75 Darkness poems

By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named N IGHT , On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule— From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of S PACE —Out of T IME . Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, With forms that no man can discover For the tears that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore; Seas that restlessly aspire, Surging, unto skies of fire; Lakes that endlessly outspread Their lone waters—lone and dead,— Their still waters—still and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily. By the lakes that thus outspread Their lone waters, lone and dead,— Their sad waters, sad and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily,— By the mountains—near the river Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,— By the grey woods,—by the swamp Where the toad and the newt encamp,— By the dismal tarns and pools Where dwell the Ghouls,— By each spot the most unholy— In each nook most melancholy,— There the traveller meets, aghast, Sheeted Memories of the Past— Shrouded forms that start and sigh As they pass the wanderer by— White-robed forms of friends long given, In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven. For the heart whose woes are legion ’T is a peaceful, soothing region— For the spirit that walks in shadow ’T is—oh, ’t is an Eldorado! But the traveller, travelling through it, May not—dare not openly view it; Never its mysteries are exposed To the weak human eye unclosed; So wills its King, who hath forbid The uplifting of the fring'd lid; And thus the sad Soul that here passes Beholds it but through darkened glasses. By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named N IGHT , On a black throne reigns upright, I have wandered home but newly From this ultimate dim Thule.

I  Self-Portrait A house with three stories. In the basement, monsters. The upper floors were empty. No furniture, nothing. I had a magic pebble that I needed to hide. But where? Woke in a room with the bed breathing. Each day the same scandal—this body. These teeth and hands. 2  The Miniature Bed A miniature bed, and in it two tiny people not sleeping, not able to sleep because a small lie has flowered between them, fragile as a new, white crocus. The miniature bed holds them like a miniature boat making its slow, true course to morning. These tiny people, thoughts thrumming like mice, are quiet as the lie blooms over them in the night, fanning its moth petals, becoming to them like a moon hovering over their bed, a moon they might almost touch with their miniature hands, if they weren't certain that one wrong gesture might break the spindles of their small world, if their hearts were not drops of trembling quicksilver, if they were brave, if they could see that small is no smaller than big, that thimbles are deep as oceans for any god, they might even touch each other then, opening the dark, like a match, the sun's flaring. 3  Harvest The fields are a book of uses. Near the house a combine takes the corn down in long rows. Dust rises up and replaces itself. A quick net of starlings drops to the furrows and sunshine pours like polished grain onto the feeding earth, this country. In the kitchen, milk streams from the gallon thin and fresh as luck. We flourish. All around us, things flourish. Cows strain the fence with their abundance. The herd makes a sound like swelling. Out in the cut field birds clean the fallen cobs into sets of teeth. 4  Sonnet for Lost Teeth The combines were tearing off the field’s clothes. It was August, haying season. My tooth was loose, a snag in the clam of my mouth. I worked it like a pearl. I'd been out of school for sixty days. In the sweat of the barn I watched him shoot the calf in the head. He wiped the hide gently, like cleaning his glasses. Overnight, I grew a beard so I wouldn't have to get married. I let my feet go black from burned grasses.It never gets easier he said, kicking straw over the blood patch. She went down so quiet it was almost sad. Later, when my tooth fell out, I buried it under my pillow and it grew into money. 5  Talisman Waiting for the school bus you find the femur of a baby animal on the ground. You carry that femur in your pocket the entire morning and touch it secretly through the cloth. When the teacher asks a question you don't raise your hand but quietly wrap your fingers around the thin shape, that bone without a mother. 6  On Waking Half of everything is invisible. A river drifts below the river. A gesture lost in the body. Wind moves through the open windows of the trees. Beyond the day, another day. Dreamed I was drowning my mother's silk laundry in the river, kneeling on the wet rocks. Back and forth I drowned it in the gray clouds... 7  Eros Each year fish run the green vein of the river. The bones of skunks lie buried in the riverbank upside down, waiting for rain. From a fragment of a Greek statue you can tell the posture of the whole god. A skeleton has the same intelligence. So that when a girl discovers it, loosened by summer rain, surfaced like a white instrument in the grass, she suddenly knows how to take it up and shake the strange rhythms from it like castanets. 8  A Childhood The horse had been beaten and flies crawled excited on the beat marks. He held still in the sunblazed pasture. For a few minutes I stood at the wire fence. He was aware of me, but he did not turn— except his eye, slightly. He listened through the many ears of the grasses. A jay made a hole in the air with its cry. Everywhere, invisible as heat, the gods married each other and went to war. The excitement of it vibrated in the flies. As if we both were standing still inside some greater, more violent motion.

And trip me up a startled robbed way Dreamt a burnt stump for a tongue Ash-haired girl Cowbell girl

A shadow in the shape of a house slides out of a house and loses its shape on the lawn. Trees seek each other as the wind within them dies. Darkness starts inside of things but keeps on going when the things are gone. Barefoot careless in the farthest parts of the yard children become their cries.

Deeply morbid deeply morbid was the girl who typed the letters Always out of office hours running with her social betters But when daylight and the darkness of the office closed about her Not for this ah not for this her office colleagues came to doubt her It was that look within her eye Why did it always seem to say goodbye? Joan her name was and at lunchtime Solitary solitary She would go and watch the pictures In the National Gallery All alone all alone This time with no friend beside her She would go and watch the pictures All alone. Will she leave her office colleagues Will she leave her evening pleasures Toil within a friendly bureau Running later in her leisure? All alone all alone Before the pictures she seems turned to stone. Close upon the Turner pictures Closer than a thought may go Hangs her eye and all the colours Leap into a special glow All for her, all alone All for her, all for Joan. First the canvas where the ocean Like a mighty animal With a really wicked motion Leaps for sailors’ funeral Holds her panting. Oh the creature Oh the wicked virile thing With its skin of fleck and shadow Stretching tightening over him. Wild yet captured wild yet captured By the painter, Joan is quite enraptured. Now she edges from the canvas To another loved more dearly Where the awful light of purest Sunshine falls across the spray, There the burning coasts of fancy Open to her pleasure lay. All alone, all alone Come away, come away All alone. Lady Mary, Lady Kitty The Honourable Featherstonehaugh Polly Tommy from the office Which of these shall hold her now? Come away, come away All alone. The spray reached out and sucked her in It was a hardly noticed thing That Joan was there and is not now (Oh go and tell young Featherstonehaugh) Gone away, gone away All alone. She stood up straight The sun fell down There was no more of London Town She went upon the painted shore And there she walks for ever more Happy quite Beaming bright In a happy happy light All alone. They say she was a morbid girl, no doubt of it And what befell her clearly grew out of it But I say she’s a lucky one To walk for ever in that sun And as I bless sweet Turner’s name I wish that I could do the same.

At my side the Demon writhes forever, Swimming around me like impalpable air; As I breathe, he burns my lungs like fever And fills me with an eternal guilty desire. Knowing my love of Art, he snares my senses, Apearing in woman's most seductive forms, And, under the sneak's plausible pretenses, Lips grow accustomed to his lewd love-charms. He leads me thus, far from the sight of God, Panting and broken with fatigue into The wilderness of Ennui, deserted and broad, And into my bewildered eyes he throws Visions of festering wounds and filthy clothes, And all Destruction's bloody retinue.

Split the boy       —his thorax, throat Pierce-peel the craw: A jag-crystalled crust      —his black scoria, slag (not Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled) What no gizzard ground (could hope to grind) What would not mesh What would not smelt Embedded undigested there in meat

Kitten curious, or roaring down drinks in Soho sumps, small hours tour buses, satellite station green rooms, or conked out in the bathtubs of motorway hotels, there you were, with muck-about kisses, sharking for the snappers, before hell opened up for you and weeping sores of after fame appeared, the haphazardry and dwindling after three limelit years, recognized with catcalls, wads of spit, a nightclub fist, the scant camaraderie melts fast, like your flat on Air Street, the Lhasa Apso pups, the wraps and lines of chang, the poster pull-outs, fake tan smiles. It’s paunch and palimony time on Lucifer’s leash. But for a madcap few who cling, thin soup, one pillow Britain is simmering with hatred, just for you.

As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: All was black, In heaven no single star, on earth no track; A brooding hush without a stir or note, The air so thick it clotted in my throat; And thus for hours; then some enormous things Swooped past with savage cries and clanking wings: But I strode on austere; No hope could have no fear. As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: Eyes of fire Glared at me throbbing with a starved desire; The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath Was hot upon me from deep jaws of death; Sharp claws, swift talons, fleshless fingers cold Plucked at me from the bushes, tried to hold: But I strode on austere; No hope could have no fear. As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: Lo you, there, That hillock burning with a brazen glare; Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro; A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell For Devil's roll-call and some fête of Hell: Yet I strode on austere; No hope could have no fear. As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: Meteors ran And crossed their javelins on the black sky-span; The zenith opened to a gulf of flame, The dreadful thunderbolts jarred earth's fixed frame: The ground all heaved in waves of fire that surged And weltered round me sole there unsubmerged: Yet I strode on austere; No hope could have no fear. As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: Air once more, And I was close upon a wild sea-shore; Enormous cliffs arose on either hand, The deep tide thundered up a league-broad strand; White foambelts seethed there, wan spray swept and flew; The sky broke, moon and stars and clouds and blue: And I strode on austere; No hope could have no fear. As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: On the left The sun arose and crowned a broad crag-cleft; There stopped and burned out black, except a rim, A bleeding eyeless socket, red and dim; Whereon the moon fell suddenly south-west, And stood above the right-hand cliffs at rest: Still I strode on austere; No hope could have no fear. As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: From the right A shape came slowly with a ruddy light; A woman with a red lamp in her hand, Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand; O desolation moving with such grace! O anguish with such beauty in thy face. I fell as on my bier, Hope travailed with such fear. As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: I was twain, Two selves distinct that cannot join again; One stood apart and knew but could not stir, And watched the other stark in swoon and her; And she came on, and never turned aside, Between such sun and moon and roaring tide: And as she came more near My soul grew mad with fear. As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: Hell is mild And piteous matched with that accursèd wild; A large black sign was on her breast that bowed, A broad black band ran down her snow-white shroud; That lamp she held was her own burning heart, Whose blood-drops trickled step by step apart; The mystery was clear; Mad rage had swallowed fear. As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: By the sea She knelt and bent above that senseless me; Those lamp-drops fell upon my white brow there, She tried to cleanse them with her tears and hair; She murmured words of pity, love, and woe, She heeded not the level rushing flow: And mad with rage and fear, I stood stonebound so near. As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: When the tide Swept up to her there kneeling by my side, She clasped that corpse-like me, and they were borne Away, and this vile me was left forlorn; I know the whole sea cannot quench that heart, Or cleanse that brow, or wash those two apart: They love; their doom is drear, Yet they nor hope nor fear; But I, what do I here?

The day is dark and the night To him that would search their heart; No lips of cloud that will part Nor morning song in the light: Only, gazing alone, To him wild shadows are shown, Deep under deep unknown And height above unknown height. Still we say as we go,i "Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day." The Past is over and fled; Nam'd new, we name it the old; Thereof some tale hath been told, But no word comes from the dead; Whether at all they be, Or whether as bond or free, Or whether they too were we, Or by what spell they have sped. Still we say as we go,i "Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day." What of the heart of hate That beats in thy breast, O Time?i Red strife from the furthest prime, And anguish of fierce debate; War that shatters her slain, And peace that grinds them as grain, And eyes fix'd ever in vain On the pitiless eyes of Fate. Still we say as we go,i "Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day." What of the heart of love That bleeds in thy breast, O Man?i Thy kisses snatch'd 'neath the ban Of fangs that mock them above; Thy bells prolong'd unto knells, Thy hope that a breath dispels, Thy bitter forlorn farewells And the empty echoes thereof? Still we say as we go,i "Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day." The sky leans dumb on the sea, Aweary with all its wings; And oh! the song the sea sings Is dark everlastingly. Our past is clean forgot, Our present is and is not, Our future's a seal'd seedplot, And what betwixt them are we?i We who say as we go,i "Strange to think by the way, Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day."