Picture Show (Sassoon collection)/Prelude to an Unwritten Masterpiece
PRELUDE TO AN UNWRITTEN MASTERPIECE
You like my bird-sung gardens: wings and flowers;Calm landscapes for emotion; star-lit lawns;And Youth against the sun-rise...'Not profound;'But such a haunting music in the sound:'Do it once more; it helps us to forget.'
Last night I dreamt an old recurring scene—Some complex out of childhood; (sex, of course!)I can't remember how the trouble starts;And then I'm running blindly in the sunDown the old orchard, and there's something cruelChasing me; someone roused to a grim pursuitOf clumsy anger...Crash! I'm through the fenceAnd thrusting wildly down the wood that's denseWith woven green of safety; paths that windMoss-grown from glade to glade; and far behind,One thwarted yell; then silence. I've escaped.
That's where it used to stop. Last night I wentOnward until the trees were dark and huge,And I was lost, cut off from all returnBy swamps and birdless jungles. I'd no chanceOf getting home for tea. I woke with shivers,And thought of crocodiles in crawling rivers.
Some day I'll build (more ruggedly than Doughty)A dark tremendous song you'll never hear.My beard will be a snow-storm, drifting whiterOn bowed, prophetic shoulders, year by year.And some will say, 'His work has grown so dreary.'Others, 'He used to be a charming writer.'And you, my friend, will query—'Why can't you cut it short, you pompous blighter?'