Irradiations; Sand and Spray Part 2

I will lie curled up, sleeping, And the wind shall chase me Far inland.

My breath is the music of the mad wind; Shrill piping, stamping of drunken feet, The fluttering, tattered broidery flung Over the dunes' steep escarpments.

The fine dry sand that whistles Down the long low beaches.

XVIII

Blue, brown, blue: sky, sand, sea: I swell to your immensity.

I will run over the endless beach, I will shout to the breaking spray, I will touch the sky with my fingers.

My happiness is like this sand: I let it run out of my hand.

XIX

The clouds pa.s.s Over the polished mirror of the sky: The clouds pa.s.s, puffs of grey, There is no star.

The clouds pa.s.s slowly: Suddenly a disengaged star flashes.

The night is cold and the clouds Roll slowly over the sky.

XX

I dance: I exist in motion: A wind-shaken flower spilling my drops in the sunlight.

I feel the muscles bending, relaxing beneath me; I direct the rippling sweep of the lines of my body; Its impact crashes through the thin walls of the atmosphere, I dance.

About me whirls The sombre hall, the gaudy stage, the harsh glare of the footlights, And in the brains of thousands watching Little flames leap quivering to the music of my effort.

I have danced: I have expressed my soul In unbroken rhythm, Sorrow, and flame.

I am tired: I would be extinguished beneath your beating hands.

XXI

Not noisily, but solemnly and pale, In a meditative ecstasy you entered life: As performing some strange rite, to which you alone held the clue.

Child, life did not give rude strength to you; from the beginning, you would seem to have thrown away, As something cold and c.u.mbersome, that armour men use against death.

You would perhaps look on him face to face, and so learn the secret Whether that face wears oftenest a smile or no?

Strange, old, and silent being, there is something Infinitely vast in your intense tininess: I think you could point out, with a smile, some curious star Far off in the heavens, which no man has seen before.

XXII

The morning is clean and blue and the wind blows up the clouds: Now my thoughts gathered from afar Once again in their patched armour, with rusty plumes and blunted swords, Move out to war.

Smoking our morning pipes we shall ride two and two Through the woods.

For our old cause keeps us together, And our hatred is so precious not death or defeat can break it.

G.o.d willing, we shall this day meet that old enemy Who has given us so many a good beating.

Thank G.o.d we have a cause worth fighting for, And a cause worth losing and a good song to sing.

XXIII

Torridly the moon rolls upward Against the smooth immensity of midsummer sky, Changeless, inexhaustible: The city beneath is still: Heaven and Earth are clasped together, Momently life grows as careless As the life of the intense stars.

Out of the houses climbing, Fuming up windows, flickering from every roof-top, Rigid on sonorous pinnacles, Silently swirl aloft Love's infinite flamelets.

XXIV

O all you stars up yonder, Do you hear me? Beautiful, winking, sullen eyes, I am tired of seeing you in the same old places, Night after night in the sky.

I hoped you would dance--but after twenty-six years, I find you are determined to stay as you are.

So I make it known to you, stars cl.u.s.tered or solitary, That I want you to fall into my lap to-night.

Come down, little stars, let me play with you: I will string you like beads, and shovel you together, And wear you in my ears, and scatter you over people-- And toss you back, like apples, if I choose.

XXV

As I wandered over the city through the night, I saw many strange things: But I have forgotten all Except one painted face.

Gaudy, shameless night-orchid, Heavy, flushed, sticky with narcotic perfume, There was something in you which made me prefer you Above all the feeble forget-me-nots of the world.

You were neither burnt out nor pallid, There was plain, coa.r.s.e, vulgar meaning in every line of you And no make-believe: You were at least alive, When all the rest were but puppets of the night.

XXVI

Slowly along the lamp-emblazoned street, Amid the last sad drifting crowds of midnight Like lost souls wandering, Comes marching by solemnly As for some gem-bedecked ritual of old, A monotonous procession of black carts Full crowded with blood-red blossom: Scarlet geraniums Unfolding their fiery globes upon the night.

These are the memories of day moulded in jagged flame: l.u.s.t, joy, blood, and death.

With crushed hands, weary eyes, and hoa.r.s.e clamour, We consecrate and acclaim them tumultuously Ere they pa.s.s, contemptuous, beyond the unpierced veil of silence.

XXVII

I think there was an hour in which G.o.d laughed at me, For as I pa.s.sed along the street, saw that all the women--although their bodies were dexterously concealed-- Were thinking with all their might what men were like: And the men, mechanically correct, cigars at lips, Were wanting to rush at the women, But were restrained by respectability or timidity, Or fear of the consequences or vanity or some puerile dream Of a pale ideal lost in the vast grey sky.

So I said to myself, it is time to end all this: I will take the first woman that comes along.

And then G.o.d laughed at me--and I too smiled To see that He was in such good humour and that the sun was s.h.i.+ning.

XXVIII

I remember, there was a day During which I did not write a line of verse: Nor did I speak a word to any woman, Nor did I meet with death.

Yet all that day I was fully occupied: My eyes saw trees, clouds, streets, houses, people; My lungs breathed air; My mouth swallowed food and drink; My hands seized things, my feet touched earth, Or spurned it at my desire.

On that day I know I would have been sufficiently happy, If I could have kept my brain from bothering at all About my next trite poem; About the tedious necessities of s.e.x; And about the day on which I would at last meet death.

XXIX

It is evening, and the earth Wraps her shoulders in an old blue shawl.