Some Imagist Poets, 1916 Part 5

But when the windows up and down those faces With yellow glimmer of gas, blaze forth; I know it is the only house that lives In all that grim four-storied row.

The others are mere shelves, overcrowded layers, Of warring, separate personalities; A jangle and a tangle of emotions, Without a single meaning running through them; But it, the empty house, has mastered all its secrets.

Behind its silent swarthy face, Eyelessly proud, It watches, it is master; It sees the other houses still incessantly learning The lesson it remembers, And which it can repeat the last dim syllable of.

THE SKATERS

_To A. D. R._

Black swallows swooping or gliding In a flurry of entangled loops and curves; The skaters skim over the frozen river.

And the grinding click of their skates as they impinge upon the surface, Is like the brushing together of thin wing-tips of silver.

F. S. FLINT

EASTER

Friend we will take the path that leads down from the flagstaff by the pond through the gorse thickets; see, the golden spikes have thrust their points through, and last year's bracken lies yellow-brown and trampled.

The sapling birch-groves have shown no leaf, and the wistarias on the desolate pergola are shorn and ashen.

We lurch on, and, stumbling, touch each other.

You do not shrink, friend.

There you, and I here, side by side, we go, jesting.

We do not seek, we do not avoid, contact.

Here is the road, with the budding elm-trees lining it, and there the low gate in the wall; on the other side, the people.

Are they not aliens?

You and I for a moment see them shabby of limb and soul, patched up to make shift.

We laugh and strengthen each other; But the evil is done.

Is not the whole park made for them, and the bushes and plants and trees and gra.s.ses, have they not grown to their standard?

The paths are worn to the gravel with their feet; the green moss will not carpet them.

The flags of the stone steps are hollowed; and you and I must strive to remain two and not to merge in the mult.i.tude.

It impinges on us; it separates us; we shrink from it; we brave through it; we laugh; we jest; we jeer; and we save the fragments of our souls.

Between two clipped privet hedges now; we will close our eyes for life's sake to life's patches.

Here, maybe, there is quiet; pa.s.s first under the bare branches, beyond is a pool flanked with sedge, and a swan among water-lilies.

But here too is a group of men and women and children; and the swan has forgotten its pride; it thrusts its white neck among them, and gobbles at nothing; then tires of the cheat and sails off; but its breast urges before it a sheet of sodden newspaper that, drifting away, reveals beneath the immaculate white splendour of its neck and wings a breast black with sc.u.m.

Friend, we are beaten.

OGRE

Through the open window can be seen the poplars at the end of the garden shaking in the wind, a wall of green leaves so high that the sky is shut off.

On the white table-cloth a rose in a vase --centre of a sphere of odour-- contemplates the crumbs and crusts left from a meal: cups, saucers, plates lie here and there.

And a sparrow flies by the open window, stops for a moment, flutters his wings rapidly, and climbs an aerial ladder with his claws that work close in to his soft, brown-grey belly.

But behind the table is the face of a man.

The bird flies off.

CONES

The blue mist of after-rain fills all the trees;

the sunlight gilds the tops of the poplar spires, far off, behind the houses.

Here a branch sways and there a sparrow twitters.

The curtain's hem, rose-embroidered, flutters, and half reveals a burnt-red chimney pot.

The quiet in the room bears patiently a footfall on the street.

GLOOM

I sat there in the dark of the room and of my mind thinking of men's treasons and bad faith, sinking into the pit of my own weakness before their strength of cunning.

Out over the gardens came the sound of some one playing five-finger exercises on the piano.

Then I gathered up within me all my powers until outside of me was nothing: I was all-- all stubborn, fighting sadness and revulsion.

And one came from the garden quietly, and stood beside me.

She laid her hand on my hair; she laid her cheek on my forehead,-- and caressed me with it; but all my being rose to my forehead to fight against this outside thing.

Something in me became angry; withstood like a wall, and would allow no entrance; I hated her.

"What is the matter with you, dear?" she said.

"Nothing," I answered, "I am thinking."

She stroked my hair and went away; and I was still gloomy, angry, stubborn.