Collected Poems
Page 17
Who dies with quiet tears upon his upturned face, making to glow with softness the hard stars.
And bring to those who knew great poetry well
Page after page that they have loved but have not learned by heart!
We who in comfort to well-lighted shelves
Can turn for all the poets ever wrote,
Beseech you: Bear to those
Who love high art no less than we ourselves,
Those who lie wounded, those who in prison cast
Strive to recall, to ease them, some great ode, and every stanza save the last
Recall—oh, in the dark, restore them
The unremembered lines; make bright the page before them!
Page after page present to these,
In prison concentrated, watched by barbs of bayonet and wire,
Give ye to them their hearts’ intense desire—
The words of Shelley, Virgil, Sophocles.
And thou, O lovely and not sad,
Euterpe, be thou in this hall tonight!
Bid us remember all we ever had
Of sweet and gay delight—
We who are free,
But cannot quite be glad,
Thinking of huge, abrupt disaster brought
Upon so many of our kind
Who treasure as do we the vivid look on the unfrightened face,
The careless happy stride from place to place,
And the unbounded regions of untrammelled thought
Open as interstellar space
To the exploring and excited mind.
O Muses, O immortal Nine!—
Or do ye languish? Can ye die?
Must all go under?—
How shall we heal without your help a world
By these wild horses torn asunder?
How shall we build anew?—how start again?
How cure, how even moderate this pain
Without you, and you strong?
And if ye sleep, then waken!
And if ye sicken and do plan to die,
Do not that now!
Hear us, in what sharp need we cry!
For we have help nowhere
If not in you I
Pity can much, and so a mighty mind, but cannot all things do!—
By you forsaken,
We shall be scattered, we shall be overtaken!
Oh, come! Renew in us the ancient wonder,
The grace of life, its courage, and its joy!
Weave us those garlands nothing can destroy!
Come! with your radiant eyes!—with your throats of thunder!
To S.V.B.—June 1940
You will not haunt the rue Vavin
Behind the old Rotonde we knew,—
Whose waiters called “les quat’ copains”
Henry and Stan and me and you.
You, with your merry wit, will not,
You, with your slouched and awkward grace,
O owlish infant polyglot!—
You will not haunt so sad a place.
The opal city in the mist
Of dusk, before the evening rain,
When topaz, rose and amethyst
The arch was echoed in the Seine;
The drives by moonlight through the Bois;
The thinned-out wood, the cared-for tree;
The elegance, the “Quant à moi,”
The “Now, old son, you listen to me!”
A story sold, a cheque from home—
All four of us would dine that day:
Aperitifs before the Dôme;
Then dinner at some smart café;
Where I would dance with Stan, while you
And Henry talked, or watched the floor;
Or bought pink drinks for girls we knew
A little, from the cheque before.
All of us knew our guarded truth:
We called, “L’addition!” not, “The cheque!”
I always ordered French vermouth,
So I could say, “Un export sec!”
And Henry would have much preferred
His brandy straight; but, ordered so,
What waiter ever would have heard
His “Bien—et moi, une fine a I’eau”?
————
Sad, sad, to call a place “so sad”,
That once was heaven and hell-on-wheels
To four hard-working, Paris-mad,
Eager, blasé, young imbeciles!
————
Yet, should you come in ghostly guise,
You will not haunt the rue Vavin:
Connecticut and her allies
You still will champion if you can;
But whence your soaring spirit flew,
You will not circle down to see
A Paris, lost no more to you,
Than lost to Henry, Stan, and me.
If, in the Foggy Aleutians
Not ever, now, any more, upon this mildewed planet
Shines the sweet, wholesome sun: we live in fog.
Our leaves grow large and green, but we bear no blossom;
No coloured hope unfolds, no poem speaks out
In Dutch, Korean, English or Tagalog.
Yet, if, in the foggy Aleutians, if on the misty
Island of Kiska, island of Attu, any
Flower, however weak and bleak, appears
In spring, between the cloudy craters, why then, although
It should take us a thousand years,
We can stare into the fog until it shines, we can force it to unfold us.
We must ask the men who have been there; they will know.
Poem and Prayer for an Invading Army
(Written to be broadcast over the NBC Network on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Read by Ronald Colman.)
They must not go alone
into that burning building!—which today
is all of Europe!
Say
that you go with them, spirit and heart and mind!
Although the body, grown
too old to fight a young man’s war; or wounded
too deeply under the healed and whitened scars
of earlier battles, must remain behind.
You, too, may not be with them, save in spirit, you
so greatly needed here, here in the very van
and front of Duty,
to fashion tools and engines, and to engineer
their transport; build the ships and mine the coal
without which all their efforts would be worse than vain!
You men and women working in the workshops, working on the farms;
makers of tanks and of tractors, fitters of wings
to metal birds which have not left the nest
as yet, which yet must try their flight;
sowers of seed in season, planters of little plants
at intervals, on acres newly plowed
and disked and harrowed,
to feed a starving world;
You workers in the shipyards, building ships
which crowd each other down the ways;
you miners of coal in dark and dangerous corridors, who see the sun’s
total eclipse
each morning, disappearing as you do under the earth’s rim,
not to emerge into the daylight till the day’s
over, and the light dim;
All you
without whose constant effort and whose skill—
without whose loyal and unfailing aid—
our men would stand
stranded upon a foreign and a hostile shore
without so much as a stout stick to beat away
Death or Pain:
bullets like angry hornets buzzing ’round the ears and the bewildered brain,
and from the sky again and yet again
the downpour of the heavy, evil, accurate, murderous rain;
You who have stood behind them to this hour,
move strong behind them now: let still
the weary bones encase the indefatigable Will.
But how can men draw near
so fierce a conflagration?—even here,
across a gray and cold and foggy sea
its heat is felt!—Why,
touch your cheek—is it not hot and tight and dry?
And look what light climbs up the eastern sky, and sinks
and climbs again!
like to the bright Aurora of the North
it floods and flushes, pulses, pales—then glows,
lighting the entire East majestically;
as if it were the sun that rose.
I wish it were!
Have patience, friend; it yet may be.
Surely our fibre and our sinews, the backbone
and brain of us, are made of some less common stuff
than clay?—Surely the blood which warms the veins
of heroes at the front, our brothers and our sons,
runs also in our own!
And are we not then capable perhaps of something
more courageous than we yet have shown?
Surely some talisman, some token of
our lofty pride in them, our heavy gratitude,
and so much, so much love,
will find its way to them!
Some messenger, the vicar and the angel
of what we feel,
will fly before them where they fly, before them and above,
like patron goddesses in wars of old,
cleaving with level lovely brows the hard air
before the eager prows,
lighting their way with incandescent wings and wingèd heel.
This is the hour, this the appointed time.
The sound of the clock falls awful on our ears,
and the sound of the bells, their metal clang and chime,
tolling, tolling,
for those about to die.
For we know well they will not all come home, to lie
in summer on the beaches.
And yet weep not, you mothers of young men, their wives,
their sweethearts, all who love them well—
fear not the tolling of the solemn bell:
it does not prophesy,
and it cannot foretell;
it only can record;
and it records today the passing of a most uncivil age,
which had its elegance, but lived too well,
and far, oh, far too long;
and which, on History’s page,
will be found guilty of injustice and grave wrong.
————
O Thou, Thou Prince of Peace, this is a prayer for War!
Yet not a war of man against his fellowman.
Say, rather, Lord, we do beseech
Thy guidance and Thy help:
In exorcising from the mind of Man, where she has made her nest,
a hideous and most fertile beast—
and this to bring about with all dispatch, for look, where
even now she would lie down again to whelp!
Lord God of Hosts! Thou Lord of Hosts not only, not alone
of battling armies Lord and King;
but of the child-like heart as well, which longs
to put away—oh, not the childish, but the adult
circuitous and adroit, antique and violent thing
called War;
and sing
the beauties of this late-to-come but oh-so-lovely Spring!
For see
where our young men go forth in mighty numbers, to set free
from torture and from every jeopardy
things that are dear to Thee.
Keep in Thy loving care, we pray, those of our fighting men
whose happy fortune it may be to come back home again
after the War is over; and all those who must perforce remain,
the mourned, the valiant slain.
This we beseech Thee, Lord. And now, before
we rise from kneeling, one thing more:
Soften our hard and angry hearts; make us ashamed
of doing what we do, beneath Thy very eyes, knowing it does displease Thee.
Make us more humble, Lord, for we are proud
without sufficient reason; let our necks be bowed
more often to Thy will;
for well we know what deeds find favour in Thy sight; and still
we do not do them.
Oh Lord, all through the night, all through the day,
keep watch over our brave and dear, so far away.
Make us more worthy of
their valour; and Thy love.
“Let them come home! Oh, let the battle, Lord, be brief,
and let our boys come home!”
So cries the heart, sick for relief
from its anxiety, and seeking to forestall
a greater grief.
So cries the heart aloud. But the thoughtful mind
has something of its own to say:
“On that day—
when they come home—from very far away—
and further than you think—
(for each of them has stood upon the very brink
or sat and waited in the anteroom
of Death, expecting every moment to be called by name)
Now look you to this matter well: that they
upon returning shall not find
seated at their own tables,—at the head,
perhaps, of the long festive board prinked out in prodigal array,
the very monster which they sallied forth to conquer and to quell;
and left behind for dead.”
Let us forget such words, and all they mean,
as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed,
Intolerance, Bigotry; let us renew
our faith and pledge to Man, his right to be
Himself, and free.
Say that the Victory is ours—then say—
and each man search his heart in true humility—
“Lord! Father! Who are we,
that we should wield so great a weapon for the rights
and rehabilitation of Thy creature Man?
Lo, from all corners of the Earth we ask
all great and noble to come forth—converge
upon this errand and this task with generous and gigantic plan:
Hold high this Torch, who will.
Lift up this Sword, who can!”
Christmas Canticle
The Angel:
Thou sinful Soul, how wilt thou feel,
On Christmas Eve when the oxen kneel,
For all thy vows to Christ so dear,
Which thou didst break in this bad year?
Man:
Full of fear— oh, full of fear!
I will fall to my knees in yellow straw;
I will clasp my hands in terror and awe!
I will lift my tears and to Mary appeal—
On Christmas Eve when the oxen kneel!
The Angel:
And dost thou think that Mary will hear,
And wash thee clean of the dirty year?—
Wherein thou didst lie and slay and steal?
Man:
Aye, for the sake of Christ so dear!
She will cool my brow. She will cleanse and heal,—
On Christmas Eve, when the oxen kneel!
The Angel:
And what wilt thou do for Mary, then,
In daylight, out in the world of men?
Man:
I will try hard not to be bad again.
I will try hard not to be bad again.
The Angel:
And when thou art tempted—wilt thou go wrong?
Man:
Jesus will help me, and make me strong;
And see that by me no evil is done.
The Angel:
Then Hail Mary and Her Little Son!
The Angel and Man:
Then Hail Mary and Her Little Son!
We have gone too f
ar; we do not know how to stop: impetus
Is all we have. And we share it with the pushed Inert.
We are clever,—we are as clever as monkeys; and some of us
Have intellect, which is our danger, for we lack intelligence
And have forgotten instinct.
Progress—progress is the dirtiest word in the language—who ever told us—
And made us believe it—that to take a step forward was necessarily, was always
A good idea?
In this unlighted cave, one step forward
That step can be the down-step into the Abyss.
But we, we have no sense of direction; impetus
Is all we have; we do not proceed, we only
Roll down the mountain,
Like disbalanced boulders, crushing before us many
Delicate springing things, whose plan it was to grow.
Clever, we are, and inventive,—but not creative:
For, to create, one must decide—the cells must decide—what form,
What colour, what sex, how many petals, five, or more than five,
Or less than five.
But we, we decide nothing: the bland Opportunity
Presents itself, and we embrace it,—we are so grateful
When something happens which is not directly War;
For we think—although of course, now, we very seldom
Clearly think—
That the other side of War is Peace.
We have no sense; we only roll downhill. Peace
Is the temporary beautiful ignorance that War
Somewhere progresses.
Deep in the muck of unregarded doom,
Where none can make a conquest, none have room
To stretch an aching muscle,—there might be
Interstices where impulse could go free . . .
There, where accomplishment cannot achieve,
Valour defend, religion quite believe,
Or vengeance plot behavior,—there may still
Be cracks, uneasy instinct well might fill
And even worm its way along, until
All might begin again; and Man receive
In prospect, what he never can retrieve.
The Animal Ball
Let us go to the Animal Ball, disguised as bipeds!
And the first man down on all fours, pays for the drinks!
Stan has a cocker that can walk on his hind legs, too:
We’ll take him along, to support us when the spirit sinks.
We’ve walked on our hind-legs now so many ages,
We’re hoof to the knee, and hock to the hip, but still—
How hot the feet get when you’ve only two to hit the ground with!
It takes real nerve to walk erect, and a pretty strong will.
We went too far when we put on the fur of lynxes,