Chapter VII: Ruins

Temples have fallen
Before today,
Stones are ever loosening their hold
One on another...

You blocks of marble, sleeping in the sun,
Can you remember chiming bells
And incense?

Now there is only silence,
Even the winged stones of archways
Sleep in peace.

Candles

Silence is but the golden frame
That holds your face,
My thoughts, like unblown candle-flame
In a holy place
Surround you. From this secret shrine
Somewhere apart
Do you not feel my candles shine
Upon your heart?

Winter Night

The I that does not love you
I have kept hidden away
In the dark.

(I never dreamed
There was a You
That does not love me!)

Tonight they met.

I hear their words
Falling like icicles
Upon me...
I am frozen in terror...
Have they killed the You
That Loves me?

Beloved, can you hear me
Through the bitter sound
Of icicles falling?
Can you see me from behind
Your frozen eyes?

Last Days

I

Shall I pretend
These days are just like other days?
One cannot spend
Every day for seven weeks
Saying good-bye.

So when I must
I speak of your departure casually
As though it were a hundred years away;
As Youth is wont to say:
"Sometime we all must die!"

II

We talk of all the happy things we have done,
We pass them in review,
"Do you remember?" is often on our lips.

One by one
We touch our memories and put them all away--
How shall I dare to look at them
When you are gone!

III

There is no beginning to my love
Nor any end--
It is about your head
Like the deep air,
More than your breath can spend.
Oft is about your heart
Like arms of faith--
Where you go, it is there.

IV

There are no last things to say,
What promise can I make?
You know my love so well.
All that I have is yours to take.
(How will it be, with part of me away,
Must not my soul be changed?)

Shall I stay young for memory's sake?
Shall I be old and grave and grey?
If I might choose, how could I tell!

V

The You I know
I shall not see again,
A stranger will return.

How shall I win the love
Which he has kept apart
With a blurred image which once was I?

I shall not know his heart,
How can I learn?

Sorrow

Sorrow stands in a wide place,
Blind--blind--
Beauty and joy are petals blown
Across her granite face,
They cannot find
Sight or sentience in stone.

Yesterday's beauty and joy lie deep
In sorrow's heart, asleep.

Prison

I close the book--the story has grown dim,
The plot confused; the hero fades
Behind unmeaning words, and over him
The covers close like window shades
On empty windows. The watchful room
Is weary. Dully the green lamp stares
Into the shadows. The coals are dumb,
The clock ticks heavily. The chairs
Wait sullenly for guests who never come.

Suppose I leave this house, suppose my feet
Plodding into the night
Carry me down the empty street
Made hideous with arcs of purple light...
Inevitably I must return to bed.
The house is waiting, chairs, and books, and clocks.
I am their prisoner. I have no more chance
Of escape, when all is said,
Than a dying beetle in a box--
And life, and love,--and death--have gone to France.

The Dream House

I steal across the sodden floor
And dead leaves blow about,
Where once we planned an iron door
To shut the whole world out;

I find the hearth, its fires unlit,
Its ashes cold--Tonight
Only the stars give warmth to it,
Only the moon gives light.

And yonder on our spacious bed
Fashioned for love and sleep
The Autumn goldenrod lies dead,
The maple-leaves lie deep.

III. Studies and Designs

A Japanese Vase
(A Design to be Wrought in Metals)

Five harsh, black birds in shining bronze come crying
Into a silver sky,
Piercing and jubilant is the shape of their flying,
Their beaks are pointed with delight,
Curved sharply with desire,
The passionate direction of their flight,
Clear and high,
Stretches their bodies taut like humming wire.
The cold wind blows into angry patterns the jet-bright
Feathers of their wings,
Their claws curl loosely, safely, about nothingness,
They clasp no things.
Direction and desire they possess
By which in sharp, unswerving flight they hold
Across an iron sea to the golden beach
Whereon lies carrion, their feast. A shore of gold
That birds wrought on a vase can never reach.

The Bow Moon
(A print by Hiroshige)

From the dawn, Take San,
Ungathered star,
Follow me back through night
Till I recapture
Evening.

(The bending hours of darkness
Sway apart like lilies
Before the backward-blowing wind.)

At last,
Bearing in her mysterious bosom
Unravished beauty,
Dark Yesterday rises to view against her silent sky
Irrevocable... secret...
Confronting the fantastic dream
Of an impossible Tomorrow.

And that frail bridge,
Delicate, immutable,
Which rises higher than the moon,
More everlasting than the fading sky,
Joining What-was-not with What-might-have-been,
That bridge were named "Today"
If I had loved you, Take San,
If you had loved me.

An Italian Chest
(Lorenzo Designs a Bas-Relief)

Lust is the oldest lion of them all
And he shall have first place,
With a malignant growl, satirical,
To curve in foliations prodigal
Round and around his face,
Extending till the echoes interlace
With Pride and Prudence, two cranes, gaunt and tall.

Four lesser lions crouch and malign the cranes,
Cursing and gossiping they shake their manes
While from their long tongues leak
Drops of thin venom as they speak.
The cranes, unmoved, peck grapes and grains
From a huge cornucopia, which rains
A plenteous meal from its antique
Interior (a note quite curiously Greek).

And nine long serpents twist
And twine, twist and twine,
A riotously beautiful design
Whose elements consist
Of eloquent spirals, fair and fine,
Embracing cranes and lions, who exist
Seemingly free, yet tangled in that living vine.

And in this chest shall be
Two cubic meters of space
Enough to hold all memory
Of you and me--
And this shall be the place
Where silence shall embrace
Our bodies, and obliterate the trace
Our souls made on the purity
Of night...
Now lock the chest, for we
Are dead, and lose the key!

The Pedlar

Hark, people, to the cry
Of this curious young magician-pedlar
Seeking a golden bowl!

He wanders through the city
Offering useful tin-ware
For all the ancient metal
You have left to rust
In the dim, dusty attic
Or mouldy cellar
Of your soul.

He refuses nothing--
Rusty nails
Which may have played their part
In a crucifixion--
For ten of these he will give
A new tin spoon.

The andirons
Once guarding hearth-fires of content,
Now dusty and forgotten
In an obscure corner,
He will give for these
A new tin tea-kettle
With a wooden handle.

And for this antique bowl
Fashioned to hold
Roses or wine?

The eyes of the pedlar glisten!
O woman, if acid reveal
Gold beneath the tarnished surface
He will gladly give you
His hands, his eyes, his soul,
His young, white body--

If not,
A mocking laugh
And a bright tin sieve
To hold your wine
And roses.

Portrait of a Lady in Bed

I. THE COVERLET

My cowardice
Covers me safely
From everything...

From cold, which makes me yield
And quietly die
Beneath the snow;

From heat, which makes me faint
Until cool nothingness receives me;

From hurt, (Seize me, O Lion,
And I shall die of fright
Before I feel your teeth!)

From love,
Yes, most of all from love.

How can love touch me?
Is it not heat,
Or cold,
Or a lion?

My cowardice covers me
Safely
From everything!

II. THE PILLOW

To know you think of me
Sustains my Spirit
Through the long night.

(My thought of you
Is wine, banishing sleep!)

Your thoughts of me are feathers,
Light nothings,
Drifting, dancing,
Floating,
Blown by a breath of fancy
Away from your sight.

They would choke me,
They would blind me
With the Nothing I am to you
If I dared see them;
But I bind them into a pillow,
And to know that you think of me
Sustains my spirit
Through the night.

III. SOUVENIR

Harlequin, seeing me gay
You loved me,
For fools need mirth,

O solemn Harlequin!

Tall tragedians make me laugh
Joyously, riotously,
Tall, dark villains, and heroes with blonde hair
Make me laugh uproariously...
(I could elope with a tragedian!)

But you with your clowning, Harlequin,
Brought bony truth too near--

Harlequin, I might have loved you
But I could not make you gay!

IV. THE CURTAIN

I do not fear
You, or me, or death,

There now is nothing left to fear
But this,
This curtain of blackness.

Once I feared you,
And all you thought and felt

And all you said and did:
I feared myself,
And all you made me think and feel
And say and do--

Now I no longer fear
Thinking, feeling, saying, doing,

Nor blankness, silence, apathy, torpor--

I do not fear
You, or me, or death--

I only fear
This curtain of blackness
Which is your absence.