April 1929
II
F
Coming out of me living is always thinking, Thinking changing and changing living, Am feeling as it was seeing— In city leaning on harbour parapet To watch a colony of duck below Sit, preen, and doze on buttresses Or upright paddle on flickering stream, Casually fishing at a passing straw. Those find sun's luxury enough, Shadow know not of homesick foreigner Nor restlessness of intercepted growth.
All this time was anxiety at night,
Shooting and barricade in street.
Walking home late I listened to a friend
Talking excitedly of final war
Of proletariat against police—
That one shot girl of nineteen through the knees,
They threw that one down concrete stair—
Till I was angry, said I was pleased.
Time passes in Hessen, in Gutensberg, With hill-top and evening holds me up, Tiny observer of enormous world. Smoke rises from factory in field, Memory of fire: On all sides heard Vanishing music of isolated larks: From village square voices in hymn, Men's voices, an old use. And I above standing, saying in thinking:
"Is first baby, warm in mother, Before born and is still mother, Time passes and now is other, Is knowledge in him now of other, Cries in cold air, himself no friend. In grown man also, may see in face In his day-thinking and in his night-thinking Is wareness and is fear of other, Alone in flesh, himself no friend.
"He say 'We must forgive and forget,' Forgetting saying but is unforgiving And unforgiving is in his living; Body reminds in him to loving, Reminds but takes no further part, Perfunctorily affectionate in hired room But takes no part and is unloving But loving death. May see in dead, In face of dead that loving wish,
As one returns from Africa to wife
And his ancestral property in Wales." '
Yet sometimes man look and say good At strict beauty of locomotive, Completeness of gesture or unclouded eye; In me so absolute unity of evening And field and distance was in me for peace, Was over me in feeling without forgetting Those ducks' indifference, that friend's hysteria, 4
Without wishing and with forgiving, To love my life, not as other, Not as bird's life, not as child's, "Cannot," I said, "being no child now nor a bird." 1
May 1929
III
Order to stewards and the study of time, Correct in books, was earlier than this But joined this by the wires I watched from train, Slackening of wire and posts' sharp reprimand, In month of August to a cottage coming.
I
Being alone, the frightened soul
Returns to this life of sheep and hay
No longer his: he every hour
Moves further from this and must so move,
As child is weaned from his mother and leaves home
But taking the first steps falters, is vexed,
Happy only to find home, a place
Where no tax is levied for being there.
So, insecure, he loves and love Is insecure, gives less than he expects.
He knows not if it be seed in time to display I';
Luxuriantly in a wonderful fructification !
Or whether it be but a degenerate remnant Of something immense in the past but now
Surviving only as the infectiousness of disease Or in the malicious caricature of drunkenness; Its end glossed over by the careless but known long To finer perception of the mad and ill.
Moving along the track which is himself, He loves what he hopes will last, which gone, Begins the difficult work of mourning, And as foreign settlers to strange country come, By mispronunciation of native words And by intermarriage create a new race And a new language, so may the soul Be weaned at last to independent delight.
Startled by the violent laugh of a jay I went from wood, from crunch underfoot, Air between stems as under water; As I shall leave the summer, see autumn come Focusing stars more sharply in the sky, See frozen buzzard flipped down the weir And carried out to sea, leave autumn, See winter, winter for earth and us,
A forethought of death that we may'find ourselves at death Not helplessly strange to the new conditions.
August 1929
IV
It is time for the destruction of error. The chairs are being brought in from the garden, The summer talk stopped on that savage coast Before the storms, after the guests and birds: In sanatoriums they laugh less and less, Less certain of cure; and the loud madman Sinks now into a more terrible calm.
The falling leaves know it, the children,
At play on the fuming alkali-tip
Or by the flooded football ground, know it—
This is the dragon's day, the devourer's: Orders are given to the enemy for a time With underground proliferation of mould, With constant whisper and the casual question, To haunt the poisoned in his shunned house, To destroy the efflorescence of the flesh, To censor the play of the mind, to enforce Conformity with the orthodox bone, With organised fear, the articulated skeleton.
You whom I gladly walk with, touch,
Or wait for as one certain of good,
We know it, we know that love
Needs more than the admiring excitement of union,
More than the abrupt self-confident farewell,
The heel on the finishing blade of grass,
The self-confidence of the falling root,
Needs death, death of the grain, our death,
Death of the old gang; would leave them
In sullen valley where is made no friend,
The old gang to be forgotten in the spring,
The hard bitch and the riding-master,
Stiff underground; deep in clear lake
The lolling bridegroom, beautiful, there.
October 1929 ■
9
Since you are going to begin to-day Let us consider what it is you do. You are the one whose part it is to lean, For whom it is not good to be alone. Laugh warmly turning shyly in the hall Or climb with bare knees the volcanic hill, Acquire that flick of wrist and after strain
Relax in your darling's arms like a stone Remembering everything you can confess, Making the most of firelight, of hours of fuss; But joy is mine not yours—to have come so far, Whose cleverest invention was lately fur; Lizards my best once who took years to breed, Could not control the temperature of blood. To reach that shape for your face to assume, Pleasure to many and despair to some, I shifted ranges, lived epochs handicapped By climate, wars, or what the young men kept, Modified theories on the types of dross, Altered desire and history of dress.
You in the town now call the exile fool That writes home once a year as last leaves fall, Think—Romans had a language in their day And ordered roads with it, but it had to die: Your culture can but leave—forgot as sure As place-name origins in favourite shire— Jottings for stories, some often-mentioned Jack, And references in letters to a private joke, Equipment rusting in unweeded lanes, Virtues still advertised on local lines; And your conviction shall help none to fly, Cause rather a perversion on next floor.
Nor even is despair your own, when swiftly Comes general assault on your ideas of safety: That sense of famine, central anguish felt For goodness wasted at peripheral fault, Your shutting up the house and taking prow To go into the wilderness to pray, Means that I wish to leave and to pass on, Select another form, perhaps your son; Though he reject you, join opposing team Be late or early at another time,
My treatment will not differ—he will be tipped, Found weeping, signed for, made to answer, topped. Do not imagine you can abdicate; Before you reach the frontier you are caught;
Others have tried it and will try again (