tortoise who carries the earth:
A grammar of fate like the map of China,
Or as wrinkles sit in the palm of a girl.
I enter my poem like a sonâs house.
The ancient thought is: nothing will change.
But the nouns are back in the bottle,
I ache and she is warm, was warm, is warm.
1960/ 1940
IN CRISIS
For Nancy
(1939)
My love on Wednesday letting fall her body
From upright walking won by weariness,
As on a bed of flesh by ounces counted out,
Softer than snuff or snow came where my body was.
So in the aboriginal waterways of the mind,
No word being spoken by a familiar girl,
One may have a clear apprehension of ghostly matters,
Audible, as perhaps in the sea-shellâs helix
The Gulf Stream can rub soft music from a pebble
Like quiet rehearsal of the words âKneel downâ:
And cool on the inner corridors of the ear
Can blow on memory and conscience like a sin.
The inner man is surely a native of God
And his wife a brilliant novice of nature.
The woman walks in the dark like a lantern swung,
A white spark blown between points of pain.
We do not speak, embracing with the blood,
The tolling heart marking its measures in darkness
Like the scratch of a match or the fire-stone
Struck to a spark in the dark by a colder one.
So, lying close, the enchanted boy may hear
Soon from Tokio the crass drum sounding,
From the heroâs hearth the merry crotchet of war.
Flame shall swallow the lady.
Tall men shall come to cool the royal bush,
Over the grey waters the buglerâs octaves
Publish aloud a new resurrection of terror.
Many will give suck at the bombâs cold nipple.
Empty your hearts: or fill from a purer source.
That what is in men can weep, having eyes:
That what is in Truth can speak from the responsible dust
And O the rose grow in the middle of the great world.
1943/ 1940
AT CORINTH
For V.
(1940)
At Corinth one has forgiven
The recording travellers in the same past
Who first entered this land of doors,
Hunting a precise emotion by clues,
Haunting a river, or a place in a book.
Here the continuous evocations are washed
Harder than tears and brighter,
But less penetrating than the touch of flesh,
(Our fingers pressed upon eyelids of stone),
Yet more patient, surely, watching
To dissolve the statues and retire
Night after night with a dissolving moon.
The valley mist ennobles
Lovers disarmed by negligence or weather,
And before night the calm
Discovers them, breathing upon the nerves,
The scent of the exhausted lamps.
Here stars come soft to pasture,
And all doors lead to sleep.
What lies beneath the turf forbids
A footstep on the augustan stair,
The intrusion of a style less pure,
Seen through the cameraâs lens,
Or the quotations of visitors.
My skill is in words only:
To tell you, writing this letter home,
That we, whose blood was sweetened once
By Byron or his elders in the magic,
Entered the circle safely, found
No messenger for us except the smiles.
Owls sip the wind here. Well,
This place also was somebodyâs home,
Whipped by the gulf to thorns,
A house for proverbs by a broken well.
Winter was never native here: nor is.
Men, women, and the nightingales
Are forms of Spring.
1943/ 1940
NEMEA
(1940)
A song in the valley of Nemea:
Sing quiet, quite quiet here.
Song for the brides of Argos
Combing the swarms of golden hair:
Quite quiet, quiet there.
Under the rolling comb of grass,
The sword outrusts the golden helm.
Agamemnon under tumulus serene
Outsmiles the jury of skeletons:
Cool under cumulus the lion queen:
Only the drum can celebrate,
Only the adjective outlive them.
A song in the valley of Nemea:
Sing quiet, quiet, quiet here.
Tone of the frog in the empty well,
Drone of the bald bee on the cold skull,
Quiet, Quiet, Quiet.
1943/ 1940
IN ARCADIA
(1940)
By divination came the Dorians,
Under a punishment composed an arch.
They invented this valley, they taught
The rock to flow with odourless
A grammar of fate like the map of China,
Or as wrinkles sit in the palm of a girl.
I enter my poem like a sonâs house.
The ancient thought is: nothing will change.
But the nouns are back in the bottle,
I ache and she is warm, was warm, is warm.
1960/ 1940
IN CRISIS
For Nancy
(1939)
My love on Wednesday letting fall her body
From upright walking won by weariness,
As on a bed of flesh by ounces counted out,
Softer than snuff or snow came where my body was.
So in the aboriginal waterways of the mind,
No word being spoken by a familiar girl,
One may have a clear apprehension of ghostly matters,
Audible, as perhaps in the sea-shellâs helix
The Gulf Stream can rub soft music from a pebble
Like quiet rehearsal of the words âKneel downâ:
And cool on the inner corridors of the ear
Can blow on memory and conscience like a sin.
The inner man is surely a native of God
And his wife a brilliant novice of nature.
The woman walks in the dark like a lantern swung,
A white spark blown between points of pain.
We do not speak, embracing with the blood,
The tolling heart marking its measures in darkness
Like the scratch of a match or the fire-stone
Struck to a spark in the dark by a colder one.
So, lying close, the enchanted boy may hear
Soon from Tokio the crass drum sounding,
From the heroâs hearth the merry crotchet of war.
Flame shall swallow the lady.
Tall men shall come to cool the royal bush,
Over the grey waters the buglerâs octaves
Publish aloud a new resurrection of terror.
Many will give suck at the bombâs cold nipple.
Empty your hearts: or fill from a purer source.
That what is in men can weep, having eyes:
That what is in Truth can speak from the responsible dust
And O the rose grow in the middle of the great world.
1943/ 1940
AT CORINTH
For V.
(1940)
At Corinth one has forgiven
The recording travellers in the same past
Who first entered this land of doors,
Hunting a precise emotion by clues,
Haunting a river, or a place in a book.
Here the continuous evocations are washed
Harder than tears and brighter,
But less penetrating than the touch of flesh,
(Our fingers pressed upon eyelids of stone),
Yet more patient, surely, watching
To dissolve the statues and retire
Night after night with a dissolving moon.
The valley mist ennobles
Lovers disarmed by negligence or weather,
And before night the calm
Discovers them, breathing upon the nerves,
The scent of the exhausted lamps.
Here stars come soft to pasture,
And all doors lead to sleep.
What lies beneath the turf forbids
A footstep on the augustan stair,
The intrusion of a style less pure,
Seen through the cameraâs lens,
Or the quotations of visitors.
My skill is in words only:
To tell you, writing this letter home,
That we, whose blood was sweetened once
By Byron or his elders in the magic,
Entered the circle safely, found
No messenger for us except the smiles.
Owls sip the wind here. Well,
This place also was somebodyâs home,
Whipped by the gulf to thorns,
A house for proverbs by a broken well.
Winter was never native here: nor is.
Men, women, and the nightingales
Are forms of Spring.
1943/ 1940
NEMEA
(1940)
A song in the valley of Nemea:
Sing quiet, quite quiet here.
Song for the brides of Argos
Combing the swarms of golden hair:
Quite quiet, quiet there.
Under the rolling comb of grass,
The sword outrusts the golden helm.
Agamemnon under tumulus serene
Outsmiles the jury of skeletons:
Cool under cumulus the lion queen:
Only the drum can celebrate,
Only the adjective outlive them.
A song in the valley of Nemea:
Sing quiet, quiet, quiet here.
Tone of the frog in the empty well,
Drone of the bald bee on the cold skull,
Quiet, Quiet, Quiet.
1943/ 1940
IN ARCADIA
(1940)
By divination came the Dorians,
Under a punishment composed an arch.
They invented this valley, they taught
The rock to flow with odourless
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