Others had swerved off to the left before,But only under protest from outside,Embittered robbers outlawed by the Law,Lepers in terror of the terrified.Now no one else accused these of a crime;They did not look ill: old friends, overcome,Stared as they rolled away from talk and timeLike marbles out into the blank and dumb.The crowd clung all the closer to conventionSunshine and horses, for the sane know whyThe even numbers should ignore the odd:The Nameless is what no free people mention;Successful men know better than to tryTo see the face of their Absconded God.
18. The Adventurers
Spinning upon their central thirst like tops,They went the Negative Way toward the Dry;Be empty caves beneath an empty skyThey emptied out their memories like a slopWhich made a foul marsh as they dried to death,Where monsters bred who forced them to forgetThe lovelies their consent avoided; yetStill praising the Absurd with their last breath.They seeded out into their miracles:The images of each grotesque temptationBecame some painter's happiest inspiration;And barren wives and burning virgins cameTo drink the pure cold water of their wells,And wish for beaux and children in their name.
19. The Waters
Poet, oracle and witLike unsuccessful anglers byThe ponds of apperception sit,Baiting with the wrong requestThe vectors of their interest;At nightfall tell the angler's lie.With time in tempest everywhere,To rafts of frail assumption clingThe saintly and the insincere;Enraged phenomena bear downIn overwhelming waves to drownBoth sufferer and suffering.The waters long to hear our question putWhich would release their longed-for answer, but.
20. The Garden
Within these gates all opening begins:White shouts and flickers through its green and red,Where children play at seven earnest sinsAnd dogs believe their tall conditions dead.Here adolescence into number breaksThe perfect circle time can draw on stone,And flesh forgives division as it makesAnother's moment of consent its own.All journeys die here; wish and weight are lifted:Where often round some old maid's desolationRoses have flung their glory like a cloak,The gaunt and great the famed for conversationBlushed in the stare of evening as they spoke,And felt their center of volition shifted.
Good-Bye to the Mezzogiorno
(for Carlo Izzo)
Out of a gothic North, the pallid childrenOf a potato, beer-or-whiskyGuilt culture, we behave like our fathers and comeSouthward into a sunburnt otherwhereOf vineyards, baroque, la bella figura,To these feminine townships where menAre males, and siblings untrained in a ruthlessVerbal in-fighting as it is taughtIn Protestant rectories upon drizzlingSunday afternoons-no more as unwashedBarbarians out for gold, nor as profiteersHot for Old Masters, but for plunderNevertheless-some believing amoreIs better down South and much cheaper(Which is doubtful), some persuaded exposureTo strong sunlight is lethal to germs(Which is patently false) and others, like me,In middle-age hoping to twig fromWhat we are not what we might be next, a questionThe South seems never to raise. PerhapsA tongue in which Nestor and Apemantus,Don Ottavio and Don Giovanni makeEqually beautiful sounds is unequippedTo frame it, or perhaps in this heatIt is nonsense: the Myth of an Open RoadWhich runs past the orchard gate and beckonsThree brothers in turn to set out over the hillsAnd far away, is an inventionOf a climate where it is a pleasure to walkAnd a landscape less populatedThan this one. Even so, to us it looks very oddNever to see an only child engrossedIn a game it has made up, a pair of friendsMaking fun in a private lingo,Or a body sauntering by himself who is notWanting, even as it perplexesOur ears when cats are called Cat and dogs eitherLupo, Nero or Bobby. Their diningPuts us to shame: we can only envy a peopleSo frugal by nature it costs themNo effort not to guzzle and swill. Yet (if IRead their faces rightly after ten years)They are without hope. The Greeks used to call the SunHe-who-smites-from-afar, and from here, whereShadows are dagger-edged, the daily ocean blue,I can see what they meant: his unwinkingOutrageous eye laughs to scorn any notionOf change or escape, and a silentEx-volcano, without a stream or a bird,Echoes that laugh. This could be a reasonWhy they take the silencers off their Vespas,Turn their radios up to full volume,And a minim saint can expect rockets-noiseAs a counter-magic, a way of sayingBoo to the Three Sisters: "Mortal we may be,But we are still here!" might cause them to hankerAfter proximities-in streets packed solidWith human flesh, their souls feel immuneTo all metaphysical threats. We are rather shocked,But we need shocking: to accept space, to ownThat surfaces need not be superficialNor gestures vulgar, cannot reallyBe taught within earshot of running waterOr in sight of a cloud. As pupilsWe are not bad, but hopeless as tutors:Goethe, Tapping homeric hexametersOn the shoulder-blade of a Roman girl, is(I wish it were someone else) the figureOf all our stamp: no doubt he treated her well,But one would draw the line at callingThe Helena begotten on that occasion,Queen of his Second Walpurgisnacht,Her baby: between those who mean by a life aBildungsroman and those to whom livingMeans to-be-visible-now, there yawns a gulfEmbraces cannot bridge. If we tryTo "go southern", we spoil in no time, we growFlabby, dingily lecherous, andForget to pay bills: that no one has heard of themTaking the Pledge or turning to YogaIs a comforting thought-in that case, for allThe spiritual loot we tuck away,We do them no harm-and entitles us, I thinkTo one little scream at A piacere,Not two. Go I must, but I go grateful (evenTo a certain Monte) and invokingMy sacred meridian names, Vito, Verga,Pirandello, Bernini, Bellini,To bless this region, its vendages, and thoseWho call it home: though one cannot alwaysRemember exactly why one has been happy,There is no forgetting that one was.
September 1958
It's No Use Raising a Shout
It's no use raising a shout.No, Honey, you can cut that right out.I don't want any more hugs;Make me some fresh tea, fetch me some rugs.Here am I, here are you:But what does it mean? What are we going to do?A long time ago I told my motherI was leaving home to find another:I never answered her letterBut I never found a better.Here am I, here are you:But what does it mean? What are we going to do?It wasn't always like this?Perhaps it wasn't, but it is.Put the car away; when life fails,What the good of going to Wales?Here am I, here are you:But what does it mean? What are we going to do?In my spine there was a base,And I knew the general's face:But they've severed all the wires,And I can't tell what the general desires.Here am I, here are you:But what does it mean? What are we going to do?In my veins there is a wish,And a memory of fish:When I lie crying on the floor,It says, "You've often done this before."Here am I, here are you:But what does it mean? What are we going to do?A bird used to visit this shore:It isn't going to come any more.I've come a very long way to proveNo land, no water, and no love.Here am I, here are you.But what does it mean? What are we going to do?
"Carry Her Over The Water"
Carry her over the water,And set her down under the tree,Where the culvers white all day and all night,And the winds from every quarter,Sing agreeably, agreeably, agreeably of love.Put a gold ring on her finger,And press her close to your heart,While the fish in the lake snapshots take,And the frog, that sanguine singer,Sing agreeably, agreeably, agreeably of love.The streets shal flock to your marriage,The houses turn round to look,The tables and chairs say suitable prayers,And the horses drawing your carriageSing agreeably, agreeably, agreeably of love.
1939?
THE TRAVELLER
No window in his suburb lights that bedroom whereA little fever heard large afternoons at play:His meadows multiply: that mill, though is not thereWhich went on grinding at the back of love all day.Nor all his weeping ways through weary wastes have foundThe Castle where his Greater Hallows are interned:For broken bridges halt him, and dark thickets roundSome ruin where an evil heritage was burned.Could he forget a child's ambition to be oldAnd institutions where he learned to wash and lie'He'd tell the truth for which he thinks himself too young,That everywhere on the horizon of his sighIs now, as always, only waiting to be toldTo be his father's house and speak his mother's tongue.
"Out of it steps the future of the poor,"
Out of it steps the future of the poor,Enigmas, executioners and rules,Her Majesty in a bad temper orThe red-nosed Fool who makes a fool of fools.Great persons eye it in the twilight forA past it might so carelessly let in,A widow with a missionary grin,The foaming inundation at a roar.We pile our all against it when afraid,And beat upon its panels when we die:By happening to be open once, it madeEnormous Alice see a wonderlandThat waited for her in the sunshine, and,Simply by being tiny made her cry.
Lullaby
Lay your sleeping head, my love,Human on my faithless arm;Time and fevers burn awayIndividual beauty fromThoughtful children, and the graveProves the child ephermeral:But in my arms till break of dayLet the living creature lie,Mortal, guilty, but to meThe entirely beautiful.Soul and body have no bounds:To lovers as they lie uponHer tolerant enchanted slopeIn their ordinary swoon,Grave the vision Venus sendsOf supernatural sympathy,Universal love and hope;While an abstract insight wakesAmong the glaciers and the rocksThe hermit's sensual ecstasy.Certainty, fidelityOn the stroke of midnight passLike vibrations of a bell,And fashionable madmen raiseTheir pedantic boring cry:Every farthing of the cost,All the dreadful cards foretell,Shall be paid, but not from this nightNot a whisper, not a thought,Not a kiss nor look be lost.Beauty, midnight, vision dies:Let the winds of dawn that blowSoftly round your dreaming headSuch a day of sweetness showEye and knocking heart may bless.Find the mortal world enough;Noons of dryness see you fedBy the involuntary powers,Nights of insult let you passWatched by every human love.
O What Is That Sound
O what is that sound which so thrills the earDown inthe valley drumming, drumming?Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,The soldiers coming.O what is that light I see flashing so clearOver the distance brightly, brightly?Only the sun on their weapons, dear,As they step lightly.O what are they doing with all that gearWhat are they doing this morning, this morning?Only the usual manoeuvres, dear,Or perhaps a warning.O why have they left the road down thereWhy are they suddenly wheeling, wheeling?Perhaps a change in the orders, dear,Why are you kneeling?O haven't they stopped for the doctor's careHaven't they reined their horses, their horses?Why, they are none of them wounded, dear,None of these forces.O is it the parson they want with white hair;Is it the parson, is it, is it?No, they are passing his gateway, dear,Without a visit.O it must be the farmer who lives so nearIt must be the farmer so cunning, so cunning?They have passed the farm already, dear,And now they are running.O where are you going? stay with me here!Were the vows you swore me deceiving, deceiving?No, I promised to love you, dear,But I must be leaving.O it's broken the lock and splintered the door,O it's the gate where they're turning, turningTheir feet are heavy on the floorAnd their eyes are burning.