bit. (Red all your eyes. O when?)
‘A poet is a man speaking to men’:
But I am then a poet, am I not?—
Ha ha. The radiator, please. Well, what?
Alive now—no—Blake would have written prose,
But movement following movement crisply flows,
So much the better, better the much so,
As burbleth Mozart. Twelve. The class can go.
Until I meet you, then, in Upper Hell
Convulsed, foaming immortal blood: farewell.
THE CAPTAIN’S SONG
The tree before my eyes bloomed into flame,
I rode the flame. This was the element,
Forsaking wife and child, I came to find,—
The flight through arrowy air dark as a dream
Brightening and falling, the loose tongues blue
Like blood above me, until I forgot.
. . Later, forgetting, I became a child
And fell down without reason and played games
Running, being the fastest, before dark
And often cried. Certain things I hid
That I had never liked, I leapt the stream
No one else could and darted off alone . .
You crippled Powers, cluster to me now:
Baffle this memory from my return,
That in the coldest nights, murmuring her name
I sought her two feet with my feet, my feet
Were warm and hers were ice and I warmed her
With both of mine. Will I warm her with one?
THE SONG OF THE TORTURED GIRL
After a little I could not have told—
But no one asked me this—why I was there.
I asked. The ceiling of that place was high
And there were sudden noises, which I made.
I must have stayed there a long time today:
My cup of soup was gone when they brought me back.
Often ‘Nothing worse now can come to us’
I thought, the winter the young men stayed away,
My uncle died, and mother broke her crutch.
And then the strange room where the brightest light
Does not shine on the strange men: shines on me.
I feel them stretch my youth and throw a switch.
Through leafless branches the sweet wind blows
Making a mild sound, softer than a moan;
High in a pass once where we put our tent,
Minutes I lay awake to hear my joy.
—I no longer remember what they want.—
Minutes I lay awake to hear my joy.
The Lightning
Sick with the lightning lay my sister-in-law,
Concealing it from her children, when I came.
What I could, did, helpless with what I saw.
Analysands all, and the rest ought to be,
The friends my innocence cherished, and you and I,
Darling,—the friends I qualm and cherish and see.
. . The fattest nation!—wé do not thrive fat
But facile in the scale with all we rise
And shift a breakfast, and there is shame in that.
And labour sweats with vice at the top, and two
Bullies are bristling. What he thought who thinks?
It is difficult to say what one will do.
Obstinate, gleams from the black world the gay and fair,
My love loves chocolate, she loves also me,
And the lightning dances, but I cannot despair.
The Long Home
bulks where the barley blew, time out of mind
Of the sleepless Master. The barbered lawn
Far to a grey wall lounges, the birds are still,
Rising wind rucks from the sill
The slack brocade beside the old throne he dreams on.
The portraits’ hands are blind.
Below these frames they strain on stones. He mumbles . .
Fathers who listen, what loves hear
Surfacing from the lightless past? He foams.
Stillness locks a hundred rooms.
Louts in a bar aloud, The People, sucking beer.
A barefoot kiss. Who trembles?
Peach-bloom, sorb-apple sucked in what fine year!
I am a wine, he wonders; when?
Am I what I can do? My large white hands.
Boater & ascot, in grandstands
Coups. Concentrations of frightful cold, and then
Warm limbs below a pier.
The Master is sipping his identity.
Ardours & stars! Trash humped on trash.
The incorporated yacht, the campaign cheque
Signed one fall on the foredeck
Hard on a quarrel, to amaze the fool. Who brash
Hectored out some false plea?
Brownpaper-blind, his morning passions trailed
Home in the clumsy dusk,—how now
Care which from which, trapped on a racing star
Where we know
‘A poet is a man speaking to men’:
But I am then a poet, am I not?—
Ha ha. The radiator, please. Well, what?
Alive now—no—Blake would have written prose,
But movement following movement crisply flows,
So much the better, better the much so,
As burbleth Mozart. Twelve. The class can go.
Until I meet you, then, in Upper Hell
Convulsed, foaming immortal blood: farewell.
THE CAPTAIN’S SONG
The tree before my eyes bloomed into flame,
I rode the flame. This was the element,
Forsaking wife and child, I came to find,—
The flight through arrowy air dark as a dream
Brightening and falling, the loose tongues blue
Like blood above me, until I forgot.
. . Later, forgetting, I became a child
And fell down without reason and played games
Running, being the fastest, before dark
And often cried. Certain things I hid
That I had never liked, I leapt the stream
No one else could and darted off alone . .
You crippled Powers, cluster to me now:
Baffle this memory from my return,
That in the coldest nights, murmuring her name
I sought her two feet with my feet, my feet
Were warm and hers were ice and I warmed her
With both of mine. Will I warm her with one?
THE SONG OF THE TORTURED GIRL
After a little I could not have told—
But no one asked me this—why I was there.
I asked. The ceiling of that place was high
And there were sudden noises, which I made.
I must have stayed there a long time today:
My cup of soup was gone when they brought me back.
Often ‘Nothing worse now can come to us’
I thought, the winter the young men stayed away,
My uncle died, and mother broke her crutch.
And then the strange room where the brightest light
Does not shine on the strange men: shines on me.
I feel them stretch my youth and throw a switch.
Through leafless branches the sweet wind blows
Making a mild sound, softer than a moan;
High in a pass once where we put our tent,
Minutes I lay awake to hear my joy.
—I no longer remember what they want.—
Minutes I lay awake to hear my joy.
The Lightning
Sick with the lightning lay my sister-in-law,
Concealing it from her children, when I came.
What I could, did, helpless with what I saw.
Analysands all, and the rest ought to be,
The friends my innocence cherished, and you and I,
Darling,—the friends I qualm and cherish and see.
. . The fattest nation!—wé do not thrive fat
But facile in the scale with all we rise
And shift a breakfast, and there is shame in that.
And labour sweats with vice at the top, and two
Bullies are bristling. What he thought who thinks?
It is difficult to say what one will do.
Obstinate, gleams from the black world the gay and fair,
My love loves chocolate, she loves also me,
And the lightning dances, but I cannot despair.
The Long Home
bulks where the barley blew, time out of mind
Of the sleepless Master. The barbered lawn
Far to a grey wall lounges, the birds are still,
Rising wind rucks from the sill
The slack brocade beside the old throne he dreams on.
The portraits’ hands are blind.
Below these frames they strain on stones. He mumbles . .
Fathers who listen, what loves hear
Surfacing from the lightless past? He foams.
Stillness locks a hundred rooms.
Louts in a bar aloud, The People, sucking beer.
A barefoot kiss. Who trembles?
Peach-bloom, sorb-apple sucked in what fine year!
I am a wine, he wonders; when?
Am I what I can do? My large white hands.
Boater & ascot, in grandstands
Coups. Concentrations of frightful cold, and then
Warm limbs below a pier.
The Master is sipping his identity.
Ardours & stars! Trash humped on trash.
The incorporated yacht, the campaign cheque
Signed one fall on the foredeck
Hard on a quarrel, to amaze the fool. Who brash
Hectored out some false plea?
Brownpaper-blind, his morning passions trailed
Home in the clumsy dusk,—how now
Care which from which, trapped on a racing star
Where we know
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