LAND’S END Poems by Adil Jussawalla
Copyright 1962 Adil Jussawalla
WRITERS WORKSHOP books are published by P. Lal from 162/92 Lake Gardens, Calcutta 31. Land’s End’s printers are the Calcutta Job Press Private Ltd., binders Bharati of 13 Patwar Bagan Lane.
Copyright 1962 Adil Jussawalla
WRITERS WORKSHOP books are published by P. Lal from 162/92 Lake Gardens, Calcutta 31. Land’s End’s printers are the Calcutta Job Press Private Ltd., binders Bharati of 13 Patwar Bagan Lane.
LAND’S END Poems by
Adil
Jussawalla
A WRITERS WORKSHOP PUBLICATION 1962
NOTE All the poems in this book were written in England, or some part of Europe ; that is, away away from the land where where I first learnt what what a poem is, what poetry, and what brings both to fruition. The poems cover four to five years. They are not arranged in the order in which they were written. A. J. J.
Seventeen T ime was short, short time when a boy lived each moment anew, and like a birth of flames one by one as candles are lighted things unseen before came to life and communicated. Water in cupped hands was life by touch playing between fingers and running round the back of my palm.
Now, detached, the water is spilled killed on rocks, one by one the lights are snuffed dead things talk no more though I listen, and only a cold assumption of arrogance is mine.
November Day As outside my window Leaves fall faded from a tree So let me let fall my thoughts Gone yellow and dry So let my thoughts Mottled, stale and yellow Be swept into some gutter in the eye And burn there As this year’s funeral to futility ; So may I Cleaned of all my deaths Once more stand firm against A lifeless sky.
31st December ‘58 W aiting for the New Year A wary restlessness in the Shadow-crossed square Hovers between the two years. Useless the ritual’s massive complexity, Useless the carols, useless the city With the old bitch dying in the shadows, Sucked dry in her three-sixty-odd dugs. She served her litter well. Now, after a Christian burial We’ll make merry Over her dead body.
But ah! this life! this year! That fountain! See the finger of water raised to Stop time Scattered in the swift haze of Pigeons in flight and spray, and lights, Useless against the minutes spinning with revelry Where water and bodies Swirl, and from a steaming shell Rise mermaids with leaping boys and dolphins Prepared to take the plunge But . . . .
What is the timeless here ? See, a paper star of Bethlehem Caps a Christmas commerical, And look, round its base Torn faces drift, like the Discarded dates Of an expended calendar.
In Memory Of The Old School J erusalem rang some mornings in. Sweating schoolboys yelled for golden Spears, chariots of fire. Outside, the sun struck an asphalt Cricketpitch, broke, and banged across Buckled iron plates Under which ragged sweeper urchins Gazed mutely At our singing. Fingers storm the piano still. O Clouds unfold, Sang Blake, to reveal (among other things) Hammered faces, taut as strings, On which educated Fingers play.
Towards Building a Temple PLEBEIAN, SOPHIA, give straw to my stonecarrying oxen for redfaced beefy workmen are going to carve butterfly wings of thinnest turquoise from wall to wall of my temple and as for the naming you whores, you — give my oxen some straw from your bedding. Medes Persians Phrygians Sassanians Sumerians Assyrians Phoenicians Lybians Etruscans Goths, forgotten tribes — if you want any part in the naming give my oxen some straw form your bedding.
Sea Voyage P arting the thick, tangled hair of this Watercurled woman this Grey world-weary old Dame Our ship plunged through, Sour, sick and ugly, she is Letting us brush her hair. But traveller, talk softly. Though old Lady Sea sleeps on horizons She’ll stride across the waves And batter you if you insult her : And the gulls will still be waving Like children as you sink.
Poker-faced I
am deceiving you. But think it is merely at cards ; Think love is excluded from hands we hold — apart — As fate deals us. Think they are only discards, Throw away rags, that bring them together, while art And skill (perversely) lie not in revealing my hand But in bluffing it : in giving you what I label worthless Play an unguessed at game, perfecting my hand : Unsuspected, keep what I hold most precious.
Yes, love for each other is out of it. Since what we keep To ourselves to grow to perfection we hold dearer Then what we give, what love grows so dearly deep As self-love ? We kissed, you were nearer My heart than its beat, but who did you see in my eyes ? Fool ! your King of Hearts has a double-edged sword And a double-face : the Joker laughs out his lies Before my silent King of Death, my dark Lord.
I hold the whole court. Think I could have packed The game before this, strung your pauper’s cards With my sovereign jacks of knowledge, stacked Art against your ignorance . . . It wasn’t hard To deceive you. But, as the one consummation Of self-love is Death — my one self-perfecting, Self-commanding Mentor — he’ll force a conclusion When he calls his card into play : the Black King Who governs my life and my art.
I’ve told you now. We’re quits and we must part. Should you be waiting for me tomorrow And I never come, pretend that I know I’m in light : end of a game squarely packed in my heart Where all ends and kings and pretences start.
The Moon And Cloud At Easter The
glazed eye shines. over stores and theatres, embassies and pubs, hangouts, the underworld, spread clouds wing. dead christ, you resurrect an image we may eat ( shirking the hard wine ) , of things you chewed and spat on your last meal. you bless, like a stuff palm, with all that remains of your leavened words this starved time and all we dare believe : punctured king, instead of moon and cloud at easter, the dead eye of a fish, a chewed duck’s wing.
The Suburb No
shouting here : the beasts asleep, Terrier, Siamese, twitless canary, The drunkards in their homes. No shouting now as satyrs creep Slowly down the sterile roads. Bent slaves Carry their raw, scalding coals, ( The base of hot urns ringing their backs, Their feet treading, treading . . . . ) They will propitiate Zeus Klarios In the park with burning urns, And the fat burghers with the field-glasses Will think of forest-fires, eruptions, ovens.
The Dolls P assing
supermarkets, seeing Mothers Blossom with washingpowder mixingbowls brasspolish backscrubbers doorknobs combs eggs mops olives insecticide frozenchicken roastchicken doormats onions tableclamps flour hoses toothpaste toothpowder beetroots hairsoftener hairspray hairdyes wasprepellant stockings deodorants tonic sanitarypads cacti spoons facepacks bread, I think of plenished, holy mothers they dreamt of In confinement and wonder where they’ve gone, Seeing children too, hung from working Fingers, pull them apart, slowly, like dolls.
What’s The Time? A
twisted smirk by a tongue-clicking watch A capsized grin by the jeweller’s sign A faceless O by the old church clock A trillion and one consmogonical time Night in the Western world, day in the Eastern As I travel, astray, on the old Shadow Line. What’s the time, mister, hey, what’s the time? Morning breaks from a young girl’s eyes But evening sallows the cheeks of another The little one sees a man with a scythe Shrieks and startles her elder brother Who darkens the room as the Reaper arrives Tea-time, thinks the frail grandmother. The scythe and the pendulum cut her together. Time for the tigresses, barn-boys dream Time for my money, the shot whores cry Time I rebelled, the cashier feels Tossing a match on his manager’s files Time I was happy, the glum judge think Doodling the face of the clerk on the sly. There’s a way of ignoring the harassing Why. When there’s frost on this island, there’s love on another Though there’s light in your day, there’s darkness on mine Time is the X between place and necessity Time is a bar on the old Shadow Line The hours are running like sand in my veins It’s striking midnight in my mind. Time and the Charioteer whistling behind : What’s the time, mister, hey, what’s the time ?
Two Postcards 1. To My Dreams You do not know how I fear you my dreams. At times I am quite terrified of you In case you lead me far from sinew, fibre. I have seen thwarted wrestlers go that way, Bloat themselves on transubstantial food And plug Religion, while women wailed about them. You do not know how you frighten me.
2. To My Songs Rot, rot, my songs, my counterfeits — now that I’ve walked In the spring rain at dawn, I see You aren’t worth a penny, counterfeit or real.
Movements Of Spring R ural
winds are rumbling through the pines ; Cherry and hawthorn tangled, bustle of bush And rasping twigs chaffe in untidy clumps. Branches sapped with gas shoot out their fires. Single flame-pods twin ; twigs frill to flowers ; Leaves unfurl through loam ; a greenshape spreads. But what disturbance strokes the upturned sky, Peels in vapours, smokes the nearby trees ? What mists the roof, collects itself in drops? When will the songless kestrel clamber higher? What movement of spring will axe the hollow elm? When will the green reject the outcry “ Liar ! ”
Frost T
he stars will burst To-night ; how bright The frosts burn The hollies, the pines. I have no thirst To-night for private worlds. Galaxies turn Complete in themselves ; The village clock Strikes ; back, Apparition ! I am alive to-night.
March Smoking
March, the wood drenched, I walk the sodden floor : eyes Gummed with sleep, mouth fouled With clotted silence, dry Teeth chattering, fists clenched.
This is the steaming floor of Hell. Remorse, Repentence, Terror, Sex, Without the drugging asphodel. Beech skins snap. Roots dangle, mushrooms smell.
Before the April rain rinse The trees (like trunkless legs, trooped From ogrish hills ; their pubic fan Of leaves knotted, webbed With coupling, carnage) — before the rains
Wash, pronged like spotted meat On twigs are offered rotten leaves To taste, for what though late rain feed? Giants know starved floors Burgeon on dregs, on rot they eat.
Westmoreland In this strange country I
have entered the water is as clear as a bell tolling across the valley ; and remote as the sound suspensions between hill and hill, its men follow some vague, withdrawn occupation, sitting among the sheep-stones lodged on see-sawed slopes, or moving, aloof, away. Under a summer sun, a strange remoteness.
Here bored and exacerbated tourists fully expect to see their ‘ day-trip-convalescents ’ miracle. Their feet paddle rings in a glaring lake. Crimson parasols, like pieces of sun-blown silk, flash. Gaudy-winged butterflies flit about white houses hung on the hill face. These are the women. A ferry steamer divides the lake.
French poodles run wild in the grass. Motorbikes lean on bridges, grand hotels keep their huge doors open, inviting the summer.
Under the weight of hills their tough boots once cracked, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and God know who, lie face upwards, sealed.
Wordsworth’s face is a cottage industry. His village loves him.
Under a cedar a faun sits, laughing.
Land’s End Here in the cramped, pig’s footed country at last Where seas grip, the airs kick and squall, Atlantic breakers boom, the sea-gulls fall Downwind to sheets of spray, the fast Seas race, roil, slump and shower Across the thrusted coastland ; where brine-wings beat The rooted perch of weeds and brine-grains bite Raw rock or nerve exposed to their brute power, Land’s End or Faith’s — what must I call This faulted coast Atlantic breakers pound ? Wave after wave explodes, hour by hour To undermine my numbed and bulwarked ground.
Cliff along cliff, the slack waves drag and hit Their catch of sea-food against worn Land’s End. Lord, is this manna that you send The startled tourists showered where they sit ? Black crabs splatter hard against the wall, Scuttle to landed fish in crevices on cliffs ; Lord, your netted round of deep lifts Its sweet fish to our lips ; yet fishers haul Against its tented pull ; do you extend Your power to your wan and sleeping Son, Curled on a trawler troubled in that caul ? Will he walk your Tumults first creation ?
Rock Peter wavers ; his planted footsteps fail ; The sea has fastened on ; boats rock on springs ; His sloped arms gulp the bilge sea’s spurning flings ; The funnel smoke is tattered like a veil. Lord, It is finished : No man, beast or fowl But needs a rock’s assurance in this hour. But neither sea nor Peter’s praising tower Holds Peter’s weight. Nor wind’s howl ; No church stands on water ; though land sings Its consecrated rock, the sea sang earlier, To form the rock, to christen and to wreck ; The sea renews itself as old rocks break. Atlantic breakers pound our ended power.
A Letter In April These are the shifting days of weather When pods of blown, ignited clouds Float and dwindle like burning cotton Over the streetland’s roofhilled red. Parallel buildings crowd together, The lonely grip a bridge of crowds, Drifts of winter half-forgotten, Fused to the railing like scraps of lead.
These are the tempting minutes of hope When the darting eye must make its choice Between the slim, primeval wishes Spawned from last year’s weedwrapped acts. Bobbin birches climb the slope, The tongueless turtle finds its voice, The river bucks with pairing fishes, Wildbloodstreams wreck our rooted facts.
And these are the sudden weeks of learning From spinning winds ; rewinding reels Draw in their catch ; windbaskets swing Their captured charms and doodles out ; Fragments, letters, tickets returning Scribble around my knocking heels. Love, tell me you’ll last the spring Shift this shifting weather out.
The Butterfly So he left with the power of flint in his eye, His future like a prophecy Of wrought-iron beds and egg-blue skies. With no one to blame but the changing wind. It took him a nightfall to know he was wrong Over birds and beds, but he was strong ; And returned on the back of an affluent song. With no one to blame but the changing wind. So he married into a Petroleum dream, And shared her taste for clotted cream, But went for swims in a dubious stream. With no one to blame but the changing wind. Surrounded by whys and horses and hows, She ran out of petrol, he ran out of rows ; He returned to his beige and piebald cows. With no one to blame but the changing wind. His pa said ma And his ma said moo, So he did the only thing he could do : He went for a breather, he went for a fall, They found him under the sandstone wall With a soothing letter tucked in his shoe : No one’s to blame but the changing wind.
The Waiters Blacker than wine from the loaded grapes of France, Blacker than mud their Tamil minds recall, Dark skins serving dishes to the sallow Sweat more night than grapesblood has ; all The long summers they abjured, for chance Of better prospects, change, a sun of contrast, Stick in a language their clients won’t allow. Must button up their manners with the past. Grow expert on the epicure’s stuffed heart. Polite of speech, punctilious, guarded, kind, As guardians of good taste, their smudged eyes know The soiled and cluttered kitchens of the mind ; The rancid oils where sweeter dishes start, Cooked, like a pick-up’s words, the soot-black roof Behind our pasted smiles ; their darkness grew To insight in their day ; they stand aloof. But slacken in their service after eleven. Guarding the day’s unending a petites, Grow shift-eyed, avoid our munching faces ; The jab, the polish of our eating rites ; Then closing time ; they dream of a foodless heaven, Shrug of their coats like priestly coats of pity, Day’s ministry complete, slip to their sleeping places In the threat of the feasted, pink-faced city.
Landlady Mendelssohn Drab, the expatriate landlady Mendelssohn, Outsized sackful of stones, sagging, Greets new arrivals ; admits to a home Not hers, where turrets serrate the breeze, Tenants to castle her lonely upkeep, An expensive city is full of thieves, She broods, but keeps her rents low Accepts on terms of decency alone.
Accepts the uncoloured, the less uneasy By stance, who fidget no detail ajar, Test no beds, whisper, sneak ; Have no guests or pets or baths ; Do not disturb, with loosening talk, Her blunt, patriotic sexual knot. The lodgers, decent, see she is paid In advance, punctually, sleep with the maid. Is uncertain of life on her gasringed mornings ; Time is a leakage somewhere, her memories Housekeep solvently ; she accuses the maid Of vulgarity ; their hands, burlesqued with breakfast, Circle in blenched clouds of spite Like pale poodles ; would fling the bowls, Shout, give notice to quit, to-day, Discover their talents in the expensive city . . . . But for a way of keeping decent, But for the decent lodgers, stay.
The Model Among the naked sheets and unkempt faces Of sallow students a naked women stands ; A vast complexity of flesh and bone relaxes Round a central lesson, for an hour being Repulsive or true or false to different hands. Upon the nude sheets quick hands place Nape, breast, thigh ; dispassion tricks Second sight to fingers as they lift Her beauty from the city’s mauling hands And craft its lifelight from crushed charcoal sticks. Woman is soot, halved apple, dust and sweat. In soot and sweat she stands recovered : one The city sent birth-naked from its womb Becomes an essence : Venus from the sea, Wrinkled Medusa, or further complexity Wasting by dazed Golgotha for the sun.
The Door My shadow sidles Up the door, Hunchbacked, humped, Towards the door ; The light goes out. Is the sign Auspicious ? Is The darkness good ? I confess These questions try My firm resolve To declare Eternal love For a bare Bald night. I knock. She answers. Ostensibly To ask her for A penny. But pray she hasn’t One : to stop A compromising Call to A red-eyed king For dubious dancers.
Poppies For Marx Their redcoats cropped by the sustained sabres Of breeze, fluttering and waving poppies Pitch down a verge in tattered Ranks, where cartwheels crunched once Carrying arguing Whigs home.
But poppies in bloodstained times are rue For rememberance, revolts, uprisings : red flags Flutter and twist in paranthesis, Spot the waving, political field.
Like scales of a red dragon in Chinese streets, Like a scarfdance by furious Cossack children.
Haystacks I watched the haystacks near Cambrai When the sun, yellow and tall, Stamped the round, covered fields. They stood on their bossed field Like a row of bent, ugly Women with straw in their beards. With seeds the warm wind opened And puffed to every strawless quarter ; With scythes in their teeth, to assault Threshers, protest their ancient young.
A Drinking Song For The Ladies One wore lace One drank gin One pressed moles One had scales. Sulking, hulking, Flaunting, flouncing, Four ladies of Brussels, drinking. One smoked rings One drank beer One wore gold Instead of teeth Sulking, hulking, Flaunting, flouncing, Pouting, slouching, Four ladies of Brussels, drinking. Three had breasts One talked shop One drank kisch One said merde ! Sulking, hulking, Flaunting, flouncing, Pouting, slouching, Crowing, cackling, Four ladies of Brussels, drinking. Two ate seeds. One drank tonic One remarked Business was bad. Sulking, hulking. Flaunting, flouncing, Pouting, slouching, Crowing, cackling, Glinting, hinting, Four ladies of Brussels, drinking.
Outside the cars Slunk away To sniff another Street ; passed Sulking, hulking, Flaunting, flouncing, Pouting, slouching, Crowing, cackling, Glinting, hinting. Leering, steering, Four ladies of Brussels, drinking.
Geneva Let me put out my welcome like a flag Of olive leaves to wrap you in my truce : Geneva : metropolis : one of the neutral cities Here to relax you. I do not rot, or run With sores like children ; fertile, eastern suns Breed maggots like brats ; but spotless, sun-burnt backs Is all my shining citizens may (publicly) show. The rest you may read in my eyes, my glazed shop-windows. What do you see there ? A stuffed eagle and clapping, clockwork bear. Let me console you. I wasn’t made between A sundown and sunrise in labour, by hands in bitterness, Or hands weeping over rubble ; not one Built in a brickless desert of brick, nor stone From the sacked quarries of Greece ; but a white palace Sits on my green acres : from sheltered lands Troubled statesmen wear away its steps For you : I’ll bring you peace : I understand. Keep, as a souvenir, A stuffed eagle and clapping, clockwork bear. Smile, love, mix in my cafes, think of Jerusalem ; bless, in St. Peter’s, my vigil and valour. My fountain leaps a sixth of a mile in hope ; And Peace a turbine humming in the deep ; My museums — The voice cracks, the streets darken ; The sword falls dripping through the yellowing air. There are no clouds, but over the dwarfed city, Dwarfing the toy alps grotesquely, fight A stuffed eagle and clapping, clockwork bear.
Evening On a Mountain The valley sunned itself all day, its span Curving up two foothills ; then the shadows Crossed like wings across its back ; further, Ferries embroidered a slim lake, stitching Silk into its cotton, prows snipping . . . . How still it was then ! the sky thin and hollow, Deflecting the words stoned across the valley, The ears straining at each rebound ; far off, A cloud, launched from a rock, streaked North like a startled bird.
Les Clochards Three figures Rodin might have carved Or Daumier drawn : three clochards Slouch on a shelf outside the Louvre. Their mouths hang open, wet and slack, With sunlight tumbling down the black hollow in their toothless heads. A woman propped against the calm Storehouse, crooks a ragged arm Across the sleeper or her lap. Their faces capped against the sun Shine like full-moons, bloated, red, While baskets stuffed with straw and bread Squat around them : wasted ones, Sleeping in the gaudy suns Of noisy, Paris afternoons ; Three clochards prolonging night, Sqeaking in the fevered light, While women, azure, gold and white Cadence by the huddled forms : Comme si elle voit en toute forme La lumiere et la douceur. La Jocande ? Oui — and up the steps ; While the hunched and huddled shapes Exude peculiar musky odours Of strongly acid piss and sweat.
A La Reine Blanche Garcon, I will always remember certain dreams Associated with your serving the petite mademoiselle Un cafe au lait — for that was when you looked Most like God when He fell in love With Himself and Beauty and forget His uglier clients.
At An Exhibition of Self portraits By Van Gogh Black ties will be worn 27 of my aspects stare at you, And you come wearing black All over, as to a funeral. These are burns in Provence. And this, where the sharpened sticks Of sunlight stabbed against my face. And this cicatrixed car were best Forgotten, lady. At best, mine was a troubled conviction (Not your fastidious kind, sir.) This head you call delightful’s My last cornfield, savaged by crows, Aspects of you.
Gauntlet The sun flayed to shreds by branches When fleeing through a birchwood : This barbarity seen in England through a coach.
Halt X I I do not know what station this is, or why We broke our journey ; checked, here in Derbyshire, One senses danger, disquietude only. Pieces of smoke litter the huddled town — Card collage on felt ; no pattering movement On roads of sliding newspaper, sidling dog, No alighting or descending the steps of its drizzling doors. II
Rain fell like a drizzle of fine slag On an anonymous town in smudged Derbyshire. I counted sixty chimneys in a quarter The size of a burgher’s courtyard, wondered at smoke Sliding edgeways through the dawn’s widening slats. A flock of pigeons dissolved in the viscid air Like a piece of mud in a current ; 5 o’clock. A streetlamp craned its neck for the spreading frogs.
A Bomb-site As if the broken stumps were a girl’s Starved shoulders ; as if the dusty rubble Were her hair starfished across a pillow, I would push my fingers through its grit.
I would press my bones into the bony Shoulders of these scarred homes, as I pass above their sardined tops, concealed ; Reach out and grasp and clean the greasy tin.
But children throwing stones, trenched behind mounds, Holler and kill and crumple like stale newsheets, Unsatisfied with spotless skies of peace, And I begin to count my enemies.
Violence is a culture found on playgrounds. Cities fall to let their children breathe.
A Prospect Of Oxford The roundabouts of shadow turn the domes And windows click and glitter in the light. Under an Autumn wheel of clouds, the pale
City’s made unreal by the height. Towers crowd a broad, open palm, Trees and rooftops scribble up its fingers ;
A river cut in black : coloured, calm Rafts flow up and down this asphalt Styx ; A train goes cutting through the stones with smoke ;
And “soldiers,” camouflaged in leaves and sticks. Idle on hills or guard the chapel towers. A sundial stares its signal from a wall . . .
The sundial cannot hold the spinning hours. Downstairs, our lives are timed, our tongues run down, Nervesprings snap and silent heads explode.
And should some Terror pitch the towers down, And I see things in quite a different light, This prospect will remain behind my eyes. . . .
The city made unreal by the height.
Two Cuttings The Academician
I.
Where the fish swims through seas of books, I swim. Where the dog sniffs, so do I. From book after book of the poet’s reading, track His sources, would follow where he has gone. But please, please, not on the Acheron.
II.
Obits. from “The Times”
Professor Dunbarton, on leave from the University of Osaka, Leaving his letters to inspect the Japanese fir on his lawn, Was cut down by silent samurai on casual horses Before he could touch it. Mr. Carpenter, retired from the University of Allahabad, Collapsed ( but placidly ) over his Decline and Fall.
Fog grey grey grey the invisible tern cries When smoke hangs wet and rises painfully Lord, what vacant songs rise ? My songs, like charred paper Over the fuming stoke Furnaces, fall to the invisible river, but the world, Flesh and devil crowd in my skull like smoke.
David And was the palace empty when the boy, Grained in the planks of ceremony, brushed the harp With thumbs of wood, thudding dull, unwilling To light its wires ; his heart a jug of water. Squat in a clang the ringing room vibrated, Its film panicked to rings around its fear ? And did he hear those feet pace The hall, courtyard laughter, distant sheep, Know what brought him here To see, left in the cold courts of Saul, Cleft on the dented javelin, Saul’s cracked tear ?
Tea In The Universities Dear, though you hold the tea-pot nicely, and pour The brew precisely, let me ( for your own health ) Withdraw behind my gaze and preach a homely Homily Empirically Logically Methodically On the analogy Of you and me And tea.
A monstrous joke has just occurred to me. Supposing you and I ( connective, we ) Were nothing more than two young leaves of tea Being in hot water Continuously Excessively Dispensably We’d solve the age-old problems easily. Deep in the tea-pots streaming void I stare Like William Yeats into his youth and try To read the leaves — A Stranger, Death, DESPAIR ! Is this all we amount to ? To steam, to sweat to stew, To make a brew For a vague mouth ( we, once-kissed, knew ) For Love whose face we dare not see On pain of death : who sips his tea Serenely Contentedly Incumbently Buddha drinking tea-wine out of china !
While in time We line our habitation in with lime, The sun plates our outside bright with silver ( Since were been up in space, we know we Look quite Heavenly Azurely Leisurely What a beautiful blue ! Maj. Gagarin, April 12th 1961. Boy! What a view! Mr. Alan Shepard, May 5th, 1961. ) Letting the Great Tea-Taster pour us out In boiling water from the spout Interlocked more Firmly Than Virgil’s damned — those Autumn leaves in Hell (ref. Book VI — line 309) — or His bloodhound Dante’s. Never again will I drink cups of tea Madly, O so Gladly, since I Maintain Consistently Persistently Precisely, that People in hot water clung like tea.
The Song I it was a winter’s song The bright sea brought. The sea broke its crust Across our newfound land Summer ended thin When jackboot traders crossed Our island babble through. As, through the ignorant years. The sea flashed like tin, A piebald language stamped Presumptious hooves on green, Muddled children : some woke Twisted, crippled, grew To scorn the marks ; some woke To knowledge of the grain The settling tribe had sown. Found the sowers gone ; Their field’s page, rock ; Their tongues’ grain, stone. II Some took the song to heart, Stood in the sharp waves And scrawled the full say Of the grave, confessing sea. Some went out to grass Midocean, drinking miles Of death to a luminous floor. Some sailed out to gain Palms from the temperate grass. Over the whistling wheat The sun danced on and on. Their wordseeds mouldered white About their lock-jawed tongues, To each a winters death. Out went the tepid sun ! Some went dumb, some blind, Some, at the Gates of Wrath, Thundered, past all wit, Dispeopled, out of mind.
III Three years, one crossing later, Out of the shrill water Bobbing words stitch A furrow through my throat. Edge of day enrols me In a scroll of words And rolls me out at night. I stop on all hundreds, Inlay rock with dust, Out by a crowded bay Where bones, teeth, skins Of dead companies lie — Companions of the quest, The siren-maddened, drowned ; Nick charms out of their ribs, Make music from their skins, Deck my bones with theirs, And I dance with the tepid sun ! Dance without rhyme or reason For the grave, confessing sea, And on and on I dance, And all I would undo, All magnitudes, all England, Out by the lyrical bay, Harboured in its spell, Where no one land is true.
A Letter For Bombay April 14th ; devi, three reports of cloud Hit rooms musical with gramophone rhymes : ’44. Yellow triangles of butterfly, grey dragon-flies, blew away with shocks-a steamer explodes. The sky bunched and sprouted like a scissored paper-tree, shook Black peacock wood. the red acrobat of my first circus fell to the floor. ’45 ; devi, the ill and crippled came to my father. A stream of glucose flowed through a r ickety wood in my chest. Crowds rolled out on the street, like a bullock’s tongue bellowing War ; then Partition, fought With sickles and knives in markets (my father working, away) Afraid if he did not return before the curfew-bell tolled seven up the hill where I stayed. Fingering a rough photograph of a burning train, trained ( Who’s winning to-day ? Are we on the side of the Germans ? ) My enemy tongue to mark time silently while the rest spoke treason. Why should I praise your formalities ? School was a treason To bursting ! it was your street-cries and great-grilled palms, it was The boat-tipping sea taught me : change of home, nearer a sea-change brought me, further from speech. The sea-gulls dropped like spent metal in t he hissing water, The eclipsed streets gave up their hovelled dead ; I drew Fear and Love to my room : jerking straws of lightning snapped : the sky splashed on the sea ; My head sucked at the stroke, and the packed rain burst Against the clouding house in wave after wave of applause ;
Then I saw they were over, those careless, gardened days, and whether The rain praised by perf ormance, next year’s children or the aged woods, I do not know, save That it drove me away. Away. I make an end. I wander like a mediaeval apothecary Abroad. In a pouch wriggling against my ribs, I carry a quintessence of you, not wholly without potency. Manners alter. Manners maketh me UnMan. I unmake Manners : they say one does not return to an early romance Improperly conducted : and I believe it true. April again : Devi, I come of age. Of age That shapes me make of splash and grit, rocks like yours, instruct me in my art, Lacking a legendary muse, give my chaos form. Should you refuse — the rack of your hovels raising only your voice Still further — demand nothing ; touch me only as far As the parted psyche can stand ; divided city, combine, And I shall return and pass beyond your storm.
The Flags Wavering loads of winter are being whipped Off the flags as they whirr and flap On barges ; crosses, eagles, side by side ; Brown pieces of sun, creaking in their first Unparcelling this year, more beautiful than swan or waterbird. Flying planes of colour flick the spring Trees, colour of crocus, or bright anemone Against the thin green ; fat ; the stiff Cloth ripples in the chilly air, and cracks. Time for retribution : for the natural order to assert The bland, unchanging blaze of artificial things That cannot moult or die : like the broad flags. These only wandering, drab, disordered, who, Surviving winter’s fractures, misapplied A frozen artifice on the natural will — Actors, whose blank masks gape out of season At the tiny, relevant leaves, Denied their punctual withering ; While all along their choked, interior streams Invisible hands raise The accusing lights of the tattered blood’s flags.
The Spiders Spiders cower along the wall. Wind blow gentle, wind blow curbed between the window’s sparkling cracks Spiders must not be disturbed.
Who build and drop and build again ; Labourers far too suave to sing ; For there’s no wool to stop the cold, There’s no silk to stuff the crack, There’s no trapped companion, English Spiders, encouraged, will not bring.
Drake The Chinese would know how to paint it — This duck’s simple stillness — Sealed web of flesh and bone, Floating. But webbed in English ironies I cough and note the beaded blue-green neck retracted against the wings ; the squat wooden shape compact as a walnut music-box, charged with spikes, but playing no notable tune.
Yet the Chinese say these quaint boxes Play distinct melodies In tune with the hidden intricate stars the dipping dragon-flies, the rushes. Too bad for the ears England has plugged With its contempt four years now. They hear mere noises, Discordant, disjointed, jarring, Like pedants gabbling.
Bats Shut in our jackets by the pale-green figs We clung a branch and slept, till dawn exposed The town and your grandmother praying ; blind, We sensed her shadow trembling on the twigs ; When she admonished Satan in her prayers, We flew away to give her peace of mind. Bats, bats you cried, and shutting up your ears Scrambled for cover, while we dived and bombed Peasants, beggars, rich fathers, richer sons. We dropped like jackfruit by the hunters’ guns, Or tore like paper on your sizzling wires. Manchild, remember what doctrinal fears Flapped up when you saw not flying-fox Nor dog nor mouse when hunting arms brought back So many pink-tongued babies in a box.
White Peacocks At first we wondered, albinos, whether the cold Had cut your throats, as we watched you lie Like bales of unmelted snow, pressed Over the warmth the sun in winter lays Deep in the shut, incubating earth. In the muted gardens steady sinking, Watched your strengthening wing-bones flap and lift Your cut bodies into the flaying chestnut — Its bole of branches, your night’s cage. You were so gentle, even the snow frightened you As you squirmed for cover under Its impossible hail of grubs : their boxes Melted in your beaks. February, March. . . . then, in the opening month We heard your jarring cries Flash out like scratched steel, as though Under your necks you were cats, Flames under the snow, Terror smothered by grace. Now, outcry the sun ; or, in the later season Of bees and chestnuts, shatter our pedantic calm With the stark, unreal fire of your call So that our masks crack and mouths speak Against the clear poise of these pretending walls ;
