Transitional Poem/Part 4
PART IV
"The hatches are let down And the night meets the dayThe spirit comes to its own The beast to its play."W. H. Auden.
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In the beginning was the Word. Under different skies now, I recall The childhood of the Word. The childhood of the Word.Before the Fall, Was dancing on the green with sun and moon:And the Word was with God. Years pass, relaxed in a faun's afternoon.And the Word was God. For him rise up the litanies of leaves From the tormented wood, and semi-breves Of birds accompany the simple dawn. Obsequious to his mood the valleys yawn, Nymphs scamper or succumb, waterfalls part The hill-face with vivacious smiles. The heart, Propped up against its paradise, records Each wave of godhead in a sea of words. He grows a wall of sunflower and moonflower blent To protest his solitude and to prevent Wolf or worm from trespassing on his rule. Observe how paradise can make a fool: They can't get in; but he—for a god no doubt s bound by his own laws—cannot get out.And the Word was made flesh, Under different skies now, Wrenching a stony song from a scant acre,The Word still justifies its Maker. Green fields were my slippers, Sky was my hat, But curiosity Killed the cat. For this did I burst My daisy band— To be clapped in irons By a strange hand?Nevertheless, you are well out of Eden:For there's no wonder where all things are new;No dream where all is sleep; no vision whereSeer and seen are one; nor prophecyWhere only echo waits upon the tongue. Now he has come to a country of stone walls,Breathes a precarious air.Frontiers of adamant declareA cold autonomy. There echo starves;And the mountain ash bleeds stoically thereAbove the muscular stream.What cairn will show the way he went:A harrow rusting on defeated bones?Or will he leave a luckier testament—Rock deeply rent,Fountains of spring playing upon the air?
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Those Himalayas of the mindAre not so easily possessed:There's more than precipice and stormBetween you and your Everest.
You who declare the peak of peaksAlone will satisfy your want,Can you distil a grain of snow?Can you digest an adamant?
Better by far the household cockScratching the common yard for corn,Whose rainy voice all night at willCan signify a private dawn.
Another bird, sagacious too,Circles in plain bewildermentWhere shoulder to shoulder long waves marchTowards a magnetic continent.
"What are these rocks impede our pomp?"Gesticulating to the sunThe waves part ranks, sidle and fume,Then close behind them and march on.
The waves advance, the Absolute CliffsUnaccountably repel:They linger grovelling; where assaultHas failed, attrition may tell.
The bird sees nothing to the point;Shrugs an indifferent wing; proceedsFrom rock to rock in the mid-oceanPeering for barnacles and weeds.
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In the chaotic age This was enough for me—Her beauty walked the page And it was poetry.
Now that the crust has cooled, The floods are kept in pen,Mountains have got their mould And air its regimen.
Nothing of heat remains But where the sacred hillConserves within her veins The fiery principle.
Fire can no longer shake Stars from their sockets downIt burns now but to make Vain motions above the town.
This glum canal, has lain Opaque night after night,One hour will entertain A jubilee of light,
And show that beauty is A motion of the mindBy its own dark caprice Directed or confined.
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Where is the fool would want those days again Whose light was globed in pain And danced upon a point of wire? When the charged batteries of desire Had licence but to passInto a narrow room of frosted glass?
The globe was broken and the light made free Of a king's territory. Artemis then, that huntress pale, Flung her black dogs upon the trail: So with one glance aroundThe hunted lightning ran and went to ground.
Safer perhaps within that cell to stay Which qualified its ray And gave it place and period, Than be at liberty where God Has put no firmamentOf glass to prove dark and light different.
But Artemis leaps down. At her thin back Wheel the shades in a pack. At once that old habit of fire Jumps out, not stopping to inquire Whether it follows or flies,Content to use the night for exercise.
And I, when at the sporting queen's halloo The light obedient flew Blazing its trail across the wild— Resigned now but not reconciled, That ancient Sphinx I sawPut moon and shades like mice beneath its paw.
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The red nor-easter is out:Trees in the covert strainLike dogs upon a leashAnd snuff the hurricane.Another wind and tree nowAre constant to their west:The breath that scours the middayUnseen, is manifestIn this embittered thorn—Forcing the stubborn frameTo grow one way and pointHis constancy and aim.
This wind that fills the hollowSky, of a vacuumWas purely bred. The thorn onceIn modest seed lay mumThat squats above the AtlanticPromontoried on pride.For my tenacious treeRequires not, to decideThat he has roots somewhere,A tropic foliage;Since that the leaf recursIs a sufficient gauge. Again, what of this glassWhereby the formulæOf sense should all be solved?It cannot enlarge a fleaNor accurately defineThe features of a star.Gazing through it I sawNothing particularDistant or close. A summerAccident it wasExplained its property.It is a burning-glassWhich interrupts the sunTo make him more intense,And touch to a single flameThe various heap of sense.
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Seventeen months agoWe came to the mine on the moor. A crowSees more than meets the eye—What marrow in fleshless bones may lie.And now I passed by a forbidding coastWhere ironworks rustOn each headland: goats crop the salted grass:Steam oozes out of the mud. Earth has No promise for proprietors. I from farCame, and passing saw something oracular.Put down the tripod here.
I stretched a line from pole to poleTo hang my paper lanterns on. Poor soul,By such a metaphysical conceitThinking to make ends meet!This line, spun from the blind heart—What could it do but prove the poles apart?More expert now, I twist the dials, catchElectric hints, curt omens suchAs may be heard by one tapping the airThat belts an ambiguous sphere.Put down the tripod here.
This is the interregnum of my year;All spring except the leaf is here,All winter but the cold.Bandage of snow for the first time unrolledLays bare the wounds given when any fateAnd most men's company could humiliate:Sterilized now; yet still they prickAnd pulse beneath the skin, moving me likeAn engine driven onBy sparks of its own combustion.There are going to be some changes made to-day. Then add to this that IHave known, and shall again, the greedy thigh;Browned by that sun, but not betrayed,Which puts the Dog-Star in the shade:For though my world at one Equator meet,These Arctic zones are still complete.Baring my skin to every bruiseLove gives, I'll love the more; since they're but duesThat flesh must pay to boneTill each is overthrown.There are going to be some changes made to-day.
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The hawk comes down from the air.Sharpening his eye uponA wheeling horizonTurned scrutiny to prayer.
He guessed the prey that cowersBelow, and learnt to keepThe distance which can stripEarth to its blank contours.
Then trod the air, contentWith contemplation tillThe truth of valley and hillShould be self-evident.
Or as the little larkWho veins the sky with song,Asking from dawn to darkNo revenues of spring:
But with the night descendsInto his chosen tree,And the famed singer endsIn anonymity.
So from a summer's heightI come into my peace;The wings have earned their night,And the song may cease.