There are no fortunes to betold, although, Because I love you more than I can say, If I could tell you I would let you know.
The winds must come from somewhere when they blow, There must be reasons why the leaves decay; Time will say nothing but I told you so.
Perhaps the roses really want to grow, The vision seriously intends to stay; If I could tell you I would let you know.
Suppose the lions all get up and go, And all the brooks and soldiers run away; Will Time say nothing but I told you so? If I could tell you I would let you know.
October 1940
54
In Sickness and in Health
(FOR MAURICE AND GWEN MANDELBAUM)
Dear, all benevolence of fingering lips That does not ask forgiveness is a noise
At drunken feasts where Sorrow strips To serve some glittering generalities: Now, more than ever, we distinctly hear The dreadful shuffle of a murderous year And all our senses roaring as the Black Dog leaps upon the individual back.
Whose sable genius understands too well What code of famine can administrate
Those inarticulate wastes where dwell Our howling appetites: dear heart, do not Think lightly to contrive his overthrow; O promise nothing, nothing, till you know
The kingdom offered by the love-lorn eyes A land of condors, sick cattle, and dead flies.
And how contagious is its desolation, What figures of destruction unawares
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Jump out on Love's imagination And chase away the castles and the bears; How warped the mirrors where our worlds are made; What armies burn up honour, and degrade Our will-to-order into thermal waste; How much lies smashed that cannot be replaced.
O let none say I Love until aware What huge resources it will take to nurse
One ruining speck, one tiny hair That casts a shadow through the universe: We are the deaf immured within a loud And foreign language of revolt, a crowd Of poaching hands and mouths who out of fear Have learned a safer life than we can bear.
Nature by nature in unnature ends : Echoing each other like two waterfalls,
Tristan, Isolde, the great friends, Make passion out of passion's obstacles; Deliciously postponing their delight, Prolong frustration till it lasts all night, Then perish lest Brangaene's worldly cry Should sober their cerebral ecstasy.
But, dying, conjure up their opposite, Don Juan, so terrified of death he hears
Each moment recommending it, And knows no argument to counter theirs; Trapped in their vile affections, he must find Angels to keep him chaste; a helpless, blind, Unhappy spook, he haunts the urinals, Existing solely by their miracles.
That syllogistic nightmare must reject The disobedient phallus for the sword;
The lovers of themselves collect, And Eros is politically adored: New Machiavellis flying through the air Express a metaphysical despair, Murder their last voluptuous sensation, All passion in one passionate negation.
Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives,
Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command—Rejoice.
Rejoice. What talent for the makeshift thought A living corpus out of odds and ends?
What pedagogic patience taught Pre-occupied and savage elements To dance into a segregated charm? Who showed the whirlwind how to be an arm. And gardened from the wilderness of space The sensual properties of one dear face?
Rejoice, dear love, in Love's peremptory word; Al chance, all love, all logic, you and I.
Exist by grace of the Absurd, And without conscious artifice we die: O, lest we manufacture in our flesh The lie of our divinity afresh, Describe round our chaotic malice now, The arbitrary circle of a vow.
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The scarves, consoles, and fauteuils of the mind May be composed into a picture still,
The matter of corrupt mankind Resistant to the dream that makes it ill, Not by our choice but our consent: beloved, pray That Love, to Whom necessity is play, Do what we must yet cannot do alone And lay your solitude beside my own.
That reason may not force us to commit That sin of the high-minded, sublimation,
Which damns the soul by praising it, Force our desire, 0 Essence of creation, To seek Thee always in Thy substances, Till the performance of those offices Our bodies, Thine opaque enigmas, do, Configure Thy transparent justice too. ,
Lest animal bias should decline our wish For Thy perfection to identify
Thee with Thy things, to worship fish, Or solid apples, or the wavering sky, Our intellectual motions with Thy light To such intense vibration, Love, excite, That we give forth a quiet none can tell From that in which the lichens live so well.
That this round 0 of faithfulness we swear May never wither to an empty nought
Nor petrify into a square, Mere habits of affection freeze our thought In their inert society, lest we Mock virtue with its pious parody And take our love for granted, Love, permit Temptations always to endanger it.
Lest, blurring with old moonlight of romance The landscape of our blemishes, we try
To set up shop on Goodwin Sands, That we, though lovers, may love soberly, O Fate, O Felix Osculum, to us Remain nocturnal and mysterious: Preserve us from presumption and delay; O hold us to the voluntary way.
? Autumn 1940
55
Jumbled in the common box Of their dark stupidity, Orchid, swan, and Caesar lie; Time that tires of everyone Has corroded all the locks, Thrown away the key for fun.
In its cleft the torrent mocks Prophets who in days gone by Made a profit on each cry, Persona grata now with none; And a jackass language shocks Poets who can only pun.
Silence settles on the clocks; Nursing mothers point a sly Index finger at a sky, Crimson with the setting sun; In the valley of the fox Gleams the barrel of a gun.
Once we could have made the docks, Now it is too late to fly; Once too often you and I Did what we should not have done; Round the rampant rugged rocks Rude and ragged rascals run.
January 1941
56
Atlantis
Being set on the idea
Of getting to Atlantis, You have discovered of course
Only the Ship of Fools is Making the voyage this year, As gales of abnormal force Are predicted, and that you Must therefore be ready to Behave absurdly enough
To pass for one of The Boys, At least appearing to love Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.
Should storms, as may well happen,
Drive you to anchor a week In some old harbour-city
Of Ionia, then speak With her witty scholars, men Who have proved there cannot be Such a place as Atlantis: Learn their logic, but notice
How its subtlety betrays
Their enormous simple grief; Thus they shall teach you the ways To doubt that you may believe.
If, later, you run aground
Among the headlands of Thrace, Where with torches all night long
A naked barbaric race Leaps frenziedly to the sound Of conch and dissonant gong; On that stony savage shore Strip off your clothes and dance, for Unless you are capable
Of forgetting completely About Atlantis, you will Never finish your journey.
Again, should you come to gay
Carthage or Corinth, take part In their endless gaiety;
And if in some bar a tart, As she strokes your hair, should say "This is Atlantis, dearie," Listen with attentiveness To her life-story: unless You become acquainted now