505 History and politics poems

To the memory of William Hickey, Esq. Coming out of India with ten thousand a year Exchanged for flesh and temper, a dry Faust Whose devil barters with digestion, has he paid dear For dipping his fingers in the Roc’s valley? Who knows? It’s certain that he owns a rage, A face like shark-skin, full of Yellow Jack, And that unreckoning tyranny of age That calls for turtles’ eggs in Twickenham. Sometimes, by moonlight, in a barge he’ll float Whilst hirelings blow their skulking flageolets, Served by a Rajah in a golden coat With pigeon-pie . . . Madeira . . . and Madeira . . . Or in his Bon de Paris with silver frogs He rolls puff-bellied in an equipage, Elegant chariot, through a gulf of fogs To dine on dolphin-steak with Post-Captains. Who knows? There are worse things than steak, perhaps, Worse things than oyster-sauces and tureens And worlds of provender like painted maps Pricked out with ports of claret and pitchcocked eels, And hubbubs of billiard-matches, burnt champagne, Beautiful ladies ‘of the establishment’ Always in tempers, or melting out again, Bailiffs and Burgundy and writs of judgment— Thus to inhabit huge, lugubrious halls Damp with the steam of entrees, glazed with smoke, Raw drinking, greasy eating, bussing and brawls, Drinking and eating and bursting into bed-chambers. But, in the end, one says farewell to them; And if he’d curse to-day—God damn your blood!— Even his curses I’d not altogether condemn, Not altogether scorn; and if phantoms ate— Hickey, I’d say, sit down, pull up, set to: Here’s knife and fork, there’s wine, and there’s a barmaid. Let us submerge ourselves in onion-soup, Anything but this ‘damned profession of writing.’

I 'Is it really a revolution, though?' I reached across the wicker table With another $10,000 question. My celebrated pamphleteer, Co-author of such volumes As Blood on the Rose, The Dream and the Drums, And How It Happened Here, Would pour some untroubled Muscatel And settle back in his cane chair. 'Look, son. Just look around you. People are getting themselves killed Left, right and centre While you do what? Write rondeaux? There's more to living in this country Than stars and horses, pigs and trees, Not that you'd guess it from your poems. Do you never listen to the news? You want to get down to something true, Something a little nearer home.' I called again later that afternoon, A quiet suburban street. 'You want to stand back a little When the world's at your feet.' I'd have liked to have heard some more Of his famous revolution. I rang the bell, and knocked hard On what I remembered as his front door, That opened then, as such doors do, Directly on to a back yard. II Not any back yard, I'm bound to say, And not a thousand miles away From here. No one's taken in, I'm sure, By such a mild invention. But where (I wonder myself) do I stand, In relation to a table and chair, The quince tree I forgot to mention, That suburban street, the door, the yard— All made up as I went along As things that people live among. And such a person as lived there! My celebrated pamphleteer! Of course, I gave it all away With those preposterous titles. The Bloody Rose?The Dream and the Drums? The three-day wonder of the flowering plum! Or was I desperately wishing To have been their other co-author, Or, at least, to own a first edition Of The Boot Boys and Other Battles? 'When are you going to tell the truth?' For there's no such book, so far as I know, As How it Happened Here, Though there may be. There may. What should I say to this callow youth Who learned to write last winter— One of those correspondence courses— And who's coming to lunch today? He'll be rambling on, no doubt, About pigs and trees, stars and horses.

We meet midway to walk white cobbles under a fish-flesh gray sky. Europe is collapsing; we are collapsing always and again no matter how hard we love one another. I don’t understand our failure, where the feed loops back and spits us into another country, another junior suite reenacting this same, same beat of   a scene that begins, rises, never ends,always ends — Our intentions don’t meet, their courses set differently by a force you don’t believe in, could be as simple as life. I want to be the wife you don’t want. You won’t let go of my wrist. I resist, threaten, bully, acquiesce. We write the next act of The Alchemist in New York, Lisbon, a beach, a bar, star-crossed maybe from different galaxies. You approach, I retreat. You retreat, I reproach. The manic two-step jitters over North Africa’s dunes farther than our hero, Santiago, can see. I rise in the night to find the sharp knife that came with the pears as a courtesy.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Long, too long America, Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only, But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not, And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are, (For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)

They never learned to tell one bird from another, a shrub from a weedy sapling, or when the season had forced a flower’s bloom, not even if a berry had ripened into poison. And yet they drew endless distinctions between colors and polish and coarseness of weave, and would not let their daughters marry out. They didn’t keep their children, though they gave them tests and fed them. They were known for meticulous records, for trophies and peeling stars. They burned things up or wore them down, had ranks and staff and lecterns, machines that moved them from place to place, bright jewels and playing cards. They were old when they could have been young, and young when they could have been old. They left a strange word in a tree: croatoan, and a track in the dust of Mars.

’Ασíνην τε . . . — Iliad All morning long we looked around the citadel starting from the shaded side there where the sea green and without lustre — breast of a slain peacock — received us like time without an opening in it. Veins of rock dropped down from high above, twisted vines, naked, many-branched, coming alive at the water’s touch, while the eye following them struggled to escape the monotonous see-saw motion, growing weaker and weaker. On the sunny side a long empty beach and the light striking diamonds on the huge walls. No living thing, the wild doves gone and the king of Asini, whom we’ve been trying to find for two years now, unknown, forgotten by all, even by Homer, only one word in the Iliad and that uncertain, thrown here like the gold burial mask. You touched it, remember its sound? Hollow in the light like a dry jar in dug earth: the same sound that our oars make in the sea. The king of Asini a void under the mask everywhere with us everywhere with us, under a name: ‘’Ασíνην τε. . .’Ασíνην τε. . .’ and his children statues and his desires the fluttering of birds, and the wind in the gaps between his thoughts, and his ships anchored in a vanished port: under the mask a void. Behind the large eyes the curved lips the curls carved in relief on the gold cover of our existence a dark spot that you see travelling like a fish in the dawn calm of the sea: a void everywhere with us. And the bird, a wing broken, that flew away last winter — tabernacle of life — and the young woman who left to play with the dog-teeth of summer and the soul that sought the lower world gibbering and the country like a large plane-leaf swept along by the torrent of the sun with the ancient monuments and the contemporary sorrow. And the poet lingers, looking at the stones, and asks himself does there really exist among these ruined lines, edges, points, hollows and curves does there really exist here where one meets the path of rain, wind and ruin does there exist the movement of the face, shape of the tenderness of those who’ve waned so strangely in our lives, those who remained the shadow of waves and thoughts with the sea’s boundlessness or perhaps no, nothing is left but the weight the nostalgia for the weight of a living existence there where we now remain unsubstantial, bending like the branches of a terrible willow tree heaped in unremitting despair while the yellow current slowly carries down rushes uprooted in the mud image of a form that the sentence to everlasting bitterness has turned to stone: the poet a void. Shieldbearer, the sun climbed warring, and from the depths of the cave a startled bat hit the light as an arrow hits a shield: ‘’Ασíνην τε. . .’Ασíνην τε. . .’. If only that could be the king of Asini we’ve been searching for so carefully on this acropolis sometimes touching with our fingers his touch upon the stones. Asini, summer ’38—Athens, Jan. ’40

To Mary — — 1. So now my summer task is ended, Mary, And I return to thee, mine own heart's home; As to his Queen some victor Knight of Fa ë ry, Earning bright spoils for her inchanted dome; Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become A star among the stars of mortal night, If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom, Its doubtful promise thus I would unite With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light. 2. The toil which stole from thee so many an hour Is ended,—and the fruit is at thy feet! No longer where the woods to frame a bower With interlaced branches mix and meet, Or where with sound like many voices sweet, Water-falls leap among wild islands green, Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen: But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been. 3. Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was, When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, And wept, I knew not why; until there rose From the near school-room, voices, that, alas! Were but one echo from a world of woes— The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 4. And then I clasped my hands and looked around— —But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground— So without shame, I spake:—"I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power, for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannise Without reproach or check." I then controuled My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. 5. And from that hour did I with earnest thought Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore, Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught I cared to learn, but from that secret store Wrought linked armour for my soul, before It might walk forth to war among mankind; Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more Within me, till there came upon my mind A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. 6. Alas, that love should be a blight and snare To those who seek all sympathies in one!— Such once I sought in vain; then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone:— Yet never found I one not false to me, Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived by thee. 7. Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain; How beautiful and calm and free thou wert In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain Of Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain, And walked as free as light the clouds among, Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long. 8. No more alone through the world's wilderness, Although I trod the paths of high intent, I journeyed now: no more companionless, Where solitude is like despair, I went.— There is the wisdom of a stern content When Poverty can blight the just and good, When Infamy dares mock the innocent, And cherished friends turn with the multitude To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken stood! 9. Now has descended a serener hour, And with inconstant fortune, friends return; Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power Which says:—Let scorn be not repaid with scorn. And from thy side two gentle babes are born To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn; And these delights, and thou, have been to me The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee. 10. Is it, that now my inexperienced fingers But strike the prelude of a loftier strain? Or, must the lyre on which my spirit lingers Soon pause in silence, ne'er to sound again, Though it might shake the Anarch Custom's reign, And charm the minds of men to Truth's own sway Holier than was Amphion's? I would fain Reply in hope—but I am worn away, And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey. 11. And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak: Time may interpret to his silent years. Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek, And in the light thine ample forehead wears, And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears, And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears: And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see A lamp of vestal fire burning internally. 12. They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth, Of glorious parents, thou aspiring Child. I wonder not—for One then left this earth Whose life was like a setting planet mild Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled Of its departing glory; still her fame Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name. 13. One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit, Which was the echo of three thousand years; And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it, As some lone man who in a desart hears The music of his home:—unwonted fears Fell on the pale oppressors of our race, And Faith, and Custom, and low-thoughted cares, Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-place. 14. Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind! If there must be no response to my cry— If men must rise and stamp with fury blind On his pure name who loves them,—thou and I, Sweet Friend! can look from our tranquillity Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night,— Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's sight, That burn from year to year with unextinguished light.

It was a' for our rightful king That we left fair Scotland's strand; It was a' for our rightful king We e'er saw Irish land, My dear, We e'er saw Irish land. Now a' is done that men can do, And a' is done in vain! My love, and native land, fareweel! For I maun cross the main, My dear, For I maun cross the main. He turn'd him right and round about, Upon the Irish shore, He gave his bridle-reins a shake, With, Adieu for evermore, My dear! And adieu for evermore! The soldier frae the war returns, And the merchant frae the main. But I hae parted frae my love, Never to meet again, My dear, Never to meet again. When day is gone and night is come, And a' folk bound to sleep, I think on him that's far awa The lee-lang night, and weep, My dear, The lee-lang night, and weep.

What if I know, Liebknecht, who shot you dead. Tiegarten trees unroll staggering shadow, in spite of it all. I am among the leaves; the inevitable voices have nothing left to say, the holed head bleeding across a heap of progressive magazines; torn from your face, trees that turned around, we do not sanctify the land with our wandering. Look upon our children, they are mutilated.