Sword Blades and Poppy Seed Part 3

They have watered the street, It shines in the glare of lamps, Cold, white lamps, And lies Like a slow-moving river, Barred with silver and black.

Cabs go down it, One, And then another.

Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.

Tramps doze on the window-ledges, Night-walkers pa.s.s along the sidewalks.

The city is squalid and sinister, With the silver-barred street in the midst, Slow-moving, A river leading nowhere.

Opposite my window, The moon cuts, Clear and round, Through the plum-coloured night.

She cannot light the city; It is too bright.

It has white lamps, And glitters coldly.

I stand in the window and watch the moon.

She is thin and l.u.s.treless, But I love her.

I know the moon, And this is an alien city.

Astigmatism

To Ezra Pound

With much friendship and admiration and some differences of opinion

The Poet took his walking-stick Of fine and polished ebony.

Set in the close-grained wood Were quaint devices; Patterns in ambers, And in the clouded green of jades.

The top was of smooth, yellow ivory, And a ta.s.sel of tarnished gold Hung by a faded cord from a hole Pierced in the hard wood, Circled with silver.

For years the Poet had wrought upon this cane.

His wealth had gone to enrich it, His experiences to pattern it, His labour to fashion and burnish it.

To him it was perfect, A work of art and a weapon, A delight and a defence.

The Poet took his walking-stick And walked abroad.

Peace be with you, Brother.

The Poet came to a meadow.

Sifted through the gra.s.s were daisies, Open-mouthed, wondering, they gazed at the sun.

The Poet struck them with his cane.

The little heads flew off, and they lay Dying, open-mouthed and wondering, On the hard ground.

"They are useless. They are not roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother. Go your ways.

The Poet came to a stream.

Purple and blue flags waded in the water; In among them hopped the speckled frogs; The wind slid through them, rustling.

The Poet lifted his cane, And the iris heads fell into the water.

They floated away, torn and drowning.

"Wretched flowers," said the Poet, "They are not roses."

Peace be with you, Brother. It is your affair.

The Poet came to a garden.

Dahlias ripened against a wall, Gillyflowers stood up bravely for all their short stature, And a trumpet-vine covered an arbour With the red and gold of its blossoms.

Red and gold like the bra.s.s notes of trumpets.

The Poet knocked off the stiff heads of the dahlias, And his cane lopped the gillyflowers at the ground.

Then he severed the trumpet-blossoms from their stems.

Red and gold they lay scattered, Red and gold, as on a battle field; Red and gold, p.r.o.ne and dying.

"They were not roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother.

But behind you is destruction, and waste places.

The Poet came home at evening, And in the candle-light He wiped and polished his cane.

The orange candle flame leaped in the yellow ambers, And made the jades undulate like green pools.

It played along the bright ebony, And glowed in the top of cream-coloured ivory.

But these things were dead, Only the candle-light made them seem to move.

"It is a pity there were no roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother. You have chosen your part.

The Coal Picker

He perches in the slime, inert, Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.

The oil upon the puddles dries To colours like a peac.o.c.k's eyes, And half-submerged tomato-cans Shine scaly, as leviathans Oozily crawling through the mud.

The ground is here and there bestud With lumps of only part-burned coal.

His duty is to glean the whole, To pick them from the filth, each one, To h.o.a.rd them for the hidden sun Which glows within each fiery core And waits to be made free once more.

Their sharp and glistening edges cut His stiffened fingers. Through the s.m.u.t Gleam red the wounds which will not shut.

Wet through and shivering he kneels And digs the slippery coals; like eels They slide about. His force all spent, He counts his small accomplishment.

A half-a-dozen clinker-coals Which still have fire in their souls.

Fire! And in his thought there burns The topaz fire of votive urns.

He sees it fling from hill to hill, And still consumed, is burning still.

Higher and higher leaps the flame, The smoke an ever-shifting frame.

He sees a Spanish Castle old, With silver steps and paths of gold.

From myrtle bowers comes the plash Of fountains, and the emerald flash Of parrots in the orange trees, Whose blossoms pasture humming bees.

He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke Bears visions, that his master-stroke Is out of dirt and misery To light the fire of poesy.

He sees the glory, yet he knows That others cannot see his shows.

To them his smoke is sightless, black, His votive vessels but a pack Of old discarded shards, his fire A peddler's; still to him the pyre Is incensed, an enduring goal!

He sighs and grubs another coal.