Chapter IV: Interlude

Mountain Trails
(GLACIER PARK, SEPT. '17)

I

Night stands in the valley
Her head
Is bound with stars,
While Dawn, a grey-eyed nun
Steals through the silent trees.
Behind the mountains
Morning shouts and sings
And dances upward.

II

The peaks even today show finger prints
Where God last touched the earth
Before he set it joyously in space
Finding it good.

III

You, slender shining--
You, downward leaping--
Born from silent snow
To drown at last in the blue silent
Mountain lake--
You are not snow or water,
You are only a silver spirit
Singing!

IV

Sharp crags of granite,
Pointing, threatening,
Thrust fiercely up at me;
And near the edge, their menace
Would whirl me down.

V

Climbing desperately toward the heights
I glance in terror behind me
To be deafened--to be shattered--
By a thunderbolt of beauty.

VI

The mountains hold communion;
They are priests, silent and austere,
They have come together
In a secret place
With unbowed heads.

VII

This hidden lake
Is a sapphire cup--
An offering clearer than wine,
Colder than tears.
The mountains hold it toward the sky
In silence.

October Morning

October is brown
In field and row--

Yet goldenrod
And goldenglow,
Purple asters
And ruddy oaks,
Sumach spreading
Crimson cloaks,
Apples red
And pumpkins gold--?

Perhaps it's gayer
To be old!

October Afternoon

The air is warm and winey-sweet,
Over my head the oak-leaves shine
Like rich Madeira, glossy brown,
Or garnet red, like old Port wine.
Wild grapes are ripening on the hill,
Dead leaves curl thickly at my feet,
Yet not one falls, it is so still.
Crickets are singing in the sun,
And aimlessly grasshoppers leap
From discontent to discontent,
Their days of leaping nearly done.
There's a rich quietness of earth
That holds no promise any more,
And like a cup, Today is filled
With the last wine the year shall pour.

Maternity

Sturdy is earth,
Dull and mighty,
Unresentful--
Of her own fertility
Covering scars
With healing green.

You cannot anger earth,
You cannot cause her pain
Nor make her remember
Your hungry, querulous love.

At last your unwilling body
She tranquilly receives
And turns it to her uses.

The Father Speaks

My little son, when you were born
There died a being, sweet and wild,
A lovely, careless, radiant child,
A passionate woman--her I mourn.

And in her place has come another,
With troubled smile and brooding eyes,
Insatiate of sacrifice
And wholly, utterly your mother.

To Allen

Beauty, the dream that I have dreamed so much
Comes true in your quick smile,
And on your cheek I see her touch
And sometimes in your eyes a while
Immortal beauty's fleeting image lies.
Dear child, in whose veins beat
The marching centuries of lovers' feet,
All those brave, ardent ghosts in you arise--
The souls who, loving beauty, gave you birth,
With a chain of passion binding beauty to earth,
A captured dream--these souls breathe with your breath
Living again in beauty that knows no death.

To Helen

Lie still in my arms, little four-years-old,
Little bud that glows
With more beauty and passion than it can hold,
Little flaming rose,

The spring's red blossoms, when winter lies deep
On a wind-swept world
Of tossing branches, lie safely asleep
In brown buds curled.

They wake--and the wind strips their petals away
And spills them afar--
Can I keep you from blooming, whatever I say,
Wild bud that you are!

The Immortal

Child of a love denied, a dream unborn,
Spirit more brave
Than passion's unfulfilment, wiser than fate--
Nor breast nor grave
As cradle you have known,--
I mourn
That my soul knows its own
Too late!

A soul's half-breath,
Passion's unremembered dream,
Perfume without a vase,
Intangible you seem
To life or death.

And when the coloured mantle of the days
Slips from my shoulders, and I lie
Forgetful, dumb,
Mingled with earth in passionless embrace,
Will you, forgotten as a bird,
Singing unheard
In space,
Will you not come
When every other dream is gone,
Bringing to that silent place
The shadow of a gesture flung
By motionless hands, a floating echo hung
From an unspoken word,
And to the empty sky
The sunset of a day which did not dawn
And cannot die!

To an Absent Child

I

At first in dreams
I pressed you so close
That you melted away on my breast,
But now I wait, breathless and motionless,
Till I feel your slender arms caress me
Like swallows blown against me
And quickly flown.

II

Small flower,
My body is the earth from which you sprang,
But we are more to each other than earth and flower,
Closer, even, than earth and flower,
For the sky in me is one with the sky in you...

My love for you
Is like sunlight shining in a quiet place,
You shall feel my love like soft light
Pouring about you.

III

I will not kiss you,
For my kisses are a chain without an end;
Nor take you in my arms,
My arms would smother you against my breast;
I will not even touch your shining head--
But lift your eyes up, flower-face,
And I will fill them as full of love
As they can hold!

IV

Ah no! If you were here
I would sweep you into my arms and hold you close!
Though my love is of the spirit
I must feel your little restless body
Pressed for a moment against my heart.

Summer Night

Rain, rain murmuring endless complaints
In mournful whisperings that never cease,
You bring my tired brain a certain peace
Like Latin prayers to absent-minded saints.

And whether silently to earth you fall,
Or dashed and driven in tempestuous flight
Like souls before God's wrath, the thirsty night,
The soft and fecund earth shall drink you all.

Maura

I

Maura dreams unwakened--
The warm winds touch the bands
That hold her hair.
The call of a silver horn floats by,
A lover tosses flowers into her hands.

Maura dreams unwakened--
She joins the maidens in their dance,
Her limbs follow slow rhythms,
A lover leads her into the shade,
She moves as in a trance.

II

What dim confusion
Troubles her dream,
What passionate caress
Disturbs her spirit's rapt seclusion?

Earth draws her close. How warm
Is lover-earth! Like a sleeping bird
She gives herself, then suddenly
She is a leaf whirled in the storm.

Somewhere in a quiet room, her soul unstirred,
Dead... or sleeping,
Through the blind tumult hears afar
The note of a horn, like a silver thread.
She has given her soul to an echo's keeping.

III

Who knows the mountain where the hunter rides
Winding his horn?
Maura who heard it in her dream
Wakens forlorn,
Too late to catch the tenuous thread
Of silver sound
Which in the troubled, intricate fugue of earth
Is drowned.

IV

Maura cannot follow over the hill,
Her youth is landlocked as a hidden pool
Where thirsty love drinks deep,
A shining pool, where lingers
The colour of an unseen golden sky,
A pool where echoes fall asleep.

But restless fingers
Trouble the waters cool,
Snatch at reflected beauty, and destroy
The mirrored dream. The pool is never still,
And broken echoes die.

V

The silver call has gone, but there is left to her
The gentleness of earth,
The simple mysteries of sleep and death,
Of love and birth.
There are faces hungry for smiles, and starving fingers
Reaching for dreams.

And like a memory are the wind-swept chords of night,
And the wide melody of evening sky
Where gleams
A colour like the echo of a horn.
There is a far hill where winds die,
And over the hill lies music yet unborn.

VI

Maura lies dead at last,
The body she gave to child and lover
Now feeds flower and tree.

Earth's arms are wide to her. What breast
Offers such gentle sleeping?
Her limbs lie peacefully.

From the dark West
There comes a note like the echoing cry
Of one who rides through the dusk alone
After the hunt sweeps by.

It fades--the night wind is forlorn--
Music is still,
But Maura has followed the silver horn
Over the distant hill,
Over the hill where all winds die.

November Dusk

Where like ghosts of verdant days
Whispering down,
Leaves in the November dusk
Drift and drown,

Stand two lovers, motionless
And apart
In their sturdy nakedness
Of the heart,

Two dark figures, side by side
Through the mist
Standing as though time had died
Since they kissed,

Whose deep roots, alive and sound
Blindly reach
Mingling in the fertile ground
Each with each--

Pray that we, when gaunt and old
Like bare trees
Through our common earth may hold
Close, like these!

Winter Valley

I

Grey grasses drown
in thin brown water
Wound like a chain on the valley's
Sunken breast.

Fallen leaves on the stream
Float motionless--rest--
So secretly the pale
Water winds around
Toward hidden pools,

Or sinking in the earth
Is drowned.

II

Curved crimson stems,
Thorny fingers of vine,
Reach toward the wind.

Sunlight, thin and cold,
Touches them--they shine.

Nothing passes for thorns to hold--
Red thorns,
Catching at shadows of the wind.

III

Silence in the valley,
Silence without wings--

Like the caught breath
Of an unspoken word
When no words come.

Withered reeds, and thin brown water
Above the reeds
Are dumb.

IV

For what are you waiting, winter valley,
Withered valley, brown with reeds?
You are hushed with waiting.

You are old with secrets,
You are tranquil with forgetting.

You are harsh with thorns
Of fruits long vanished.

V. Love Poems in Autumn

Ballad

Follow, follow me into the South,
And if you are brave and wise
I'll buy you laughter for your mouth,
Sorrow for your eyes.

I'll buy you laughter, wild and sweet,
And sorrow, grey and still,
But you must follow with willing feet
Over the farthest hill.

Follow, follow me into the South,
You may return tomorrow
Wearing my kisses on your mouth,
In your eyes my sorrow.

The Pathway of Black Leaves

I. THE TURNING

The pathway opened before her eyes
Between black leaves--
She laughed, and shivered, and turned aside
From the dusty road.

Her feet moved on like heart-beats,
She could not stop them;
Relentlessly each step fulfilled itself
And the steps behind it--
A hidden chain, drawing her onward
Captive.

And yet she said: "Now I walk free
At last!"

II. TOLL-GATE

The sign read:

"Paupers may pass untaxed,
The Rich shall pay a penny,
The Poor
Must give all they possess."

She emptied her pockets bravely and passed through...
They gave her a golden coin in return for her silver,
Bearing on one side the head of a king,
And on the other a worn inscription
Curved like a wreath
And written in a tongue she did not know.

III. THE INN

There was the inn, beside the path,
Standing like the words of an ancient prophet
Forgotten long, now suddenly come true.

"They who break bread here
Shall not eat for hunger;
They who lie here
Shall not sleep."

All night long the black leaves, one by one,
Laughed, and shivered, and fell into darkness.

IV. RETURN

She has come home
To the house she knew:
But she has forgotten
The square oaken smile of the door.

The room is a stranger,
The fire is sullen;
On her hair a black leaf shines
And clings where it fell.

Against her heart
She has hidden away
The bitter golden profile of a king.

Elegy

I would be autumn earth, and hold
Your beautiful body, slain,
Where, lying still and cold,
Only the winter rain
Shall touch your limbs and face;
Where the white frost shall wed.
Your body to black mould
In the close, passionless embrace
Of that dark marriage bed:
I would be autumn earth, and hold
Your beautiful body, dead.

Sequence

I. ARRIVAL

Shining highways
Sing to your step,
Windows beckon,
Doorways open a square embrace.

Doors laugh gently
Swinging together
Behind you.