there I stand in Eden again, welcomed back by the krum- horns. doppions, sordumes of jolly miners and a bob major from the Cathedral (romanesque) of St. Sophie (Die Kalte):
One reason for my alarm is that. when he closes his eyes, he arrives. not in New Jerusalem. but on some august day of outrage when hellikins cavort through ruined drawing-rooms and fish-wives intervene in the Chamber or
some autumn night of delations and noyades when the unrepentant thieves (including me) are sequestered and those he hates shall hate themselves instead.
So with a passing glance we take the other's posture: Already our steps recede, heading. incorrigible each, towards his kind of meal and evening.
Was it (as it must look to any god of cross-roads) simply a fortuitous intersection of life-paths. loyal to different fibs,
or also a rendezvous between accomplices who, in spite of themselves, cannot resist meeting
to remind the other (do both, at bottom. desire truth?) of that half of their secret which he would most like to forget,
forcing us lxlth. for a fraction of a second. to remember our victim (but for him I could forget the blood. but for me he could forget the innocence)
on whose immolation (call him Abel. Remus, whom you will, it is one Sin Offering) arcadias. utopias. our dear old bag of a democracy. are alike founded:
For without a cement of blood (it must be human. it must be innocent) no secular wall will safely stand.
June 1954
VI Compline
Now, as desire and the things desired
Cease to require attention, As, seizing its chance, the body escapes,
Section by section, to join Plants in their chaster peace which is more
To its real taste, now a day is its past, Its last deed and feeling in, should come
The instant of recollection When the whole thing makes sense: it comes, but all
I recall are doors banging, Two housewives scolding, an old man gobbling, ■
A child's wild look of envy, Actions, words, that could fit any tale,
And I fail to see either plot Or meaning; I cannot remember
A thing between noon and three. |
Nothing is with me now but a sound, A heart's rhythm, a sense of stars Leisurely walking around, and both
Talk a language of motion I can measure but not read: maybe
My heart is confessing her part In what happened to us from noon to three,
That constellations indeed Sing of some hilarity beyond
All liking and happening, But, knowing I neither know what they know
Nor what I ought to know, scorning All vain fornications of fancy,
Now let me, blessing them both For the sweetness of their cassations, Accept our separations.
A stride from now will take me into dream, Leave me, without a status,
Among its unwashed tribes of wishes Who have no dances and no jokes But a magic cult to propitiate
What happens from noon till three, Odd rites which they hide from me—should I chance,
Say, on youths in an oak-wood Insulting a white deer, bribes nor threats
Will get them to blab—and then Past untruth is one step to nothing, For the end, for me as for cities, Is total absence: what comes to be
Must go back into non-being For the sake of the equity, the rhythm Past measure or comprehending.
Can poets (can men in television)
Be saved? It is not easy To believe in unknowable justice
Or pray in the name of a love Whose name one's forgotten: libera
Me, libera C (dear C) And all poor s-o-b's who never Do anything properly, spare Us in the youngest day when all are
Shaken awake, facts are facts (And I shall know exactly what happened
Today between noon and three), That we, too, may come to the picnic
With nothing to hide, join the dance As it moves in perichoresis, Turns about the abiding tree.
Spring 1954
VII Lauds
Among the leaves the small birds sing; The crow of the cock commands awaking: In solitude, for company.
Bright shines the sun on creatures mortal; Men of their neighbors become sensible: In solitude, for company.
The crow of the cock commands awaking; I
Already the mass-bell goes dong-ding: In solitude, for company.
Men of their neighbors become sensible; God bless the Realm, God bless the People: In solitude, for company.
Already the mass-bell goes dong-ding; The dripping mill-wheel is again turning: In. solitude, for company.
God bless the Realm, God bless the People; God bless this green world temporaclass="underline" In solitude, for company.
The dripping mill-wheel is again turning; Among the leaves the small birds sing: In solitude, for company.
1952
76
Homage to Clio
Our hill has made its submission and the green
Swept on into the north: around me, From morning to night, flowers duel incessantly, Color against color, in combats
Which they all win, and at any hour from some point else
May come another tribal outcry Of a new generation of birds who chirp Not for effect but because chirping
Is the thing to do. More lives than I perceive
Are aware of mine this May morning As I sit reading a book, sharper senses Keep watch on an inedible patch
Of unsatisfactory smell, unsafe as
So many areas are: to observation My book is dead, and by observations they live In space, as unaware of silence
As Provocative Aphrodite or her twin,
Virago Artemis, the Tall Sisters Whose subjects they are. That is why, in their Dual Realm, Banalities can be beautiful,
Why nothing is too big or too small or the wrong
Color, and the roar of an earthquake Rearranging the whispers of streams a loud sound Not a din: but we, at haphazard
And unseasonably, are brought face to face
By ones, Clio, with your silence. After that Nothing is easy. We may dream as we wish Of phallic pillar or navel-stone
With twelve nymphs twirling about it, but pictures
Are no help: your silence already is there Between us and any magical center
Where things are taken in hand. Besides,
Are we so sorry? Woken at sun-up to hear
A cock pronouncing himself himself Though all his sons had been castrated and eaten, I was glad I could be unhappy: if
I don't know how I shall manage, at least I know
The beast-with-two-backs may be a species Evenly distributed but Mum and Dad Were not two other people. To visit
The grave of a friend, to make an ugly scene,
To count the loves one has grown out of, Is not nice, but to chirp like a tearless bird, As though no one dies in particular
And gossip were never true, unthinkable: If it were, forgiveness would be no use, One-eye-for-one would be just and the innocent Would not have to suffer. Artemis,
Aphrodite, are Major Powers and all wise
Castellans will mind their p's and q's, But it is you, who never have spoken up, Madonna of silences, to whom we turn
When we have lost control, your eyes, Clio, into which
We look for recognition after We have been found out. How shall I describe you? They Can be represented in granite
(One guesses at once from the perfect buttocks, The flawless mouth too grand to have corners, Whom the colossus must be), but what icon Have the arts for you, who look like any
Girl one has not noticed and show no special
Affinity with a beast? I have seen Your photo, I think, in the papers, nursing A baby or mourning a corpse: each time
You had nothing to say and did not, one could see,