A Last Verse
Will you
come to sit? My
shade will lead you far to
Hades like a cat with eyes on
nothing.
XI.68
[Return to the index]
[Paraphrase of Plato to Aster] [Pretty Ophelia]
Come out to watch the stars—
I'll spread myself before you like the sky;
I would be leading you
alone,
and watching you with all my million eyes.
II.69
[Return to the index]
Once was a forest here;
some deep roots, now rotted
under pavements,
the tools of savages
in cellar excavations.
Our fathers left silver as they
flashed in the dark places;
so we our rusted cans
down by the shore.
The jagged leaves still fall
where the gods, now faded,
blacked the stumps.
And finding relics, as we do,
those after us will say:
These few
sailed many years to reach the land;
and more, they touched their prows on sand.
They did not founder in the littoral.
Mindful of witch hazel and the Sower
I know not where I may fall.
The leaf and seed
one moment only tear at bark;
and the sailor braves the riptide
for the shore.
VIII.69
I Loved You Once
after fragments of Sappho
I am near the sights of the sea:
beach-grass growing along the shore,
a monument: TO PELAGON
FISHERMAN
HIS BASKET—HIS OAR
RELICS OF A WRETCHED LIFE
FROM HIS FATHER
on the shingle
where I will not step.
The birds. . .
in evening, they
are cold within, wings drop
to their sides.
The moon comes up,
full, shining on the girls,
the Cretan girls, dancing by the altars,
light feet on the grass,
crushing pale flowers;
and they sing,
Evening star,
most beautiful of all. . .
But the stars are hidden by the moon,
outshone by sudden silver.
My temper is not malign,
you said,
but a child
that has not learned to speak;
may you find a soft companion
who gives you rest.
My friends the Cretan girls,
leave your song, day is near,
the moon has set, and stars—
I sleep alone;
dawn comes in golden sandals.
This night was long;
I wish ours had been
twice this long:
I loved you once, Atthis,
years ago.
XI.69
[Return to the index]
Still thinking that there must be more
in carrels where we found our bones
I read the tomes of woman-lore:
How Orpheus tamed wild beast and stone,
and Hades, with his lyre:
when Eurydice fell, the songs were left alone.
That woman made him seek unholy fire,
but though he won the lord who held her there,
who let them then, escaping him, aspire;
still, his impatience in the end was bare;
he could not hold himself one second more;
so he and I are both in such despair.
I.70
[Return to the index]
These woods, too often seen in anger,
or by pretty country fools
now taught to answer why;
a place for ring-talk,
bitten smiles above the waterfall.
The miscast pebbles understand
the private lives of poets.
I came, a January leaf,
to watch my mulching brothers.
II.70
[Return to the index]
Some walk in morning twilight,
picking grassleaves from the rain,
watching puddles melt in dew.
A greeting here, a nod,
to ask,
Do we recall?
We watched the stars fade,
sang, and saw the sky go green.
No;
did we walk in morning twilight,
feeling strange and broken pain,
breaking fast when day was new?
Toast and brown sugar,
brown sugar and tea:
in empty mistglow-yellow streets,
some walk in morning twilight,
picking pebbles from the drain;
but they are lonely folk and few.
II.70
[Return to the index]
All the roads pull in their legs
like sleepers when the night is cold;
through the empty book is darkness.
The time is over-ripe:
I could give a silver bracelet
which would be no more than that.
Where are you going?
Shall we walk through wet-roofed trees,
crushed grass in the mud,
each more alone?
I have no fear:
we only know in part.
But night, a silver bracelet,
each would be no more.
We know as we are known,
read the same books,
grunting at the words.
The dance of white canes tapping:
still I could give anything
which still would be no more.
III.70
If I Go On, It'll Become an Obsession
I
I cannot speak for you.
If I could, your speech
would have a cast: your mother,
lilacs and forsythia, brick houses,
hills and piers, and rowboats;
of times you walked out pensive on the hills,
of times you turned and sighed,
and threw your hair in circles on the sand.
If I could speak for you,
I could not hear your voice,
faint, better than imagination.
This is the best compliment I know.
If I go on,
I'll lose the metaphor, an academic twist.
I cannot speak for you.
II
"But surely, you're joking."
I heard you laughing, colored
blue like a furnace,
red, orange, green like fruit,
running through the trees, breathing
heartbeats of the fallen leaves,
your disconnected music bending,
wrapped in a candle;
the twisted wick:
documents, scraps, remembrances
that you don't care to redeliver.
III
"It annoys me that he writes these poems.
Does he want to order me around?
If he's playing games,
he's playing them for keeps.
He should relax.
My feet are on the ground,
but this nut thinks he's Dante!"
If I could speak for you,
I could not hear your voice,
faint, better than imagination.
This is the best compliment I know.
Autumn 1970
Where did that poet go?
When I look closer than the empty lights
I see him standing in the window,
Reflected in the black.
He hides inside the clock.
He walks some summer street
as evening turns to velvet night
and music mixes from the yellow windows.
(Under the mulberry tree
he stopped to pick a few
in youth, a browsing beast, when all was right.)
I hide him from the plots of policy.
Don't get me wrong; he wouldn't do:
Stomach spoilt with drink,
Love spoilt with begging,
Tomorrow's nightmares solid in the dawn.
I hide him for my own sweet sanity.
Without him I would die.
15.II.86
Inside my crystal ball I see your face
upside-down; one dancing night spreads bright
across the backdrop of my mind; one kiss
that every other kiss recalls lies pressed
upon my lips.
But in the sun you walk
in afternoon among the warm red leaves,
unheeding my poor baubles: glass and paint
and petals dried.
What could I give you?
Nothing
but this keepsake world, this treasurebox, my heart.
[Return to the index]
Sometimes in the Spring It Rains
Sometimes in the spring it rains.
The grey sky, brown wet bark and stones
and all the heaviness of green
hide the new sun.
And we remember light on snow,
clear air, and glittering ice; we mourn
the winter cold.
The mud first came a welcome gift,
the melting of the curse, but now
it clots our shoes.
Yet through the dreary twilight gleam
forsythia and lilac, hyacinth and tulip,
bright in the thickets.
The trick of memory selects the best
to put beside the worst we see, and so
the world decays.
But from decay comes life; the seed that dies
arises once again. That small bright hope
still counsels trust.
Spring can be harsh, to crush unwilling dreams;
but to the waking sight, they are but mulch
for roses like the sun.
19.V.88