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The House of Dust - Part IV - Complete

by Conrad Potter Aiken

I. CLAIRVOYANT

'This envelope you say has something in it

Which once belonged to your dead son, or something

He knew, was fond of? Something he remembers?

The soul flies far, and we can only call it

By things like these . . . a photograph, a letter,

Ribbon, or charm, or watch . . . '

. . . Wind flows softly, the long slow even wind,

Over the low roofs white with snow;

Wind blows, bearing cold clouds over the ocean,

One by one they melt and flow,

Streaming one by one over trees and towers,

Coiling and gleaming in shafts of sun;

Wind flows, bearing clouds; the hurrying shadows

Flow under them one by one . . .

' . . . A spirit darkens before me . . . it is the spirit

Which in the flesh you called your son . . . A spirit

Young and strong and beautiful . . .

He says that he is happy, is much honored;

Forgives and is forgiven . . . rain and wind

Do not perplex him . . . storm and dust forgotten . .

The glittering wheels in wheels of time are broken

And laid aside . . . '

'Ask him why he did the thing he did!'

'He is unhappy. This thing, he says, transcends you:

Dust cannot hold what shines beyond the dust . . .

What seems calamity is less than a sigh;

What seems disgrace is nothing.'

'Ask him if the one he hurt is there,

And if she loves him still!'

'He tells you she is there, and loves him still,

Not as she did, but as all spirits love . . .

A cloud of spirits has gathered about him.

They praise him and call him, they do him honor;

He is more beautiful, he shines upon them.'

. . . Wind flows softly, the long deep tremulous wind,

Over the low roofs white with snow . . .

Wind flows, bearing dreams; they gather and vanish,

One by one they sing and flow;

Over the outstretched lands of days remembered,

Over remembered tower and wall,

One by one they gather and talk in the darkness,

Rise and glimmer and fall . . .

'Ask him why he did the thing he did!

He knows I will understand!'

'It is too late:

He will not hear me: I have lost my power.'

'Three times I've asked him! He will never tell me.

God have mercy upon him. I will ask no more.'

II. DEATH: AND A DERISIVE CHORUS

The door is shut. She leaves the curtained office,

And down the grey-walled stairs comes trembling slowly

Towards the dazzling street.

Her withered hand clings tightly to the railing.

The long stairs rise and fall beneath her feet.

Here in the brilliant sun we jostle, waiting

To tear her secret out . . . We laugh, we hurry,

We go our way, revolving, sinister, slow.

She blinks in the sun, and then steps faintly downward.

We whirl her away, we shout, we spin, we flow.

Where have you been, old lady? We know your secret!

Voices jangle about her, jeers, and laughter. . . .

She trembles, tries to hurry, averts her eyes.

Tell us the truth, old lady! where have you been?

She turns and turns, her brain grows dark with cries.

Look at the old fool tremble! She's been paying,

Paying good money, too, to talk to spirits. . . .

She thinks she's heard a message from one dead!

What did he tell you? Is he well and happy?

Don't lie to us, we all know what he said.

He said the one he murdered once still loves him;

He said the wheels in wheels of time are broken;

And dust and storm forgotten; and all forgiven. . . .

But what you asked he wouldn't tell you, though,

Ha ha! there's one thing you will never know!

That's what you get for meddling so with heaven!

Where have you been, old lady? Where are you going?

We know, we know! She's been to gab with spirits.

Look at the old fool! getting ready to cry!

What have you got in an envelope, old lady?

A lock of hair? An eyelash from his eye?

How do you know the medium didn't fool you?

Perhaps he had no spirit, perhaps he killed it.

Here she comes! the old fool's lost her son.

What did he have, blue eyes and golden hair?

We know your secret! what's done is done.

Look out, you'll fall, and fall, if you're not careful,

Right into an open grave. . . .but what's the hurry?

You don't think you will find him when you're dead?

Cry! Cry! Look at her mouth all twisted,

Look at her eyes all red!

We know you, know your name and all about you,

All you remember and think, and all you scheme for.

We tear your secret out, we leave you, go

Laughingly down the street. . . .Die, if you want to!

Die, then, if you're in such a hurry to know!

. . . .She falls. We lift her head. The wasted body

Weighs nothing in our hands. Does no one know her?

Was no one with her when she fell? . . .

We eddy about her, move away in silence.

We hear slow tollings of a bell.

III. PALIMPSEST: A DECEITFUL PORTRAIT

Well, as you say, we live for small horizons:

We move in crowds, we flow and talk together,

Seeing so many eyes and hands and faces,

So many mouths, and all with secret meanings,

Yet know so little of them; only seeing

The small bright circle of our consciousness,

Beyond which lies the dark. Some few we know,

Or think we know. . . Once, on a sun-bright morning,

I walked in a certain hallway, trying to find

A certain door: I found one, tried it, opened,

And there in a spacious chamber, brightly lighted,

A hundred men played music, loudly, swiftly,

While one tall woman sent her voice above them

In powerful sweetness. . . .Closing then the door

I heard it die behind me, fade to whisper,

And walked in a quiet hallway as before.

Just such a glimpse, as through that opened door,

Is all we know of those we call our friends. . . .

We hear a sudden music, see a playing

Of ordered thoughts, and all again is silence.

The music, we suppose, (as in ourselves)

Goes on forever there, behind shut doors,

As it continues after our departure,

So, we divine, it played before we came . . .

What do you know of me, or I of you? . . .

Little enough. . . .We set these doors ajar

Only for chosen movements of the music:

This passage, (so I think, yet this is guesswork)

Will please him, it is in a strain he fancies,

More brilliant, though, than his; and while he likes it

He will be piqued . . . He looks at me bewildered

And thinks (to judge from self, this too is guesswork)

The music strangely subtle, deep in meaning,

Perplexed with implications; he suspects me

Of hidden riches, unexpected wisdom. . . .

Or else I let him hear a lyric passage,

Simple and clear; and all the while he listens

I make pretence to think my doors are closed.

This too bewilders him. He eyes me sidelong

Wondering 'Is he such a fool as this?

Or only mocking?' There I let it end. . . .

Sometimes, of course, and when we least suspect it,

When we pursue our thoughts with too much passion,

Talking with too great zeal, our doors fly open

Without intention; and the hungry watcher

Stares at the feast, carries away our secrets,

And laughs. . . .but this, for many counts, is seldom.

And for the most part we vouchsafe our friends,

Our lovers too, only such few clear notes

As we shall deem them likely to admire:

'Praise me for this' we say, or 'laugh at this,'

Or 'marvel at my candor'. . . .all the while

Withholding what's most precious to ourselves,

Some sinister depth of lust or fear or hatred,

The sombre note that gives the chord its power;

Or a white loveliness, if such we know,

Too much like fire to speak of without shame.

Well, this being so, and we who know it being

So curious about those well-locked houses,

The minds of those we know, to enter softly,

And steal from floor to floor up shadowy stairways,

From room to quiet room, from wall to wall,

Breathing deliberately the very air,

Pressing our hands and nerves against warm darkness

To learn what ghosts are there,

Suppose for once I set my doors wide open

And bid you in. . . .Suppose I try to tell you

The secrets of this house, and how I live here;

Suppose I tell you who I am, in fact. . . .

Deceiving you, as far as I may know it,

Only so much as I deceive myself.

If you are clever you already see me

As one who moves forever in a cloud

Of warm bright vanity: a luminous cloud

Which falls on all things with a quivering magic,

Changing such outlines as a light may change,

Brightening what lies dark to me, concealing

Those things that will not change . . . I walk sustained

In a world of things that flatter me: a sky

Just as I would have had it; trees and grass

Just as I would have shaped and colored them;

Pigeons and clouds and sun and whirling shadows,

And stars that brightening climb through mist at nightfall,

In some deep way I am aware these praise me:

Where they are beautiful, or hint of beauty,

They point, somehow, to me. . . .This water says,

Shimmering at the sky, or undulating

In broken gleaming parodies of clouds,

Rippled in blue, or sending from cool depths

To meet the falling leaf the leaf's clear image,

This water says, there is some secret in you

Akin to my clear beauty, silently responsive

To all that circles you. This bare tree says,

Austere and stark and leafless, split with frost,

Resonant in the wind, with rigid branches

Flung out against the sky, this tall tree says,

There is some cold austerity in you,

A frozen strength, with long roots gnarled on rocks,

Fertile and deep; you bide your time, are patient,

Serene in silence, bare to outward seeming,

Concealing what reserves of power and beauty!

What teeming Aprils! chorus of leaves on leaves!

These houses say, such walls in walls as ours,

Such streets of walls, solid and smooth of surface,

Such hills and cities of walls, walls upon walls;

Motionless in the sun, or dark with rain;

Walls pierced with windows, where the light may enter;

Walls windowless where darkness is desired;

Towers and labyrinths and domes and chambers,

Amazing deep recesses, dark on dark,

All these are like the walls which shape your spirit:

You move, are warm, within them, laugh within them,

Proud of their depth and strength; or sally from them,

When you are bold, to blow great horns at the world. .

This deep cool room, with shadowed walls and ceiling,

Tranquil and cloistral, fragrant of my mind,

This cool room says, just such a room have you,

It waits you always at the tops of stairways,

Withdrawn, remote, familiar to your uses,

Where you may cease pretence and be yourself. . . .

And this embroidery, hanging on this wall,

Hung there forever, these so soundless glidings

Of dragons golden-scaled, sheer birds of azure,

Coilings of leaves in pale vermilion, griffins

Drawing their rainbow wings through involutions

Of mauve chrysanthemums and lotus flowers,

This goblin wood where someone cries enchantment,

This says, just such an involuted beauty

Of thought and coiling thought, dream linked with dream,

Image to image gliding, wreathing fires,

Soundlessly cries enchantment in your mind:

You need but sit and close your eyes a moment

To see these deep designs unfold themselves.

And so, all things discern me, name me, praise me,

I walk in a world of silent voices, praising;

And in this world you see me like a wraith

Blown softly here and there, on silent winds.

'Praise me' I say; and look, not in a glass,

But in your eyes, to see my image there,

Or in your mind; you smile, I am contented;

You look at me, with interest unfeigned,

And listen,I am pleased; or else, alone,

I watch thin bubbles veering brightly upward

From unknown depths, my silver thoughts ascending;

Saying now this, now that, hinting of all things,

Dreams, and desires, velleities, regrets,

Faint ghosts of memory, strange recognitions,

But all with one deep meaning: this is I,

This is the glistening secret holy I,

This silver-winged wonder, insubstantial,

This singing ghost. . . .And hearing, I am warmed.

* * * * *

You see me moving, then, as one who moves

Forever at the centre of his circle:

A circle filled with light. And into it

Come bulging shapes from darkness, loom gigantic,

Or huddle in dark again. . . .A clock ticks clearly,

A gas-jet steadily whirs, light streams across me;

Two church bells, with alternate beat, strike nine;

And through these things my pencil pushes softly

To weave grey webs of lines on this clear page.

Snow falls and melts; the eaves make liquid music;

Black wheel-tracks line the snow-touched street; I turn

And look one instant at the half-dark gardens,

Where skeleton elm-trees reach with frozen gesture

Above unsteady lamps, with black boughs flung

Against a luminous snow-filled grey-gold sky.

'Beauty!' I cry. . . .My feet move on, and take me

Between dark walls, with orange squares for windows.

Beauty; beheld like someone half-forgotten,

Remembered, with slow pang, as one neglected . . .

Well, I am frustrate; life has beaten me,

The thing I strongly seized has turned to darkness,

And darkness rides my heart. . . .These skeleton elm-trees,

Leaning against that grey-gold snow filled sky,

Beauty! they say, and at the edge of darkness

Extend vain arms in a frozen gesture of protest . . .

A clock ticks softly; a gas-jet steadily whirs:

The pencil meets its shadow upon clear paper,

Voices are raised, a door is slammed. The lovers,

Murmuring in an adjacent room, grow silent,

The eaves make liquid music. . . .Hours have passed,

And nothing changes, and everything is changed.

Exultation is dead, Beauty is harlot,

And walks the streets. The thing I strongly seized

Has turned to darkness, and darkness rides my heart.

If you could solve this darkness you would have me.

This causeless melancholy that comes with rain,

Or on such days as this when large wet snowflakes

Drop heavily, with rain . . . whence rises this?

Well, so-and-so, this morning when I saw him,

Seemed much preoccupied, and would not smile;

And you, I saw too much; and you, too little;

And the word I chose for you, the golden word,

The word that should have struck so deep in purpose,

And set so many doors of wish wide open,

You let it fall, and would not stoop for it,

And smiled at me, and would not let me guess

Whether you saw it fall. . . These things, together,

With other things, still slighter, wove to music,

And this in time drew up dark memories;

And there I stand. This music breaks and bleeds me,

Turning all frustrate dreams to chords and discords,

Faces and griefs, and words, and sunlit evenings,

And chains self-forged that will not break nor lengthen,

And cries that none can answer, few will hear.

Have these things meaning? Or would you see more clearly

If I should say 'My second wife grows tedious,

Or, like gay tulip, keeps no perfumed secret'?

Or 'one day dies eventless as another,

Leaving the seeker still unsatisfied,

And more convinced life yields no satisfaction'?

Or 'seek too hard, the sight at length grows callous,

And beauty shines in vain'?

These things you ask for,

These you shall have. . . So, talking with my first wife,

At the dark end of evening, when she leaned

And smiled at me, with blue eyes weaving webs

Of finest fire, revolving me in scarlet,

Calling to mind remote and small successions

Of countless other evenings ending so,

I smiled, and met her kiss, and wished her dead;

Dead of a sudden sickness, or by my hands

Savagely killed; I saw her in her coffin,

I saw her coffin borne downstairs with trouble,

I saw myself alone there, palely watching,

Wearing a masque of grief so deeply acted

That grief itself possessed me. Time would pass,

And I should meet this girl, my second wife

And drop the masque of grief for one of passion.

Forward we move to meet, half hesitating,

We drown in each others' eyes, we laugh, we talk,

Looking now here, now there, faintly pretending

We do not hear the powerful pulsing prelude

Roaring beneath our words . . . The time approaches.

We lean unbalanced. The mute last glance between us,

Profoundly searching, opening, asking, yielding,

Is steadily met: our two lives draw together . . .

. . . .'What are you thinking of?'. . . .My first wife's voice

Scattered these ghosts. 'Oh nothing, nothing much,

Just wondering where we'd be two years from now,

And what we might be doing . . . ' And then remorse

Turned sharply in my mind to sudden pity,

And pity to echoed love. And one more evening

Drew to the usual end of sleep and silence.

And, as it is with this, so too with all things.

The pages of our lives are blurred palimpsest:

New lines are wreathed on old lines half-erased,

And those on older still; and so forever.

The old shines through the new, and colors it.

What's new? What's old? All things have double meanings,

All things return. I write a line with passion

(Or touch a woman's hand, or plumb a doctrine)

Only to find the same thing, done before,

Only to know the same thing comes to-morrow. . . .

This curious riddled dream I dreamed last night,

Six years ago I dreamed it just as now;

The same man stooped to me; we rose from darkness,

And broke the accustomed order of our days,

And struck for the morning world, and warmth, and freedom. . . .

What does it mean? Why is this hint repeated?

What darkness does it spring from, seek to end?

You see me, then, pass up and down these stairways,

Now through a beam of light, and now through shadow,

Pursuing silent ends. No rest there is,

No more for me than you. I move here always,

From quiet room to room, from wall to wall,

Searching and plotting, weaving a web of days.

This is my house, and now, perhaps, you know me. . .

Yet I confess, for all my best intentions,

Once more I have deceived you. . . .I withhold

The one thing precious, the one dark thing that guides me;

And I have spread two snares for you, of lies.

IV. COUNTERPOINT: TWO ROOMS

He, in the room above, grown old and tired,

She, in the room below, his floor her ceiling,

Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light,

And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . .

She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night,

His watch, the same he has heard these cycles of ages,

Wearily chimes at seconds beneath his pillow.

The clock, upon her mantelpiece, strikes nine.

The night wears on. She hears dull steps above her.

The world whirs on. . . .New stars come up to shine.

His youth, far off, he sees it brightly walking

In a golden cloud. . . .Wings flashing about it. . . . Darkness

Walls it around with dripping enormous walls.

Old age, far off, her death, what do they matter?

Down the smooth purple night a streaked star falls.

She hears slow steps in the street, they chime like music;

They climb to her heart, they break and flower in beauty,

Along her veins they glisten and ring and burn. . . .

He hears his own slow steps tread down to silence.

Far off they pass. He knows they will never return.

Far off, on a smooth dark road, he hears them faintly.

The road, like a sombre river, quietly flowing,

Moves among murmurous walls. A deeper breath

Swells them to sound: he hears his steps more clearly.

And death seems nearer to him: or he to death.

What's death? She smiles. The cool stone hurts her elbows.

The last of the rain-drops gather and fall from elm-boughs,

She sees them glisten and break. The arc-lamp sings,

The new leaves dip in the warm wet air and fragrance.

A sparrow whirs to the eaves, and shakes his wings.

What's death, what's death? The spring returns like music,

The trees are like dark lovers who dream in starlight,

The soft grey clouds go over the stars like dreams.

The cool stone wounds her arms to pain, to pleasure.

Under the lamp a circle of wet street gleams. . . .

And death seems far away, a thing of roses,

A golden portal, where golden music closes,

Death seems far away:

And spring returns, the countless singing of lovers,

And spring returns to stay. . . .

He, in the room above, grown old and tired,

Flings himself on the bed, face down, in laughter,

And clenches his hands, and remembers, and desires to die.

And she, by the window, smiles at a night of starlight.

. . . The soft grey clouds go slowly across the sky.

V. THE BITTER LOVE-SONG

No, I shall not say why it is that I love you,

Why do you ask me, save for vanity?

Surely you would not have me, like a mirror,

Say 'yes, your hair curls darkly back from the temples,

Your mouth has a humorous, tremulous, half-shy sweetness,

Your eyes are April grey. . . .with jonquils in them?'

No, if I tell at all, I shall tell in silence . . .

I'll say, my childhood broke through chords of music

Or were they chords of sun? wherein fell shadows,

Or silences; I rose through seas of sunlight;

Or sometimes found a darkness stooped above me

With wings of death, and a face of cold clear beauty. .

I lay in the warm sweet grass on a blue May morning,

My chin in a dandelion, my hands in clover,

And drowsed there like a bee. . . .blue days behind me

Stretched like a chain of deep blue pools of magic,

Enchanted, silent, timeless. . . .days before me

Murmured of blue-sea mornings, noons of gold,

Green evenings streaked with lilac, bee-starred nights.

Confused soft clouds of music fled above me.

Sharp shafts of music dazzled my eyes and pierced me.

I ran and turned and spun and danced in the sunlight,

Shrank, sometimes, from the freezing silence of beauty,

Or crept once more to the warm white cave of sleep.

No, I shall not say 'this is why I praise you,

Because you say such wise things, or such foolish. . .'

You would not have me say what you know better?

Let me instead be silent, only saying:

My childhood lives in me, or half-lives, rather,

And, if I close my eyes cool chords of music

Flow up to me . . . long chords of wind and sunlight. . . .

Shadows of intricate vines on sunlit walls,

Deep bells beating, with aeons of blue between them,

Grass blades leagues apart with worlds between them,

Walls rushing up to heaven with stars upon them. . .

I lay in my bed and through the tall night window

Saw the green lightning plunging among the clouds,

And heard the harsh rain storm at the panes and roof. . . .

How should I know,,how should I now remember,

What half-dreamed great wings curved and sang above me?

What wings like swords? What eyes with the dread night in them?

This I shall say. I lay by the hot white sand-dunes. .

Small yellow flowers, sapless and squat and spiny,

Stared at the sky. And silently there above us

Day after day, beyond our dreams and knowledge,

Presences swept, and over us streamed their shadows,

Swift and blue, or dark. . . .What did they mean?

What sinister threat of power? What hint of beauty?

Prelude to what gigantic music, or subtle?

Only I know these things leaned over me,

Brooded upon me, paused, went flowing softly,

Glided and passed. I loved, I desired, I hated,

I struggled, I yielded and loved, was warmed to blossom . . .

You, when your eyes have evening sunlight in them,

Set these dunes before me, these salt bright flowers,

These presences. . . .I drowse, they stream above me,

I struggle, I yield and love, I am warmed to dream.

You are the window (if I could tell I'd tell you)

Through which I see a clear far world of sunlight.

You are the silence (if you could hear you'd hear me)

In which I remember a thin still whisper of singing.

It is not you I laugh for, you I touch!

My hands, that touch you, suddenly touch white cobwebs,

Coldly silvered, heavily silvered with dewdrops;

And clover, heavy with rain; and cold green grass. . .

VI. CINEMA

As evening falls,

The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls

Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,

Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.

How shall we live to-night, where shall we turn?

To what new light or darkness yearn?

A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;

And one by one in myriads we descend

By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades,

Through half-lit halls which reach no end. . . .

Take my arm, then, you or you or you,

And let us walk abroad on the solid air:

Look how the organist's head, in silhouette,

Leans to the lamplit music's orange square! . . .

The dim-globed lamps illumine rows of faces,

Rows of hands and arms and hungry eyes,

They have hurried down from a myriad secret places,

From windy chambers next to the skies. . . .

The music comes upon us. . . .it shakes the darkness,

It shakes the darkness in our minds. . . .

And brilliant figures suddenly fill the darkness,

Down the white shaft of light they run through darkness,

And in our hearts a dazzling dream unwinds . . .

Take my hand, then, walk with me

By the slow soundless crashings of a sea

Down miles on miles of glistening mirrorlike sand,

Take my hand

And walk with me once more by crumbling walls;

Up mouldering stairs where grey-stemmed ivy clings,

To hear forgotten bells, as evening falls,

Rippling above us invisibly their slowly widening rings. . . .

Did you once love me? Did you bear a name?

Did you once stand before me without shame? . . .

Take my hand: your face is one I know,

I loved you, long ago:

You are like music, long forgotten, suddenly come to mind;

You are like spring returned through snow.

Once, I know, I walked with you in starlight,

And many nights I slept and dreamed of you;

Come, let us climb once more these stairs of starlight,

This midnight stream of cloud-flung blue! . . .

Music murmurs beneath us like a sea,

And faints to a ghostly whisper . . . Come with me.

Are you still doubtful of me, hesitant still,

Fearful, perhaps, that I may yet remember

What you would gladly, if you could, forget?

You were unfaithful once, you met your lover;

Still in your heart you bear that red-eyed ember;

And I was silent, you remember my silence yet . . .

You knew, as well as I, I could not kill him,

Nor touch him with hot hands, nor yet with hate.

No, and it was not you I saw with anger.

Instead, I rose and beat at steel-walled fate,

Cried till I lay exhausted, sick, unfriended,

That life, so seeming sure, and love, so certain,

Should loose such tricks, be so abruptly ended,

Ring down so suddenly an unlooked-for curtain.

How could I find it in my heart to hurt you,

You, whom this love could hurt much more than I?

No, you were pitiful, and I gave you pity;

And only hated you when I saw you cry.

We were two dupes; if I could give forgiveness,

Had I the right, I should forgive you now . . .

We were two dupes . . . Come, let us walk in starlight,

And feed our griefs: we do not break, but bow.

Take my hand, then, come with me

By the white shadowy crashings of a sea . . .

Look how the long volutes of foam unfold

To spread their mottled shimmer along the sand! . . .

Take my hand,

Do not remember how these depths are cold,

Nor how, when you are dead,

Green leagues of sea will glimmer above your head.

You lean your face upon your hands and cry,

The blown sand whispers about your feet,

Terrible seems it now to die,

Terrible now, with life so incomplete,

To turn away from the balconies and the music,

The sunlit afternoons,

To hear behind you there a far-off laughter

Lost in a stirring of sand among dry dunes . . .

Die not sadly, you whom life has beaten!

Lift your face up, laughing, die like a queen!

Take cold flowers of foam in your warm white fingers!

Death's but a change of sky from blue to green . . .

As evening falls,

The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls

Tremble and glow . . . the music breathes upon us,

The rayed white shaft plays over our heads like magic,

And to and fro we move and lean and change . . .

You, in a world grown strange,

Laugh at a darkness, clench your hands despairing,

Smash your glass on a floor, no longer caring,

Sink suddenly down and cry . . .

You hear the applause that greets your latest rival,

You are forgotten: your rival, who knows? is I . . .

I laugh in the warm bright light of answering laughter,

I am inspired and young . . . and though I see

You sitting alone there, dark, with shut eyes crying,

I bask in the light, and in your hate of me . . .

Failure . . . well, the time comes soon or later . . .

The night must come . . . and I'll be one who clings,

Desperately, to hold the applause, one instant,

To keep some youngster waiting in the wings.

The music changes tone . . . a room is darkened,

Someone is moving . . . the crack of white light widens,

And all is dark again; till suddenly falls

A wandering disk of light on floor and walls,

Winks out, returns again, climbs and descends,

Gleams on a clock, a glass, shrinks back to darkness;

And then at last, in the chaos of that place,

Dazzles like frozen fire on your clear face.

Well, I have found you. We have met at last.

Now you shall not escape me: in your eyes

I see the horrible huddlings of your past,

All you remember blackens, utters cries,

Reaches far hands and faint. I hold the light

Close to your cheek, watch the pained pupils shrink,

Watch the vile ghosts of all you vilely think . . .

Now all the hatreds of my life have met

To hold high carnival . . . we do not speak,

My fingers find the well-loved throat they seek,

And press, and fling you down . . . and then forget.

Who plays for me? What sudden drums keep time

To the ecstatic rhythm of my crime?

What flute shrills out as moonlight strikes the floor? . .

What violin so faintly cries

Seeing how strangely in the moon he lies? . . .

The room grows dark once more,

The crack of white light narrows around the door,

And all is silent, except a slow complaining

Of flutes and violins, like music waning.

Take my hand, then, walk with me

By the slow soundless crashings of a sea . . .

Look, how white these shells are, on this sand!

Take my hand,

And watch the waves run inward from the sky

Line upon foaming line to plunge and die.

The music that bound our lives is lost behind us,

Paltry it seems . . . here in this wind-swung place

Motionless under the sky's vast vault of azure

We stand in a terror of beauty, face to face.

The dry grass creaks in the wind, the blown sand whispers,

The soft sand seethes on the dunes, the clear grains glisten,

Once they were rock . . . a chaos of golden boulders . . .

Now they are blown by the wind . . . we stand and listen

To the sliding of grain upon timeless grain

And feel our lives go past like a whisper of pain.

Have I not seen you, have we not met before

Here on this sun-and-sea-wrecked shore?

You shade your sea-gray eyes with a sunlit hand

And peer at me . . . far sea-gulls, in your eyes,

Flash in the sun, go down . . . I hear slow sand,

And shrink to nothing beneath blue brilliant skies . . .

* * * * *

The music ends. The screen grows dark. We hurry

To go our devious secret ways, forgetting

Those many lives . . . We loved, we laughed, we killed,

We danced in fire, we drowned in a whirl of sea-waves.

The flutes are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled.

Whose body have I found beside dark waters,

The cold white body, garlanded with sea-weed?

Staring with wide eyes at the sky?

I bent my head above it, and cried in silence.

Only the things I dreamed of heard my cry.

Once I loved, and she I loved was darkened.

Again I loved, and love itself was darkened.

Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days.

The screen at last grows dark, the flutes are silent.

The doors of night are closed. We go our ways.

VII.

The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.

The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:

And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.

A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.

Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,

The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,

And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.

The purple lights leap down the hill before him.

The gorgeous night has begun again.

'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,

I will hold my light above them and seek their faces,

I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins. . . . '

The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,

Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,

Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.

We hear him and take him among us like a wind of music,

Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;

We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,

We pour in a sinister mass, we ascend a stair,

With laughter and cry, with word upon murmured word,

We flow, we descend, we turn. . . . and the eternal dreamer

Moves on among us like light, like evening air . . .

Good night! good night! good night! we go our ways,

The rain runs over the pavement before our feet,

The cold rain falls, the rain sings.

We walk, we run, we ride. We turn our faces

To what the eternal evening brings.

Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,

We have built a tower of stone high into the sky.

We have built a city of towers.

Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.

Our souls are light. They have shaken a burden of hours. . . .

What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . .

Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .

And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;

Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;

And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.