Selected Poems
Page 20
The dappled Rhineland and the smile between the apple trees,
And Heine’s songs – here the heart wandered like a lover –
Aus meinem grossen Schmerzen
Mäch Ich die kleine Lieder;
I know not what we can make of ours,
The cofferdam’s full to the brim but leaded with silence.
This was a place once
Of spirit and intelligent courage;
Now they’ve turned life into Ersatz
In Hackenkreuzland – and where the hammer strikes
It strikes alone to break and not to make…’
And a voice rang over the moor
‘Todt ist kein Ersatzding im Russischen Schnee’
(No, death’s no ersatz in the Russian snows.)
‘You remember öd und leer? It referred to a sea
Where no sail showed – it is Wagner’s Tristan –
Came the sail bearing Isolt, and the tune changed
Late, late – too late, for all its joy. So for us, late
Is the sail over the waste of years, the flute plays to very many dead,
Falters, resumes. It will not bring back Erich Mühsam.’
Another said:
‘While you chattered “peace in our time” and everything shook because the base was rotten,
Hugged child whispering ‘Can’t happen here’, keeping your politics warm on the hob,
And the facts swelled in their ghastly sequence leering back at you in the chapter called Munich,
We were here with our pickaxes, spades,
In our fog, our fury, our silence;
Here were we – we, the veterans.’
2
A travelling wind blew over the dirty snow
With a clang of battle and a song in it, and a man said:
‘That is our Thaelmann Kolonne in the streets of Madrid.’
In the sullen northern dusk the shadows come and go,
Look close, each is alive and most are strong;
And the mist turns into sound, the sound into singing:
‘Victory, though not the action –
I have seen Victory coming but not the action,
The way, the year it will come.’
When the tide bursts free remember this and these,
Saying: Not conquest of men but victory over war,
And what makes it, the Hackenkreuz, the Fasces.
England
Soldier, poor Soldier
Stands like an ox, man, ’as ’is beer at the bar,
Soldier poor soldier
Cum frum the Midlands, dumb as the Stoke wot bore ’im,
Soldier poor soldier
Tur git tur this…e wunders… whoi wur Oi born?
Soldier poor soldier
’E shuffles ’is feet an’ now ’e’s thinkin’ o’ missus.
Soldier poor soldier
Soon ’e’ll be wroitin’ ’er, tellin’ ’er: ‘Bear up, muthur,
Soldier poor soldier
Oi’m fur the draft, Oi’m shiftin’ tur Overseas…’
Soldier poor soldier
’E’s thinkin’: ‘She’ll be that puff-eyed when she gets it.’
Soldier poor soldier
‘’Ere’s whur tur wroite me’ ’e’ll put, ‘and moind you keep that
Soldier poor soldier
Patch o’ greens cumin’, and also yur upper lip
Soldier poor soldier
’Ard. ’Ere’s whu to wroite: 1,543,670,
Soldier poor soldier
WP/Base Camp – that’s Overseas –
Soldier poor soldier
That’s moi address no mistake; and don’t you make
Soldier poor soldier
No silly mistakes with it, muthur, and then Oi won’t
Soldier poor soldier
Make no mistakes withe War’ – wud that make ’er laugh?
Soldier poor soldier
‘You wus 40 last birthday, and ’ere am Oi 46:
Soldier poor soldier
Got thru the last, and Oi’ll manage tur git through this
Soldier poor soldier
Some’ow, Oi expect, but muther it do seem ’ard;
Soldier poor soldier
And then it doan’ seem so ’ard
Soldier poor soldier
And then it doan’ seem so ’ard if everyone pullin’
Solider poor soldier
’Is weight tur make it the last, the bluddy last
Soldier poor soldier
O’ all these wars – but is it? ’Ere’s love and kisses;
Soldier poor soldier
The men’s alroit – but Oi’m thinkin’ o’ you and ’ome.’
Soldier poor soldier
’E ’as ’is second and get to thinkin’ o’ England:
Soldier poor soldier
Not much of a Peace it wur between the two,
Soldier poor soldier
And not it’s the ’Uns again, the Nazi nasties;
Soldier poor soldier
Jap’s still cheeky, and Empire’s going’ down drain.
Soldier poor soldier
Expect Oi’m fur India, fur ‘Allah’s Paradise’
Soldier poor soldier
Like the picture ’ad it – Oi’m fur old paradise…
Soldier, poor man.
The Poet to His Wars
(For John Gawsworth)
The poet in a trench at sunset, awaiting battle. He goes on thinking, at times talking to his rum-flask, and all is imminent. ‘As good a time as another, or what better, to set it down at last, the definition, to me, of inspiration, or do I mean of poetry? While waiting like this, what better?’
1
Of poetry? Sometimes it comes in a tear
That rises here, there, anywhere, alone;
Back to the heart it goes to suffer there.
At times it comes on wings of wine, then’s gone
Back to nowhere, nowhere.
2
Twilit it comes, or in a burst of gold
Is all around – sunset in Mexican skies –
You may be sure it’s nature’s not yet told,
All’s in hiatus between doubt and lies;
A poem? Not to be sold!
3
A poem is like a wind held fast in a tree
That shakes because the wind’s got into the bush,
Sits there a while, and then is gone. Ah, see,
The divine afflatus leaves, and all’s a-hush
Hawthorn calm as a sea.
4
Silence, it seems comes now…
The near-horizon bursts into flames and panoramic noises take
possession. The battle does not reach the poet, who, now in
moonlight, resumes. But this seems now of life rather than of
part of life: inspiration. Will it ever be finished?
4
This rock in the desert – is it protective, sound?
Beware, beware, such is no holy ground:
No rock is there, I think, to clasp and grasp
Because the sapient scorpion or the asp
Lie to its foot curled around.
5
Oh moon in a mist, how the dead reeds do grow!
Shells in a mist! Was it not ever so,
Since we all began, for us to climb the step?
Wars on the wind for ever, blow soft, blow low
Over my earthy deep.
Three Prison Sonnets
for Solita Solano
1
How long’s a prisoner’s day – long as an ell?
Not even a cigarette butt’s in front of him,
The dusts and damps and mouldiwarps of Hell
Will see that that man’s cup be full to the brim.
No more for him ‘the darling buds of May’,
All’s the Hamletian gloom, now dark, now dim,
All’s done, except ‘Tomorrow’s another day’…
It is indeed, and most of all for him
.
Even God, they say, must suffer in this land,
Its cup past overflowing since how long?
As for poor Jesus, would he understand?
He would indeed, pain’s sempiternal song.
And still alone, entombed, the prisoner sings
Awaiting dawn, until the welkin rings.
2
Of what does he dream, if such the case may be,
This damned prisoner in his accursed cell?
Maybe he dreams awhile of you and me,
And other unknown friends who wish him well,
Maybe dreams not. Of music dreameth he?
Dream on, sweet sleeper, an inch is worth an ell,
Catch it while cans’t, while we unceasingly
Strive to undo, somehow, the locks of Hell.
When lovely sleep descends on thee at last,
I’ll wager thou may’st dream of wanton girls,
Curled hair and snaky flank – of what unfurls
Beyond unseen horizons, possibly…
How good’s all this, in jail’s anatomy,
Despite ‘Within it are ye helden fast’.
3
‘Let not the divine afflatus gang agley,
Not in this minute no! Ah, how divine
Twould be could one but smoke and savour wine,
Such’s not for us who long in prison lay,
Lie, and will doubtless lie…’ a poet sings
One afternoon, until the welkin rings
(Ring soon, ring sweet, ring true). Maybe he faints
After these words addressed to all his saints.
What shall we do, all we who’re not within
The barren, hapless cell, what can we do?
From what comes counsel? Tis nor me, or you
This death, this dust, they are not of our kin.
E’en music’s useless, weeping mid its strings,
E’en April shaws and sound of freshnet springs.
By Their Faces Shall Ye Know Them
Look at their scowling faces, bless their hearts!
Here’s Goya, most disgusted as we see,
And next, his father-in-law, the same as he,
More, even furious! And then again it starts
After Albeñiz, with the smaller fry:
That lovely marquess, that delicious king…
(Theirs not to think but merely pay and die),
And Balmes, young monk, and all the rest of the ring.
The thousands are more of a kind, less personal,
A sort of tapestry, of ox-cart wine –
And here’s the architect, dear Rusiñol;
Alas for Romero de Torres – e’en he in his prime…
Wretched’s the lot, in consternation, pain.
What’s this about? The paper money of Spain.
In the Watches of the Night
In the watches of the night,
‘When the stars are shining bright
And the winds are breathing low’,
Say, oh say where shall I go!
In the reaches of the dark,
Is it ‘hush’ or is it ‘hark’ –
What am I that am not thee,
Jesus, Mary or Trinity?
In the stretches of high noon,
is it ‘never’ is it ‘soon’?
World, pause awhile and let me be,
That am the path, the rill, the tree.
In the watches of the dawn,
What art thou but humble spawn,
When worm and louse ride over thee,
In the hollows of the sea,
And the dew corrodes the lawn?
Order
Like fighting one’s way it is through a thick brick wall –
If the flower’s at the end, then all may go right, go right –
Set never a time to this, nor ‘now’ nor ‘night’ –
But mark: ‘If the tears must rise see that they do not fall.’
To Whom?
Into my arms in a cup of music, love,
That we may all pleasures prove and disprove
In an hour as iridescent as the dove
While our tears rise, fall not, but ever move
From clef to clef, out on the cliffs, my love –
The cliffs, the cliffs – that word comes from above,
Is sacrosanct. Nigeria has a grove
That seems to send for me. Hides this a trove,
An ancient treasure of men who died in love?
In heaven and earth are things that surely prove
Other philosophies than ours, my love;
Twas ever so – in times when the sea wove
Her turbulent arabesques, while the sun strove
To undo the moon, and failed as ever, and drove
New rages into time, from unanswered love –
So come with me that we the pleasures prove
And mate the query with its answering love.
Portrait-Sonnet
To be or not to be? To be, my heart,
Since whether he come at dawn or dusk of day
Love doth concede thee ever a flying start,
And truth goes with thee on thine errant way.
Despite the battle at the double gate,
Thou farest on apace, as all may see,
None can assess the meshes of thy fate,
Thy curious, wayward fate – well let it be!
O Primitif, moon-flecked, grass under dew,
Breeze-borne, by all the wandering spirits kissed,
O whippet-grace, O dreaming love-in-a-mist,
To thy own law thy allegiance solely due;
To thee, the dance, the music and the love –
To be, indeed – as thou dost hourly prove.
‘Till Dawn do us Deliver’
To Clyde Robinson
‘Till dawn do us deliver…’ Down the ways
Of murderous history runs the masked phrase
Under wan moonlight murmured in prison days,
Alone and stark, or cupped in two lovers’ hands,
Half threat, half promise – agonising both.
‘Till dawn do us deliver…’ Like an oath
A sigh, a moan, a scream, it says and unsays
All that has gone before – the flowers and seeds
That live and breed and rot, and all that bleeds
With eyes pressed to the stony heart of truth.
I think no word’s so cruel as Dawn, forsooth,
Herald of yet more cruel days and ways;
The Devil stamps and Hell breaks out in praise –
(Of such can be our dawns on icy lawns).
Which would you rather: lone and feckless be
Or plunged within that sea of misery
UP to the brim, good heart, when the very lees
Climb to your throat? What says the heart? It dies?
‘Till dawn do us deliver…’ I surmise
You choose that love shall do as e’er it please
In its hard and cruel self, rather than desert be…
No thread’s in this, of gold or sable strain,
Nothing’s in this but night, night, night –
There’s no surprise in this – I’ll sonnet thee:
8 AM Sonnet
Look, here’s a corpse at the holy foot of God!
5,503’s his name; his hair was red,
Now he lies low upon the waiting sod,
Crumpled and empty on death’s ready bed.
Will he do right by her, his sudden bride,
Loving her well, as every good man should,
Or will he turn himself on his left side
Eschewing all the pleasures of the blood?
The dawn came cold, but came at final last,
The executioners shivering in a ring,
The gong hung dumb and all the while how fast
An eyelid winked, as if to say ‘Un-bring
The order now – yes, now, now, now, now, now –’
Thus was all p
oised when Thomas broke his plow.
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 through 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 heart, a closed book that soon you must be forgetting,
Even as I put your memorable gestures from me.
Of Liberty
I have sat by many fires and seen the leaves
Drift in the air, leaves parting from high trees
As thoughts run from a brain, when winters freeze
Outside, till wine is ripe in the flesh and weaves
Its restless determinations in the brain,
With here and there a flash of spirited gold.
Thoughts are stirred thus, fierce leaves against the skies,
Old tenants joyful, dragged from a haunted room
Where custom penned them in its relentless tomb;
Delivering winds come by, the prisoners fold
Free hands to speed the grateful prayers that rise
Soft as a smoke whose angry flame is out.
Then Freedom says: Thou shalt not speak of me –
I am the secret thing, the unexpressed
That fades to tremulous dust upon the breast
Of him that clasps and tells my history –
My name is you all, you shall not sing of me;