New Poems | Page 4

house in darkness, I alone?Like a thing unwarrantable cross the hall?And climb the stairs to find the group of doors?Standing angel-stern and tall.
I want my own room's shelter. But what is this?Throng of startled beings suddenly thrown?In confusion against my entry? Is it only the trees'?Large shadows from the outside street lamp blown?
Phantom to phantom leaning; strange women weep?Aloud, suddenly on my mind?Startling a fear unspeakable, as the shuddering wind?Breaks and sobs in the blind.
So like to women, tall strange women weeping!?Why continually do they cross the bed??Why does my soul contract with unnatural fear??I am listening! Is anything said?
Ever the long black figures swoop by the bed;?They seem to be beckoning, rushing away, and
beckoning.?Whither then, whither, what is it, say?What is the reckoning.
Tall black Bacchae of midnight, why then, why?Do you rush to assail me??Do I intrude on your rites nocturnal??What should it avail me?
Is there some great Iacchos of these slopes?Suburban dismal??Have I profaned some female mystery, orgies?Black and phantasmal?
NEXT MORNING
How have I wandered here to this vaulted room?In the house of life?--the floor was ruffled with gold?Last evening, and she who was softly in bloom,?Glimmered as flowers that in perfume at twilight
unfold
For the flush of the night; whereas now the gloom?Of every dirty, must-besprinkled mould,?And damp old web of misery's heirloom?Deadens this day's grey-dropping arras-fold.
And what is this that floats on the undermist?Of the mirror towards the dusty grate, as if feeling?Unsightly its way to the warmth?--this thing with
a list?To the left? this ghost like a candle swealing?
Pale-blurred, with two round black drops, as if it
missed?Itself among everything else, here hungrily stealing?Upon me!--my own reflection!--explicit gist?Of my presence there in the mirror that leans from
the ceiling!
Then will somebody square this shade with the
being I know?I was last night, when my soul rang clear as a bell?And happy as rain in summer? Why should it be
so??What is there gone against me, why am I in hell?
PALIMPSEST OF TWILIGHT
DARKNESS comes out of the earth?And swallows dip into the pallor of the west;?From the hay comes the clamour of children's
mirth;?Wanes the old palimpsest.
The night-stock oozes scent,?And a moon-blue moth goes flittering by:?All that the worldly day has meant?Wastes like a lie.
The children have forsaken their play;?A single star in a veil of light?Glimmers: litter of day?Is gone from sight.
EMBANKMENT AT NIGHT,?BEFORE THE WAR
_Outcasts_.
THE night rain, dripping unseen,?Comes endlessly kissing my face and my hands.
The river, slipping between?Lamps, is rayed with golden bands?Half way down its heaving sides;?Revealed where it hides.
Under the bridge?Great electric cars?Sing through, and each with a floor-light racing
along at its side.?Far off, oh, midge after midge?Drifts over the gulf that bars?The night with silence, crossing the lamp-touched
tide.
At Charing Cross, here, beneath the bridge?Sleep in a row the outcasts,?Packed in a line with their heads against the wall.?Their feet, in a broken ridge?Stretch out on the way, and a lout casts?A look as he stands on the edge of this naked stall.
Beasts that sleep will cover?Their faces in their flank; so these?Have huddled rags or limbs on the naked sleep.?Save, as the tram-cars hover?Past with the noise of a breeze?And gleam as of sunshine crossing the low black heap,
Two naked faces are seen?Bare and asleep,?Two pale clots swept and swept by the light of the
cars.?Foam-clots showing between?The long, low tidal-heap,?The mud-weed opening two pale, shadowless stars.
Over the pallor of only two faces?Passes the gallivant beam of the trams;?Shows in only two sad places?The white bare bone of our shams.
A little, bearded man, pale, peaked in sleeping,?With a face like a chickweed flower.?And a heavy woman, sleeping still keeping?Callous and dour.
Over the pallor of only two places?Tossed on the low, black, ruffled heap?Passes the light of the tram as it races?Out of the deep.
Eloquent limbs?In disarray?Sleep-suave limbs of a youth with long, smooth
thighs?Hutched up for warmth; the muddy rims?Of trousers fray?On the thin bare shins of a man who uneasily lies.
The balls of five red toes?As red and dirty, bare?Young birds forsaken and left in a nest of mud--?Newspaper sheets enclose?Some limbs like parcels, and tear?When the sleeper stirs or turns on the ebb of the
flood--
One heaped mound?Of a woman's knees?As she thrusts them upward under the ruffled skirt--?And a curious dearth of sound?In the presence of these?Wastrels that sleep on the flagstones without any
hurt.
Over two shadowless, shameless faces?Stark on the heap?Travels the light as it tilts in its paces?Gone in one leap.
At the feet of the sleepers, watching,?Stand those that wait?For a place to lie down; and still as they stand,
they sleep,?Wearily catching?The flood's slow gait?Like men who are drowned, but float erect in the
deep.
Oh, the singing mansions,?Golden-lighted tall?Trams that pass, blown ruddily down the night!?The bridge on its stanchions?Stoops like a pall?To this human blight.
On the outer pavement, slowly,?Theatre people pass,?Holding aloft their umbrellas that flash and are
bright?Like flowers of infernal moly?Over nocturnal grass?Wetly bobbing and drifting