Look! We Have Come Through! | Page 3

foam rent?From the crest of a falling breaker,?Over the poppies sent.
He puts his surf-wet fingers?Over her startled eyes,?And asks if she sees the land, the land,?The land of her glad surmise.
THIRD PART
AGAIN in her blue, blue mantle?Riding at Joseph's side,?She says, "I went to Cythera,?And woe betide!"
Her heart is a swinging cradle?That holds the perfect child,?But the shade on her forehead ill becomes?A mother mild.
So on with the slow, mean journey?In the pride of humility;?Till they halt at a cliff on the edge of the land?Over a sullen sea.
While Joseph pitches the sleep-tent?She goes far down to the shore?To where a man in a heaving boat?Waits with a lifted oar.
FOURTH PART
THEY dwelt in a huge, hoarse sea-cave?And looked far down the dark?Where an archway torn and glittering?Shone like a huge sea-spark.
He said: "Do you see the spirits?Crowding the bright doorway?"?He said: "Do you hear them whispering?"?He said: "Do you catch what they say?"
FIFTH PART
THEN Joseph, grey with waiting,?His dark eyes full of pain,?Heard: "I have been to Patmos;?Give me the child again."
Now on with the hopeless journey?Looking bleak ahead she rode,?And the man and the child of no more account?Than the earth the palfrey trode.
Till a beggar spoke to Joseph,?But looked into her eyes;?So she turned, and said to her husband:?"I give, whoever denies."
SIXTH PART
SHE gave on the open heather?Beneath bare judgment stars,?And she dreamed of her children and Joseph,?And the isles, and her men, and her scars.
And she woke to distil the berries?The beggar had gathered at night,?Whence he drew the curious liquors?He held in delight.
He gave her no crown of flowers,?No child and no palfrey slow,?Only led her through harsh, hard places?Where strange winds blow.
She follows his restless wanderings?Till night when, by the fire's red stain,?Her face is bent in the bitter steam?That comes from the flowers of pain.
Then merciless and ruthless?He takes the flame-wild drops?To the town, and tries to sell them?With the market-crops.
So she follows the cruel journey?That ends not anywhere,?And dreams, as she stirs the mixing-pot,?She is brewing hope from despair.
TRIER
_FIRST MORNING_
THE night was a failure?but why not--?
In the darkness
with the pale dawn seething at the window?through the black frame?I could not be free,?not free myself from the past, those others--?and our love was a confusion,?there was a horror,?you recoiled away from me.
Now, in the morning?As we sit in the sunshine on the seat by the little
shrine,?And look at the mountain-walls,?Walls of blue shadow,?And see so near at our feet in the meadow?Myriads of dandelion pappus?Bubbles ravelled in the dark green grass?Held still beneath the sunshine--
It is enough, you are near--?The mountains are balanced,?The dandelion seeds stay half-submerged in the
grass;?You and I together?We hold them proud and blithe?On our love.?They stand upright on our love,?Everything starts from us,?We are the source.
BEUERBERG
_"AND OH--?THAT THE MAN I AM?MIGHT CEASE TO BE--"_
No, now I wish the sunshine would stop,?and the white shining houses, and the gay red
flowers on the balconies?and the bluish mountains beyond, would be crushed
out?between two valves of darkness;?the darkness falling, the darkness rising, with
muffled sound?obliterating everything.
I wish that whatever props up the walls of light?would fall, and darkness would come hurling
heavily down,?and it would be thick black dark for ever.?Not sleep, which is grey with dreams,?nor death, which quivers with birth,?but heavy, sealing darkness, silence, all immovable.
What is sleep??It goes over me, like a shadow over a hill,?but it does not alter me, nor help me.?And death would ache still, I am sure;?it would be lambent, uneasy.?I wish it would be completely dark everywhere,?inside me, and out, heavily dark?utterly.
WOLFRATSHAUSEN
_SHE LOOKS BACK_
THE pale bubbles?The lovely pale-gold bubbles of the globe-flowers?In a great swarm clotted and single?Went rolling in the dusk towards the river?To where the sunset hung its wan gold cloths;?And you stood alone, watching them go,?And that mother-love like a demon drew you
from me?Towards England.
Along the road, after nightfall,?Along the glamorous birch-tree avenue?Across the river levels?We went in silence, and you staring to England.
So then there shone within the jungle darkness?Of the long, lush under-grass, a glow-worm's
sudden?Green lantern of pure light, a little, intense, fusing
triumph,?White and haloed with fire-mist, down in the
tangled darkness.
Then you put your hand in mine again, kissed me,
and we struggled to be together.?And the little electric flashes went with us, in the
grass,?Tiny lighthouses, little souls of lanterns, courage
burst into an explosion of green light?Everywhere down in the grass, where darkness was
ravelled in darkness.
Still, the kiss was a touch of bitterness on my mouth?Like salt, burning in.?And my hand withered in your hand.?For you were straining with a wild heart, back,
back again,?Back to those children you had left behind, to all
the ?ons of the past.?And I was here in the under-dusk of the Isar.
At home, we leaned in the bedroom window?Of the old Bavarian Gasthaus,?And the frogs in the pool beyond thrilled with
exuberance,?Like a boiling pot the pond crackled with happiness,?Like a