No banners swelling and no clarion’s shout
To crown my phoenix, lest it burn again
To immortal ash. Say this alone of me:
The leaves stream in the skies, the winds are out.
Saintes De La Mer
They heard God’s radiant voices in the deserts
Bidding them rise and northern countries seek;
Mary and Mary Salomé the meek
Set sail with fervent eyes to gain new converts,
Landed in wail of wind and weeping waves
Where the great Rhone breaks free – their holy graves
Are consecrate and hallowed. Nature’s breath
Loosed on these savage sands now smoothes their dreams
In the stern tombs built for them, and at last
Their souls are freed from their religious fast,
Their saintly sorrows fled. Ah, true it seems
Earthly repose descends on these two fair
Adventurous saints, Saintes Maries de la Mer.
Aigues Mortes
The joyous centuries have gone as cloud
Slanting across immense and southern skies,
Borne on the mistral’s violence, but the proud
Old town persists. Between four walls it lies,
Ramparts with fair commerce and tempestuous surge
Its giant shores. Such memories must be
The ghostly guards that watch each sun emerge
Out of the dying plain, and every night,
Worn with these windy battles, although dead,
Change medieval guard, give over fight
With time’s modernity. Their eyes widespread
Marvel and mock at us; their last crusade
Is won in the endurance of their walls:
Aigues-Mortes their holy cross – and thus is made
The town impregnable, and silence falls.
Trasimene
Winter let out the herald day – a coil
Of roads swept down Cortona’s hill to bring
Quick footsteps through the flushing February soil,
Where sombre Ossaio, built on misty ground,
Broods in the giant plain. A stream went round
Two full-blown toads that celebrated spring,
Pressing the easeful mud. White bulls were led
Curvetting in the dust, and the spring’s mood
Rose in the veins of silent trees, and spread
Itself through fiery furrows in golden blood.
This plain has other bloods to fill its heart,
Where ghostly Punic bones rise to the keen
Haunting of owls, and the Roman legions start
Again by the shores of dolorous Trasimene.
When We Must Go Our Ways
When we must go our ways no more together,
After this shortening time that love has given
Our hearts to meet, remember that day of driven
And wayward rains, soft lulls in the wild weather,
And we on the road full-hearted, with mute lips
Masking the sorrow each should have of each
Once all things told. We saw the meadows reach
Wet arms about the river where it slips
To quietude and dies within the lake.
These waters where two swans wove silently
Their twin romance of summer’s harmony
Heard your confession’s ardour, saw us make
The delicate vow of love, though you are bound
Now on another quest, and faithfully
Go to its call; so from desire we found
Hope in the future’s dear uncertainty.
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 rotting 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.
The White Cat
She moves in the rose alcove of this bed,
Secure, attentive to no vagrant lover
Whose claw annoys the latch; her senses bred
In warmth of dormant languors now discover,
As every night, a virgin paradise
Of seemly pillows, lucent napery,
Perpetual snow of linens that arise
To be explored, and singular tracery
Of hidden form – but in that moment she
Projects the utmost sapience of her ears
Across the silence, where a moth has cast
Unheeded farandoles of dusty tears
Courting the midnight oil, and wittily
Her paw arrests, and curls to sleep at last.
Or pensively she will unhood an eye,
A fiery bauble settled in the blue
Pernicious rim, that like a polar sky
Is cruellest of all colours; as the true
Too faithful pool that gave Narcissus joy
And death, this clear is her untempered look,
Remote as dawn – nor could a hand destroy
Her astral calm; and when the hand forsook
Its subtle flitting, coldly would she rise, –
Slow as a nun that fastens the first veil
Between her and the world, or diligent priest
That envies his own shadow yet dare not fail
By moribund faithless, shriving them with lies –
Or yearn, ancestral sphinx, towards the east?
Wansford Bridge Spring
Once more
Catkin and lambstail
In the landscape –
And on a black wind the quiver
Of pussy-willows –
And a swan’s feather
On the grey river
Curling sea-ward.
Because of the wind in the north only these
Signs – and the black wind
Between us and Spring.
Looking at a Photograph in the
Same Dress 1928 to 1926
I, like you then? No. Shadowy-seamed and old
My 1928…I change the theme
From self to lover – between the street and dream
Moves and delays our now. Arms that do fold
Your music within my reeds, and your eyes’ arc
Actual or memorised, and dusky old
… Ah face, come dawn – Jealousy and the old dark
Afric we’ll come to yet – These are the told
Numbers (and told again) our chart comports –
Lover, your servant I; and when the calms
Of seas incline to the real remoter palms
Down there, and timeless we shall rest or go,
Think then of, for us, on threshold of those ports:
All this, though dark, was ever – and tell me so.
For December
Haste, heart –
Eat, envy –
Neglect nothing.
Rhapsodise past rancours,
Yield, Ygdrasil.
Heart is honoured,
Envy eased,
Nothing love lacks –
Reunions, not partings – but break soon
Year, O bar athwart us.
Here we make a vow
Evenly for the two of us:
No miss nor loss of kiss –
Rule but, and time’s to heel,
Yours, without years
.
1929’s Spring Poem
Why
Does Spring
Bloom these new little golden dead thistles
Empty snailshells
Papyrus-hued grass
Machine-made sample buds
In leather rubber cardboard ironware
Instead of
Steaming up and streaming down
Academically?
The Boeuf Blues
Back again between the odds and ends –
Back again between the odds and ends –
What once was gay’s now sad,
What was unknown’s now friends.
Each capital’s not more than one Café
Wherein you lose (wherein you lose)
Yourself in what you have and have had…
Why worry choose, (why worry choose?)
The waiter waits, he will wait all night,
But when you’re tight he will set you right
Back in tomorrow and even yesterday,
Time plays the piper, but what do we pay?
O Boeuf-sur-le-Toit, you had one song –
But when I look in the mirrors it all goes wrong.
Me-mo-ry Blues… and only back today…
I’m a miserable travellin’ man.
Equatorial Way
Not yet satisfied
But I’ll be satisfied
With the days I’ve slaved for hopes,
Now I’m cuttin’ all the ropes,
Gettin’ in my due of dough
From ofays that’ll miss me so –
Go-ing, Go-ing
Where the arrow points due South.
I don’t mean your red neck farms,
I don’t mean your Jim Crow trains,
I mean Gaboon –
I don’t mean your cotton lands,
Ole stuff coons in Dixie bands,
I said Gaboon.
This ain’t no white man’s nigger,
Nor was – but I’ve grown bigger
The further away from you,
Further, longer away from you,
My cracker moon.
Doin’ my own stuff now,
We know how to handle our niggers,
You-all’s plumb crazy over there
Why, you might even let a nigger sit down with you,
Where’d we be if that happened?
Sure, that story of the gang to kill the firemen’s true,
$25 a head we got for each dead nigger,
Killed 30 in Mississippi in a year,
Niggers gotta be kept in their place.
Tell you what’s worse – that’s them Northern whites
They just turn the niggers crazy, ‘equality’,
‘Organise for better wages’, ‘black and white together fight’
Yah, we framed up
Angelo Herndon, gave him 20 years on the Georgia chain-gang for that
Under pre-Abolition law, ‘Incitement to slaves’, not bad huh?
We hoped the ‘Atlanta 6’ bunch
Of whites and niggers with the same racket
Would get the death penalty. Sure, we always let the
Mobs take the prisoners unless we
Shoot ’em ourselves; that was the Tuscaloosa lot,
Weren’t no gang of masked men at all,
Did it ourselves, yah, quick and neat
Save the third boy didn’t die – oh that’s alright
Daren’t testify ’gainst no-one, we beat ’em in jail
Beat their families too, make ’em sign
‘Under duress’ we calls it. They sign, don’t ask no help
From outside, perfec’ly content with lawyers court gives ’em.
We run them International Labor Defense attorneys out the town,
They nigh got lynched on the train, huh.
Know what them agitators for ‘Equal Rights’ is askin’?
‘Self-determination for the Black Belt’.
Well, farmer over there’ll show you an old lynched nigger’s tooth.
Kinda lucky he thinks, on his fob,
Holds it up when a cropper hands him sauce
Askin’ fer wages…
That’s the kind o’ ‘Self-determination’ we got,
Don’t need no interference,
That’s why we’re shooting so many niggers jes’ now,
Ain’t we gotta protec’ our white women?
Naw, ain’t no rape, why a nigger wouldn’t dare…
Jes’ our word, sorta slogan.
Old nigger in Maryland, Euel Lee, in jail 3 years now
Fer nuthin – farmer and fam’ly found murdered,
Course he didn’ do it, that nigger asked for his wages
See? cain’t have that; other niggers would too.
Them Scottsboro boys is innocent, we all knows that –
But hell, looka what’d happen if they free ’em…
Other niggers ’d be asking for their rights,
Showin’ how we keep ’em on chain-gangs till they die,
Share-croppers goin’ to planters for pay,
Equator, Pole and Pole –
Fixin’ to board the prow
And let the ocean roll and roll
And roll me over, even,
To where the Congo waters roll.
Won’t take from the old lands
But twelve bottles of gin –
Won’t leave on the old lands
But my cheque cashed in –
Then make clear to the Black Folks
They can’t but win.
Last advice to the crackers:
Bake your own white meat –
Last advice to the lynchers:
Hang your brother by the feet.
One sitting pretty black man
Is a million strong on heat.
Goin’ to beat up Fear on the octaves,
Tear the cracker limb from limb –
Goin’ to take on each-every vengeance,
Drum one blood-blasting hymn –
And laugh, laugh, laugh in the shadows,
Louder’n Death – I’ll be watching him.
Southern Sheriff
White folks don’t kill each other in the South
Ho no, not with so many niggers around.
It’s the wrong end of the stick you got, englishman.
You say: ‘here’s a murder, find the criminal’
We say: ‘too many niggers around with uppity ideas’
So we jus’ take one or two along for murder,
Oh we ain’ p’ticlder, don’t have to be no corpse
Found, we arrest ’em ‘for vagrancy’, on suspicion-like,
We frame ’em, yah. Say, didn’ Governor Sterling of Texas say
Sometimes you gotta burn a house to save a village?
That’s when that nigger was framed
(Governor said mighta been innocent,
But a white woman cain’t lie, see?)
Rape? sure they rape white women,
Leas’ways they’d like to – that’s good enough.
Askin’ for unemployment insurance;
Might git together with the poor-whites
More’n they do – yah, we been breakin’ up those meetings –
Askin’ fer ‘probes an’ enquiries’,
An’, well, tryin’ to stop all we do,
Because we gotta protec’ our bosses ain’t we?
Why, it’d upset the whole South.
Now the Ku Klux Klan
Weren’t made fer nuthin’ I suppose?
And if we don’t get lynch law we have plain lynchin’.
We got ex-Senator Heflin
Knows how to talk:
‘If Alabama courts can’t
Stop nigger rapists white men can and will.’
Whole case been goin’ on too long,
Whole world protestin’,
Oughta had ‘the quickest way out’, courts is too slow.
Reckon we can account fer about 80 niggers we ki
lled this year,
Right here in Birmingham, Alabama – year ain’t over yet:
Tisn’t everyone knows that,
We got our records, from Jan. to Aug., ’bout 80 niggers.
An’ we’d like to shoot every son of a bitch that comes down here
Talking ‘equal rights’ – them white agitators
And niggers from the North.
Maybe we’ll get to doin’ it.
Only thing is
Looks to me they’re gettin’ more and more determined,
Those that calls themselves ‘comrades’,
Gettin’ an’ stickin’ together,
Jes’ won’t do if it goes on…
That is the Southern justice,
Not lynch-mobs, but part of the Law speaking.
‘Rape’
To Haywood Patterson
A small farmer’s wife speaking
‘Here’s that hot rain again
Makin’ the Georgia earth so red…
They say it’s niggers’ blood made it red first,
Huh, the damn niggers groanin’ an’ bellyachin’ –
When I go out they don’ seem to see me no more
Like they used to – even Mandy’s kinda queer,
They don’ pray so much, that’s it –
They’s secret, quite a pack o’ them’s evil;
I guess it’ll pass, when cotton and cane’s right again.
Most cain’t read – what they know ’bout ‘world crisis’?
(An’ what the hell’s that to us?)
Well, I ’member Uncle Tom
An’ how the slavers got sold up,
An’ that sorta peachy wife in the middle of the book…
(Feelin’ kinda soft today myself too,
An’ no one ’round) –
What they grumble about now they’re free,
What more they want? Ain’ we had to swallow
The Yank’s meddlin?
Granpa said… Oh to hell with Granpa,
Selected Poems Page 21
