Whether the people in the street Like pattering ripples go by, Or whether the theatre sighs and sighs With a loud, hoa.r.s.e sigh:
Or the wind shakes a ravel of light Over the dead-black river, Or night"s last echoing Makes the daybreak shiver:
I feel the silence waiting To take them all up again In its vast completeness, enfolding The sound of men.
LISTENING
I LISTEN to the stillness of you, My dear, among it all; I feel your silence touch my words as I talk, And take them in thrall.
My words fly off a forge The length of a spark; I see the night-sky easily sip them Up in the dark.
The lark sings loud and glad, Yet I am not loth That silence should take the song and the bird And lose them both.
A train goes roaring south, The steam-flag flying; I see the stealthy shadow of silence Alongside going.
And off the forge of the world, Whirling in the draught of life, Go sparks of myriad people, filling The night with strife.
Yet they never change the darkness Or blench it with noise; Alone on the perfect silence The stars are buoys.
BROODING GRIEF
A YELLOW leaf from the darkness Hops like a frog before me.
Why should I start and stand still?
I was watching the woman that bore me Stretched in the brindled darkness Of the sick-room, rigid with will To die: and the quick leaf tore me Back to this rainy swill Of leaves and lamps and traffic mingled before me.
LOTUS HURT BY THE COLD
How many times, like lotus lilies risen Upon the surface of a river, there Have risen floating on my blood the rare Soft glimmers of my hope escaped from prison.
So I am clothed all over with the light And sensitive beautiful blossoming of pa.s.sion; Till naked for her in the finest fashion The flowers of all my mud swim into sight.
And then I offer all myself unto This woman who likes to love me: but she turns A look of hate upon the flower that burns To break and pour her out its precious dew.
And slowly all the blossom shuts in pain, And all the lotus buds of love sink over To die unopened: when my moon-faced lover, Kind on the weight of suffering, smiles again.
MALADE
THE sick grapes on the chair by the bed lie p.r.o.ne; at the window The ta.s.sel of the blind swings gently, tapping the pane, As a little wind comes in.
The room is the hollow rind of a fruit, a gourd Scooped out and dry, where a spider, Folded in its legs as in a bed, Lies on the dust, watching where is nothing to see but twilight and walls.
And if the day outside were mine! What is the day But a grey cave, with great grey spider-cloths hanging Low from the roof, and the wet dust falling softly from them Over the wet dark rocks, the houses, and over The spiders with white faces, that scuttle on the floor of the cave!
I am choking with creeping, grey confinedness.
But somewhere birds, beside a lake of light, spread wings Larger than the largest fans, and rise in a stream upwards And upwards on the sunlight that rains invisible, So that the birds are like one wafted feather, Small and ecstatic suspended over a vast spread country.
LIAISON
A BIG bud of moon hangs out of the twilight, Star-spiders spinning their thread Hang high suspended, withouten respite Watching us overhead.
Come then under the trees, where the leaf-cloths Curtain us in so dark That here we"re safe from even the ermin-moth"s Flitting remark.
Here in this swarthy, secret tent, Where black boughs flap the ground, You shall draw the thorn from my discontent, Surgeon me sound.
This rare, rich night! For in here Under the yew-tree tent The darkness is loveliest where I could sear You like frankincense into scent.
Here not even the stars can spy us, Not even the white moths write With their little pale signs on the wall, to try us And set us affright.
Kiss but then the dust from off my lips, But draw the turgid pain From my breast to your bosom, eclipse My soul again.
Waste me not, I beg you, waste Not the inner night: Taste, oh taste and let me taste The core of delight.
TROTH WITH THE DEAD
THE moon is broken in twain, and half a moon Before me lies on the still, pale floor of the sky; The other half of the broken coin of troth Is buried away in the dark, where the still dead lie.
They buried her half in the grave when they laid her away; I had pushed it gently in among the thick of her hair Where it gathered towards the plait, on that very last day; And like a moon in secret it is shining there.
My half shines in the sky, for a general sign Of the troth with the dead I pledged myself to keep; Turning its broken edge to the dark, it shines indeed Like the sign of a lover who turns to the dark of sleep.
Against my heart the inviolate sleep breaks still In darkened waves whose breaking echoes o"er The wondering world of my wakeful day, till I"m lost In the midst of the places I knew so well before.
DISSOLUTE
MANY years have I still to burn, detained Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshrine A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.
And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of life, What matter the stuff I lick up in my living flame, Seeing I keep in the fire-core, inviolate, A night where she dreams my dreams for me, ever the same.
SUBMERGENCE
WHEN along the pavement, Palpitating flames of life, People flicker round me, I forget my bereavement, The gap in the great constellation, The place where a star used to be.
Nay, though the pole-star Is blown out like a candle, And all the heavens are wandering in disarray, Yet when pleiads of people are Deployed around me, and I see The street"s long outstretched Milky Way,
When people flicker down the pavement, I forget my bereavement.
THE ENKINDLED SPRING
THIS spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.
I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration, Faces of people streaming across my gaze.