Part 7

And faint in that amazing glow, Until the darkness close above; And they will know -- poor fools, they'll know! -- One moment, what it is to love.

Kindliness

When love has changed to kindliness -- Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press So tight that Time's an old god's dream Nodding in heaven, and whisper stuff Seven million years were not enough To think on after, make it seem Less than the breath of children playing, A blasphemy scarce worth the saying, A sorry jest, "When love has grown To kindliness -- to kindliness!" . . . And yet -- the best that either's known Will change, and wither, and be less, At last, than comfort, or its own Remembrance. And when some caress Tendered in habit (once a flame All heaven sang out to) wakes the shame Unworded, in the steady eyes We'll have, -- THAT day, what shall we do? Being so noble, kill the two Who've reached their second-best? Being wise, Break cleanly off, and get away. Follow down other windier skies New lures, alone? Or shall we stay, Since this is all we've known, content In the lean twilight of such day, And not remember, not lament? That time when all is over, and Hand never flinches, brushing hand; And blood lies quiet, for all you're near; And it's but spoken words we hear, Where trumpets sang; when the mere skies Are stranger and nobler than your eyes; And flesh is flesh, was flame before; And infinite hungers leap no more In the chance swaying of your dress; And love has changed to kindliness.

Mummia

As those of old drank mummia To fire their limbs of lead, Making dead kings from Africa Stand pandar to their bed;

Drunk on the dead, and medicined With spiced imperial dust, In a short night they reeled to find Ten centuries of lust.

So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme, Stuffed love's infinity, And sucked all lovers of all time To rarify ecstasy.

Helen's the hair shuts out from me Verona's livid skies; Gypsy the lips I press; and see Two Antonys in your eyes.

The unheard invisible lovely dead Lie with us in this place, And ghostly hands above my head Close face to straining face;

Their blood is wine along our limbs; Their whispering voices wreathe Savage forgotten drowsy hymns Under the names we breathe;

Woven from their tomb, and one with it, The night wherein we press; Their thousand pitchy pyres have lit Your flaming nakedness.

For the uttermost years have cried and clung To kiss your mouth to mine; And hair long dust was caught, was flung, Hand shaken to hand divine,

And Life has fired, and Death not shaded, All Time's uncounted bliss, And the height o' the world has flamed and faded, Love, that our love be this!

The Fish

In a cool curving world he lies And ripples with dark ecstasies. The kind luxurious lapse and steal Shapes all his universe to feel And know and be; the clinging stream Closes his memory, glooms his dream, Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides Superb on unreturning tides. Those silent waters weave for him A fluctuant mutable world and dim, Where wavering masses bulge and gape Mysterious, and shape to shape Dies momently through whorl and hollow, And form and line and solid follow Solid and line and form to dream Fantastic down the eternal stream; An obscure world, a shifting world, Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled, Or serpentine, or driving arrows, Or serene slidings, or March narrows. There slipping wave and shore are one, And weed and mud. No ray of sun, But glow to glow fades down the deep (As dream to unknown dream in sleep); Shaken translucency illumes The hyaline of drifting glooms; The strange soft-handed depth subdues Drowned colour there, but black to hues, As death to living, decomposes -- Red darkness of the heart of roses, Blue brilliant from dead starless skies, And gold that lies behind the eyes, The unknown unnameable sightless white That is the essential flame of night, Lustreless purple, hooded green, The myriad hues that lie between Darkness and darkness! . . .

And all's one. Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun, The world he rests in, world he knows, Perpetual curving. Only -- grows An eddy in that ordered falling, A knowledge from the gloom, a calling Weed in the wave, gleam in the mud -- The dark fire leaps along his blood; Dateless and deathless, blind and still, The intricate impulse works its will; His woven world drops back; and he, Sans providence, sans memory, Unconscious and directly driven, Fades to some dank sufficient heaven.

O world of lips, O world of laughter, Where hope is fleet and thought flies after, Of lights in the clear night, of cries That drift along the wave and rise Thin to the glittering stars above, You know the hands, the eyes of love! The strife of limbs, the sightless clinging, The infinite distance, and the singing Blown by the wind, a flame of sound, The gleam, the flowers, and vast around The horizon, and the heights above -- You know the sigh, the song of love!

But there the night is close, and there Darkness is cold and strange and bare; And the secret deeps are whisperless; And rhythm is all deliciousness; And joy is in the throbbing tide, Whose intricate fingers beat and glide In felt bewildering harmonies Of trembling touch; and music is The exquisite knocking of the blood. Space is no more, under the mud; His bliss is older than the sun. Silent and straight the waters run. The lights, the cries, the willows dim, And the dark tide are one with him.

Thoughts on the Shape of the Human Body

How can we find? how can we rest? how can We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man? We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate, Who love the unloving and lover hate, Forget the moment ere the moment slips, Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips, Who want, and know not what we want, and cry With crooked mouths for Heaven, and throw it by. Love's for completeness! No perfection grows 'Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose, And joint, and socket; but unsatisfied Sprawling desires, shapeless, perverse, denied. Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape, Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape, Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed, Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways From sanity and from wholeness and from grace. How can love triumph, how can solace be, Where fever turns toward fever, knee toward knee? Could we but fill to harmony, and dwell Simple as our thought and as perfectible, Rise disentangled from humanity Strange whole and new into simplicity, Grow to a radiant round love, and bear Unfluctuant passion for some perfect sphere, Love moon to moon unquestioning, and be Like the star Lunisequa, steadfastly Following the round clear orb of her delight, Patiently ever, through the eternal night!

Flight

Voices out of the shade that cried, And long noon in the hot calm places, And children's play by the wayside, And country eyes, and quiet faces -- All these were round my steady paces.

Those that I could have loved went by me; Cool gardened homes slept in the sun; I heard the whisper of water nigh me, Saw hands that beckoned, shone, were gone In the green and gold. And I went on.

For if my echoing footfall slept, Soon a far whispering there'd be Of a little lonely wind that crept From tree to tree, and distantly Followed me, followed me. . . .

But the blue vaporous end of day Brought peace, and pursuit baffled quite, Where between pine-woods dipped the way. I turned, slipped in and out of sight. I trod as quiet as the night.

The pine-boles kept perpetual hush; And in the boughs wind never swirled. I found a flowering lowly bush, And bowed, slid in, and sighed and curled, Hidden at rest from all the world.

Safe! I was safe, and glad, I knew! Yet -- with cold heart and cold wet brows I lay. And the dark fell. . . . There grew Meward a sound of shaken boughs; And ceased, above my intricate house;

And silence, silence, silence found me. . . . I felt the unfaltering movement creep Among the leaves. They shed around me Calm clouds of scent, that I did weep; And stroked my face. I fell asleep.