Sword Blades and Poppy Seed | Page 8

of flowers!?My money-bag of shining dreams! My hours,?Windless and still, of afternoon!?You are my world and I your citizen.?What meaning can have patience then?
Apology
Be not angry with me that I bear?Your colours everywhere,?All through each crowded street,?And meet?The wonder-light in every eye,?As I go by.
Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze,?Blinded by rainbow haze,?The stuff of happiness,?No less,?Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds?Of peacock golds.
Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way?Flushes beneath its gray.?My steps fall ringed with light,?So bright,?It seems a myriad suns are strown?About the town.
Around me is the sound of steepled bells,?And rich perfumed smells?Hang like a wind-forgotten cloud,?And shroud?Me from close contact with the world.?I dwell impearled.
You blazon me with jewelled insignia.?A flaming nebula?Rims in my life. And yet?You set?The word upon me, unconfessed?To go unguessed.
A Petition
I pray to be the tool which to your hand?Long use has shaped and moulded till it be?Apt for your need, and, unconsideringly,?You take it for its service. I demand?To be forgotten in the woven strand?Which grows the multi-coloured tapestry?Of your bright life, and through its tissues lie?A hidden, strong, sustaining, grey-toned band.?I wish to dwell around your daylight dreams,?The railing to the stairway of the clouds,?To guard your steps securely up, where streams?A faery moonshine washing pale the crowds?Of pointed stars. Remember not whereby?You mount, protected, to the far-flung sky.
A Blockhead
Before me lies a mass of shapeless days,?Unseparated atoms, and I must?Sort them apart and live them. Sifted dust?Covers the formless heap. Reprieves, delays,?There are none, ever. As a monk who prays?The sliding beads asunder, so I thrust?Each tasteless particle aside, and just?Begin again the task which never stays.?And I have known a glory of great suns,?When days flashed by, pulsing with joy and fire!?Drunk bubbled wine in goblets of desire,?And felt the whipped blood laughing as it runs!?Spilt is that liquor, my too hasty hand?Threw down the cup, and did not understand.
Stupidity
Dearest, forgive that with my clumsy touch?I broke and bruised your rose.?I hardly could suppose?It were a thing so fragile that my clutch
Could kill it, thus.
It stood so proudly up upon its stem,?I knew no thought of fear,?And coming very near?Fell, overbalanced, to your garment's hem,
Tearing it down.
Now, stooping, I upgather, one by one,?The crimson petals, all?Outspread about my fall.?They hold their fragrance still, a blood-red cone
Of memory.
And with my words I carve a little jar?To keep their scented dust,?Which, opening, you must?Breathe to your soul, and, breathing, know me far
More grieved than you.
Irony
An arid daylight shines along the beach?Dried to a grey monotony of tone,?And stranded jelly-fish melt soft upon?The sun-baked pebbles, far beyond their reach?Sparkles a wet, reviving sea. Here bleach?The skeletons of fishes, every bone?Polished and stark, like traceries of stone,?The joints and knuckles hardened each to each.?And they are dead while waiting for the sea,?The moon-pursuing sea, to come again.?Their hearts are blown away on the hot breeze.?Only the shells and stones can wait to be?Washed bright. For living things, who suffer pain,?May not endure till time can bring them ease.
Happiness
Happiness, to some, elation;?Is, to others, mere stagnation.?Days of passive somnolence,?At its wildest, indolence.?Hours of empty quietness,?No delight, and no distress.
Happiness to me is wine,?Effervescent, superfine.?Full of tang and fiery pleasure,?Far too hot to leave me leisure?For a single thought beyond it.?Drunk! Forgetful! This the bond: it?Means to give one's soul to gain?Life's quintessence. Even pain?Pricks to livelier living, then?Wakes the nerves to laugh again,?Rapture's self is three parts sorrow.?Although we must die to-morrow,?Losing every thought but this;?Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss.
Happiness: We rarely feel it.?I would buy it, beg it, steal it,?Pay in coins of dripping blood?For this one transcendent good.
The Last Quarter of the Moon
How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life,?A spatter of rust on its polished steel!?The seasons reel?Like a goaded wheel.?Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife.
The night is sliding towards the dawn,?And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees.?A torn moon flees?Through the hemlock trees,?The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn.
Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing?A rabble of clouds flares out of the east.?Like dogs unleashed?After a beast,?They stream on the sky, an outflung string.
A desolate wind, through the unpeopled dark,?Shakes the bushes and whistles through empty nests,?And the fierce unrests?I keep as guests?Crowd my brain with corpses, pallid and stark.
Leave me in peace, O Spectres, who haunt?My labouring mind, I have fought and failed.?I have not quailed,?I was all unmailed?And naked I strove, 'tis my only vaunt.
The moon drops into the silver day?As waking out of her swoon she comes.?I hear the drums?Of millenniums?Beating the mornings I still must stay.
The years I must watch go in and out,?While I build with water, and dig in air,?And the trumpets blare?Hollow despair,?The shuddering trumpets of utter rout.
An atom tossed in a chaos made?Of yeasting worlds, which bubble and foam.?Whence have I come??What would be home??I hear