end, who swore

  Nabara must show a white flag now, but saw instead the fourteen

  Climb into their matchwood boat and fainting pull for the shore.

  Canarias lowered a launch that swept in a greyhound’s curve

  Pitiless to pursue

  And cut them off. But that bloodless and all-but-phantom crew

  Still gave no soft concessions to fate: they strung their nerve

  For one last fling of defiance, they shipped their oars and threw

  Hand-grenades at the launch as it circled about to board them.

  But the strength of the hands that had carved them a hold on history

  Failed them at last: the grenades fell short of the enemy,

  Who grappled and overpowered them,

  While Nabara sank by the stern in the hushed Cantabrian sea.

  * * *

  They bore not a charmed life. They went into battle foreseeing

  Probable loss, and they lost. The tides of Biscay flow

  Over the obstinate bones of many, the winds are sighing

  Round prison walls where the rest are doomed like their ships to rust –

  Men of the Basque country, the Mar Cantabrico.

  Simple men who asked of their life no mythical splendour,

  They loved its familiar ways so well that they preferred

  In the rudeness of their heart to die rather than to surrender …

  Mortal these words and the deed they remember, but cast a seed

  Shall flower for an age when freedom is man’s creative word.

  Freedom was more than a word, more than the base coinage

  Of politicians who hiding behind the skirts of peace

  They had defiled, gave up that country to rack and carnage:

  For whom, indelibly stamped with history’s contempt,

  Remains but to haunt the blackened shell of their policies.

  For these I have told of, freedom was flesh and blood – a mortal

  Body, the gun-breech hot to its touch: yet the battle’s height

  Raised it to love’s meridian and held it awhile immortal;

  And its light through time still flashes like a star’s that has turned to ashes,

  Long after Nabara’s passion was quenched in the sea’s heart.

  1 The episode upon which this poem is based is related in G. L. Steer’s book The Tree of Gernika about the Spanish Civil War.

  2 In italics are the words of Walsingham after the sea-battle between English and Basques in 1350.

  3 Cf. Byron’s comments upon ‘Non-Intervention’ in The Age of Bronze:

  Lone, lost, abandoned in their utmost need

&n
bsp; By Christians, unto whom they gave their creed.

  The desolated lands, the ravaged isle,

  The fostered feud encouraged to beguile,

  The aid evaded, and the cold delay

  Prolonged but in the hope to make a prey: –

  These, these shall tell the tale, and Greece can show

  The false friend worse than the infuriate foe.

  Spring Song

  Floods and the voluble winds

  Have warned the dead away:

  In swaying copse the willows

  Wave their magic wands.

  The sun is here to deal

  With the dull decay we felt:

  In field and square he orders

  The vague shadows to heel.

  The licence is renewed

  And all roads lead to summer:

  Good girls come to grief,

  Fish to the springy rod.

  Our thoughts like sailplanes go

  To and fro sauntering

  Along fantastic cloud-streets

  On warmer currents’ flow.

  A larger appetite,

  A tautening of the will,

  The wild pony tamed,

  The common gorse alight.

  Now the bee finds the pollen,

  The pale boy a cure:

  Who cares if in the sequel

  Cocky shall be crestfallen?

  Night Piece

  Down the night-scented borders of sleep

  They walk hand in hand, the lovers

  Whom day abashed like the cross

  Eye of the rheumatic keeper.

  They are laid in the grass, and above

  Their limbs a syringa blossoms1

  In brief and bridal white,

  Under whose arch of moonshine

  The impotent is made straight,

  The ice-queen delighted,

  And the virgin loves to moan,

  And the schoolboy finds the equator.

  Here too the dark plays tricks

  On some of accredited glory.

  The chairman’s forgot his speech:

  The general meets his victims,

  And the pale wounds weep once more:

  The archbishop is preaching

  Stark naked: standing alone

  Among his people, the dictator

  Glares round for a bodyguard.

  All the fears cold-shouldered at noonday

  Flock to these shades, and await

  In displeasure those who ignored them.

  1 See note on Father to Sons (Pegasus) p. 514

  The Three Cloud-Maidens

  Says winding Trent