Amores Part 8

Again I saw a brown bird hover Over the flowers at my feet; I felt a brown bird hover Over my heart, and sweet Its shadow lay on my heart.

I thought I saw on the clover A brown bee pulling apart The closed flesh of the clover And burrowing in its heart.

She moved her hand, and again I felt the brown bird cover My heart; and then The bird came down on my heart, As on a nest the rover Cuckoo comes, and shoves over The brim each careful part Of love, takes possession, and settles her down, With her wings and her feathers to drown The nest in a heat of love.

She turned her flushed face to me for the glint Of a moment. "See," she laughed, "if you also Can make them yawn." I put my hand to the dint In the flower's throat, and the flower gaped wide with woe.

She watched, she went of a sudden intensely still, She watched my hand, to see what I would fulfil.

I pressed the wretched, throttled flower between My fingers, till its head lay back, its fangs Poised at her. Like a weapon my hand was white and keen, And I held the choked flower-serpent in its pangs Of mordant anguish, till she ceased to laugh, Until her pride's flag, smitten, cleaved down to the staff.

She hid her face, she murmured between her lips The low word "Don't." I let the flower fall, But held my hand afloat towards the slips Of blossom she fingered, and my fingers all Put forth to her: she did not move, nor I, For my hand like a snake watched hers, that could not fly.

Then I laughed in the dark of my heart, I did exult Like a sudden chuckling of music. I bade her eyes Meet mine, I opened her helpless eyes to consult Their fear, their shame, their joy that underlies Defeat in such a battle. In the dark of her eyes My heart was fierce to make her laughter rise.

Till her dark deeps shook with convulsive thrills, and the dark Of her spirit wavered like water thrilled with light; And my heart leaped up in longing to plunge its stark Fervour within the pool of her twilight, Within her s.p.a.cious soul, to grope in delight.

And I do not care, though the large hands of revenge Shall get my throat at last, shall get it soon, If the joy that they are searching to avenge Have risen red on my night as a harvest moon, Which even death can only put out for me; And death, I know, is better than not-to-be.

A Pa.s.sING BELL

MOURNFULLY to and fro, to and fro the trees are waving; _What did you say, my dear?_ The rain-bruised leaves are suddenly shaken, as a child Asleep still shakes in the clutch of a sob-- _Yes, my love, I hear._

One lonely bell, one only, the storm-tossed afternoon is braving, _Why not let it ring?_ The roses lean down when they hear it, the tender, mild Flowers of the bleeding-heart fall to the throb-- _It is such a little thing!_

A wet bird walks on the lawn, call to the boy to come and look, _Yes, it is over now._ Call to him out of the silence, call him to see The starling shaking its head as it walks in the gra.s.s-- _Ah, who knows how?_

He cannot see it, I can never show it him, how it shook-- _Don't disturb him, darling._ --Its head as it walked: I can never call him to me, Never, he _is_ not, whatever shall come to pa.s.s.

_No, look at the wet starling._

IN TROUBLE AND SHAME

I LOOK at the swaling sunset And wish I could go also Through the red doors beyond the black-purple bar.

I wish that I could go Through the red doors where I could put off My shame like shoes in the porch, My pain like garments, And leave my flesh discarded lying Like luggage of some departed traveller Gone one knows not where.

Then I would turn round, And seeing my cast-off body lying like lumber, I would laugh with joy.

ELEGY

SINCE I lost you, my darling, the sky has come near, And I am of it, the small sharp stars are quite near, The white moon going among them like a white bird among snow-berries, And the sound of her gently rustling in heaven like a bird I hear.

And I am willing to come to you now, my dear, As a pigeon lets itself off from a cathedral dome To be lost in the haze of the sky, I would like to come, And be lost out of sight with you, and be gone like foam.

For I am tired, my dear, and if I could lift my feet, My tenacious feet from off the dome of the earth To fall like a breath within the breathing wind Where you are lost, what rest, my love, what rest!

GREY EVENING

WHEN you went, how was it you carried with you My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours?

My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers, And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?

Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped And garnered that the golden daylight yields.

Dim lamps like yellow poppies glimmer among The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk, As farther off the scythe of night is swung, And little stars come rolling from their husk.

And all the earth is gone into a dust Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold, Covered with aged lichens, pale with must, And all the sky has withered and gone cold.

And so I sit and scan the book of grey, Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading, All fearful lest I find the last words bleeding With wounds of sunset and the dying day.

FIRELIGHT AND NIGHTFALL

THE darkness steals the forms of all the queens, But oh, the palms of his two black hands are red, Inflamed with binding up the sheaves of dead Hours that were once all glory and all queens.

And I remember all the sunny hours Of queens in hyacinth and skies of gold, And morning singing where the woods are scrolled And diapered above the chaunting flowers.

Here lamps are white like snowdrops in the gra.s.s; The town is like a churchyard, all so still And grey now night is here; nor will Another torn red sunset come to pa.s.s.

THE MYSTIC BLUE

OUT of the darkness, fretted sometimes in its sleeping, Jets of sparks in fountains of blue come leaping To sight, revealing a secret, numberless secrets keeping.

Sometimes the darkness trapped within a wheel Runs into speed like a dream, the blue of the steel Showing the rocking darkness now a-reel.

And out of the invisible, streams of bright blue drops Rain from the showery heavens, and bright blue crops Surge from the under-dark to their ladder-tops.

And all the manifold blue and joyous eyes, The rainbow arching over in the skies, New sparks of wonder opening in surprise.

All these pure things come foam and spray of the sea Of Darkness abundant, which shaken mysteriously, Breaks into dazzle of living, as dolphins that leap from the sea Of midnight shake it to fire, so the secret of death we see.