and expressions
So that he seems a stranger in his passing;
Who voice the dumb night fittingly;
Sea, you shadow of all things, now mock us to
death with your shadowing.
BOURNEMOUTH
Hymn to Priapus
My love lies underground
With her face upturned to mine,
And her mouth unclosed in a last long kiss
That ended her life and mine.
I dance at the Christmas party
Under the mistletoe
Along with a ripe, slack country lass
Jostling to and fro.
The big, soft country lass,
Like a loose sheaf of wheat
Slipped through my arms on the threshing floor
At my feet.
The warm, soft country lass,
Sweet as an armful of wheat
At threshing-time broken, was broken
For me, and ah, it was sweet!
Now I am going home
Fulfilled and alone,
I see the great Orion standing
Looking down.
He's the star of my first beloved
Love-making.
The witness of all that bitter-sweet
Heart-aching.
Now he sees this as well,
This last commission.
Nor do I get any look
Of admonition.
He can add the reckoning up
I suppose, between now and then,
Having walked himself in the thorny, difficult
Ways of men.
He has done as I have done
No doubt:
Remembered and forgotten
Turn and about.
My love lies underground
With her face upturned to mine,
And her mouth unclosed in the last long kiss
That ended her life and mine.
She fares in the stark immortal
Fields of death;
I in these goodly, frozen
Fields beneath.
Something in me remembers
And will not forget.
The stream of my life in the darkness
Deathward set!
And something in me has forgotten,
Has ceased to care.
Desire comes up, and contentment
Is debonair.
I, who am worn and careful,
How much do I care?
How is it I grin then, and chuckle
Over despair?
Grief, grief, I suppose and sufficient
Grief makes us free
To be faithless and faithful together
As we have to be.
Ballad of a Wilful Woman
FIRST PART Upon her plodding palfrey With a heavy child at her breast And Joseph holding the bridle They mount to the last hill-crest. Dissatisfied and weary She sees the blade of the sea Dividing earth and heaven In a glitter of ecstasy. Sudden a dark-faced stranger With his back to the sun, holds out His arms; so she lights from her palfrey And turns her round about. She has given the child to Joseph, Gone down to the flashing shore; And Joseph, shading his eyes with his hand, Stands watching evermore. SECOND PART THE sea in the stones is singing, A woman binds her hair With yellow, frail sea-poppies, That shine as her fingers stir. While a naked man comes swiftly Like a spurt of white foam rent From the crest of a falling breaker, Over the poppies sent. He puts his surf-wet fingers Over her startled eyes, And asks if she sees the land, the land, The land of her glad surmise. THIRD PART AGAIN in her blue, blue mantle Riding at Joseph's side, She says, "I went to Cythera, And woe betide!" Her heart is a swinging cradle That holds the perfect child, But the shade on her forehead ill becomes A mother mild. So on with the slow, mean journey In the pride of humility; Till they halt at a cliff on the edge of the land Over a sullen sea. While Joseph pitches the sleep-tent She goes far down to the shore To where a man in a heaving boat Waits with a lifted oar. FOURTH PART THEY dwelt in a huge, hoarse sea-cave And looked far down the dark Where an archway torn and glittering Shone like a huge sea-spark. He said: "Do you see the spirits Crowding the bright doorway?" He said: "Do you hear them whispering?" He said: "Do you catch what they say?" FIFTH PART THEN Joseph, grey with waiting, His dark eyes full of pain, Heard: "I have been to Patmos; Give me the child again." Now on with the hopeless journey Looking bleak ahead she rode, And the man and the child of no more account Than the earth the palfrey trode. Till a beggar spoke to Joseph, But looked into her eyes; So she turned, and said to her husband: "I give, whoever denies." SIXTH PART SHE gave on the open heather Beneath bare judgment stars, And she dreamed of her children and Joseph, And the isles, and her men, and her scars. And she woke to distil the berries The beggar had gathered at night, Whence he drew the curious liquors He held in delight. He gave her no crown of flowers, No child and no palfrey slow, Only led her through harsh, hard places Where strange winds blow. She follows his restless wanderings Till night when, by the fire's red stain, Her face is bent in the bitter steam That comes from the flowers of pain. Then merciless and ruthless He takes the flame-wild drops To the town, and tries to sell them With the market-crops. So she follows the cruel journey That ends not anywhere, And dreams, as she stirs the mixing-pot, She is brewing hope from despair. TRIER
First Morning
THE night was a failure
but why not—?
In the darkness
with the pale dawn seething at the window
through the black frame
I could not be free,
not free myself from the past, those others—
and our love was a confusion,
there was a horror,
you recoiled away from me.
Now, in the morning
As we sit in the sunshine on the seat by the little
shrine,
And look at the mountain-walls,