Sword Blades and Poppy Seed | Page 9

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 no
answer. I am afraid!

I crave to be lost like a wind-blown flame.
Pushed into nothingness
by a breath,
And quench in a wreath
Of engulfing death
This fight
for a God, or this devil's game.
A Tale of Starvation
There once was a man whom the gods didn't love,
And a disagreeable
man was he.
He loathed his neighbours, and his neighbours hated him,

And he cursed eternally.
He damned the sun, and he damned the stars,
And he blasted the
winds in the sky.
He sent to Hell every green, growing thing,
And
he raved at the birds as they fly.
His oaths were many, and his range was wide,
He swore in fancy
ways;
But his meaning was plain: that no created thing
Was other
than a hurt to his gaze.
He dwelt all alone, underneath a leaning hill,
And windows toward
the hill there were none,
And on the other side they were
white-washed thick,
To keep out every spark of the sun.
When he went to market he walked all the way
Blaspheming at the
path he trod.
He cursed at those he bought of, and swore at those he
sold to, By all the names he knew of God.
For his heart was soured in his weary old hide,
And his hopes had
curdled in his breast.
His friend had been untrue, and his love had
thrown him over For the chinking money-bags she liked best.
The rats had devoured the contents of his grain-bin,
The deer had
trampled on his corn,
His brook had shrivelled in a summer drought,

And his sheep had died unshorn.
His hens wouldn't lay, and his cow broke loose,
And his old horse
perished of a colic.
In the loft his wheat-bags were nibbled into holes


By little, glutton mice on a frolic.
So he slowly lost all he ever had,
And the blood in his body dried.

Shrunken and mean he still lived on,
And cursed that future which
had lied.
One day he was digging, a spade or two,
As his aching back could lift,

When he saw something glisten at the bottom of the trench,
And to
get it out he made great shift.
So he dug, and he delved, with care and pain,
And the veins in his
forehead stood taut.
At the end of an hour, when every bone cracked,

He gathered up what he had sought.
A dim old vase of crusted glass,
Prismed while it lay buried deep.

Shifting reds and greens, like a pigeon's neck,
At the touch of the sun
began to leap.
It was dull in the tree-shade, but glowing in the light;
Flashing like an
opal-stone,
Carved into a flagon; and the colours glanced and ran,

Where at first there had seemed to be none.
It had handles on each side to bear it up,
And a belly for the gurgling
wine.
Its neck was slender, and its mouth was wide,
And its lip was
curled and fine.
The old man saw it in the sun's bright stare
And the colours started up
through the crust,
And he who had cursed at the yellow sun
Held
the flask to it and wiped away the dust.
And he bore the flask to the brightest spot,
Where the shadow of the
hill fell clear;
And he turned the flask, and he looked at the flask,

And the sun shone without his sneer.
Then he carried it home, and put it on a shelf,
But it was only grey in
the gloom.
So he fetched a pail, and a bit of cloth,
And he went

outside with a broom.
And he washed his windows just to let the sun
Lie upon his
new-found vase;
And when evening came, he moved it down
And
put it on a table near the place
Where a candle fluttered in a draught from the door.
The old man
forgot to swear,
Watching its shadow grown a mammoth size,

Dancing in the kitchen there.
He forgot to revile the sun next morning
When he found his vase
afire in its light.
And he carried it out of the house that day,
And
kept it close beside him until night.
And so it happened from day to day.
The old man fed his life
On
the beauty of his vase, on its perfect shape.
And his soul forgot its
former strife.
And the village-folk came and begged to see
The flagon which was
dug from the ground.
And the old man never