Echoes
1
Since learning all in such a tremble last night —
Not with my eyes adroit in the dark,
But with my fingers hard with fright,
Astretch to touch a phantom, closing on myself —
I have been smiling.
2
Mothering innocents to monsters is
Not of fertility but fascination
In women.
3
It was the beginning of time
When selfhood first stood up in the slime.
It was the beginning of pain
When an angel spoke and was quiet again.
4
After the count of centuries numbers hang
Heavy over the unnumbered hopes and oppress
The heart each woman stills beneath her dress
Close to the throat, where memory clasps the lace,
An ancient brooch.
5
It is a mission for men to scare and fly
After the siren luminary, day.
Someone must bide, someone must guard the night.
6
If there are heroes anywhere
Unarm them quickly and give them
Medals and fine burials
And history to look back on
As weathermen point with pride to rain.
7
Dire necessity made all,
Made the most frightful first,
Then less and less dire the need
Until in that world horrors were least
And haunting meant never to see ghosts.
8
Intelligence in ladies and gentlemen
And their children
Draws a broad square of knowledge
With their house walls.
But four corners to contain a square
Yield to an utmost circle —
The garden of the perpendicular is a sphere.
9
Need for a tragic head,
Though no occasion now to grieve,
In that mere mental time
When tears are thought of and none appear.
10
The optician, in honour of his trade,
Wore the most perfect spectacles ever made,
Saw his unspectacled mother and father
And all his unspectacled relatives with anger,
On holidays for spite never went home
But put away his spectacles to visit Rome,
And indulged his inherited astigmatism
As the vacation privilege of an optician,
Squinting up at the Cathedral
As the Romans thought cultivated and natural.
11
" I shall mend it," I say,
Whenever something breaks,
" By tying the beginning to the end."
Then with my hands washed clean
And fingers piano-playing
And arms bare to go elbow-in,
I come to an empty table always.
The broken pieces do not wait
On rolling up of sleeves.
I come in late always
Saying, " I shall mend it."
12
Gently down the incline of the mind
Speeds the flower, the leaf, the time —
All but the fierce name of the plant,
Imperishable matronymic of a species.
13
The poppy edifices of sleep,
The monotonous musings of night-breath,
The liquid featureless interior faces,
The shallow terrors, waking never far.
14
Love at a sickbed is a long way
And an untastable thing.
It hangs like a sickroom picture
And wears like another's ring.
Then the guarded yawn of pain snaps,
The immeasurable areas of distress
. . . . . . collapse . . .
15
. . . cheated history —
Which stealing now has only then
And stealing us has only them.
16
Now victory has come of age,
Learned in arts of desolation,
Gifted with death, love of decline,
Hunger of waste and fresh corruption.
And here it softens and laments,
Mourns fallen enemies, kisses the razed cities,
Hovers where sense has been,
In a ravished world, and calls the pities.
17
Forgive me, giver, if I destroy the gift!
It is so nearly what would please me,
I cannot but perfect it.
18
" Worthy of a jewel," they say of beauty,
Uncertain what is beauty
And what the precious thing.
19
And if occasionally a rhyme appeared,
This was the illness but not the death
So fear-awaited that hope of it
Ailing forgetfulness became.
20
In short despite of time, that long despite of truth
By all that's false and would be true as true,
Here's truth in time, and false as false,
To say, " Let truth be so-and-so
In ways so opposite, there's no
Long-short of it to reason more."
21
Between the word and the world lie
Fading eternities of soon.
22
When a dog lying on the flagstones
Gazes into the sea of spring,
The surface of instruction
Does not ripple once:
He watches it too well.
23
Love is very everything, like fire:
Many things burning,
But only one combustion.
24
My address? At the cafes, cathedrals,
Green fields, marble terminals —
I teem with place.
When? Any moment finds me,
Reiterated morsel
Expanded into space.
25
Let us seem to speak
Or they will think us dead, revive us.
Nod brightly, Hour.
Rescue us from rescue.
26
What a tattle-tattle we.
And what a rattle-rattle me.
What a rattle-tattle-tattle-rattle we-me.
What a rattle-tattle.
What a tattle-rattle.
What a we.
What a me.
What a what a
What a
What
Since learning all in such a tremble last night —
Not with my eyes adroit in the dark,
But with my fingers hard with fright,
Astretch to touch a phantom, closing on myself —
I have been smiling.
2
Mothering innocents to monsters is
Not of fertility but fascination
In women.
3
It was the beginning of time
When selfhood first stood up in the slime.
It was the beginning of pain
When an angel spoke and was quiet again.
4
After the count of centuries numbers hang
Heavy over the unnumbered hopes and oppress
The heart each woman stills beneath her dress
Close to the throat, where memory clasps the lace,
An ancient brooch.
5
It is a mission for men to scare and fly
After the siren luminary, day.
Someone must bide, someone must guard the night.
6
If there are heroes anywhere
Unarm them quickly and give them
Medals and fine burials
And history to look back on
As weathermen point with pride to rain.
7
Dire necessity made all,
Made the most frightful first,
Then less and less dire the need
Until in that world horrors were least
And haunting meant never to see ghosts.
8
Intelligence in ladies and gentlemen
And their children
Draws a broad square of knowledge
With their house walls.
But four corners to contain a square
Yield to an utmost circle —
The garden of the perpendicular is a sphere.
9
Need for a tragic head,
Though no occasion now to grieve,
In that mere mental time
When tears are thought of and none appear.
10
The optician, in honour of his trade,
Wore the most perfect spectacles ever made,
Saw his unspectacled mother and father
And all his unspectacled relatives with anger,
On holidays for spite never went home
But put away his spectacles to visit Rome,
And indulged his inherited astigmatism
As the vacation privilege of an optician,
Squinting up at the Cathedral
As the Romans thought cultivated and natural.
11
" I shall mend it," I say,
Whenever something breaks,
" By tying the beginning to the end."
Then with my hands washed clean
And fingers piano-playing
And arms bare to go elbow-in,
I come to an empty table always.
The broken pieces do not wait
On rolling up of sleeves.
I come in late always
Saying, " I shall mend it."
12
Gently down the incline of the mind
Speeds the flower, the leaf, the time —
All but the fierce name of the plant,
Imperishable matronymic of a species.
13
The poppy edifices of sleep,
The monotonous musings of night-breath,
The liquid featureless interior faces,
The shallow terrors, waking never far.
14
Love at a sickbed is a long way
And an untastable thing.
It hangs like a sickroom picture
And wears like another's ring.
Then the guarded yawn of pain snaps,
The immeasurable areas of distress
. . . . . . collapse . . .
15
. . . cheated history —
Which stealing now has only then
And stealing us has only them.
16
Now victory has come of age,
Learned in arts of desolation,
Gifted with death, love of decline,
Hunger of waste and fresh corruption.
And here it softens and laments,
Mourns fallen enemies, kisses the razed cities,
Hovers where sense has been,
In a ravished world, and calls the pities.
17
Forgive me, giver, if I destroy the gift!
It is so nearly what would please me,
I cannot but perfect it.
18
" Worthy of a jewel," they say of beauty,
Uncertain what is beauty
And what the precious thing.
19
And if occasionally a rhyme appeared,
This was the illness but not the death
So fear-awaited that hope of it
Ailing forgetfulness became.
20
In short despite of time, that long despite of truth
By all that's false and would be true as true,
Here's truth in time, and false as false,
To say, " Let truth be so-and-so
In ways so opposite, there's no
Long-short of it to reason more."
21
Between the word and the world lie
Fading eternities of soon.
22
When a dog lying on the flagstones
Gazes into the sea of spring,
The surface of instruction
Does not ripple once:
He watches it too well.
23
Love is very everything, like fire:
Many things burning,
But only one combustion.
24
My address? At the cafes, cathedrals,
Green fields, marble terminals —
I teem with place.
When? Any moment finds me,
Reiterated morsel
Expanded into space.
25
Let us seem to speak
Or they will think us dead, revive us.
Nod brightly, Hour.
Rescue us from rescue.
26
What a tattle-tattle we.
And what a rattle-rattle me.
What a rattle-tattle-tattle-rattle we-me.
What a rattle-tattle.
What a tattle-rattle.
What a we.
What a me.
What a what a
What a
What
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