In secret joy, remote from wordly strife.
Great lovers were they, so I like to think,
At rest upon their mountain’s perilous brink.
At St Rémy
By St. Rémy, at parting of the ways,
Two jewels lie, old sculpting of Roman hands,
As thoughts on the background of a giant brain.
Time lingers here; each drop of southern rain
Effaces listless, tardily disbands
The pressing cohorts of forgotten days,
They move to battle still. And in a high
Clear cupola two figures crown the sky,
Placid in noble peace – a conqueror’s mood
Ordained them, eternal witness of great hours;
The summers gild them, and the breath of flowers
Rises about their ardent solitude.
Today the winds assailed them as I stood
In desert groves and winter’s empty bowers.
Saintes Maries-De-La-Mer
They heard God’s radiant voice upon the deserts
Bidding them rise and northern countries seek;
Mary and Mary-Salomé the meek
Set sail with fervent heart to gain new converts,
Traversed those ardent tempests firm with faith,
Landing in wail of wind and furious waves
Where the great Rhone breaks free: their holy graves
Are consecrate and hallowed in ancient death.
The gales of these savage lands now smooth their dreams
In the stern tombs built for them, and at last
Their saintly sorrows are fled into the past;
A crowd kneels at their sanctuary and deems
Repose perpetual cradles these two fair
Adventurous Saintes Maries-de-la-Mer.
By the Dordogne
Leaving Cahors I go through feathery fields
Of ancient mustards golden to the sun,
They sway as if in mockery, where one
Grey steeple rises angrily and shields
A humble village with its shade severe.
Today the Dordogne valley, green and flush
With myriad flowers, slumbers in the hush
Of noon; spring’s coffers have been emptied here.
I pause at sunset on the giant plains,
Where sheaf of pigeons on the wind up-blown
Wheels with fierce feathers through the hurrying skies
That stream above the earth; the evening rains
Hot light on these far furrows that are sown
With growing harvests, green before the eyes.
The Night in Avignon
The city’s politics grow very loud
In this café, and the Provençal crowd
Drifts in, drifts out, while gestures intertwine
Throbbing against the giant mirrors; wine
Goes by on platter, hurrying waiters stand,
Arrested by the intoxicated hand
Of a southern orator, who drops his talk
To stare at the intruding stranger’s walk.
Here are the women too, the local belles,
An aged adventuress that proudly swells
In dark immaculate satin, fashion’s latest,
Flanked by a dozen men, for she’s the greatest
Dame of the streets – the waiter whispers fast,
Relentless, till I go, thinking, at last
From crowds anonymous one must depart;
Walking away a little tired at heart,
Disturbed and baffled by the arguments
That ring as clocks and chime their discontents,
Sighing the hour that’s lost, the hour that’s gone
Into the silence of the dark. Oh town,
Home of tonight, Provence of autumn be
More than a threshold transitory to me,
With tenor voices ringing through the street
Above the accompaniment of many feet,
The urgent steps, the saunterings of the crowd
That stir vexation now. I’d cry aloud
Against the very suavest company
That would not leave me wilful, solitary,
This hour or two – for I could never write
With one beside me waiting, while the night
Unrolls its silent velvets in the street.
This is the time when hardy travellers meet
To gorge in taverns lustily, with wine
Of Chateau-Neuf des Papes, and sit in a line
Telling each other ready tales outside.
The plane-trees turn more ashen, very wide
The spaces in between the stars are grown,
With slip of moon imprisoned there till dawn;
But here, in the worldy cell, a game of chess
Holds two opponents pompously, a dress
Of orange stirs the mirrors with its flames
Startling my silence, while a voice proclaims
A stormy knowledge of the fate of France.
Tomorrow I’ll be gone – the hours advance
To winter while the autumn’s voices sing
Of drifting leaves, of many a beating wing
That hastens, travelling to the south each day.
The cypress avenues and the poplars sway
Clouded with risen dusts of winds returning.
I see white Avignon tomorrow burning
As beacon blond upon the sunset; last
The papal towers fade into the past
That steals them from me – but in another year
I shall turn back, and see, and hold, and hear
That which I have tonight, best things of France
That ripen in the harvests of Provence.
New Coasts
The memories of this coast are thick about me
Returned from springtimes past, and now the sunset
Fades, I pause in silence, looking back
At other days. I knew that garden first,
In its grove of ponderous trees where shadows lay
Deep on the afternoon, walled in with flowers
That trailed their burden of colours over-ripe;
Thus first the south ascended in my heart.
There was another time, in land of rocks
Flung broadcast to the sea, with Africa,
Giant unknown across the azure storms;
Great trumpetings were there in every crest
Crowning the ebb and plunge of wave and wave.
A bitter pine tree stood, cold as in prayer,
The hermit sorrowing in this wilderness
For arid soul cast out. Here was no green,
No living lovely thing beneath sky’s blue,
Only a ledge for devil and for God
To meet again, a place of miracles;
So did this land seem holy ground. That day,
Between the mountains of the mists and dews
I took the road that climbs to Castillon,
High on its ruins poised – the old, the new,
Both gazing down upon the valleys. There
All things alive were in diaphanous trance;
The sun above the hill, and the white wraiths
Low on the lemon fields – no echo passed
Till distantly a flock of watery bells
Uprose and faded, leaving the altitudes
Remoter still in a religious twilight.
Now I have come to other coasts, and see
The luminous Alps at bay before the tide,
Their mystic line drawn out; the ocean swells,
Wary with treacherous blues, white crests unfurled,
And hurrying waves that race behind each other.
I note the unfriendly pines, trim egoists
That grow as spare as a long line of facts;
The olive trees that bow with curling arms,
Ripe with the glamour of the legends still,
They too are here – and vigilant on the terrace
One palm tree, deputy from Africa.
Red Earth, Pale Olive, Fragmentary Vine
Red earth, pale olive, fragmentary vine
Mellow with sun’s decline.
In aftermath of harvest all the days
Are flushed with stillness, lit with almond greys,
And this November afternoon I see
Cypress against the sky so very still.
Upon a narrow strand
Full surges moving to the barren land
Towered with rocks, and on this sudden hill
I pause before the sunset that shall be,
In its last hour, a psalm
Sped to the journeying heart that seeketh balm.
The Solitary
And so I sit and let the hours pass
Huddled before the page and scarce awake;
In this deserted place there is no glass
To ring with mine, only still nights to slake
My thirsty craving with their lassitude.
And in the silence two caged birds are sleeping,
The fire is out, the hidden spiders creeping
Into the house along the rotted wood.
The very long complete decay of this,
Spreading its tangled cobwebs to the noon!
A dusty cypress broods, this shanty is
Only a ravaged husk beneath the moon.
There is no sound inside, and by the dead
Embers of hearth my wingless thoughts are still,
Cradled in ashes; nothing stirs until
I hear life’s maggot gnawing its last shred.
Pale Moon, Slip of Malachite
Pale moon, slip of malachite
Above the smoke of the clouds poising
In a green moment that will not last –
And you there, far beyond the furthest roads and sea paths,
Distiller of the heavens,
One drop of blood in the sky, suffusing it:
Sunset, advancing
From this grey weather suddenly.
Tempests
In the alleys of the sea are companies of voices
Wailing ghosts’ orisons, stirred within their tomb;
Storm on crest of ocean, tempest in the darkness:
Mortal hearts are quaking,
Destinies are hurried
Deathwards to the silence of immemorial gloom.
Storm within the heart when memories are driven
From their opened prison as gales before the past;
Equinox of passions lifting all before it:
Many a bonfire flaming
Lit by this rebellion,
And every door broke open that had been shuttered fast.
The Paradise’s angels, the spirits buried deep
Far out in desert places are risen in alarm;
Apocalypse with trumpets clarioning Infinity:
The heavens at their quaking,
The stars in a last riot,
And we, a little fragment upon God’s weary palm.
Echoes
The wandering footstep on the stair,
The waiting hour that leads to sleep,
A smile, then there is time to weep,
And after tears time to despair.
A summer moon forgotten now,
The brief adventure of two lovers,
An autumn stretch of cloud that covers
The windy starveling trees that bow
Sighing in sorrowful September –
And then the stillness of the street
That bears away the stranger’s feet…
These things are lonely to remember.
Toulonnaise
She was a rebel governess
Who came from Toulon in the south,
Red cherries tumbling on her hat,
Loud laughter breaking at her mouth.
Came to the Midlands there to teach
A girl of seven sullen-hearted –
Her voice was full of life’s adventure,
Her eye too gay, so she departed.
And I, the child of seven, wonder
In what far province of the south
After these years may rediscover
The cherries defiant of her mouth.
Lips that would snap with scorn then soften,
Chasing the scolding from her brow…
Thus I remember – comes the thought
We should not know each other now.
A Vis-à-vis
I shall never forget the ancient courtesan
Of Bandol by the sea, a little town
Lost in that Mediterranean saison morte,
With its hostelry that treats small fry en pension.
Her florid face blinks at an early dinner,
Poor solitary meal she knows so well
Without pretence of book or conversation,
Drawing her scarf about her. Very still,
The venerable false cat, she sums one up,
And does not savour the varied memories
Of those that filled her life; the moonstones gleam
In a golden setting upon each heavy arm,
Spoils of the past – If she would only tell,
Speak out the meagre mockeries of her mind!
Disapprobation peers from her eyes, and there
Is an acid smile as well, if smile be needed
Even now to dismiss inopportunities.
I think we angered her, as from the room
Between our voices shrilled, mosquito-like,
She moved in panoply of ancient taffetas.
But we forgot, flushing with local wines
Aided with metaphysical words, perhaps,
Forgot for an hour this siren of last century –
And then I saw her, sitting a little while
Before that tideless sea, alone, alone,
Spider at brood, now lulled in an intense
Malicious contemplation of the moon.
Spenkler
Spenkler in an overcoat
Perambulates galoshed thoughts
On little bridges, while we float
Beneath inquiringly. He sorts
The best in Venice from second-best;
‘People are hard to mix,’ he fears –
Dispensing tea at home he’ll rest
From mundane scandals, his only cares.
I should not wonder, if like the cat
He had nine lives – In every shock
Against decorum I know he sat
More firmly on convention’s rock.
Eyes lined with red, a leper’s mind
Entrenched beneath the meagre skull,
With crouching hands that have defined
Vicarious joys, and to the full
Pottered obscenely at his own,
Fingering lusts meticulous;
Love’s chiffonnier in every town,
Old, unabashed, ridiculous.
I heard this cracked harmonica
Vituperate its tunes, that pass
Like spiders of South America
Dart in the dust to kill. The glass
Eye of his soul looked out at me,
Retreated, and seemed to intimate
No good for youth’s futurity…
These days are so indelicate!
Allegory
Hear your three symbols of today:
The lamb, the crow, the eagle live,
The crow would bear the lamb away
Fierce-taloned to a falconry;
Gaunt as the eagle he would strive.
The lamb, the crow, the eagle brood
On temporal sorrows; peregrine
Falls to the snare, and I have seen
Raven lamenting in a wood,
And the lone lamb upon the green.
The lamb, the crow, the eagle die;
The lamb must bleed in merciless hands,
The crow decays on shipwrecked sands,
The eagle exiled from his sky –
So did my only eagle die.
Pays Hanté
Green runs the grass there,
In a great wind under the Downs a little after sunset;
Our feet had trod the plain
In other days.
Five tall unknown trees
Austerely watch my feet return alone;
Each night
They watch our ghosts move together again,
They wait as beacons –
Five trees burning,
Dark intensities in a silent land.
I have been far tonight calling the dead,
Calling them through the mist to stand on the old road,
But in the dawn
Came chill resurrection, and I would have slept.
A peacock’s wraith stood out upon the path,
And luminous faces with forgotten eyes
Were by me. I, who said,
This year I have no ghosts, new winds have breathed on me
Dispersing dusts – I have no shrouds to consider,
Since passed along the current of my four rivers,
And I am come to harbour.
Processions touched my hands and said, Return,
The day is with you now –
There stood
Five tall trees, rising in a haunted land.
§
FROM AFAR
From Afar
The fire stirs, creeping afresh from the embers,
Dim is the light, sound died down, faded irretrievably.
I sit thinking of you
Friends, partners of other times…
Gay, lusty, destitute and unsobered:
One hour’s delirium
Beating innumerable wings in a web of forgetfulness.
What place is this for such phantasmagoria –
Do you not see I am estranged from you,
Going by new ways, spectator of elemental solitudes?
And on this eve
Now alone at the hearth, a closed book that soon you must be forgetting,
Even as I put your memorable gestures from me.
Buddha above the Hearth
God in the shadows hidden, up there above the fire,
Selected Poems Page 10
