Classic Poem

I

Not all the vast inconsequence of death;
Nor the white savour of a dawn whose place
Is washed and stippled to a delicate space;
No, nor the upward trumpet blow of breath
Pitched at a dream, though sinking far beneath;
Nor the dim inquisition of a face
Explored by fingers searching final grace —
Not this, not one of these can I bequeath.
There are some words we cannot say aloud:
We open ineffectual throats and gape. . . .
O Beauty without index, olive-browed!
Black violet night without the old escape!
How shall I bandage flame! How shall I drape
A knuckle twitching in a phantom shroud!

II

Intone no trap of words: these have a way
Of chartering vessels that leak and founder; words
Will put a wind along the wings of birds,
Then block their passage to some pale Cathay,
Hissing the while that they and only they
Have strength to spurn the heavy halves and thirds
Of horizontal progress, leave the herds,
Spike gold, split purple, splinter black and grey.
Words can erode velocities of steel
That stagger flashing through a roaring dream;
You reach for syllables to hold to, feel
For words — and they crash by you with a scream:
Words make us grunt and whicker: Circe said
White-honey words — and gave men husks instead!

III

Yet I could bear the hard glazed look that grows
In the grey eyes I must remember still:
I used to fill my hands with colour, fill
Each angry vein with such a fierce repose
That even as I speak it something glows
Under the stiff black slag of love until,
Smouldering through, impatient, frenzied to spill
Over, yearns back the fire that somehow froze.
Always the sting of banked-up passion slides
Like a coiled snake-whip snarling to the heart:
The gesture of frustration that derides,
The accent of the footsteps that depart. . . .
And what am I to work with? Having known
Stars what can I fashion out of stone?

IV

Let my loud heart clap quiet and be done
With peevish folly and obtuse complaint:
When was that seneschal of dreams a saint
Under the large surveillance of the sun? ...
And let me finish as I had begun:
Let no half words or quarter phrases taint
The dossier by a dubious restraint;
And put no tears on this oblivion.
I leave no silhouette on some harsh hill
Against the sky, outlined in minor black;
The gestured and theatric imbecile
May fling a studied rose and turn his back:
I only want this body to be still;
I only want these throbbing valves to crack.

V

Is there, then, nothing we can say or do
To stave off what the eyes make manifest?
They speak the thing our lips merely attest,
They speak, and, having spoken, they are through.
Grey eyes glove metal; and eyes that are blue
Stroke velvet across lightning, veil a breast
With bitterness that will not let us rest
And give us beauty that we misconstrue.
I have in little ways found what I found:
Hope like an old sponge dipped in vinegar;
And that the Place of Skulls is dizzier ground
Than the unsteady orbit of a star;
And that dead love, no matter where we are,
Will search us out and turn our souls around.

VI

To base my feet against your crying flesh,
Jutting my passion like a ladder; reach
Out of this black bewilderment, this mesh
Of nerves the white nihility of speech;
From your small breasts and blue-veined thighs achieve
Something that flashes through the blood, transcends
The terror of the impulse to retrieve
In the hot glow that dazzles and defends —
That would let heaven down for me to use;
Loop with a running knot the naked fire
Of constellations; rope stars in a noose
To swing the soul out of a snuffed desire:
The least poor flicker of love's little noon
Is mirrored in the dead pits of the moon.

VII

How brave you are! With what a quiet grace
You consecrate our little dreams to death!
No vulgar gaze could guess it from your face,
Your eyes laugh back and even is your breath;
The blue steel of the eyes that used to give
A sullen glory to the stagnant dusk
Withdraws its title and prerogative,
Leaving a blackened shell, a hollowed husk.
A chaos of cold light spills on the ridge
Of a ragged afterglow stabbed by a star:
And Pharaoh sleeps and twitches like a midge,
And sweat is on the palms of Potiphar,
And Cleopatra murmurs names and moans
And I — I have my ashes; you — your stones.

VIII

Had not the sun now breaking in the west
Somehow at dissolution flared up, flung
Light that shivered like an adder's tongue
Into the cell where love had had his jest,
I should not thus be pacing with the rest
Of the proud singers who had starved and sung
And combed their hearts for music and had strung
Bone of their bone with agonies unguessed.
Each frosted leap sputters; frozen trees
Rattle and rub their knuckles together; thin
Cacklings can be heard whenever these
Go rigid and the stiffening locks them in:
Poets and trees freeze from the center, freeze;
But they will touch a star and make it spin.

IX

If I knew what you wanted; if I knew
In some cool single word that it was over:
This thing, this beautiful thing that came to clover
And lifted purple and passed out of view!
Speak. Let it be as clear as two and two,
As sharp and fixed as that; and lay no cover
On it. Say, " Yes, you were once my lover —
And now you are — well — now you are — just you. "
Say that ... and then go on remembering:
That is the unendurable hell! I would
Laugh on the dagger's point ... sing, even sing,
If you could wrench old roots out — if you could!
But that you must sleep with a ghost and feel
Quick breath against your lids — that cuts like steel!