I will wrap my frozen and bitter songs about me, In one grey drift, and rest.
III
Fluttering and soft the snow Flings outward, swirls and settles, But when I try to seize it, The wind tears it away.
Through poised green platforms of enormous pines, I see far hilltops pushing up blue roofs.
Snow comes, And hums Through the woof Of the lower branches.
It skips and dances: It drops in sluggish folds Of grey, To where the frozen rhododendron bushes With lower air-gusts play, And the earth hushes Its movement.
Fluttering and soft the snow is blent In long loose spirals with my dream.
It is all I have, the snow, And I know That when I chase it, it will fly from me; Beyond the lifeless green, Beyond the low blue hills, Beyond the pale straw-coloured glare, Down in the west It goes; Straight southward where the purple-orange flare Of sunset flows, And into the blackened heart of my last rose Pours its despair.
Fluttering, soft, and dim Regrets that skip and skim Grey in the grey twilight; Slim and weary whirls the snow, And where it goes I too shall go.
IV
Of my long nights afar in alien cities I have remembered only this: They were black scarves all dusted over with silver, In which I wrapped my dreams; They were black screens on which I made those pictures That faded out next day.
Youth without glory, manhood one mad struggle, Maturity a battle without trumpet calls: Long gleams from pallid suns seen only in my dreaming Struck those dissolving walls.
And of my days, I only know They slipped and fell, Like too-brief sunsets, Into the hill-ravines that held the snow.
Three lofty pines At the corners of my heart Waited, apart.
They only see In the mystery Of the grey sky, The jaggled clouds that fly, Endlessly.
POPPIES OF THE RED YEAR
_(A Symphony in Scarlet)_
I
The words that I have written To me become as poppies: Deep angry disks of scarlet flame full-glowing in the stillness Of a shut room.
Silken their edges undulate out to me, Drooping on their hairy stems; Flaring like folded shawls, down-curved like rockets starting To break and shatter their light.
Wide-flaunting and heavy, crinkle-lipped blossom, Darting faint shivers through me; Globed Chinese lanterns on green silk cords a-swaying Over motionless pools.
These are lamps of a festival of sleep held each night to welcome me, Crimson-bursting through dark doors.
Out to the dull, blue, heavy fumes of opium rolling From their rent red hearts, I go to seek my dream.
II
A riven wall like a face half torn away Stares blankly at the evening: And from a window like a crooked mouth It barks at the sunset sky.
And over there, beyond, On plains where night has settled, Ten-like encampments of vaporous blue smoke or mist, Three men are riding.
One of them looks and sees the sky: One of them looks and sees the earth: The last one looks and sees nothing at all.
They ride on.
One of them pauses and says, "It is death."
Another pauses and says, "It is life."
The last one pauses and says, ""Tis a dream."
His bridle shakes.
The sky Is filled with oval violet-tinted clouds Through which the sun long settled strikes at random, Enkindling here and there blotched circles of rosy light.
These are poppies, Unclosing immense corollas, Waving the hors.e.m.e.n on.
Over the earth, upheaving, folding, They ride: their bridles shake: One of them sees the sky is red: One of them sees the earth is dark: The last man sees he rides to his death, Yet he says nothing at all.
III
There will be no harvest at all this year; For the gaunt black slopes arising Lift the wrinkled aching furrows of their fields, falling away, To the rainy sky in vain.
But in the furrows There is gra.s.s and many flowers.
Scarlet tossing poppies Flutter their wind-slashed edges, On which gorged black flies poise and sway in drunken sleep.
The black flies hang Above the tangled trampled gra.s.ses, Grey, crumpled bundles lie in them: They sprawl, Heave faintly; And between their stiffened fingers, Run out clogged crimson trickles, Spattering the poppies and standing in beads on the gra.s.s.
IV
I saw last night Sudden puffs of flame in the northern sky.
The sky was an even expanse of rolling grey smoke, Lit faintly by the moon that hung Its white face in a dead tree to the east.
Within the depths of greenish greyish smoke Were roars, Crackles and spheres of vapour, And then Huge disks of crimson shooting up, falling away.