Part 5 (1/2)

Whether the people in the street Like pattering ripples go by, Or whether the theatre sighs and sighs With a loud, hoa.r.s.e sigh:

Or the wind shakes a ravel of light Over the dead-black river, Or night's last echoing Makes the daybreak s.h.i.+ver:

I feel the silence waiting To take them all up again In its vast completeness, enfolding The sound of men.

LISTENING

I LISTEN to the stillness of you, My dear, among it all; I feel your silence touch my words as I talk, And take them in thrall.

My words fly off a forge The length of a spark; I see the night-sky easily sip them Up in the dark.

The lark sings loud and glad, Yet I am not loth That silence should take the song and the bird And lose them both.

A train goes roaring south, The steam-flag flying; I see the stealthy shadow of silence Alongside going.

And off the forge of the world, Whirling in the draught of life, Go sparks of myriad people, filling The night with strife.

Yet they never change the darkness Or blench it with noise; Alone on the perfect silence The stars are buoys.

BROODING GRIEF

A YELLOW leaf from the darkness Hops like a frog before me.

Why should I start and stand still?

I was watching the woman that bore me Stretched in the brindled darkness Of the sick-room, rigid with will To die: and the quick leaf tore me Back to this rainy swill Of leaves and lamps and traffic mingled before me.

LOTUS HURT BY THE COLD

How many times, like lotus lilies risen Upon the surface of a river, there Have risen floating on my blood the rare Soft glimmers of my hope escaped from prison.

So I am clothed all over with the light And sensitive beautiful blossoming of pa.s.sion; Till naked for her in the finest fas.h.i.+on The flowers of all my mud swim into sight.

And then I offer all myself unto This woman who likes to love me: but she turns A look of hate upon the flower that burns To break and pour her out its precious dew.

And slowly all the blossom shuts in pain, And all the lotus buds of love sink over To die unopened: when my moon-faced lover, Kind on the weight of suffering, smiles again.

MALADE

THE sick grapes on the chair by the bed lie p.r.o.ne; at the window The ta.s.sel of the blind swings gently, tapping the pane, As a little wind comes in.

The room is the hollow rind of a fruit, a gourd Scooped out and dry, where a spider, Folded in its legs as in a bed, Lies on the dust, watching where is nothing to see but twilight and walls.

And if the day outside were mine! What is the day But a grey cave, with great grey spider-cloths hanging Low from the roof, and the wet dust falling softly from them Over the wet dark rocks, the houses, and over The spiders with white faces, that scuttle on the floor of the cave!

I am choking with creeping, grey confinedness.

But somewhere birds, beside a lake of light, spread wings Larger than the largest fans, and rise in a stream upwards And upwards on the sunlight that rains invisible, So that the birds are like one wafted feather, Small and ecstatic suspended over a vast spread country.