Are found too late.
What shall he do, whose heart j
Chooses to depart?
He shall against his peace
Feel his heart harden, Envy the heavy birds
At home in a garden. For walk he must the empty
Selfish journey Between the needless risk And the endless safety.
Will he safe and sound Return to his own ground?
Clouds and lions stand
Before him dangerous And the hostility of dreams.
O let him honour us Lest he should be ashamed
In the hour of crisis, In the valleys of corrosion Tarnish his brightness.
Who are you, whose speech Sounds for out of reach?
You are the town and we are the clock.
We are the guardians of the gate in the rock, The Two.
On your left and on your right
In the day and in the night,
We are watching you.
Wiser not to ask just what has occurred
To them who disobeyed our word; To those
We were the whirlpool, we were the reef,
We were the formal nightmare, grief
And the unlucky rose.
Climb up the crane, learn the sailors' words When the ships from the islands laden with birds Come in.
Tell your stories of fishing and other men's wives: The expansive moments of constricted lives In the lighted inn.
But do not imagine we do not know
Nor that what you hide with such care won't show
At a glance. Nothing is done, nothing is said, But don't make the mistake of believing us dead: I shouldn't dance.
We're afraid in that case you'll have a fall.
We've been watching you over the garden wall :
For hours. The sky is darkening like a stain, Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers.
When the green field comes off like a lid 1,
Revealing what was much better hid: (
Unpleasant. And look, behind you without a sound The woods have come up and are standing round
In deadly crescent. |
t
The bolt is sliding in its groove, Outside the window is the black removers van.
And now with sudden swift emergence Come the women in dark glasses and the
humpbacked surgeons And the scissor man.
This might happen any day So be careful what you say Or do.
Be clean, be tidy, oil the lock, Trim the garden, wind the clock,
Remember the Two. from "The Dog Beneath the Skin": 1932, ? 1934
25
Now through night's caressing grip Earth and all her oceans slip, Capes of China slide away From her fingers into day And the Americas incline Coasts towards her shadow line. Now the ragged vagrants creep Into crooked holes to sleep: Just and unjust, worst and best, Change their places as they rest: Awkward lovers lie in fields Where disdainful beauty yields: While the splendid and the proud Naked stand before the crowd And the losing gambler gains And the beggar entertains: May sleep's healing power extend Through these hours to our friend. Unpursued by hostile force, Traction engine, bull or horse Or revolting succubus; Calmly till the morning break Let him lie, then gently wake.
from "The Dog Beneath the Skin": ? 1935
O for doors to be open and aninvite with gilded edges To dine with Lord Lobcock and Count Asthma on the
platinum benches, With the somersaults and fireworks, the roast and the
smacking kisses— | Cried the six cripples to the silent statue, "
The six beggared cripples.
And Garbo's and Cleopatra's wits to go astraying, In a feather ocean with me to go fishing and playing Still jolly when the cock has burst himself with crowing— i
Cried the six cripples to the silent statue, ,
The six beggared cripples.
And to stand on green turf among the craning yellow faces, Dependent on the chestnut, the sable, and Arabian horses, ;
And me with a magic crystal to foresee their places— Cried the six cripples to the silent statue, The six beggared cripples.
I
!
And this square to be a deck, and these pigeons sails to rig And to follow the delicious breeze like a tantony pig To the shaded feverless islands where the melons are big— j
Cried the six cripples to the silent statue,
The six beggared cripples. ^
f'
And these shops to be turned to tulips in a garden bed, And me with my stick to thrash each merchant dead '
As he pokes from a flower his bald and wicked head— Cried the six cripples to the silent statue,
The six beggared cripples. ■
And a hole in the bottom of heaven, and Peter and Paul And each smug surprised saint like parachutes to fall, And every one-legged beggar to have no legs at all— Cried the six cripples to the silent statue, The six beggared cripples.
? Spring 1935
Look, stranger, at this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be,
That through the channels of the ear
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.
Here at the small field's ending pause Where the chalk wall falls to the foam, and its tall ledges Oppose the pluck And knock of the tide, And the shingle scrambles after the sucking surf, and the gull lodges A moment on its sheer side.
Far off like floating seeds the ships Diverge on urgent voluntary errands; And the full view Indeed may enter
And move in memory as now these clouds do,
That pass the harbour mirror
And al the summer through the water saunter.
November 1935
28
Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last; Nurses to the graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.
Whispering neighbours, left and right, Pluck us from the real delight; And the active hands must freeze Lonely on the separate knees.
Dead in hundreds at the back Follow wooden in our track, Arms raised stiffly to reprove In false attitudes of love.
Starving through the leafless wood Trolls run scolding for their food; And the nightingale is dumb, And the angel will not come.
Cold, impossible, ahead Lifts the mountain's lovely head Whose white waterfall could bless Travellers in their last distress.
March 1936
29
Dear, though the night is gone, The dream still haunts to-day That brought us to a room, Cavernous, lofty as A railway terminus, And crowded in that gloom Were beds, and we in one In a far corner lay.
w
Our whisper woke no clocks, We kissed and I was glad At everything you did,
Indifferent to those Who sat with hostile eyes In pairs on every bed, Arms round each other's necks, Inert and vaguely sad.
O but wha.t worm of guilt Or what malignant doubt Am I the victim of; That you then, unabashed, Did what I never wished, Confessed another love; And I, submissive, felt Unwanted and went out?
March 19 36
30
Casino
Only the hands are living; to the wheel attracted, Are moved, as deer trek desperately towards a creek Through the dust and scrub of the desert, or gently As sunflowers turn to the light.
And as the night takes up the cries of feverish children, The cravings of lions in dens, the loves of dons, Gathers them all and remains the night, the Great room is full of their prayers.
To the last feast of isolation, self-invited, They flock, and in the rite of disbelief are joined; From numbers all their stars are recreated, The enchanted, the world, the sad.
Without, the rivers flow among the wholly living, Quite near their trysts; and the mountains part them;