Georgian Poetry 1913-15 Part 21

Such is life!

You're going to say. You see I've got it pat, Your jaded wheeze. Lord, what a wit I'ld make If I'd a set grin painted on my face.

And such is life, I'ld say a hundred times, And each time set the world aroar afresh At my original humour. Missed a hoop!

Why, man alive, you've naught to grumble at.

I've boggled every hoop since I was six.

I'm fifty-five; and I've run round a ring Would make this potty circus seem a pinhole.

I wasn't born to sawdust. I'd the world For circus ...

Merry Andrew:

It's no time for crowing now.

I know a gentleman, and take on trust The silver spoon and all. My teeth were cut Upon a horseshoe: and I wasn't born To purple and fine linen--but to sawdust, To sawdust, as you say--brought up on sawdust.

I've had to make my daily bread of sawdust: Ay, and my children's,--children's, that's the rub, As Shakespeare says ...

Gentleman John:

Ah, there you go again!

What a rare wit to set the ring aroar-- As Shakespeare says! Crowing? A gentleman?

Man, didn't you say you'd never missed a hoop?

It's only gentlemen who miss no hoops, Clean livers, easy lords of life who take Each obstacle at a leap, who never fail.

You are the gentleman.

Merry Andrew:

Now don't you try Being funny at my expense; or you'll soon find I'm not quite done for yet--not quite snuffed out.

There's still a spark of life. You may have words: But I've a fist will be a match for them.

Words slaver feebly from a broken jaw.

I've always lived straight, as a man must do In my profession, if he'ld keep in fettle: But I'm no gentleman, for I fail to see There's any sport in baiting a poor man Because he's losing grip at forty-two, And sees his livelihood slipping from his grasp-- Ay, and his children's bread.

Gentleman John:

Why, man alive, Who's baiting you? This winded, broken cur, That limps through life, to bait a bull like you!

You don't want pity, man! The beaten bull, Even when the dogs are tearing at his gullet, Turns no eye up for pity. I myself, Crippled and hunched and twisted as I am, Would make a brave fend to stand up to you Until you swallowed your words, if you should s...o...b..r Your pity over me. A bull! Nay, man, You're nothing but a bear with a sore head.

A bee has stung you--you who've lived on honey.

Sawdust, forsooth! You've had the sweet of life: You've munched the honeycomb till--

Merry Andrew:

Ay! talk's cheap.

But you've no children. You don't understand.

Gentleman John:

I have no children: I don't understand!

Merry Andrew:

It's children make the difference.

Gentleman John:

Man alive-- Alive and kicking, though you're shamming dead-- You've hit the truth at last. It's that, just that, Makes all the difference. If you hadn't children, I'ld find it in my heart to pity you, Granted you'ld let me. I don't understand!

I've seen you stripped. I've seen your children stripped.

You've never seen me naked; but you can guess The misst.i.tched, gnarled, and crooked thing I am.

Now, do you understand? I may have words.

But you, man, do you never burn with pride That you've begotten those six limber bodies, Firm flesh, and supple sinew, and lithe limb-- Six nimble lads, each like young Absalom, With red blood running lively in his veins, Bone of your bone, your very flesh and blood?

It's you don't understand. G.o.d, what I'ld give This moment to be you, just as you are, Preposterous pantaloons, and purple cats, And painted leer, and crimson curls, and all-- To be you now, with only one missed hoop, If I'd six clean-limbed children of my loins, Born of the ecstasy of life within me, To keep it quick and valiant in the ring When I ... but I ... Man, man, you've missed a hoop; But they'll take every hoop like blooded colts: And 'twill be you in them that leaps through life, And in their children, and their children's children.

G.o.d! doesn't it make you hold your breath to think There'll always be an Andrew in the ring, The very spit and image of you stripped, While life's old circus lasts? And I ... at least There is no twisted thing of my begetting To keep my shame alive: and that's the most That I've to pride myself upon. But, G.o.d, I'm proud, ay, proud as Lucifer, of that.

Think what it means, with all the urge and sting, When such a l.u.s.t of life runs in the veins.

You, with your six sons, and your one missed hoop, Put that thought in your pipe and smoke it. Well, And how d'you like the flavour? Something bitter?

And burns the tongue a trifle? That's the brand That I must smoke while I've the breath to puff.

(Pause.) I've always worshipped the body, all my life-- The body, quick with the perfect health which is beauty, Lively, lissom, alert, and taking its way Through the world with the easy gait of the early G.o.ds.

The only moments I've lived my life to the full And that live again in remembrance unfaded are those When I've seen life compact in some perfect body, The living G.o.d made manifest in man: A diver in the Mediterranean, resting, With sleeked black hair, and glistening salt-tanned skin, Gripping the quivering gunwale with tense hands, His torso lifted out of the peac.o.c.k sea, Like Neptune, carved in amber, come to life: A stark Egyptian on the Nile's edge poised Like a bronze Osiris against the lush, rank green: A fisherman dancing reels, on New Year's Eve, In a hall of shadowy rafters and flickering lights, At St Abbs on the Berwickshire coast, to the skirl of the pipes, The lift of the wave in his heels, the sea in his veins: A Cherokee Indian, as though he were one with his horse, His coppery shoulders agleam, his feathers aflame With the last of the sun, descending a gulch in Alaska; A brawny Cleveland puddler, stripped to the loins, On the cauldron's brink, stirring the molten iron In the white-hot glow, a man of white-hot metal: A Cornish ploughboy driving an easy share Through the grey, light soil of a headland, against a sea Of sapphire, gay in his new white corduroys, Blue-eyed, dark-haired, and whistling a careless tune: Jack Johnson, stripped for the ring, in his swarthy pride Of sleek and rippling muscle ...

Merry Andrew:

Jack's the boy!

Ay, he's the proper figure of a man.

But he'll grow fat and flabby and scant of breath.

He'll miss his hoop some day.

Gentleman John:

But what are words To shape the joy of form? The Greeks did best To cut in marble or to cast in bronze Their ecstasy of living. I remember A marvellous Hermes that I saw in Athens, Fished from the very bottom of the deep Where he had lain two thousand years or more, Wrecked with a galleyful of Roman pirates, Among the white bones of his plunderers Whose flesh had fed the fishes as they sank-- Serene in cold, imperishable beauty, Biding his time, till he should rise again, Exultant from the wave, for all men's worship, The morning-spring of life, the youth of the world, Shaped in sea-coloured bronze for everlasting.

Ay, the Greeks knew: but men have forgotten now.

Not easily do we meet beauty walking The world to-day in all the body's pride.

That's why I'm here--a stable-boy to camels-- For in the circus-ring there's more delight Of seemly bodies, goodly in sheer health, Bodies trained and tuned to the perfect pitch, Eager, blithe, debonair, from head to heel Aglow and alive in every pulse, than elsewhere In this machine-ridden land of grimy, glum Round-shouldered, coughing mechanics. Once I lived In London, in a slum called Paradise, Sickened to see the greasy pavements crawling With puny flabby babies, thick as maggots.

Poor brats! I'ld soon go mad if I'd to live In London, with its stunted men and women But little better to look on than myself.

Yet, there's an island where the men keep fit-- St Kilda's, a stark fastness of high crag: They must keep fit or famish: their main food The Solan goose; and it's a chancy job To swing down a sheer face of slippery granite And drop a noose over the sentinel bird Ere he can squawk to rouse the sleeping flock.

They must keep fit--their bodies taut and trim-- To have the nerve: and they're like tempered steel, Suppled and fined. But even they've grown slacker Through traffic with the mainland, in these days.

A hundred years ago, the custom held That none should take a wife till he had stood, His left heel on the dizziest point of crag, His right leg and both arms stretched in mid air, Above the sea: three hundred feet to drop To death, if he should fail--a Spartan test.

But any man who could have failed, would scarce Have earned his livelihood or his children's bread On that bleak rock.

Merry Andrew (drowsily):

Ay, children--that's it, children!