How shall I keep April
When my songs are done —
How can I be silent
And still feel the sun?
I, who dreaded silence,
I, who April-long
Kept my heart from breaking
With the cry of song.
How can I hold sunlight
In my hands, like gold.
And bear the pain of silence
When my songs are old?
I am less of myself and more of the sun;
The beat of life is wearing me
To an incomplete oblivion,
Yet not to the certain dignity
Of death. They cannot even die
Who have not lived.
The hungry jaws
Of space snap at my unlearned eye,
And time tears in my flesh like claws.
If I am not life's, if I am not death's.
Out of chaos I must re-reap
The burden of untasted breaths.
Who has not waked may not yet sleep.
I will make myself new thought;
My own is worn and old.
And old counterpanes will not
Keep out the wind and cold.
From borrowed thought I will choose
Pieces, and, row on row,
Patch a quilt of many hues
Like the quilts of long ago.
It cannot be so fine
As what the years have thinned.
But I dread the smothered whine
Of four grey walls' grey wind.
I will patch me a counterpane.
For mine is worn to scars.
And I fear the iron rain
Of a ceiling's splashing stars.
The light beats upon me.
I am startled--
a split leaf crackles on the paved floor--
I am anguished--defeated.
A slight wind shakes the seed-pods--
my thoughts are spent
as the black seeds.
My thoughts tear me,
I dread their fever.
I am scattered in its whirl.
I am scattered like
the hot shrivelled seeds.
The shrivelled seeds
are spilt on the path--
the grass bends with dust,
the grape slips
You crash over the trees,
you crack the live branch--
the branch is white,
the green crushed,
each leaf is rent like split wood.
You burden the trees
with black drops,
you swirl and crash--
you have broken off a weighted leaf
in the wind,
it is hurled out,
whirls up and sinks,
a green stone.
You are clear
O rose, cut in rock,
hard as the descent of hail.
I could scrape the colour
from the petals
like spilt dye from a rock.
If I could break you
I could break a tree.
If I could stir
I could break a tree--
I could break you.
O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air--
The long, grim years with iron tread
Move down the shuttered isle
Of time's unrecking labyrinth
Paved with forgotten dead.
And I, a feather in their wake,
Gaze long and tremblingly
Into these sunless corridors,
Praying the light to break!
Many cages round me,
Bar on bar
Stand grim, forbidding!
Ghostly pressures
Clutch my heart.
I gaze with eyes unseeing —
Whereunto may I wander free?
Alas, alas!
My garden walks lie inwardly!
There is a bird that hangs head-down and cries
Between the mango leaves and passion vines.
Below, a spotted serpent twines
And blunts its head against the yellowing skies.
Along the warping ground a turtle scrapes,
And tortured lie glazed fishes in marsh grass.
Across the sky that burnishes like brass
A bat veers, stupid with the yeast of grapes.
Out of the forest, panther, come,
Silken, supple, silent, lone —
Out of the forest, drooped with night —
To your delight.
Under bloom and over stone,
Out of the forest, panther, come.
Something sees and slips with you,
Something huge and gaunt and blue,
Lashes its tail and follows you :
You, pursued, still pursue. . . .
Sky with thunder on its rim
Closes and closes after you :
Trigger loin, swinging limb,
Go and go and go from him!
Brushing haunches, taut with dew,
Follow, follow, follow you.
Two monsters,
Iron and Coal,
Sleep in the darkness.
A poisonous scarlet breath blows over them,
And they awake hissing and writhing,
And spew forth blood-red vomit
In streams like fiery serpents.
Then from the reeking pools
A monstrous brood is born,
Black, strong, beautiful.
But we turn away our tired eyes,
And try to find the sky above the smoke-clouds.
I buried you deeper last night
You with your tears
And your tangled hair
You with your lips
That kissed so fair
I buried you deeper last night.
I buried you deeper last night
With fuller breasts
And stronger arms
With softer lips
And newer charms
I buried you deeper last night.
Deeper ...... aye, deeper
And again tonight
Till that gay spirit
That once was you