American Poetry, 1922 Part 16

IV

If I had been a boy, I would have worshiped your grace, I would have flung my worship before your feet, I would have followed apart, glad, rent with an ecstasy to watch you turn your great head, set on the throat, thick, dark with its sinews, burned and wrought like the olive stalk, and the n.o.ble chin and the throat.

I would have stood, and watched and watched and burned, and when in the night, from the many hosts, your slaves, and warriors and serving men you had turned to the purple couch and the flame of the woman, tall like cypress tree that flames sudden and swift and free as with crackle of golden resin and cones and the locks flung free like the cypress limbs, bound, caught and shaken and loosed, bound, caught and riven and bound and loosened again, as in rain of a kingly storm or wind full from a desert plain.

So, when you had risen from all the lethargy of love and its heat, you would have summoned me, me alone, and found my hands, beyond all the hands in the world, cold, cold, cold, intolerably cold and sweet.

V

It was not chast.i.ty that made me cold nor fear, only I knew that you, like myself, were sick of the puny race that crawls and quibbles and lisps of love and love and lovers and love's deceit.

It was not chast.i.ty that made me wild but fear that my weapon, tempered in different heat, was over-matched by yours, and your hand skilled to yield death-blows, might break.

With the slightest turn--no ill-will meant-- my own lesser, yet still somewhat fine-wrought fiery-tempered, delicate, over-pa.s.sionate steel.

CONRAD AIKEN

SEVEN TWILIGHTS

I

The ragged pilgrim, on the road to nowhere, Waits at the granite milestone. It grows dark.

Willows lean by the water. Pleas of water Cry through the trees. And on the boles and boughs Green water-lights make rings, already paling.

Leaves speak everywhere. The willow leaves Silverly stir on the breath of moving water, Birch-leaves, beyond them, twinkle, and there on the hill, And the hills beyond again, and the highest hill, Serrated pines, in the dusk, grow almost black.

By the eighth milestone on the road to nowhere He drops his sack, and lights once more the pipe There often lighted. In the dusk-sharpened sky A pair of night-hawks windily sweep, or fall, Booming, toward the trees. Thus had it been Last year, and the year before, and many years: Ever the same. "Thus turns the human track Backward upon itself, I stand once more By this small stream..." Now the rich sound of leaves, Turning in air to sway their heavy boughs, Burns in his heart, sings in his veins, as spring Flowers in veins of trees; bringing such peace As comes to seamen when they dream of seas.

"O trees! exquisite dancers in gray twilight!

Witches! fairies! elves! who wait for the moon To thrust her golden horn, like a golden snail, Above that mountain--arch your green benediction Once more over my heart. m.u.f.fle the sound of bells, Mournfully human, that cries from the darkening valley; Close, with your leaves, about the sound of water: Take me among your hearts as you take the mist Among your boughs!" ... Now by the granite milestone, On the ancient human road that winds to nowhere, The pilgrim listens, as the night air brings The murmured echo, perpetual, from the gorge Of barren rock far down the valley. Now, Though twilight here, it may be starlight there; Mist makes elfin lakes in the hollow fields; The dark wood stands in the mist like a somber island With one red star above it.... "This I should see, Should I go on, follow the falling road,-- This I have often seen.... But I shall stay Here, where the ancient milestone, like a watchman, Lifts up its figure eight, its one gray knowledge, Into the twilight; as a watchman lifts A lantern, which he does not know is out."

II

Now by the wall of the ancient town I lean Myself, like ancient wall and dust and sky, And the purple dusk, grown old, grown old in heart.

Shadows of clouds flow inward from the sea.

The mottled fields grow dark. The golden wall Grows gray again, turns stone again, the tower, No longer kindled, darkens against a cloud.

Old is the world, old as the world am I; The cries of sheep rise upward from the fields, Forlorn and strange; and wake an ancient echo In fields my heart has known, but has not seen.

"These fields"--an unknown voice beyond the wall Murmurs--"were once the province of the sea.

Where now the sheep graze, mermaids were at play, Sea-horses galloped, and the great jeweled tortoise Walked slowly, looking upward at the waves, Bearing upon his back a thousand barnacles, A white acropolis ..." The ancient tower Sends out, above the houses and the trees, And the wide fields below the ancient walls, A measured phrase of bells. And in the silence I hear a woman's voice make answer then: "Well, they are green, although no ship can sail them....

Sky-larks rest in the gra.s.s, and start up singing Before the girl who stoops to pick sea-poppies.

Spiny, the poppies are, and oh how yellow!

And the brown clay is runneled by the rain...."

A moment since, the sheep that crop the gra.s.s Had long blue shadows, and the gra.s.s-tips sparkled: Now all grows old.... O voices strangely speaking, Voices of man and woman, voices of bells, Diversely making comment on our time Which flows and bears us with it into dusk, Repeat the things you say! Repeat them slowly Upon this air, make them an incantation For ancient tower, old wall, the purple twilight, This dust, and me. But all I hear is silence, And something that may be leaves or may be sea.

III

When the tree bares, the music of it changes: Hard and keen is the sound, long and mournful; Pale are the poplar boughs in the evening light Above my house, against a slate-cold cloud.

When the house ages and the tenants leave it, Cricket sings in the tall gra.s.s by the threshold; Spider, by the cold mantel, hangs his web.

Here, in a hundred years from that clear season When first I came here, bearing lights and music, To this old ghostly house my ghost will come,-- Pause in the half-light, turn by the poplar, glide Above tall gra.s.ses through the broken door.

Who will say that he saw--or the dusk deceived him-- A mist with hands of mist blow down from the tree And open the door and enter and close it after?

Who will say that he saw, as midnight struck Its tremulous golden twelve, a light in the window, And first heard music, as of an old piano, Music remote, as if it came from the earth, Far down; and then, in the quiet, eager voices?

"... Houses grow old and die, houses have ghosts-- Once in a hundred years we return, old house, And live once more." ... And then the ancient answer, In a voice not human, but more like creak of boards Or rattle of panes in the wind--"Not as the owner, But as a guest you come, to fires not lit By hands of yours.... Through these long-silent chambers Move slowly, turn, return, and bring once more Your lights and music. It will be good to talk."

IV

"This is the hour," she said, "of trans.m.u.tation: It is the eucharist of the evening, changing All things to beauty. Now the ancient river, That all day under the arch was polished jade, Becomes the ghost of a river, thinly gleaming Under a silver cloud.... It is not water: It is that azure stream in which the stars Bathe at the daybreak, and become immortal...."

"And the moon," said I--not thus to be outdone-- "What of the moon? Over the dusty plane-trees Which crouch in the dusk above their feeble lanterns, Each coldly lighted by his tiny faith; The moon, the waxen moon, now almost full, Creeps whitely up.... Westward the waves of cloud, Vermilion, crimson, violet, stream on the air, Shatter to golden flakes in the icy green Translucency of twilight.... And the moon Drinks up their light, and as they fade or darken, Brightens.... O monstrous miracle of the twilight, That one should live because the others die!"

"Strange too," she answered, "that upon this azure Pale-gleaming ghostly stream, impalpable-- So faint, so fine that scarcely it bears up The petals that the lantern strews upon it,-- These great black barges float like apparitions, Loom in the silver of it, beat upon it, Moving upon it as dragons move on air."

"Thus always," then I answered,--looking never Toward her face, so beautiful and strange It grew, with feeding on the evening light,-- "The gross is given, by inscrutable G.o.d, Power to beat wide wings upon the subtle.

Thus we ourselves, so fleshly, fallible, mortal, Stand here, for all our foolishness, transfigured: Hung over nothing in an arch of light While one more evening like a wave of silence Gathers the stars together and goes out."

V

Now the great wheel of darkness and low clouds Whirs and whirls in the heavens with dipping rim; Against the ice-white wall of light in the west Skeleton trees bow down in a stream of air.

Leaves, black leaves and smoke, are blown on the wind; Mount upward past my window; swoop again; In a sharp silence, loudly, loudly falls The first cold drop, striking a shriveled leaf....

Doom and dusk for the earth! Upward I reach To draw chill curtains and shut out the dark, Pausing an instant, with uplifted hand, To watch, between black ruined portals of cloud, One star,--the tottering portals fall and crush it.

Here are a thousand books! here is the wisdom Alembicked out of dust, or out of nothing; Choose now the weightiest word, most golden page, Most somberly musicked line; hold up these lanterns,-- These paltry lanterns, wisdoms, philosophies,-- Above your eyes, against this wall of darkness; And you'll see--what? One hanging strand of cobweb, A window-sill a half-inch deep in dust ...

Speak out, old wise-men! Now, if ever, we need you.

Cry loudly, lift shrill voices like magicians Against this baleful dusk, this wail of rain....

But you are nothing! Your pages turn to water Under my fingers: cold, cold and gleaming, Arrowy in the darkness, rippling, dripping-- All things are rain.... Myself, this lighted room, What are we but a murmurous pool of rain?...

The slow arpeggios of it, liquid, sibilant, Thrill and thrill in the dark. World-deep I lie Under a sky of rain. Thus lies the sea-sh.e.l.l Under the rustling twilight of the sea; No G.o.ds remember it, no understanding Cleaves the long darkness with a sword of light.

VI

Heaven, you say, will be a field in April, A friendly field, a long green wave of earth, With one domed cloud above it. There you'll lie In noon's delight, with bees to flash above you, Drown amid b.u.t.tercups that blaze in the wind, Forgetting all save beauty. There you'll see With sun-filled eyes your one great dome of cloud Adding fantastic towers and spires of light, Ascending, like a ghost, to melt in the blue.

Heaven enough, in truth, if you were there!

Could I be with you I would choose your noon, Drown amid b.u.t.tercups, laugh with the intimate gra.s.s, Dream there forever.... But, being older, sadder, Having not you, nor aught save thought of you, It is not spring I'll choose, but fading summer; Not noon I'll choose, but the charmed hour of dusk.

Poppies? A few! And a moon almost as red....

But most I'll choose that subtler dusk that comes Into the mind--into the heart, you say-- When, as we look bewildered at lovely things, Striving to give their loveliness a name, They are forgotten; and other things, remembered, Flower in the heart with the fragrance we call grief.

VII

In the long silence of the sea, the seaman Strikes twice his bell of bronze. The short note wavers And loses itself in the blue realm of water.

One sea-gull, paired with a shadow, wheels, wheels; Circles the lonely ship by wave and trough; Lets down his feet, strikes at the breaking water, Draws up his golden feet, beats wings, and rises Over the mast.... Light from a crimson cloud Crimsons the sluggishly creeping foams of waves; The seaman, poised in the bow, rises and falls As the deep forefoot finds a way through waves; And there below him, steadily gazing westward, Facing the wind, the sunset, the long cloud, The G.o.ddess of the ship, proud figurehead, Smiles inscrutably, plunges to crying waters, Emerges streaming, gleaming, with jewels falling Fierily from carved wings and golden b.r.e.a.s.t.s; Steadily glides a moment, then swoops again.

Carved by the hand of man, grieved by the wind; Worn by the tumult of all the tragic seas, Yet smiling still, unchanging, smiling still Inscrutably, with calm eyes and golden brow-- What is it that she sees and follows always, Beyond the molten and ruined west, beyond The light-rimmed sea, the sky itself? What secret Gives wisdom to her purpose? Now the cloud In final conflagration pales and crumbles Into the darkening waters. Now the stars Burn softly through the dusk. The seaman strikes His small lost bell again, watching the west As she below him watches.... O pale G.o.ddess Whom not the darkness, even, or rain or storm, Changes; whose great wings are bright with foam, Whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s are cold as the sea, whose eyes forever Inscrutably take that light whereon they look-- Speak to us! Make us certain, as you are, That somewhere, beyond wave and wave and wave, That dreamed-of harbor lies which we would find.