Conrad Aiken

When you are not surprised, not surprised, nor leap in imagination from sunlight into shadow or from shadow into sunlight suiting the color of fright or delight to the bewildering circumstance when you are no longer surprised by the quiet or fury of daybreak the stormy uprush of the sun’s rage over the edges of torn trees torrents of living and dying flung upward and outward inward and downward to space or else peace peace peace peace the wood-thrush speaking his holy holy far hidden in the forest of the mind while slowly the limbs of light unwind and the world’s surface dreams again of night as the center dreams of light when you are not surprised by breath and breath and breath the first unconscious morning breath the tap of the bird’s beak on the pane and do not cry out come again blest blest that you are come again o light o sound o voice of bird o light and memory too o memory blest and curst with the debts of yesterday that would not stay, or stay when you are not surprised by death and death and death death of the bee in the daffodil death of color in the child’s cheek on the young mother’s breast death of sense of touch of sight death of delight and the inward death the inward turning night when the heart hardens itself with hate and indifference for hated self and beloved not-self when you are not surprised by wheel’s turn or turn of season the winged and orbed chariot tilt of time the halcyon pause, the blue caesura of spring and solar rhyme woven into the divinely remembered nest by the dark-eyed love in the oriole’s breast and the tides of space that ring the heart while still, while still, the wave of the invisible world breaks into consciousness in the mind of god then welcome death and be by death benignly welcomed and join again in the ceaseless know-nothing from which you awoke to the first surprise.

The house in Broad Street, red brick, with nine rooms the weedgrown graveyard with its rows of tombs the jail from which imprisoned faces grinned at stiff palmettos flashing in the wind the engine-house, with engines, and a tank in which young alligators swam and stank, the bell-tower, of red iron, where the bell gonged of the fires in a tone from hell magnolia trees with whitehot torch of bud the yellow river between banks of mud the tall striped lighthouse like a barber’s pole snake in the bog and locust in the hole worn cigarette cards, of white battleships, or flags, or chorus girls with scarlet lips, jackstones of copper, peach tree in the yard splashing ripe peaches on an earth baked hard children beneath the arc-light in a romp with Run sheep Run, and rice-birds in the swamp, the organ-grinder’s monkey, dancing bears, okras in baskets, Psyche on the stairs— and then the north star nearer, and the snow silent between the now and long ago time like a train that roared from place to place new crowds, new faces, for a single face no longer then the chinaberry tree nor the dark mockingbird to sing his glee nor prawns nor catfish; icicles instead and Indian-pipes, and cider in the shed arbutus under pinewoods in the spring and death remembered as a tropic thing with picture postcard angels to upraise it and trumpet vines and hummingbirds to phrase it then wisdom come, and Shakspere’s voice far off, to be or not, upon the teacher’s cough, the latent heat of melting ice, the brief hypotenuse from ecstasy to grief amo amas, and then the cras amet, the new-found eyes no slumber could forget, Vivien, the affliction of the senses, and conjugation of historic tenses and Shakspere nearer come, and louder heard, and the disparateness of flesh and word, time growing swifter, and the pendulums in shorter savage arcs that beat like drums— hands held, relinquished, faces come and gone, kissed and forgotten, and become but one, old shoes worn out, and new ones bought, the gloves soiled, and so lost in limbo, like the loves— then Shakspere in the heart, the instant speech parting the conscious terrors each from each— wisdom’s dishevelment, the purpose lamed, and purposeless the footsteps eastward aimed the bloodstream always slower, while the clock followed the tired heart with louder knock, fatigue upon the eye, the tardy springs inviting to no longer longed-for things— the birdsong nearer now than Shakspere’s voice, whispers of comfort—Death is near, rejoice!— remember now the red house with nine rooms the graveyard with its trumpetvines and tombs— play jackstones now and let your jackstones be the stars that make Orion’s galaxy so to deceive yourself until you move into that house whose tenants do not love.

Absolute zero: the locust sings: summer’s caught in eternity’s rings: the rock explodes, the planet dies, we shovel up our verities. The razor rasps across the face and in the glass our fleeting race lit by infinity’s lightning wink under the thunder tries to think. In this frail gourd the granite pours the timeless howls like all outdoors the sensuous moment builds a wall open as wind, no wall at all: while still obedient to valves and knobs the vascular jukebox throbs and sobs expounding hope propounding yearning proposing love, but never learning or only learning at zero’s gate like summer’s locust the final hate formless ice on a formless plain that was and is and comes again.

Goya drew a pig on a wall. The five-year-old hairdresser’s son Saw, graved on a silver tray, The lion; and sunsets were begun. Goya smelt the bull-fight blood. The pupil of the Carmelite Gave his hands to a goldsmith, learned To gild an aureole aright. Goya saw the Puzzel’s eyes: Sang in the street (with a guitar) And climbed the balcony; but Keats (Under the halyards) wrote ‘Bright star.’ Goya saw the Great Slut pick The chirping human puppets up, And laugh, with pendulous mountain lip, And drown them in a coffee cup; Or squeeze their little juices out In arid hands, insensitive, To make them gibber . . . Goya went Among the catacombs to live. He saw gross Ronyons of the air, Harelipped and goitered, raped in flight By hairless pimps, umbrella-winged: Tumult above Madrid at night. He heard the seconds in his clock Crack like seeds, divulge, and pour Abysmal filth of Nothingness Between the pendulum and the floor: Torrents of dead veins, rotted cells, Tonsils decayed, and fingernails: Dead hair, dead fur, dead claws, dead skin: Nostrils and lids; and cauls and veils; And eyes that still, in death, remained (Unlidded and unlashed) aware Of the foul core, and, fouler yet, The region worm that ravins there. Stench flowed out of the second’s tick. And Goya swam with it through Space, Sweating the fetor from his limbs, And stared upon the unfeatured face That did not see, and sheltered naught, But was, and is. The second gone, Goya returned, and drew the face; And scrawled beneath it, ‘This I have known’ . . . And drew four slatterns, in an attic, Heavy, with heads on arms, asleep: And underscribed it, ‘Let them slumber, Who, if they woke, could only weep’ . . .

These hills are sandy. Trees are dwarfed here. Crows Caw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance, Complain in dusty pine-trees. Yellow daybreak Lights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew, Dew as heavy as rain; the rabbit tracks Show sharply in it, as they might in snow. But it’s soon gone in the sun—what good does it do? The houses, on the slope, or among brown trees, Are grey and shrivelled. And the men who live here Are small and withered, spider-like, with large eyes. Bring water with you if you come to live here— Cold tinkling cisterns, or else wells so deep That one looks down to Ganges or Himalayas. Yes, and bring mountains with you, white, moon-bearing, Mountains of ice. You will have need of these Profundities and peaks of wet and cold. Bring also, in a cage of wire or osier, Birds of a golden colour, who will sing Of leaves that do not wither, watery fruits That heavily hang on long melodious boughs In the blue-silver forests of deep valleys. I have now been here—how many years? Years unnumbered. My hands grow clawlike. My eyes are large and starved. I brought no bird with me, I have no cistern Where I might find the moon, or river, or snow. Some day, for lack of these, I’ll spin a web Between two dusty pine-tree tops, and hang there Face downward, like a spider, blown as lightly As ghost of leaf. Crows will caw about me. Morning and evening I shall drink the dew.