and sand and burnt sea-drift;
but in the summer, as I watch
the wave till its edge of foam
touches the hot sand and instantly
vanishes like snow on the equator,
I would cry out, stay, stay;
then I remember delicate enduring frost
and its mid-winter dawn-pattern;
in the hot noon-sun, I think of the grey
opalescent winter-dawn; as the wave
burns on the shingle, I think,
you are less beautiful than frost;
but it is also true that I pray,
O, give me burning blue
and brittle burnt sea-weed
above the tide-line,
as I stand, still unsatisfied,
under the long shadow-on-snow of the pine.
[5]
Satisfied, unsatisfied,
satiated or numb with hunger,
this is the eternal urge,
this is the despair, the desire to equilibrate
the eternal variant;
you understand that insistent calling,
that demand of a given moment,
the will to enjoy, the will to live,
not merely the will to endure,
the will to flight, the will to achievement,
the will to rest after long flight;
but who knows the desperate urge
of those others—actual or perhaps now
mythical birds—who seek but find no rest
till they drop from the highest point of the spiral
or fall from the innermost centre of the ever-narrowing circle?
for they remember, they remember, as they sway and hover,
what once was—they remember, they remember—
they will not swerve—they have known bliss,
the fruit that satisfies—they have come back—
what if the islands are lost? what if the waters
cover the Hesperides? they would rather remember—
remember the golden apple-trees;
O, do not pity them, as you watch them drop one by one,
for they fall exhausted, numb, blind
but in certain ecstasy,
for theirs is the hunger
for Paradise.
[6]
So I would rather drown, remembering—
than bask on tropic atolls
in the coral-seas; I would rather drown
remembering—than rest on pine or fir-branch
where great stars pour down
their generating strength, Arcturus
or the sapphires of the Northern Crown;
I would rather beat in the wind, crying to these others:
yours is the more foolish circling,
yours is the senseless wheeling
round and round—yours has no reason—
I am seeking heaven;
yours has no vision,
I see what is beneath me, what is above me,
what men say is-not—I remember,
I remember, I remember—you have forgot:
you think, even before it is half-over,
that your cycle is at an end,
but you repeat your foolish circling—again, again, again;
again, the steel sharpened on the stone;
again, the pyramid of skulls;
I gave pity to the dead,
O blasphemy, pity is a stone for bread,
only love is holy and love’s ecstasy
that turns and turns and turns about one centre,
reckless, regardless, blind to reality,
that knows the Islands of the Blest are there,
for many waters can not quench love’s fire.
[7]
Yet resurrection is a sense of direction,
resurrection is a bee-line,
straight to the horde and plunder,
the treasure, the store-room,
the honeycomb;
resurrection is remuneration,
food, shelter, fragrance
of myrrh and balm.
[8]
I am so happy,
I am the first or the last
of a flock or a swarm;
I am full of new wine;
I am branded with a word,
I am burnt with wood,
drawn from glowing ember,
not cut, not marked with steel;
I am the first or the last to renounce
iron, steel, metal;
I have gone forward,
I have gone backward,
I have gone onward from bronze and iron,
into the Golden Age.
[9]
No poetic fantasy
but a biological reality,
a fact: I am an entity
like bird, insect, plant
or sea-plant cell;
I live; I am alive;
take care, do not know me,
deny me, do not recognise me,
shun me; for this reality
is infectious—ecstasy.
[10]
It is no madness to say
you will fall, you great cities,
(now the cities lie broken);
it is not tragedy, prophecy
from a frozen Priestess,
a lonely Pythoness
who chants, who sings
in broken hexameters,
doom, doom to city-gates,
to rulers, to kingdoms;
it is simple reckoning, algebraic,
it is geometry on the wing,
not patterned, a gentian
in an ice-mirror,
yet it is, if you like, a lily
folded like a pyramid,
a flower-cone,
not a heap of skulls;
it is a lily, if you will,
each petal, a kingdom, an aeon,
and it is the seed of a lily
that having flowered,
will flower again;
it is that smallest grain,
the least of all seeds
that grows branches
where the birds rest;
it is that flowering balm,
it is heal-all,
everlasting;
it is the greatest among herbs
and becometh a tree.
[11]
He was the first that flew
(the heavenly pointer)
but not content to leave
the scattered flock,
He journeys back and forth
between the poles of heaven and earth forever;
He was the first to wing
from that sad Tree,
but having flown, the Tree of Life
bears rose from thorn
and fragrant vine,
from barren wood;
He was the first to say,
not to the chosen few,
his faithful friends,
the wise and good,
but to an outcast and a vagabond,
to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.
[12]
So the first—it is written,
will be the twisted or the tortured individuals,
out of line, out of step with world so-called progress;
the first to receive the promise was a thief;
the first actually to witness His life-after-death,
was an unbalanced, neurotic woman,
who was naturally reviled for having left home
and not caring for house-work … or was that Mary of Bethany?
in any case—as to this other Mary
and what she did, everyone knows,
but it is not on record
exactly where and how she found the alabaster jar;
some say she took the house-money
or the poor-box money,
some say she had nothing with her,
neither purse nor script,
no gold-piece or silver
stamped with image o
f Caesar.
[13]
In any case, she struek an uneanny bargain
(or so some say) with an Arab,
a stranger in the market-place;
actually, he had a little booth of a house
set to the left, back of the market
as you pass through the lower-gate;
what he had, was not for sale; he was on his way
to a eoronation and a funeral—a double affair—
what he had, his priceless, unobtainable-elsewhere myrrh
was for the double ceremony, a funeral and a throning;
his was not ordinary myrrh and incense
and anyway, it is not for sale, he said;
he drew aside his robe in a noble manner
but the un-maidenly woman did not take the hint;
she had seen nobility herself at first hand;
nothing impressed her, it was easy to see;
she simply didn’t eare whether he acclaimed
or snubbed her—or worse; what are insults?
she knew how to detach herself,
another unforgivable sin,
and when stones were hurled,
she simply wasn’t there;
she wasn’t there and then she appeared,
not a beautiful woman really—would you say?
certainly not pretty;
what struck the Arab was that she was unpredictable;
this had never happened before—a woman—
well yes—if anyone did, he knew the world—a lady
had not taken a hint, had not sidled gracefully
at a gesture of implied dismissal
and with no apparent offence really,
out of the door.
[14]
It was easy to see that he was not an ordinary merchant;
she saw that certainly—he was an ambassador;
there was hardly anyone you could trust
with this precious merchandise,
though the jars were sealed,
the fragrance got out somehow,
and the rumour was bruited about,
even if you yourself managed to keep out
of the ordinary haunts of the merchants;
some said, this distillation, this attar
lasted literally forever, had so lasted—
though no one could of course, actually know
what was or was-not in those alabaster boxes
of the Princesses of the Hyksos Kings,
there were unguent jars, certainly;
but who would open them?
they had charms wrought upon them,
there were sigils and painted figures on all the jars;
no one dismantled the tombs,
that would be wickedness—but this he knew,
his own people for centuries and centuries,
had whispered the secret of the sacred processes of distillation;
it was never written, not even in symbols, for this they knew—
no secret was safe with a woman.
[15]
She said, I have heard of you;
he bowed ironically and ironically murmured,
I have not had the pleasure,
his eyes now fixed on the half-open door;
she understood; this was his second rebuff
but deliberately, she shut the door;
she stood with her back against it;
planted there, she flung out her arms,
a further barrier,
and her scarf slipped to the floor;
her face was very pale,
her eyes darker and larger
than many whose luminous depth
had inspired some not-inconsiderable poets;
but eyes? he had known many women—
it was her hair—un-maidenly—
It was hardly decent of her to stand there,
unveiled, in the house of a stranger.
[16]
I am Mary, she said, of a tower-town,
or once it must have been towered
for Magdala is a tower;
Magdala stands on the shore;
I am Mary, she said, of Magdala,
I am Mary, a great tower;
through my will and my power,
Mary shall be myrrh;
I am Mary—O, there are Marys a-plenty,
(though I am Mara, bitter) I shall be Mary-myrrh;
I am that myrrh-tree of the gentiles,
the heathen; there are idolaters,
even in Phrygia and Cappadocia,
who kneel before mutilated images
and burn incense to the Mother of Mutilations,
to Attis-Adonis-Tammuz and his mother who was myrrh;
she was a stricken woman,
having borne a son in unhallowed fashion;
she wept bitterly till some heathen god
changed her to a myrrh-tree;
I am Mary, I will weep bitterly,
bitterly … bitterly.
[17]
But her voice was steady and her eyes were dry,
the room was small, hardly a room,
it was an alcove or a wide cupboard
with a closed door, a shaded window;
there was hardly any light from the window
but there seemed to be light somewhere,
as of moon-light on a lost river
or a sunken stream, seen in a dream
by a parched, dying man, lost in the desert …
or a mirage … it was her hair.
[18]
He who was unquestionably
master of caravans,
stooped to the floor;
he handed her her scarf;
it was unseemly that a woman
appear disordered, dishevelled;
it was unseemly that a woman
[19]
I am Mary, the incense-flower of the incense-tree,
myself worshipping, weeping, shall be changed to myrrh;
I am Mary, though melted away,
I shall be a tower … she said, Sir,
I have need, not of bread nor of wine,
nor of anything you can offer me,
and demurely, she knotted her scarf
and turned to unfasten the door.
[20]
Some say she slipped out and got away,
some say he followed her and found her,
some say he never found her
but sent a messenger after her
with the alabaster jar;
some say he himself was a Magician,
a Chaldean, not an Arab at all,
and had seen the beginning and the end,
that he was Balthasar, Melchior,
or that other of Bethlehem;
some say he was masquerading,
was an Angel in disguise
and had really arranged this meeting
to conform to the predicted pattern
which he or Balthasar or another
had computed exactly from the stars;
some say it never happened,
some say it happens over and over;
some say he was an old lover
of Mary Magdalene and the gift of the myrrh
was in recognition of an old burnt-out
yet somehow suddenly renewed infatuation;
some say he was Abraham,
some say he was God.
[21]
Anyhow, it is exactly written,
the house was filled with the odour of the ointment;
that was a little later and this was not such a small house
and was maybe already fragrant with boughs and wreaths,
for this was a banquet, a festival;
it was all very gay and there was laughter,
but Judas Iscariot turned down his mouth,
he muttered Extravagant under his breath,
for the nard though not potent,
had that subtle, indefinable essenc
e
that lasts longer and costs more;
Judas whispered to his neighbour
and then they all began talking about the poor;
but Mary, seated on the floor,
like a child at a party, paid no attention;
she was busy; she was deftly un-weaving
the long, carefully-braided tresses
of her extraordinary hair.
[22]
But Simon the host thought,
we must draw the line somewhere;
he had seen something like this
in a heathen picture
or a carved stone-portal entrance
to a forbidden sea-temple;
they called the creature,
depicted like this,
seated on the sea-shore
or on a rock, a Siren,
a maid-of-the-sea, a mermaid;
some said, this mermaid sang
and that a Siren-song was fatal
and wrecks followed the wake of such hair;
she was not invited,
he bent to whisper
into the ear of his Guest,
I do not know her.
[23]
There was always a crowd hanging about outside
any door his Guest happened to enter;
he did not wish to make a scene,
he would call someone quietly to eject her;
Simon though over-wrought and excited,
had kept careful count of his guests;
things had gone excellently till now,
but this was embarrassing;
she was actually kissing His feet;
He does not understand;
they call him a Master,
but Simon questioned:
this man if he were a prophet, would have known
who and what manner of woman this is.
[24]
Simon did not know but Balthasar
or Melchior could have told him,
or better still, Gaspar or Kaspar,
who, they say, brought the myrrh;
Simon wished to avoid a scene
but Kaspar knew the scene was unavoidable
and already written in a star
or a configuration of stars
that rarely happens, perhaps once
in a little over two thousand years.