Classic Poem

How the Poem Ends

For there are still sounds of a world
As if astir where it lay dead
Not longer than a moment ago —
This very moment, now.
They have no skill in their legs to walk
Or in their heads to make up time,
And yet they quiver with old talents,
Crying up, " Give us to do."
But Francisca does not answer.
And glad they are not to have been heard
When they have ceased complaining
And wish for nothing but to be dead
As happily they are, and were.
Not impolitely while they murmur
Francisca sings, she does not contradict.
And such complaisance is all they want,
No second thoughts or studying.
They are but voices slow to follow
Their tongues into corruption,
And Francisca deafs me from them.
Or, honouring their poor clamour
With nicest confutation,
I'd teach then no in tender stages
Of their argument, then mine.
And a horror from corpse to corpse would spread,
Death tasted with too live a mind.
If they still dream the dream they dreamt
When legs and heads were human,
No need to wake them into death
Though they have overslept: the rigor takes
The body first, the mind comes of itself.
The voices will in their own time
Fall silent with embarrassment
Of having spoken false.
And Francisca intercedes till then
Between this graveyard parliament and Laura.

But that's enough of the world,
Never more when it was most alive
Than a cramped theatre of language —
Prophecy seemed truer than truth.
Come, to inquire wholly, not in passing.
Those are uncomfortable fashions now
Which were the world once advertised.
The too up-to-date finalities
Multiply into long ago.
Come, they have sickened and lost eloquence
And do not work their purpose, or ours.
Francisca will preside while we withdraw
To the major drama that was not meant
To be produced by their kindness
On their stage for their self-congratulation.
Francisca is a charm like a wise child
Against the childishness of the world
To be the glory-world it tells of.
She does not interrupt, obedient
To the aged tones and gestures —
So that there's not to rage or scold
Unless upon themselves for wagging on.

Come, to leave Francisca playing
Without tossing back the ball
That rolls away, perhaps under our feet
When walking past her with this afternoon
Like to-night's cheese and lettuce in our basket,
Or spice cakes, very tough . . . to give her one. . . .
But leave her playing without looking hard.
She's at a covered game like love —
Gentle to the eye but full of hurt
That can't be helped and so better not seen.
For such a child is death at play
When the dead protest they are too young
To lie so still and be so old.

And what's the outward sign to know by
How much mortality in Deya
On Francisca's muffling brow
Quarrels with death, then of itself is dead
More quickly than of death, and no complaining?
Except it is a brow more without sound
Than brows are known to be? Even mine
Yields echoes though you walk upon it
Small enough, with careful tread enough.
But Francisca's brow is perfect smoothness,
And that's the only outward sign
How still a brow it is to walk upon,
None could you ask for where to be
More left-alone, or sound of self come sooner.
The outward signs show only from within,
As Deya from the lagging sea
Invisible or not at all appears.
The theme is mortuary
And must be so intelligenced —
By approaching land from land
And beholding with dry vision
The earthly picture, no water in the eye
To blur immediacy into vistas
Of time-hearted understanding.
For death's a now like earth on which you stand
And only readable by looking near. . . .
Which closes up the eye? Then how to see?
The eye's a weakness, gentlemen,
As you know by the delight it gives,
And never leads but it leads wrong.
And flying off to ships this way and that
You ride interpretation backwards
Until your minds-of-mariners
Are idiotic with the not-real stars.
Then there's the coming home once more.
But that's not seeing solid, only weary.
You've yet to grow short-legged as you were
And learn to walk without a compass.
Indeed, there's nowhere to fly off to.
Everything's here under your lashes
That you have right of knowledge in,
And what you're stupid of is stupidness. . . .
So what's the outward sign to know by
If, as I say, Francisca verily
To such and such intent . . . in Deya . . .
Shall you perhaps take ship? see for yourself?
Francisca, here's a gentleman from life
Come all this way to meet you . . .
An unfriendly little girl . . .
A most indifferent smile for all this way. . . .

And I? If I in Deya am
No more envisageable phantasm
Than the problematic child, Francisca,
Then where am I, to seem a someone
In the world, filling a chair and housed
At an address that reaches me
By means of this make-believe body —
For never did I move or dwell
Outside myself — then where am I?
I lie from Deya inward by long leagues
Of earthliness from the sun and sea
Turning inward to nowhere-on-earth.
A rumoured place? That takes us to the moon?
Let it be moon. The moon was never more
Than a name without a place to match it. . . .
In Deya there's a moon-blight always
On the watery irises of fancy.
And minds that feed on bodily conceits
Go daft in Deya, especially Germans. . . .
At any rate earth's proved, which saves
The proving of the place it gives into.
And where'd be time for that, between
Out of one, into the other, a twinkling
As fast as realizing death — or not?
Therefore, without the learned pause, to find
That Deya is this open door I say
At least to look in by, if not to enter?

How's that? How's anything you know or don't?
You can't believe . . . on ordinary paper . . .
Printed by myself, and Robert . . .
He's human, by every imperfection
He's made a dogged art of. . . .
Yes, I ink, he pulls, we patch a greyness,
Or clean the thickened letters out. . . .
You can't believe . . . do I not eat?
With pleasure. To-day was aubergine
Browned strong in oil, and blackberries
By Robert picked and juiced into stiff jelly
Come out so good but odd.
And I eat it at all times. But eating?
That's to be kind, a madness
Executed in the stomach
But starting in the heart, which forgives.
And I forgive the idle fruits
Who have no thoughts but quick to soothe
The frowning mouths that can't agree.
And all the frightened edibles
That cringe away from argument,
Swearing they have no fixed opinion
Or ever took sides between man and —
Ah, though you can't believe, there's always God.
And that's a story you can go to sleep on
Without waking up next morning
The better or the worse for it.
Indeed, was it not written by yourselves?
A poem's by — who knows? And must be read
In prompt mistrust of the designing sense.
For once you let it have you,
There's no way out unless to leave behind
Your wits in it and wander foolish.

And so you can't believe. . . . And yet I speak
With a homely habit of self-pleasing
That tokens self-possession, a sure tongue?
Yes, the possession is my own.
My muse is I. . . . What shall we think?
The circumstances are at once
Too natural and too poetical
To determine either doubt or belief. . . .
Let's ask Maria, she's cleaning fish
Under the algarrobas with the cats.
Her comb keeps tumbling and her cheek is shy,
But a royal manner clicks in her brain
If the question is important.
And the answer to important questions
Is of course always the same, nor long —
Another question: " Who asks?"
Maria's wisdom is not flattering.
Perhaps she'd seem, like Queen Victoria,
A little rude, as well-bred servants are.
I'd answer you myself, but — no.
In speaking for your special sake,
Suiting the answer to the question,
My courtesy would, I fear, like hers
Be queenly, as precision is
Which otherwise were arrogance.

Let's speak to Juan White-Mule about it.
If there's a settlement between
Your certain sanity and mine,
He'll make it, and with no disrespect
To either party, a paz mallorquina
Founded on mutual regret
That ever did we meet to differ.
But you'd not like to pledge yourselves
To difference, owning you were
Not here when there, not right when wrong.
And I could only as usual
Linger apart in tacit presence. . . .
Sooner or later you'd strike up talk:
" Peseta's down to-day. What's your story?"
So here's my story, now let me die again
Into the stranger you can't do without,
O tourists of neighbourliness.