Epistles

I: TO GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

From Bonn to Hopkins: Now let hail

Be sharp upon the bay-bud's scale;

Wither the branch and blight the root,

The bud has cracked with the ripe fruit.

No, not bitter the word was said,

Then pen cut, and the tear shed,

But stern as the flower from the bud,

From the mind's love, and the vein's blood

Plunged to the stars, the hard, the clean

Sure-fruited beauty, till between

Sun and soil the blossoms are

Sharp as the hail and strong as the star.

To Bonn from Hopkins: No, not these,

The flame-bent boughs of the branching trees,

The fruit, the flower, the bud's desire

Have crowned my life, nor the breathing fire

Of the frail stars builded its diadem -

But the pain, ache, prick, and the pierce of them,

Have cut the garland that I found,

Since, when my sudden fingers bound

These thorns of beauty to my brow

I knew, beneath the sunny bough

How bled the nights that bore this hour

That breathes with the leaf and blooms with the flower.

Il: ON POSTHUMOUS FAME

From Paul to John: My words were bees

That sucked the sweet from thorning trees,

That raped with bright and sharpened knives

The pain-bought honey of our lives.

And there were those who could not feel

The slim incisions of their steel,

Who heard the drowsy voices drone

Of the sacked flowers and the bees flown,

Of the bitter rind and the root's drouth

And drove them back against my mouth

With the fire sharper upon the wing,

With the bee's honey and the wasp's sting.

From John to Paul: The bees come home

To the bruised hive and the broken comb;

And the breeze sings in the blasted tree

Of honeyed wings and the shouts of the bee,

Fighting with fine and silver smart

To lay their honey in your heart,

Till those who could not feel their blade -

When the song is sung and the honey made -

Shall break their plates beneath your feet

With blackened lips, when the comb is sweet.

They shall not guess of the sharpened sting

In the bee's song and the wasp's wing.

Ill: ON PHILISTINES

From John to Stephen: Who are they

Who clang their bitter discs at day

And twist the slumberous lips with sound

Of snarling hoofs on horny ground?

Oh what is dawn, my friend, to those -

Mist on the grass, and dew on the rose -

When the cold vein be warm with blood

And the thorn flower and the branch bud?

I hear them, I who parch for light

Mid the dream's fear and the sleep's sight

Crashing their cymbals hoarse and hard

They break the gourd and stamp the shard.

To John from Stephen: They are those

Whom the wind will sift and the ground close,

Who have not burned with thirst for dawn

With the hand clenched and the lip drawn.

They shall not feel wind stir their hair

Mid bursting beaks on the naked air.

They have not known, as you have known,

Night's massive hand set back the stone

Of dawn upon the crying day

To the light's love and the wind's way.

But all dawns come and pass them by.

The nights go over, and the winds die.