Georgian Poetry 1920-22 Part 7

Of caterpillars Fabre tells how day after day Around the rim of a vast earth pot they crawled, Tricked thither as they filed shuffling out one morn Head to tail when the common hunger called.

Head to tail in a heaving ring day after day, Night after slow night, the starving mommets crept, Each following each, head to tail, day after day, An unbroken ring of hunger--then it was snapt.

I thought of you, long-heaving, horned green caterpillars, As I lay awake. My thoughts crawled each after each, Crawling at night each after each on the same nerve, An unbroken ring of thoughts too sore for speech.

Over and over and over and over again The same hungry thoughts and the hopeless same regrets, Over and over the same truths, again and again In a heaving ring returning the same regrets.

CHANGE

I am that creature and creator who Loosens and reins the waters of the sea, Forming the rocky marge anon anew.

I stir the cold b.r.e.a.s.t.s of antiquity, And in the soft stone of the pyramid Move wormlike; and I flutter all those sands Whereunder lost and soundless time is hid.

I shape the hills and valleys with these hands, And darken forests on their naked sides, And call the rivers from the vexing springs, And lead the blind winds into deserts strange.

And in firm human bones the ill that hides Is mine, the fear that cries, the hope that sings.

I am that creature and creator, Change.

WILFRID GIBSON

FIRE

In each black tile a mimic fire's aglow, And in the hearthlight old mahogany, Ripe with stored sunshine that in Mexico Poured like gold wine into the living tree Summer on summer through a century, Burns like a crater in the heart of night: And all familiar things in the ingle-light Glow with a secret strange intensity.

And I remember hidden fires that burst Suddenly from the midnight while men slept, Long-smouldering rages in the darkness nursed That to an instant ravening fury leapt, And the old terror menacing evermore A crumbling world with fiery molten core.

BARBARA FELL

Stephen, wake up! There's some one at the gate.

Quick, to the window ... Oh, you'll be too late!

I hear the front door opening quietly.

Did you forget, last night, to turn the key?

A foot is on the stairs--nay, just outside The very room--the door is opening wide...

Stephen, wake up, wake up! Who's there? Who's there?

I only feel a cold wind in my hair...

Have I been dreaming, Stephen? Husband, wake And comfort me: I think my heart will break.

I never knew you sleep so sound and still....

O my heart's love, why is your hand so chill?

PHILIP AND PHOEBE WARE

Who is that woman, Philip, standing there Before the mirror doing up her hair?

You're dreaming, Phoebe, or the morning light Mixing and mingling with the dying night Makes shapes out of the darkness, and you see Some dream-remembered phantasy maybe.

Yet it grows clearer with the growing day; And in the cold dawn light her hair is grey: Her lifted arms are naught but bone: her hands White withered claws that fumble as she stands Trying to pin that wisp into its place.

O Philip, I must look upon her face There in the mirror. Nay, but I will rise And peep over her shoulder ... Oh, the eyes That burn out from that face of skin and bone, Searching my very marrow, are my own.

BY THE WEIR

A scent of Esparto gra.s.s--and again I recall That hour we spent by the weir of the paper-mill Watching together the curving thunderous fall Of frothing amber, bemused by the roar until My mind was as blank as the speckless sheets that wound On the hot steel ironing-rollers perpetually turning In the humming dark rooms of the mill: all sense and discerning By the stunning and dazzling oblivion of hill-waters drowned.

And my heart was empty of memory and hope and desire Till, rousing, I looked afresh on your face as you gazed-- Behind you an old gnarled fruit-tree in one still fire Of innumerable flame in the sun of October blazed, Scarlet and gold that the first white frost would spill With eddying flicker and patter of dead leaves falling-- looked on your face, as an outcast from Eden recalling A vision of Eve as she dallied bewildered and still

By the serpent-encircled tree of knowledge that flamed With gold and scarlet of good and evil, her eyes Rapt on the river of life: then bright and untamed By the labour and sorrow and fear of a world that dies Your ignorant eyes looked up into mine; and I knew That never our hearts should be one till your young lips had tasted The core of the bitter-sweet fruit, and wise and toil-wasted You should stand at my shoulder an outcast from Eden too.

WORLDS

Through the pale green forest of tall bracken-stalks, Whose interwoven fronds, a jade-green sky, Above me glimmer, infinitely high, Towards my giant hand a beetle walks In glistening emerald mail; and as I lie Watching his progress through huge gra.s.sy blades And over pebble boulders, my own world fades And shrinks to the vision of a beetle's eye.

Within that forest world of twilight green Ambushed with unknown perils, one endless day I travel down the beetle-trail between Huge glossy boles through green infinity ...

Till flashes a glimpse of blue sea through the bracken asway, And my world is again a tumult of windy sea.

ROBERT GRAVES

LOST LOVE

His eyes are quickened so with grief, He can watch a gra.s.s or leaf Every instant grow; he can Clearly through a flint wall see, Or watch the startled spirit flee From the throat of a dead man.