Sword Blades and Poppy Seed | Page 8

and girdled. Do the sun-filled men
Feel
patience then?
Be patient with you?
When the snow-girt earth
Cracks to let
through a spurt
Of sudden green, and from the muddy dirt
A
snowdrop leaps, how mark its worth
To eyes frost-hardened, and do
weary men
Feel patience then?
Be patient with you?
When pain's iron bars

Their rivets tighten,

stern
To bend and break their victims; as they turn,
Hopeless, there
stand the purple jars
Of night to spill oblivion. Do these men
Feel
patience then?
Be patient with you?
You! My sun and moon!
My basketful 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