For the hush
Of song,
The corn
For the scythe
And the thorn
In wait
For the heart
Till the last
Of the first
Depart,
And the least
Of the past
Is dust
And the dust
Is lost.
Hold fast!
(c. 1947)
I Must Begin to Comprehend
I must begin to comprehend
My loves, because of my
Disorganised desire to live
Before it’s time to die.
First there’s the love I bear my friends,
(A poor and sickly thing.)
And secondly my love for George –
I keep him on a string.
And then there’s all the love I store
And lavish on myself;
A healthy and a freckled beast
(I keep it on a shelf.)
So now I know myself and I
Can start my life anew.
Half tragical, half magical,
And half an hour, or two.
(c. 1947)
The Threads Remain
The threads remain, and cotton ones
Last longer than a thought
Which takes so long before it’s sold,
And dies before it’s bought.
I must begin to classify
My loves, because of my
Disorganised desire to live
Before it’s time to die.
First there’s the love I bear my friends,
(A poor and sickly thing)
And then my love for all that long
Wild family of String.
Such as the brothers Chord and Twine
And Uncle Rope, who’s bred
With cotton on the brain, and all
My love is based on thread.
Then there is all the love I store
And lavish on myself
A healthy and a freckled beast
(I keep it on a shelf)
So now I know myself and I
Can start my life anew
Half magical, half tragical
And half-an-hour, or two.
(c. 1947)
White Mules at Prayer
White mules at prayer! Ignore them. Turn to me
Until the gold contraption of our love
Rattles its seven bright boxes and the sea
Withdraws its breakers from the Rhubarb Grove.
Combe out your zephyrs from the comely heads
Of combers, with your complex combes, the hair
Of their commotion! For the pillowy beds
Are made to float like Ida, down the air.
Why not! with feathers for their cargo, yea
And sheets at large to be so closely hauled
That one might think no blanket of the spray
But waits its bolster from another world.
This is no place where maudlin-headed fays
Can smirk behind their mushrooms: ’tis a shore
For gaping daemons. It is such a place
As I, my love, have long been looking for.
Here where the rhubarb grove into the wave
Throws down its rueful image, we can fly
Our kites of love above the sandy grave
Of those long drowned in love’s dubiety.
For love is ripest by a rhubarb grove
When weird reflections glimmer through the dawn.
O Iridescence vegetably wove
Of hues that die the moment they are born.
O love, lob-sided love! how long ago
My antler’d antics pranced through halls of dread.
The Alps of God stood silent in a row
A dunce’s cap of snow on every head.
Chill was the air, chill on the brow, & very
Close for all that, because the day was warm.
The screaming gale gave little presage, really,
Or sign of any future kind of storm.
Lost in the venal world our dreams deflate
By easy stages through green atmosphere.
Imagination’s taut balloon is late
In coming up, like the blue whale, for air.
It is not known what genus of the wild
Blue plums of thought best wrinkle, twitch and flow
Into black wisdom’s prune, for in the mild
Orchards of love there is no need to know.
No need at all, for us to wander back
Into the core of what one day might be
The kind of nut no argument can crack –
What is it, friend, that stirs the Indian tea?
No! not the hollow heron-crested prince
Of porcelain spurs the white steeds of the south,
Rather, some ragged mendicant shall prance
With wisdom like an acorn in his mouth.
What use to cry for Capricorn? it sails
Across the heart’s red atlas; it is found
Only within the skull, where all the tails
The tempest has are whisking it around.
No time for tears! It is enough today
That we, meandering these granular shores,
Can watch the ponderous billows at their play
Like midnight beasts with garlands in their jaws.
But hush! Along the winds the turkey-breasted
Clouds involve our spirit with their flight.
Cover the eyes; you can’t be interested.
Bandage your eyes with seaweed for tonight.
White mules at prayer! I wish they’d go away
Or else you would not stare at them so deep.
The sea-gloom thickens. Hark! within the spray
I hear the mermaids munching in their sleep.
(c. 1947)
O Love, O Death, O Ecstasy
1
O love, O death, O ecstasy
Beneath the moon’s marmoreal snout!
O rhubarb burning by the sea
Through nights of nought and days of doubt
Ah pity me, Ah pity me,
What is it all about?
What is it all about?
2
A voice across the coughing brine
Has sewn your spirit into mine!
O love it is for me to die
Upon your bosom noisily,
Ah pity me, ah pity me,
What is it all about?
What is it all about?
(c. 1947)
Tintinnabulum
1
There was a man came up to me,
He said, ‘I know you well:
Within your face I’m sure I see
The tinkling of a bell.’
2
I said to him, ‘I rather doubt
We’ve ever met before!
I cannot recollect your snout.
Retire, and say no more.’
3
But he continued – ‘I recall
Our meeting long ago,
Your face amazed me then, with all
Its tinkles, don’t you know.’
4
He put his ear within a good
Four inches of the space
On which my features sit and brood –
And listened to my face.
5
‘Just so,’ he said at last; ‘just so.
Sit down, O tinkly one.
Here, in the cool our thoughts can flow
To where they first begun.’
From Figures of Speech. The Key to the drawing is on p. 234.
6
I said, ‘I know you not: nor where
You live: nor who you be
And much resent the way you stare
Exclusively at me.’
7
‘It is the tinkling, sir,’ he said.
‘Your face is pastoral.
Behind its monstrousness are spread
The meadows lush and cool.
8
‘Behind the hot, ridiculous
Red face of you, there ring
The bells of youth, melodious
As sheepfolds in the spring.
9
‘I’m sure I’m not mistaken, sir
My ears could not forget
A face with such interior
Melodies, dry or wet.
10
‘I must have met you long ago,
In Maida Vale, I think
When the canal was bright with snow
And black with Indian ink.
11
‘Beneath an archway, on a stair
(The harvest moon was full –
And ripe as any yellow pear
That tastes of cotton wool) –
‘I saw your shape descend on me –
It all comes gaily back –
You stood and tried to bend on me
Your eyes of button-black –
13
‘Away, away, I heard you cry –
(Just as you have today –
Without a wherefore or a why,
I had to disobey)
14
‘Away! away! I heard you say
But swiftly I replied
I’ve every kind of right to stay –
The law is on my side.
15
‘“No moral right, no moral right,”
You screamed, in double prose,
“You have no case at all tonight
I am the man who knows” –
16
‘And then – you tinkled! ’Twas that sound
That cantered through my ears
And thence into a vale profound
Too deep for human tears.’
17
‘No, no, no, no, it is not so!
Your memory’s at fault!
How can such recollections grow
On boughs of biblic salt?
18
‘It was not me, for I am not
The tinkling type,’ I said.
‘I am a businessman, I’ve got
A bowler on my head.’
19
‘Mere counterfeit,’ the man replied,
‘That symbol of the grave
Could never even hope to hide
That you are not a slave.
20
‘There is a sparkle in your eye,
A lightness in your tread –
And your demeanour crisp and spry
Leaves nothing to be said.
21
‘Give up your soul. Deny your pride,
Confess your guilt, and be
Unutterably on my side
Before we go to tea.
22
‘Though I’m a stranger, can’t you feel
Our kinship – otherwise
How could your presence, soft as veal
Bring tears into my eyes?
23
‘Turn over a fresh page my friend
And turn it over fast –
For no one knows how soon may end
The foolscap of your past.
24
‘Come, let me hold you by the raw
Black elbow of your coat.
Your courage mounts; O leave the shore
While this is yet a boat.
25
‘I am your boat! I am your crew
Your rudder or your mast –
Yea friend, I am your limpets too
And your elastoplast.’
26
How could I fail to be inspired
By words so hotly said.
I found my inner faith was fired,
The blood rushed to my head.
27
‘O stranger, I will tell you all!
I am the man, I was
So nervous of my inner bell –
Especially out of doors.
28
‘But I am he: the tinkly one.
What I can do, I will.’
Said he – ‘See how the golden sun
Sits on that pea-green hill.
29
‘It is a sign. You have confessed.
Your finer self breaks through –
Even the flowers your boots have pressed
Are ogling in the dew.
30
‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said. I squatted
On the sparkling pasture.
The rain came down and filled my spotted
Shirt with pleasant moisture.
31
A kind of ecstasy descended
With the rain on me –
And gradually I unbended
Metaphysically.
32
Described wide arcs so bright!
They might have been those starry crumbs
That skid the arctic night.
33
And by exorbitant degrees
My body grew involved,
Until the problem of my knees
And elbows were resolved.
34
Until my brain grew clearer far
Than it had ever been
That both my ears, now kept ajar
Might hear what I had seen.
35
‘If it be so, that quite unknown
To friends, I tinkle, stranger
Please tell me, am I quite alone
In this – and is there danger?’
36
He listened once again, his ear
Close to my face, and cried,
‘There is no danger – yet, I hear
Such silvery sounds inside,
37
‘Such sounds as fairies pluck from strings
Of starbeams, in the dew –
O Lord it is a moving thing
To listen, sir, to you.’
38
His ear was very near my face,
I bit it once, for fun.
He said, ‘You ought to know your place,
With friendship newly born.’
39
‘I trusted you,’ I said, ‘to know
The friendly way I meant it.’
‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘I’ll get to know
Your ways, and won’t resent it.’
40
He listened once again. I kept
Immobile, an improvement
So great, he said my tinkling leapt
Straight through the second movement.
41
Such dulcet sounds as might inspire
A broker with the thrill
Of consummating his desire
To hug a daffodil.
42
Again I spoke, ‘O tell me, am
I quite alone in this
Weird tintinnabulation, Sam –
Is it indigenous?’
43
I called him Sam, because I felt
Our friendship, strange and quick
Needed cementing. Would he melt?
And call me Roderick?
44
He did – there was no doubt a svelte
And psychic power possessed us –
For neither name was one which spelt
The proof of our asbestos.
45
‘Am I alone?’ I once again
Reverted to my theme,
‘Do other tinklers wake the strain
Of cowbells in the cream?’
46
‘There are three others who have this
Peculiar trait. They are
A grocer bred in Pontefrice
A bison and a Tsar.
47
‘You are the fourth and I will prove
Your excellence to all.
Cast off that symbol of the grave
Your bowler and your pall.’
48
His arguments had been so fair
And what is more I k
new
That there was really something there
That needed seeing to.
49
So, standing in the lashing rain
I wrenched my hat away
From my haematic head, in pain
And then, symbolically,
50
(His eyes were on me all the while)
I flung the symbol through
The downpour with the kind of smile
That needs attending to.
51
And I was free! and now my goal
Is on a different plane
And I will never let my soul
Be rude to me again.