Transitional Poem/Part 2
PART II
"Do I contradict myself?Very well then, I contradict myself;I am large, I contain multitudes."W. Whitman.
8
It is becoming now to declare my allegiance,To dig some reservoir for my springtime's pain,Bewilderment and pride, before their insurgenceIs all sopped up in this dry regimen.
Laughable dwarfs, you may twirl and tweak my heart,—Have I not fought with Anakim at the crossways?Once I was Cicero, though pedant fateNow bids me learn the grammar of my days.
These, then, have my allegiance; they whose shiningConvicted my false dawn of flagrant night,Yet ushered up the sun, as poets leaningUpon a straw surmise the infinite.
You, first, who ground my lust to love uponYour gritty humorous virginity,Then yielding to its temper suddenlyProved what a Danube can be struck from stone:With you I ran the gauntlet for my prime,Then living in the moment lived for all time.
Next the hawk-faced man, who could praise an appleIn terms of peach and win the argument. Quick Was he to trip the shambling rhetoricOf laws and lions: yet abstract turned the tablesAnd his mind, almost, with a whiff of airClothed first in a woman and after in a nightmare.
She next, sorrow's familiar, who turnedHer darkness to our light; that "brazen leech"Alleviating the vain cosmic itchWith fact coated in formulæ lest it burnedOur tongue. She shall have portion in my praise,And live in me, not memory, for always.
Last the tow-haired poet, never doneWith cutting and planing some new gnomic propTo jack his all too stable universe up:—Conduct's Old Dobbin, thought's chameleon.Single mind copes with split intelligence,Breeding a piebald strain of truth and nonsense.
These have I loved and chosen, once being sureSome spacious vision waved upon their eyesThat troubles not the common register;And love them still, knowing it otherwise.
Knowing they held no mastership in wisdomOr wit save by certificate of my love,I have found out a better way to praise them—Nestor shall die and let Patroclus live.
So I declare it. These are they who builtMy house and never a stone of it laid agley.So cheat I memory that works in giltAnd stucco to restore a fallen day,
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I thought to have had some fameAs the village idiotCondemned at birth to sitOracle of blind alleys:Shanghaied aboard the galleysI got reprieve and shame.
Tugging at his oarThis idiot who, for lackOf the striped Zodiac,Swore that every planetWas truck, soon found some meritIn his own abject star.
Then there came disgustOf the former loon who couldElbow a bridge and broodFrom Chaos to last TrumpOver the imbecile pompOf waters dribbling past.
For what can water beBut so much less or moreGravamen to the oar?—(Reasons our reformed dunce)It is high time to renounceThis village idiocy.
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How they would jeer at us-—Ulysses, Herodotus,The hard-headed PhœniciansOr, of later nations,Columbus, the Pilgrim FathersAnd a thousand othersWho laboured only to findSome pittance of new ground,Merchandise or women.Those rude and bourgeois seamenGot glory thrown inAs it were with every tonOf wave that swept their boat,And would have preferred a coatFor keeping off the spray.
Since the heroes lieEntombed with the recipeOf epic in their heart, And have buried—it seems—that artOf minding one's own businessMagnanimously, for usThere's nothing but to recantAmbition, and be contentLike the poor child at playTo find a holidayIn the sticks and mudOf a familiar road.
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If I bricked up ambition and gave no airTo the ancestral curse that gabbles there, I could leave wonder on the latch And with a whole heart watchThe calm declension of an English year.
I would be pædagogue—hear poplar, limeAnd oak recite the seasons' paradigm. Each year a dynasty would fall Within my orchard wall—I'd be their Tacitus, and they my time.
Among those pippin princes I could easeA heart long sick for some Hesperides: Plainsong of thrushes in the soul Would drown that rigmaroleOf Eldorados, Auks, and Perilous Seas.
(The God they cannot see sages defineIn a slow-motion. If I discipline My flux into a background still And sure as a waterfallWill not a rainbow come of that routine?)
So circumscribe the vampire and he'll die soon—Lunacy and anæmia take their own. Grounded in temperate soil I'll stay, An orchard god, and sayMy glow-worms hold a candle to the moon.
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Enough. There is no magicCircle nor prophylacticSorcery of garlicWill keep the vampire in.See!—that authenticOriginal of sinSlides from his cabinUp to my sober treesAnd spits disease,Thus infected, theyStart a sylvan rivalry,Poplar and oak surpassTheir natural green, and raceEach other to the stars.
Since my materialHas chosen to rebel,It were most politic—Ere I also fall sick—To escape this Eden.Indeed there has been no peaceFor any gardenOr for any treesSince Priapus died,And lust can no more rideOver self-love and pride.
Leave Eden to the brutes:For he who lets his sapRun downward to the rootsWill wither at the topAnd wear fool's-cap.I am no English lawnTo build a smooth traditionOut of Time's recessionAnd centuries of dew . . .Adam must subdueThe indestructible serpent,Outstaring it: contentIf he can transplantOne slip from paradiseInto his own eyes.
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Can the mole takeA census of the stars?Our firmament will neverGive him headache.
The man who nuzzlesIn a woman's lapBurrows toward a nightToo deep for puzzles:
While he, whose prayerHolds up the starry systemIn a God's train, sees nothingDifficult there.
So I, perhaps,Am neither mole nor mantis;I see the constellations,But by their gaps.
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In heaven, I suppose, lie down togetherAgonised Pilate and the boa-constrictorThat swallows anything: but we must seizeOne horn or the other of our antitheses. When I consider each independent starWearing its world of darkness like a furAnd rubbing shoulders with infinity,I am content experience should beMore discontinuous than the points prickedOut by the mazy course of a derelict,Iceberg, or Flying Dutchman, and the heartStationary and passive as a chart.In such star-frenzy I could boast, betwixtMy yester and my morrow self are fixedAll the birds carolling and all the seasGroaning from Greenwich to the Antipodes.
But an eccentric hour may come, when systemsNot stars divide the dark; and then life's pistonsPounding into their secret cylinderBegin to tickle the most anchorite earWith hints of mechanisms that includeThe man. And once that rhythm arrests the blood,Who would be satisfied his mind is noContinent but an archipelago?They are preposterous paladins and pranceFrom myth to myth, who take an Agag stanceUpon the needle points of here and now,Where only angels ought to tread. AllowOne jointure feasible to man, one stateSquared with another—then he can integrate A million selves and where disorder ruledStraddle a chaos and beget a world.
Peals of the New Year once for me came tumblingOut of the narrow night like clusters of humming-Birds loosed from a black bag, and rose againIrresponsibly to silence: but now I strainTo follow them and see for miles aroundMen square or shrug their shoulders at the sound.Then I remember the pure and granite hillsWhere first I caught an ideal tone that stills,Like the beloved's breath asleep, all dinOf earth at traffic: silence's first-born,Carrying over each sensual ravineTo inform the seer and uniform the seen.So from this ark, this closet of the brain,The dove emerges and flies back againWith a Messiah sprig of certitude—Promise of ground below the sprawling flood.
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Desire is a witchAnd runs against the clock.It can unstitchThe decent hemWhere space tacks on to time: It can unlockPandora's privacies.
It puffs in theseTop-gallants of the mind,And away I standOn the elemental galeInto an oceanThat the liar LucianHad never dared retail.
When my love leans with allHer shining breast and shoulder,I know she is olderThan Ararat the hill,And yet more youngThan the first daffodilThat ever shews a spring.
When her eyes delayOn me, so deep are theyTunnelled by love, althoughYou poured AtlanticIn this one and PacificIn the other, I knowThey would not overflow.
Desire clicks backLike cuckoo into clock;Leaves me to explainEyes that a tear will drownAnd a body where youthNor age will long remainTo implicate the truth.
It seems that we must callAnything truth whose wellIs deep enough;For the essentialPhilosopher-stone, desire,Needs no other proofThan its own fire.
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Remembering how betweenEmbrace and ultimate boneAlways have interposedStrata undiagnosedIn Love's geology;And even memoryIs bullied by the fleshOut of its usual dish;I railed upon desire, The silly self-betrayerWhose Cronic appetiteGobbles up all his brood;And I found, in body's despite,A moral to clinch the mood.
They say that a mathematicianOnce fell to such a passionFor and , he lockedHis door to keep outsideWhatever might distractHim from his heavenly bride:And presently diedIn the keenest of blissesWith a dozen untasted dishesOutside his door. O man,Feed Cronos with a stone.He's easily decoyedWho, perched on any throne,Happily gnaws the void.
From this theoric towerCorn-land and city seemA lovely skiagram:You could not guess what sourContagion has outwornThose streets of men and corn. Let body doubt: the pureShadow will reassure,For shadow gives a freeLicence to lunacy.—And yet fools say it isThe heart that's credulous . . .For once, O sceptic heart,Will you not play your part?
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When nature plays hedge-schoolmaster,Shakes out the gaudy map of summerAnd shows me charabanc, rose, barley-earAnd every bright-winged hummer,
He only would require of meTo be the sponge of natural lawsAnd learn no more of that cosmographyThan passes through the pores.
Why must I then unleash my brainTo sweat after some revelationBehind the rose, heedless if truth maintainOn the rose-bloom her station?
When bullying April bruised mine eyesWith sleet-bound appetites and crude Experiments of green, I still was wiseAnd kissed the blossoming rod.
Now summer brings what April took,Riding with fanfares from the south,And I should be no Solomon to lookMy Sheba in the mouth.
Charabancs shout along the laneAnd summer gales bay in the woodNo less superbly because I can't explainWhat I have understood.
Let logic analyse the hive,Wisdom's content to have the honey:So I'll go bite the crust of things and thriveWhile hedgerows still are sunny.