Look! We Have Come Through! | Page 4

rattle a child spins round for joy, the night
rattled?With the extravagance of the frogs,?And you leaned your cheek on mine,?And I suffered it, wanting to sympathise.
At last, as you stood, your white gown falling from
your breasts,?You looked into my eyes, and said: "But this is
joy!"?I acquiesced again.?But the shadow of lying was in your eyes,?The mother in you, fierce as a murderess, glaring
to England,?Yearning towards England, towards your young
children,?Insisting upon your motherhood, devastating.
Still, the joy was there also, you spoke truly,?The joy was not to be driven off so easily;?Stronger than fear or destructive mother-love, it
stood flickering;?The frogs helped also, whirring away.?Yet how I have learned to know that look in your
eyes?Of horrid sorrow!?How I know that glitter of salt, dry, sterile,
sharp, corrosive salt!?Not tears, but white sharp brine?Making hideous your eyes.
I have seen it, felt it in my mouth, my throat, my
chest, my belly,?Burning of powerful salt, burning, eating through
my defenceless nakedness.?I have been thrust into white, sharp crystals,?Writhing, twisting, superpenetrated.
Ah, Lot's Wife, Lot's Wife!?The pillar of salt, the whirling, horrible column
of salt, like a waterspout?That has enveloped me!?Snow of salt, white, burning, eating salt?In which I have writhed.
Lot's Wife!--Not Wife, but Mother.?I have learned to curse your motherhood,?You pillar of salt accursed.?I have cursed motherhood because of you,?Accursed, base motherhood!
I long for the time to come, when the curse against
you will have gone out of my heart.?But it has not gone yet.?Nevertheless, once, the frogs, the globe-flowers of
Bavaria, the glow-worms?Gave me sweet lymph against the salt-burns,?There is a kindness in the very rain.
Therefore, even in the hour of my deepest, passionate
malediction?I try to remember it is also well between us.?That you are with me in the end.?That you never look quite back; nine-tenths, ah,
more?You look round over your shoulder;?But never quite back.
Nevertheless the curse against you is still in my
heart?Like a deep, deep burn.?The curse against all mothers.?All mothers who fortify themselves in motherhood,
devastating the vision.?They are accursed, and the curse is not taken off?It burns within me like a deep, old burn,?And oh, I wish it was better.
BEUERBERG
_ON THE BALCONY_
IN front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost
ribbon of rainbow;?And between us and it, the thunder;?And down below in the green wheat, the labourers?Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat.
You are near to me, and your naked feet in their
sandals,?And through the scent of the balcony's naked
timber?I distinguish the scent of your hair: so now the
limber?Lightning falls from heaven.
Adown the pale-green glacier river floats?A dark boat through the gloom--and whither??The thunder roars. But still we have each other!?The naked lightnings in the heavens dither?And disappear--what have we but each other??The boat has gone.
ICKING
_FROHNLEICHNAM_
You have come your way, I have come my way;?You have stepped across your people, carelessly,
hurting them all;?I have stepped across my people, and hurt them
in spite of my care.
But steadily, surely, and notwithstanding?We have come our ways and met at last?Here in this upper room.
Here the balcony?Overhangs the street where the bullock-wagons
slowly?Go by with their loads of green and silver birchtrees
For the feast of Corpus Christi.
Here from the balcony?We look over the growing wheat, where the jadegreen
river?Goes between the pine-woods,?Over and beyond to where the many mountains?Stand in their blueness, flashing with snow and the
morning.
I have done; a quiver of exultation goes through
me, like the first?Breeze of the morning through a narrow white
birch.?You glow at last like the mountain tops when they
catch?Day and make magic in heaven.
At last I can throw away world without end, and
meet you?Unsheathed and naked and narrow and white;?At last you can throw immortality off, and I see you?Glistening with all the moment and all your
beauty.
Shameless and callous I love you;?Out of indifference I love you;?Out of mockery we dance together,?Out of the sunshine into the shadow,?Passing across the shadow into the sunlight,?Out of sunlight to shadow.
As we dance?Your eyes take all of me in as a communication;?As we dance?I see you, ah, in full!?Only to dance together in triumph of being together?Two white ones, sharp, vindicated,?Shining and touching,?Is heaven of our own, sheer with repudiation.
_IN THE DARK_
A BLOTCH of pallor stirs beneath the high?Square picture-dusk, the window of dark sky.
A sound subdued in the darkness: tears!?As if a bird in difficulty up the valley steers.
"Why have you gone to the window? Why don't
you sleep??How you have wakened me! But why, why do
you weep?"
_"I am afraid of you, I am afraid, afraid!?There is something in you destroys me--!"_
"You have dreamed and are not awake, come here
to me."?_"No, I have wakened. It is you, you are cruel to?me!"_
"My dear!"--_"Yes, yes, you are cruel to me. You
cast?A shadow over my breasts that will kill me at last."_
"Come!"--_"No, I'm a thing of life. I give?You armfuls of sunshine, and you won't let me live."_
"Nay, I'm too sleepy!"--_"Ah, you are horrible;?You stand before me like ghosts, like a darkness
upright."_
"I!"--_"How can you treat