Three Poems

I

In the grim valley the iron festering and

The veiled silence and the derelict hand

Muster the ghosts of the unaccountably lost

To gather in this valley where I am host.

In dual ambuscade of eye and tongue

The moments hang nowhere and for long

The smudged words cannot touch these cripples;

The trees reach out for their fallen apples.

If it were only any winter but in this

When wonder's antics in the skull may miss

The magical seven or the three of love,

Miss what it means for me to live.

A shadow army from wise Crete's long sand,

They file this watery morning where the wind

Through skeleton walls moans their march

And the eye, seeing stones, imagines much:

Sees on the snow the warrior's salute,

The ragged army and those we must shoot:

But in this valley Spring will never come:

Only this ruin which we call home

Raises its gaunt hands in attitude of prayer

Remembering summer's embrace. Despair

Beyond the easy solution waits ahead

Still to flourish when those and I are dead.

u

I will walk to your wish through images of dearth,

Over grass blades stabbing the bloodless snow,

On the smooth face of winter touching earth,

And give you the limp handshake of the scarecrow.

And what you will most wish for and desire

Is to live easily, be free from care.

. To be free thus is indistinguishable from death:

The gaunt tree moving, ridiculous giraffe.

Under the lying stars your individual breath

Has the axe of wind to cut all to chaff.

You would see the year fall back on the tide

And the future be late for parade.

In cottages children are hiding their heads,

In a candle's distorted gloom the dogs howl

And in cities clerks go to their circumspect beds

To a night where women shiver and wolves prowl,

To a land where the lovely and the lame may mix

Seeking what love or their pity lacks.

The dreamer is free only until he wakes. And I

In the general insomnia gave my dreams to you:

The lake we saw was probably all sky

Neither in nor under water, never blue;

But what will be offered for the scenes

We saw after judgment on the world's sins?

To walk into the wood, to watch the lark

Or the degenerate mole, to hope summer come

And sea on bare arms, to dismiss the park

Where every tree is perfect, to found a new home;

While all the hills lie threatened by the marsh,

This is your impossible November wish.

Il

Everywhere in the past the unrecorded men,

Those who were not martyred or who did not fall,

May more have been their day than many, than

The deceptive perfection of the cathedral,

Than magical science or the heroic name.

And we who think of the summer as always as to-morrow

Must not imagine a season without sorrow:

To new acts man's responses may be the same.

When you look from this island across the sea,

Splendid with the wake of every ship you miss,

Do not be certain of an easy eternity,

Of a dream kingdom where the faithful kiss.

Be sure there will be something there to bless,

But not so certain that the alien coast

Has any original glory of which to boast,

Or final antidote to limp distress.

Here trees are hostile ; the cliff's shadow spies

On hope's slow action. The gulls scream

The fantastic world of our youth, the lies

Of a Gothic hell, haunted, as real as the dream.

Sometimes you pause within earshot of your doubt

Hearing a question's echo: and you hear

The macabre devils as they loudly appear

Shouting for a saviour to cast them out.

Thus there are times when we cannot be lost in each other:

When love must be seen as on the sands below

The narrow cliffs we both of us inhabit. We must smother

Sometimes the desire to change the sand to snow.

Thus there are hours when not to be lost is lying,

When neither sand nor snow nor the cliff's formation

Can make strict the contours of elation,

Nor can they frighten with their continual spying.

Let fortune become for a while our chaperone,

Until we are well enough to see ill clearly.

Still we may adopt the customary tone,

Love what we loved but perhaps less dearly.

So now while the fever handles our town

We hope to prevent as well as cure,

That the half-diseased be not considered pure,

Nor the certificate be taken for a crown.