Georgian Poetry 1920-22 Part 18

How are things going with you? Will you have some coffee?

Well, of course it's trying sometimes, but never mind, It will probably be all right. Carry on, and keep cheerful.

I shouldn't, if I were you, meet trouble half-way, It is always best to take everything as it comes.

LATE SNOW

The heavy train through the dim country went rolling, rolling, Interminably pa.s.sing misty snow-covered plough-land ridges That merged in the snowy sky; came turning meadows, fences, Came gullies and pa.s.sed, and ice-coloured streams under frozen bridges.

Across the travelling landscape evenly drooped and lifted The telegraph wires, thick ropes of snow in the windless air; They drooped and paused and lifted again to unseen summits, Drawing the eyes and soothing them, often, to a drowsy stare.

Singly in the snow the ghosts of trees were softly pencilled, Fainter and fainter, in distance fading, into nothingness gliding, But sometimes a crowd of the intricate silver trees of fairyland Pa.s.sed, close and intensely clear, the phantom world hiding.

O untroubled these moving mantled miles of shadowless shadows, And lovely the film of falling flakes; so wayward and slack; But I thought of many a mother-bird screening her nestlings, Sitting silent with wide bright eyes, snow on her back.

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG

SEASCAPE

Over that morn hung heaviness, until, Near sunless noon, we heard the ship's bell beating A melancholy staccato on dead metal; Saw the bare-footed watch come running aft; Felt, far below, the sudden telegraph jangle Its harsh metallic challenge, thrice repeated: 'Stand to. Half-speed ahead. Slow. Stop her!'

They stopped.

The plunging pistons sank like a stopped heart: She held, she swayed, a hulk, a hollow carca.s.s Of blistered iron that the grey-green, waveless, Unruffled tropic waters slapped languidly.

And, in that pause, a sinister whisper ran: Burial at Sea! a Portuguese official ...

Poor fever-broken devil from Mozambique: Came on half tight: the doctor calls it heat-stroke.

Why do they travel steerage? It's the exchange: So many million 'reis' to the pound!

What did he look like? No one ever saw him: Took to his bunk, and drank and drank and died.

They're ready! Silence!

We cl.u.s.tered to the rail, Curious and half-ashamed. The well-deck spread A comfortable gulf of segregation Between ourselves and death. 'Burial at sea' ...

The master holds a black book at arm's length; His droning voice comes for'ard: 'This our brother ...

We therefore commit his body to the deep To be turned into corruption' ... The bo's'n whispers Hoa.r.s.ely behind his hand: 'Now, all together!'

The hatch-cover is tilted; a mummy of sailcloth Well ballasted with iron shoots clear of the p.o.o.p; Falls, like a diving gannet. The green sea closes Its burnished skin; the snaky swell smoothes over ...

While he, the man of the steerage, goes down, down, Feet foremost, sliding swiftly down the dim water, Swift to escape Those plunging shapes with pale, empurpled bellies That swirl and veer about him. He goes down Unerringly, as though he knew the way Through green, through gloom, to absolute watery darkness, Where no weed sways nor curious fin quivers: To the sad, sunless deeps where, endlessly, A downward drift of death spreads its wan mantle In the wave-moulded valleys that shall enfold him Till the sea give up its dead.

There shall he lie dispersed amid great riches: Such gold, such arrogance, so many bold hearts!

All the sunken armadas pressed to powder By weight of incredible seas! That mingled wrack No livening sun shall visit till the crust Of earth be riven, or this rolling planet Reel on its axis; till the moon-chained tides, Unloosed, deliver up that white Atlantis Whose naked peaks shall bleach above the slaked Thirst of Sahara, fringed by weedy tangles Of Atlas's drown'd cedars, frowning eastward To where the sands of India lie cold, And heap'd Himalaya's a rib of coral Slowly uplifted, grain on grain....

We dream Too long! Another jangle of alarum Stabs at the engines: 'Slow. Half-speed. Full-speed!'

The great bearings rumble; the screw churns, frothing Opaque water to downward-swelling plumes Milky as wood-smoke. A shoal of flying-fish Spurts out like animate spray. The warm breeze wakens; And we pa.s.s on, forgetting, Toward the solemn horizon of bronzed c.u.mulus That bounds our brooding sea, gathering gloom That, when night falls, will dissipate in flaws Of watery lightning, washing the hot sky, Cleansing all hearts of heat and restlessness, Until, with day, another blue be born.

SCIROCCO

Out of that high pavilion Where the sick, wind-hara.s.sed sun In the whiteness of the day Ghostly shone and stole away-- Parched with the utter thirst Of unnumbered Libyan sands, Thou, cloud-gathering spirit, burst Out of arid Africa To the tideless sea, and smote On our pale, moon-cooled lands The hot breath of a lion's throat.

And that furnace-heated breath Blew into my placid dreams The heart of fire from whence it came: Haunt of beauty and of death Where the forest breaks in flame Of flaunting blossom, where the flood Of life pulses hot and stark, Where a wing'd death breeds in mud And tumult of tree-shadowed streams-- Black waters, desolately hurled Through the uttermost, lost, dark, Secret places of the world.

There, O swift and terrible Being, wast thou born; and thence, Like a demon loosed from h.e.l.l, Stripped with rending wings the dense Echoing forests, till their bowed Plumes of trees like tattered cloud Were toss'd and torn, and cried aloud As the wood were rack'd with pain: Thence thou freed'st thy wings, and soon From the moaning, stricken plain In whorled eagle-soarings rose To melt the sun-defeating snows Of the Mountains of the Moon, To dull their glaciers with fierce breath, To slip the avalanches' rein, To set the laughing torrents free On the tented desert beneath, Where men of thirst must wither and die While the vultures stare in the sun's eye; Where slowly sifting sands are strown On broken cities, whose bleaching bones Whiten in moonlight stone on stone.

Over their pitiful dust thy blast Pa.s.sed in columns of whirling sand, Leapt the desert and swept the strand Of the cool and quiet sea, Gathering mighty shapes, and proud Phantoms of monstrous, wave-born cloud, And northward drove this panoply Till the sky seemed charging on the land....

Yet, in that plumed helm, the most Of thy hot power was cooled or lost, So that it came to me at length, Faint and tepid and shorn of strength, To shiver an olive-grove that heaves A myriad moonlight-coloured leaves, And in the stone-pine's dome set free A murmur of the middle sea: A puff of warm air in the night So spent by its impetuous flight It scarce invades my pillar'd closes,-- To waft their fragrance from the sweet Buds of my lemon-coloured roses Or strew blown petals at my feet: To kiss my cheek with a warm sigh And in the tired darkness die.

THE QUAILS

(In the south of Italy the peasants put out the eyes of a captured quail so that its cries may attract the flocks of spring migrants into their nets.)

All through the night I have heard the stuttering call of a blind quail, A caged decoy, under a cairn of stones, Crying for light as the quails cry for love.

Other wanderers, Northward from Africa winging on numb pinions, dazed With beating winds and the sobbing of the sea, Hear, in a breath of sweet land-herbage, the call Of the blind one, their sister....

Hearing, their fluttered hearts Take courage, and they wheel in their dark flight, Knowing that their toil is over, dreaming to see The white stubbles of Abruzzi smitten with dawn, And spilt grain lying in the furrows, the squandered gold That is the delight of quails in their spring mating.

Land-scents grow keener, Penetrating the dank and bitter odour of brine That whitens their feathers; Far below, the voice of their sister calls them To plenty, and sweet water, and fulfilment.

Over the pallid margin of dim seas breaking, Over the thickening in the darkness that is land, They fly. Their flight is ended. Wings beat no more.

Downward they drift, one by one, like dark petals, Slowly, listlessly falling Into the mouth of horror: The nets....

Where men come trampling and crying with bright lanterns, Plucking their weak, entangled claws from the meshes of net, Clutching the soft brown bodies mottled with olive, Crushing the warm, fluttering flesh, in hands stained with blood, Till their quivering hearts are stilled, and the bright eyes, That are like a polished agate, glaze in death.

But the blind one, in her wicker cage, without ceasing Haunts this night of spring with her stuttering call, Knowing nothing of the terror that walks in darkness, Knowing only that some cruelty has stolen the light That is life, and that she must cry until she dies.

I, in the darkness, Heard, and my heart grew sick. But I know that to-morrow A smiling peasant will come with a basket of quails Wrapped in vine-leaves, prodding them with blood-stained fingers, Saying, 'Signore, you must cook them thus, and thus, With a sprig of basil inside them.' And I shall thank him, Carrying the piteous carcases into the kitchen Without a pang, without shame.

'Why should I be ashamed? Why should I rail Against the cruelty of men? Why should I pity, Seeing that there is no cruelty which men can imagine To match the subtle dooms that are wrought against them By blind spores of pestilence: seeing that each of us, Lured by dim hopes, flutters in the toils of death On a cold star that is spinning blindly through s.p.a.ce Into the nets of time?'

So cried I, bitterly thrusting pity aside, Closing my lids to sleep. But sleep came not, And pity, with sad eyes, Crept to my side, and told me That the life of all creatures is brave and pityful Whether they be men, with dark thoughts to vex them, Or birds, wheeling in the swift joys of flight, Or brittle ephemerids, spinning to death in the haze Of gold that quivers on dim evening waters; Nor would she be denied.

The harshness died Within me, and my heart Was caught and fluttered like the palpitant heart Of a brown quail, flying To the call of her blind sister, And death, in the spring night.

SONG AT SANTA CRUZ

Were there lovers in the lanes of Atlantis: Meeting lips and twining fingers In the mild Atlantis springtime?

How should I know If there were lovers in the lanes of Atlantis When the dark sea drowned her mountains Many ages ago?