FROM A DIARY
Imperfections of substance, dross of the day-by-day;
Banality, unlove and disappointment … Grey
Webs of attrition, and the trivial tick
Of the nerves’ run-down clock – dank skeins of thick
Colourless thought unravelling through the skull, –
This bitter grit of conscience, and the dull
Pulse of internal scars … Compression: no
Inscape or scope or space: only the flow
Of stupor’s steady muffled fugue. – At night,
While time pursues unwatched its weightless flight,
Blackness lolls on the air, as still as gas
And denser, round each building’s lonely mass
Collapsing in the depths of its own dream;
Silence suppresses every pent-up latent scream;
And I lie like a log (as I have lain
How many year-long nights?) and once again
Immobile, mute, locked in my private room,
Hear, ruminating on the unwritten doom
Awaiting all men’s hearts in their dumb solitude,
Within me my heart’s numb, indifferent blood.
w. 1941, c. 1943
ODEUR DE PENSÉE
Thought has a subtle odour: which is not
Like that which hawthorn after rainfall has;
Nor is it sickly or astringent as
Are some scents which round human bodies float,
Diluting sweat’s thick auras. It’s not like
Dust’s immemorial smells, which lurk
Where spiders nest, in shadows under doors
Of rooms where centuries have died, and rest
In clouds along the blackening cracked floors
Of sties and closets, attics and wrecked tombs …
Thought’s odour is so pale that in the air
Nostrils inhale, it disappears like fire
Put out by water. Drifting through the coils
Of the involved and sponge-like brain it frets
The fine-veined walls of secret mental cells,
Brushing their fragile fibre as with light
Nostalgic breezes: And it’s then we sense
Remote presentiment of some intensely bright
Impending spiritual dawn, of which the pure
Immense illumination seems about to pour
In upon our existence from beyond
The edge of Knowing! But of that obscure
Deep presaging excitement shall remain
Briefly to linger in dry crannies of the brain
Not the least breath when fear-benumbed and frail
Our dying thought within the closely-sealed
Bone casket of the skull has flickered out,
And we’ve gone down into the odourless black soil.
c. 1943
FÊTE
After long thirst for sky, there was the sky,
That ether lake: vast azure canopy
Intensely stretched between horizons’ ends!
Along the quays
The panes of opening windows flashed like wings,
Weaving long rays among the leafless trees;
Sirens of drifting barges sang:
And the whole day
Drank in the fecund flowing of the sky.
And on the outskirts of the town
Where the last house-blocks take their vacant stare
Across the straggling zone, and rusty streams
Among brown squares of threadbare soil
Persist their irrigating ooze, a savage train
Tore through a cutting with triumphant screams,
Releasing streamers of thick whirling breath
Which climbed and were suspended like presentiments on high …
Once more the earth, its buried spirit stirred,
Aspired towards the Summer’s splendid bursting
And an illustrious death.
w. Paris 1938
CHAMBRE D’HÔTEL
While a sad Sunday’s silver light
Slid through the rain of afternoon
And slimed the town’s grey stone,
We side-by-side without a word
Above the cobbled island quays
Round which rolled on the swollen Seine,
Lay staring at a white
And barren ceiling: till it seemed
We’d lain forever thus entombed
Deep in unspeaking spleen.
Oh, when at last I tried to take
Your hand in mine, your stranger’s face
Towards my mouth to bend,
You sprang up from the bed and went
Away, across the room, to stand
And watch, through muslin’d window-glass
The plane-trees lean to ask
The river what you too asked then,
A riddle without answer and
As old as earth’s disgrace.
w. 1940, p. 1942
JARDIN DU PALAIS ROYAL
To B. Von M.
The sky’s a faded blue and taut-stretched flag
Sides the arcade (tenebrous lanes
Down which at times patchouli’d ghosts flit by –
Furtive reflections on the filmy panes
Of shops which seem to store only the dusts
And atmospheres of antiquated years, –
Intent on fusty vice), restricts the garden-
Statues’ timeless gaze. Here inside this
Shut-off and bygone place, brown urchin birds
Play tag and twitter, jittering around
The central fountain’s dance; while children chase
Their ragged shadows round about
The palinged trees, with screams; and iron chairs
With pattern-perforated seats drop their design
Like black lace on the gravel. There we sat
And watched that liquid trembling spire the wind
Made sway and break and spatter a thin spray
Like tears upon our hair and tight-clenched hands …
How long? I have forgotten. But you rocked
Backwards and forwards, scraping up small stones,
And never spoke. The day was in July,
Full of a whitish and exhausting glare. And I
Could only stare in silence, trying to see
Into the constantly disintegrating core
Round which the fountain ever climbed again;
Hearing the clack of feet that died away
Down the dim passage, and the unnerving din
Child-voices made behind us. O but then
You turned, and asked me with inconsolable eyes
The meaning of the pain that kept us dumb;
And then we both knew that our pact had been betrayed;
And that cold moment made the garden seem
Too like our lives, abandoned in a wilderness of Time,
Boxed-in by the frustrating and decayed
Walls of the haunted Memory’s arcade.
p. 1942
NOCTAMBULES
Hommage à Djuna Barnes
They stand in doorways; then
Step out into the rain
Beneath the lamplight’s blue
Aurora; down the street
Towards a blood-red sign
Scrawled swiftly on the wet
Slate of the midnight sky
And then sponged off again …
With watchful masks they wait
On stools at bars. I can-
Not see their faces; some
Are weeping; now I hear
A shadow sigh: The band
Plays recklessly away
Our last hours, one by one …
And then a girl in tulle
With black moths fluttering in
The gold mist of her hair
Enters the hard white pool
Of a great arc-lamp’s glare
Revealing, where her face
Should be, a gaping hole!
Their mingling voices roar …
Now they have gone again:
The Rue Fontaine is full
Of other shadows; rain
Trickles down postered walls,
Down cafés’ plate-glass panes.
Whispers outside the door, –
Words an accordion drowns …
Now like the clink of ice
In highball glasses come
Their voices from afar:
Straying from place to place,
Not knowing where we go,
We stumble through our dream
Beneath an evil star …
Words the wind’s echoes blur,
Lost among tossing trees
Along the Rue Guynemer
Where as the wheezing chimes
Of Ste Sulpice strike three,
In his tight attic high
Above the street, a boy
With a white face which dreams
Have drained of meaning, writes
The last page of a book
Which none will understand:
While down the corridor
Outside the room return
Their faint footsteps again …
They wait outside the door;
Their whispers fall like sand
In hour-glasses; I hear
Passionate sobbing; then
A voice that I’ve heard before
On many a night like this –
Strident with anguish – cries:
Darkness erodes the hearts
Locked in our breasts: the Night
Is gnawing our lives away:
O let Lust deaden without end
This aching void within …
And when the voice has died
Away, more cries are heard
Which, merging with the wind
In wordless tumult, blend
In an inconsolable dirge
And desperately press
Onwards in waves across
Acres of wet roofs, on
Across the unseen Seine,
Away beyond the Madeleine
And deep into the gulf that yawns
Behind the Sacré Coeur …
The rustling driven rain
Ceases awhile; the air
Hangs numb; Night still wears on.
Now down the desolate wide glade
Of Boulevard Sebastopol,
Beneath the creaking iron boughs
Of shop signs hung along each side,
A young American, intent
On finding a chance bed-fellow,
Pursues a vagrant matelot’s
Slim likely-looking form …
An English drunkard sits alone
In a small bistro in Les Halles
And keeps rehearsing the Lord’s Prayer
In a mad high-pitched monotone
To the blue empty air.
And in a Left-bank café where
At about half-past four
Exiles are wont to bare
Their souls, a son-and-heir
Of riches and neurosis casts
His frail befuddled blonde
Brutally to the floor
And with despairing fists
Tries to blot out the gaze
Of her wet senseless eyes …
One who has wandered long
Through labyrinths of his own brain
More solitary and obscure
Than any maze of stone
Pavements and lamplit walls
Now stops beside the Seine
And leaning down to peer
Into the swirling gloom
Of swollen waters, says:
What day can ever end
The night of those from whom
God turns away his face,
Or what ray’s finger pierce
The depths wherein they drown?
Exhaustion brings no peace
To the lost soul … But soon
Behind the Eastern slums
A chalky streak of dawn-
Light gradually gleams;
And men from women turn
Away to face the wall,
All lust exhausted, in
Dozens of one-night rooms …
Then suddenly a chill
Breath sneaks along the stones
Of narrow streets and makes
The lids of rubbish-bins
To clatter faintly, shakes
The rags and scraps and tins
Strewn in the gutters; and
A rapid shiver runs
Throughout the still, grey, blind
Mass of the city. – Now
As countless times before
I make my roomward way
Across that silent square
Where always as I pass
Them snarling lions stare
At me with stony eyes
From round about the base
Of their dry fountain … O!
How derelict is this
Hour of Night’s ending: when
The Dark’s pale denizens must go
With tales untold and tears
Unwept, – their shrivelled souls
Unsold, unsaved, – back to
The caves of sleep, their worn-
Out beds in lonely holes
Wherein they hide by day.
And climbing the last stair
How timeless seems this time
Of vigil in despair:
Of night by night the same
Weary anabasis
Between two wars, towards
The Future’s huge abyss.
p. 1941
SONNET: THE UNCERTAIN BATTLE
Away the horde rode, in a storm of hail
And steel-blue lightning. Hurtled by the wind
Into their eardrums from behind the hill
Came in increasing bursts the startled sound
Of trumpets in the unseen hostile camp. –
Down through a raw black hole in heaven stared
The horror-blanched moon’s eye. Across the swamp
Five ravens flapped; and the storm disappeared
Soon afterwards, like them, into that pit
Of Silence which lies waiting to consume
Even the braggart World itself at last …
The candle in the hermit’s cave burned out
At dawn, as usual. – No one ever came
Back down the hill, to say which side had lost.
w. 1941, p. 1942
LINES
So much to tell: so measurelessly more
Than this poor rusting pen could ever dare
To try to scratch a hint of … Words are marks
That flicker through men’s minds like quick black dust;
That falling, finally obliterate the faint
Glow their speech emanates. Too soon all sparks
Of vivid meaning are extinguished by
The saturated wadding of Man’s tongue …
And yet, I lie, I lie:
Can even Omega discount
The startling miracle of human song?
w. 1941, p. 1942
THE ANCHORITE
I His departure out of the City.
II His Habitation in the Wilderness.
III In a Vision He is Assaulted by Demonic Powers and by the Temptation to Surrender to the Void.
IV He Addresses himself to God in the Following Psalm.
V His Journey Along the Endless Road resumed.
I. His Departure out of the City
In all that city there was not one man who knew
Of his departure; not one eye to watch him go
When he went striding out through the great Eastern Gate
That sunny Lenten day. Only the stern fixed stare
Of a stone lion’s head carved jutting from the arch
Followed the progress of his black unswerving back
Away into the out-of-sight, through drifting dusts
…
Before him rose remotely the blue tooth-like rock
Which masked for him where the real wilderness began;
Above his head, on the high plateaus of the air
The larks released their pale electric ecstasies;
And as he strode along, he laughed, calling to mind
All that he’d left behind him: the great labyrinth
Of the sleep-walking masses, – the dense midnight maze
Of dread, through which they wandered without speech, as though
To name their suffering would be to die of it; –
The city like a time-beleaguered termite-heap,
Swarming with flocks of languishing or fevered masks,
Never a naked face among them; – all night long …
II. His Habitation in the Wilderness
III. In a Vision, He is Assaulted by Demonic Powers and by Temptation to Surrender to the Void
… Until one night (after indefinite
Succession of long nights) closed in
Around him unfamiliarly, a night
Fraught with some secret sense of change
And danger.
On the slopes
Of every nearby foothill, strange
Orchards broke into flower and the air
Was stirred with rustling as their
Petals opened, colour of snow, of fire,
Of eyes. A flight of birds
Swept by invisibly, with small swift cries.
And all the darkness throbbed
With premonition.
A great trembling glow
About the middle of the night appeared
Along the border of the Western sky,
Reflecting some far conflagration;
In its unreal light
The rocks around like an arena seemed,
Encircling him with watchful tiers;
And music like a faint
Blue mirage streamed about his ears …
Out of the distance issued sudden bursts
Of dense machine-gun fire.
Uncertain haze of insubstantiality.
Anxiety and emptiness.
Dim images. A maze
Of muddled intimations in the mind,
A blank expectancy. Quick images again …
(A broken arch bridging the desert stream;
Beneath the bridge a breaking wave
Through which a bright fish swam.
A soldier sleeping open-mouthed
Outside the entrance of a mountain-cave,
Caught in a cage, a black misshapen beast,
Half-ox, half-bear, eyes red with rage.
An ancient sword mysteriously thrust
Up to the hilt in the desert’s sandy floor.)
IV. He Addresses a Psalm to God
V. His Return to the Road Without an End