No movement, no repose,
But only perfect prescience
Of the Becoming of the Whole.
[Voice]
The seed springs from us into flower; yet none can tell
At what hour late or early those concealed furled leaves
And multifoliate petals shall outgrow their tender shell.
[Choir]
The hour is unknown:
The hour endures:
The hour strikes every hour.
IV
[Voice]
Each hour of life is glorious and vain.
O thirst and glorious unsatisfied
Lamenting cry! How vain the short relief
And unabiding refuge from the tide
That nearer crawls each day across the sands
On which our house is founded! Vanity
Of vanities, all things held by our hands!
Beyond their reach, with diamond-rays, and high
Above the furthest fields of ether lies
The core of glory, only ascertained
By inward opening of Death’s deep eye
And outward flight of Spirit long sustained:
[Choir: distantly echoing]
By wings the swift flames of the funeral pile
Are fanned … Dead faces guard a secret smile.
w. 1938–40, p. 1956
STROPHES ÉLÉGIAQUES À LA MÉMOIRE D’ALBAN BERG (1885-1935)
The titles of the first, second and fourth parts of the following sequence were taken from Berg’s Lyric Suite. Lines 14 and 15 of the third part are a quotation from a poem in Baudelaire’s sequence ‘Le Vin’, which was set to music by Berg as a cantata. Two earlier versions of these Strophes were written in English, but were not satisfactory enough to be printed. The following version, written in 1939, three years after the original impulse, appeared in Cahiers du Sud in January 1940. D.G.
Andante Amoroso
Souvenir d’un musicien: des cordes lyriques
Soulèvent des draps de brume et l’ouïe est entrainée
Parmi des perspectives dissolvantes où son élégie
Fleurit comme une couronne qu’arrosent des pleurs
De sons: orchidées couleur d’ecchymose, et roses
Flétries, fleurs de la passion, une gerbe flottante
Lente à travers la vue des yeux fermés.
Sa musique est une pluie qui rafraîchit
Les cyprès seuls parmis ces rochers gris,
Trouble comme l’amour dans la mémoire les airs
Du soir, à l’heure où la hantise et l’obsession,
Figures du passé, glissent comme des têtes coupées
Sur les courants du crépuscule lointain
De Cimmérie, refuge des ombres perdues.
L’illusion tremble. En haut, aigües
Des lames de lumière crue incisent les cieux;
Et au-dessous, autour d’un lac de plomb
Le vent agite des roseaux dissonants;
Des vagues concentriques frappent le bord de l’eau
Comme les échos d’un cri désespéré.
Très vite s’envolent des oiseaux comme des flèches.
Tenebroso
Les grandes plaines où les routes sont comme des veines,
Les rangs de montagnes et les lacs réfléchissants,
Même les prairies les plus vides ou fleuries
Portent l’ombre énorme du Zeitgeist, qui menace
Avec ses nuages noirs de sort solides
Toutes les moissons; les saisons ne font plus
Qu’illustrer les phases des luttes humaines.
Et au-dessûs du chaos des grandes villes
Qui gonfle le continent, la noirceur des ceux pèse
Comme un jugement sur toutes les rues-prisons
Où rôdent encore les peurs de l’ancienne nuit
Avec des uniformes, des bâtons, des fusils,
Et où la folie couve ses fantaisies
De persécutés, d’espions, d’élus de Dieu.
Nous couchés sans sommeil dans nos chambres séparées
Nous écoutons un fracas comme de trains-fantômes
Se précipitant vers le bout de nos souffrances;
Et tandis que leur tonnerre ruine nos rêves on se demande
Quel grand minuit peut être le but de leurs roues chaudes,
Quel signe pourrait empêcher tout espoir comme un train fou
De se dérailler dans la tête de l’homme.
Intermezzo
Tout chant est triomphe et toute plainte
Est réconciliation. Brûle encore,
Brûle, O lyre du larynx, guérisse le tourment
Qui ne sait pas trouver une sortie
Parmi le labyrinthe de la poitrine. Encore
Plongez-vous dans la mélodie, O ailes sonores
A la recherche de repos et de paix.
Toute plainte est réconciliation
Avec le lamentable, et sait résoudre
Les pleurs et les ruines, la maladie
Des empires, dans des arabesques
De cancereuse corruption et de pluie
D’étincelante semence stérile, tels que
‘Les sons d’une musique énervante et câline,
‘Semblable au cri lointain de l’humaine douleur;’
Et une telle musique peut nous consoler
De la condition damnée, la blessure secrète,
Qui grimpant vers le silence à travers l’oreille
Invisible de l’espace, avec des chants brûlés
Dans les royaumes de l’inouï créé de lointains
Paysages, exaltés et profonds.
Misterioso
Il se hâte vers sa fin, le requiem
Que des événements inconnus doivent interrompre;
Prémonitoires de la rupture les cordes forcées
A travers tous les tons par le vent rude
De l’angoisse! et répétition de pressentiments
Intérieurs: ces fusées d’étoiles rouges et
L’Etoile de la Mort au milieu qui projette
Sur nous la paralysie de ses rayons pénétrants
Jusqu’au recoin le plus secret de l’âme,
Là où coupable le miroir tourne
Sans cesse et ne cesse pas de rendre
Des images deformées de notre détresse: telle la fumée
Qui accompagne la Bête hors de l’abîme, l’agneau
Meurtri, et ces chevaliers aux quatre couleurs criantes …
Mais toutes les visions surgies hors du temps
Se fanent enfin; ne peuvent nullement cacher
La révélation de la nudité affreuse
De l’homme tragique divisé en lui-même
Qui maintenant doit monter sur l’échafaud de son trône
Et porter une couronne de feu, et être trahi, tomber
Dans les ténèbres du mythe pour retrouver son Christ.
Epilogue: 1939
Les vrais témoins ne sont plus aujourd’hui
Ecoutés, le silence les cache
(En était un celui qu’on commémore
Ici: en exil son esprit,
Sa ville natale perdue
Aux barbares bruns et noirs, et ses partitions
Verboten comme un scandale dangereux).
Villes glorieuses de la musique, de l’art,
Vienne, Salzburg et Prague, des millepieds
Chaussés de fer ont envahi vos rues,
L’araignée hideuse de la croix gammée
Partout suspend ses toiles; ce sont des rats
Qui font la musique de chambre dans vos chambres;
Et dans vos jardins ombrageux se cachent les loups.
Elle s’agrandit toujours la tache
Flagrante, et déshonore l’histoire.
Les injustes règnent, leurs orateurs perfides
Rendent sourd le peuple tandis que tombent les haches.
Mais hors de l’avenir quel orage effrayant
Va effacer leurs
dernières traces avec ses foudres!
Les vrais témoins nous resteront toujours.
w. Eté 1939, p. 1940
A VAGRANT AND OTHER POEMS
(1950)
A VAGRANT
‘Mais il n’a point parlé, mais cette année encore
Heure par heure en vain lentement tombera.’
ALFRED DE VIGNY
‘They’re much the same in most ways, these great cities. Of them all,
Speaking of those I’ve seen, this one’s still far the best
Big densely built-up area for a man to wander in
Should he have ceased to find shelter, relief,
Or dream in sanatorium bed; should nothing as yet call
Decisively to him to put an end to brain’s
Proliferations round the possibilities that eat
Up adolescence, even years up to the late
Thirtieth birthday; should no one seem to wait
His coming, to pop out at last and bark
Briskly: “A most convenient solution has at last
Been found, after the unavoidable delay due to this spate of wars
That we’ve been having lately. This is it:
Just fill in (in block letters) on the dotted-line your name
And number. From now on until you die all is
O.K., meaning the clockwork’s been adjusted to accommodate
You nicely; all you need’s to eat and sleep,
To sleep and eat and eat and laugh and sleep,
And sleep and laugh and wake up every day
Fresh as a raffia daisy!” I already wake each day
Without a bump or too much morning sickness to routine
Which although without order wears the will out just as well
As this job-barker’s programme would. His line may in the end
Provide me with a noose with which to hang myself, should I
Discover that the strain of doing nothing is too great
A price to pay for spiritual integrity. The soul
Is said by some to be a bourgeois luxury, which shows
A strange misunderstanding both of soul and bourgeoisie.
The Sermon on the Mount is just as often misconstrued
By Marxists as by wealthy congregations, it would seem.
The “Modern Man in Search of Soul” appears
A comic criminal or an unbalanced bore to those
Whose fear of doing something foolish fools them. Je m’en fous!
Blessèd are they, it might be said, who are not of this race
Of settled average citizens secure in their état
Civil of snowy guiltlessness and showy high ideals
Permitting them achieve an inexpensive lifelong peace
Of mind, through dogged persistence, frequent aspirin, and bile
Occasionally vented via trivial slander … Baa,
Baa, O sleepysickness-rotted sheep, in your nice fold
Are none but marketable fleeces. I my lot
Prefer to cast at once away right in
Among the stone-winning lone wolves whose future cells
Shall make home-founding unworthwhile. Unblessèd let me go
And join the honest tribe of patient prisoners and ex-
Convicts, and all such victims of the guilt
Society dare not admit its own. I would not strike
The pose of one however who might in a chic ballet
Perform an apache role in rags of cleverly-cut silk.
Awkward enough, awake, yet although anxious still just sane,
I stand still in my quasi-dereliction, or but stray
Slowly along the quais towards the ends of afternoons
That lead to evenings empty of engagements, or at night
Lying resigned in cosy-corner crow’s-nest, listen long
To sounds of the surrounding city desultorily
Seeking in loud distraction some relief from what its nerves
Are gnawed by: I mean knowledge of its lack of raison d’être.
The city’s lack and mine are much the same. What, oh what can
A Vagrant hope to find to take the place of what was once
Our expectation of the Human City in which each man might
Morning and evening, every day, lead his own life, and Man’s?’
p. 1948
INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE
Beneath the well-born weak-lined gentle flesh
Its firmly-moulded bonework did much to sustain
This face’s actively upheld nobility. I had the time
To gaze upon a late transmuted beauty
Known none too kindly to the North in our cold time.
Yet I knew warmth was there, where were born both
Her Southern mildness and Repression’s bleakest whim,
Which is to spoil the good with greatness, till it do its best
To die in surfeit of a passion lean as sin.
I still knew of her nothing less than this,
She could well have played Portia in Spanish
Making it seem a Terry had conceived
To play the cello to a foreign bard’s guitar.
Attentive, I beheld a less premeditated look
Melting the mask till one could see it once had worn
The serene, robust air as of never-rebuked gaiety
That shakes like laughter round a regally-loved child;
And saw her clamber up, her will supported
By the arms of his gold braid-adorned dark dignity,
Till safe in peril perching, from the lofty balustrade
She overlooked a square where waved and roared
In passionate approval of political Papa
The population, it appeared, of the then nascent State.
She’d come down to the mezzanine in person
To welcome us, dismissed the footman, stepped
With lifted dress-train held bunched at the knees
Into the ivory-panelled gilt-grilled lift;
Dismissed her maid on reaching the third floor
And shown us down a quite dark passage, hung
With glass-masked pastels – Redon, Morisot, maybe, –
At once how long she must have sat alone,
Sad lady, with the back of her fauteuil
Turned to the uncommunicative view
Of drear palatial faubourg roofs displayed
Between portentous casement draperies,
There in that room the hotel’s master had
But seldom entered, though his youth’s collections here
As elsewhere were the source of all that caught
The roving eye: a Degas statuette,
A hand-high Rodin piece; upon the wall
Above the fireplace, a nice Géricault –
Two Turkish ladies, or baigneuses; some fine
Old pots, and a miraculously carved
Ivory ball within a ball within a ball
That stood upon the escritoire, still piled
With business correspondence that no secretary
Could have availed much to diminish. ‘How
Long it must be now since we last –
When was it? Oh, the Occupation? Yes,
I remained here all the time, I held
The fort. A long grim winter. But Eugène,
Of course, had other things to occupy
In South America his busy mind, than my
Predicament. Nothing changed him; simply we
Became “loyally indifferent”; or I trust I so appeared.’
Under the weight of false presuppositions hanging round
Upon all three of us, the other lady frowned (touched too; too tired) –
Her constant lit cheroot let fall a not entirely
Inappropriate tiny elegy of ash. Three enigmatic masks.
Outside upon the Plaza, the huge crowd still waved and waved!
‘God gives us all, yet no one asks
What it is given for …’
p. 1950
PHOTOGRAPH
To Philippe Soupault
Whatever you were looking at when Abbott’s camera clicked,
It hardly wore the likeness, I suppose, that you wear now;
Yet its reality can hardly have been other than the one
That we both recognize at present, which is made real
By us and all who truly live in it. Your eyes
Are clear, more clear and keen than what they see, and gaze through pain,
Frustration and the future of futility. They look
Straight into the hid heart of whatsoever lies ahead, with active trust,
With scepticism and with the tried affection that cannot ever be
Made disappointed by its object’s failures. You will thus always be aware
That what is true is lovable, and you in knowing this
Will have become one in whose love the love of others may find rest.
c. 1950
REPORTED MISSING
At the end of the sunny, polished corridor
I opened a door I had not seen before
And stepped into a room in which the air
Had long been undisturbed but was not stale but
Sleepy sweet and half-familiar, half
Reminiscent of another time and life. There were
Bookshelves and two deep basket chairs, that faced
Each other, though the bed was single, spread
With a soft paisley-patterned cloth, no more to be
Unmade. The view from the dormer window, creeper-fringed,
Was the best in the house. Upon the mantelshelf
Stood lonely in its leather frame a photograph I’ll not
Forget, I think, although I never met
The sitter, so immediate was the subjugating charm
That struck one from the eyes and features. These
Reported how much he was missing, whom I cannot praise,
Only commemorate in a few unasked-for lines
Which must leave the essential once more all but quite unsaid.
c. 1950
A TOUGH GENERATION
To grow unguided at a time when none
Are sure where they should plant their sprig of trust;
When sunshine has no special mission to endow
With gold the rustic rose, which will run wild
And ramble from the garden to the wood
To train itself to climb the trunks of trees
If the old seedsman die and suburbs care
For sentimental cottage-flowers no more;
To grow up in a wood of rotted trees