Part 5 (2/2)

LIAISON

A BIG bud of moon hangs out of the twilight, Star-spiders spinning their thread Hang high suspended, withouten respite Watching us overhead.

Come then under the trees, where the leaf-cloths Curtain us in so dark That here we're safe from even the ermin-moth's Flitting remark.

Here in this swarthy, secret tent, Where black boughs flap the ground, You shall draw the thorn from my discontent, Surgeon me sound.

This rare, rich night! For in here Under the yew-tree tent The darkness is loveliest where I could sear You like frankincense into scent.

Here not even the stars can spy us, Not even the white moths write With their little pale signs on the wall, to try us And set us affright.

Kiss but then the dust from off my lips, But draw the turgid pain From my breast to your bosom, eclipse My soul again.

Waste me not, I beg you, waste Not the inner night: Taste, oh taste and let me taste The core of delight.

TROTH WITH THE DEAD

THE moon is broken in twain, and half a moon Before me lies on the still, pale floor of the sky; The other half of the broken coin of troth Is buried away in the dark, where the still dead lie.

They buried her half in the grave when they laid her away; I had pushed it gently in among the thick of her hair Where it gathered towards the plait, on that very last day; And like a moon in secret it is s.h.i.+ning there.

My half s.h.i.+nes in the sky, for a general sign Of the troth with the dead I pledged myself to keep; Turning its broken edge to the dark, it s.h.i.+nes indeed Like the sign of a lover who turns to the dark of sleep.

Against my heart the inviolate sleep breaks still In darkened waves whose breaking echoes o'er The wondering world of my wakeful day, till I'm lost In the midst of the places I knew so well before.

DISSOLUTE

MANY years have I still to burn, detained Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshrine A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.

And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of life, What matter the stuff I lick up in my living flame, Seeing I keep in the fire-core, inviolate, A night where she dreams my dreams for me, ever the same.

SUBMERGENCE

WHEN along the pavement, Palpitating flames of life, People flicker round me, I forget my bereavement, The gap in the great constellation, The place where a star used to be.

Nay, though the pole-star Is blown out like a candle, And all the heavens are wandering in disarray, Yet when pleiads of people are Deployed around me, and I see The street's long outstretched Milky Way,

When people flicker down the pavement, I forget my bereavement.

THE ENKINDLED SPRING

THIS spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration, Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

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