RED SYMPHONY
I
Over the ink-black cauldron of the sea,
Heavily, on wings of leaden cloud,
Howling the sunset
Races out to assail me.
Long have I voyaged,
Night after night the grey rains swept the sea:
The heaving breakers
Hissed and quivered but held no light.
Now my voyage is ending,
White storm winds have swept bare my soul;
With their harsh laughter,
Their maddening mockery,
Their bayonet-thrusts of despair.
Over the keen, clean-swept zenith
Roll crushingly, huge masses of cloud:
Dull, ponderous, sagging with the burden
Of creaking snow.
They drop flat on the sea,
They hang menacing over me,
They festoon the sun
With swags of crimson light.
They stripe the horizon,
They bar every way with their iron tongues;
They loom weltering over my effort,
They steadfastly close me in.
Meanwhile the sun
With dying force
Wrenches one little crack
In the midst of the sagging masses,
And I steer on to it.
Like a crimson lake
The light overflows and touches the bulging surfaces
With carmine, with scarlet,
With orange, with vermillion,
With brick red, with bluish purple,
With maroon, with rose, with russet,
With savage green, with snowy blue,
With grey, with ebony, with gold.
It is the storm of the evening
That races out shrieking
To assail me,
And I hail it.
II
The sky's vast emptiness
Is crowded with fragments colliding,
Ragged, splintered masses
Swirling away to the night.
The volcano of the sun
Has burst and split its crater:
Black slag is hurled to the zenith
Above the red lava-sea.
Black shrivelled, charred fragments
Fall into the scarlet torrent:
Huge tresses of darkness sweep over my face,
Leaving me choking.
The sea is one crimson steaming fire;
Each fanged wavelet
Flickers and dances about the one behind it,
Hungrily licking at the ship.
Fierce whirling swords,
Tossed spear-heads lancelike
Spit and stab, then suddenly fall
Leaving me there
On a rolling summit of flame, facing a gulf of despair.
The ship
Lurches
With ice-crusted prow into the wave-trough;
And rises, rapidly dripping liquid lire,
Long twisted necklaces, that burn out to green frozen chrysolite.
III
Over my head a bell beats: it is midnight.
Perhaps I will live to the dawn.
About me are the mouths of yawning furnaces
And from these scarlet mouths the heat outpours,
And darts and licks its dry tongues at my brain
Till it, too, seems a black shell almost bursting
With the force of flame in it.
Still, wearily, I swing my shovel,
Spattering the black coal over the palates
Of the snoring mouths which rapidly swallow.
There is nothing else to do.
My legs seem melting away in sweat beneath me:
In my body my lungs and heart are fighting for air,
My eyes are seared by the appalling scarlet,
Of the furnaces about me—I scarcely-see them—My
shovelfuls fall short with every swing.
Without I hear the battering of the tempest,
The ship is pounded sideways by black immeasurable wave-thrusts,
And rising dizzily again, like a half-senseless fighter,
Is again sent downwards, by those unseen fists.
My shovel rises to the ship's slow recovery,
My shovel shoots out at the smash of toppling masses,
Sometimes I pause and pant for an endless instant,
While the ship crouches, quivering.
Over my head a bell beats: it is morning.
Wearily I drop the shovel,
And drag myself to the deck.
IV
Afar
There is something that seems a shore;
The sky has been blown clean of clouds except to westward,
And these stare hard at me, like huge sardonyx towers.
I cling to a half-shattered rail that reels and dances,
Soused by the choking water,
My face a streaming mass of blood and salt and grime,
I wait and dizzily I try to remember.
What is this city that out there awaits me?
Am I its conqueror?
Will scarlet flags hang fluttering in the streets
To greet my coming?
Will crimson lanterns
Jingle and toss in festival to-night?
Has the fire burned the ship and is the water
But stinging icy fire,
That whips and sears my face?
Down there the furnaces go out, for the water
Sloshes about the floor;
And steaming acrid fumes arise,
No living soul could stay in such a place.
Out here the decks are shattered,
The boats are shorn away,
And far on the horizon,
The city glares with its sardonyx towers.
Now the red bells,
The black-red bells,
The storm bells,
Break loose from the horizon,
Leaping upon the eastern sea,
And breaking it in their teeth.
The towers
Infuriate, enkindle
From base to summit,
In layers, and orange terraces,
Against the blue snow haze that drifts down on them from the east.
The ship of my soul
Is rolling to port at last,
With one clang from its heaving boilers,
One sigh from its shaking funnels,
One rattle from its loosened chains.
I will lash myself to the masthead
And wait
Empty-eyed and open-mouthed,
Till the city that is all one scarlet flame of death
Takes me to itself at last.
VIOLET SYMPHONY
I
But yesterday
Moonsails were raking high the harbour of my dreams.
Dull night of trees,
Dark sorrows drooping,
Glittering raindrops gleam on you
In recollection
Of my despair.
But yesterday
Stardust was scattered deep on the dark gulf of my dreams.
Wind of the night,
Questing, swaying, calling,
Rustle of dull grasses,
Why do you trouble me?
Yesterday
Purple mist was powdered on the windless sea of dreams.
Faces of the night that pass me,
Haggard, monotonous faces,
Windblown hair and lustful lips,
I am not what you desire.
Yesterday
One—two—sails above the mist—.
Windswallows that hover
Towards the rainclouds of the horizon,
Out of the reedy harbours
Rocking, swaying, falling,
Blown to sea and parted
Yesterday,
Yesterday.
II
Purple-blue bloom of night,
Globed grapes clustered morosely
Down the dark vineyards of untrodden streets:
The noise of the moments is like the clash of the hoofs of a horse
rattling,
Thin tattoo in the stillness:
The noise of the moments takes me, uncaring,
Towards the day.
With brassy crash, dawn's corybants
Invade and trample the vineyard:
Like a faun I hide and watch them,
A dark cup in my hand.
Spoilers of my vineyard,
Spilling the lees of my sweet red wine,
You will yet ask in vain for a cup that is not yours,
A purple, dewy cup of lonely night.
Tramplers in the morning,
Sunburnt faces and weary lips,
There is yet a cup here you cannot have,
I hold it in my hands.
Would you drink of it?
Lay down your thyrse and timbrel.
Break the harsh dance that flickers through the morning,
Forget the scarlet perfumes of the day.
Remember only starless night, cool swish of many seas.
Faint pearl-glow of evening,
Cool marble in the silence:
Purple-blue grapes of night crushed freshly,
Deep sleep and the drowsy stars.
III
I love the night that in long violet shroud
Slowly and lovingly wraps up the day,
Hiding its blurred imperfections
In endless tenderness.
I love the day's
High violet cone of light,
With thin haze on the horizon
Like a wavering summer sea.
But most of all I love midsummer dawn,
When far-off planes of light ascend and tremble together
Like distant purple waves, the sound of whose dim breaking
Is lost in the wild babel of awaking birds.
IV
Twisted fragments of violet paper,
The dawn drops you
Into the green bowl filled with the day's grey waves.
I love the night's
Deep purple grapes
That yesterday
Were crushed and spilled,
In long and sluggish rivers
That joined and made a sea,
Where, half-guessed through the mist,
Two golden sails
Drifted on silently.
The blue fume of my dreams
Is laced with violet flame.
One golden sail alone came back to rest
In its nest
Among the reeds.
The other sail is lost;
Behind the mist,
Beyond the craggy rock,
About which race in jagged white
The waves,
Horizon on horizon far away
She waits.
But through the day,
Comes no faint song, nor creaking of the ropes.
Twisted fragments of violet paper,
Charred and fallen:
Out of the green bowl lazily coils grey smoke.
GREY SYMPHONY
I
Up on the hillside a long row of larches
Shake from their grizzled Beards the vestiges of rain,
From grey-blue melting ice-slabs 'neath their arches
The spring goes up again.
Writhing, exuding,
Up-steaming, streaming,
The earth is breathing to the sky
Wet clouds of spring.
Dim rosy fans, the trees
As they flick to and fro,
Seem driving greyish vapour
Over the snow.
The sky remodulates itself
From violet-grey to blue,
Under the upturned eaves of the blue larches
The sun looks through.
Now with the heat of the sun
The grey-blue ice-slabs quiver,
They slide in muddy trickles
Towards the river.
Up on the hillside between the long row of larches
Fume up from south pale clouds that bear the rain;
In pearl and violet arches
They break and shape again.
II
I have seen in the evening
The greyish-violet clouds
Roll wearily back from northward
To the place whence first they came.
One or two orange lamps burnt low
Against deep purple hills—
The wind was hurrying, bundling them together,
The pines awoke to sing
The song of the snow buzzing and screaming
On its one string.
I have seen within my heart
Crocuses, purple and gold,
Drop cold and dull and colourless
Beneath the snow.
One or two orange lamps burnt low,
Vain memories.
The wind has driven me too many winters,
My songs are snowflakes whirling about my breast.
I will wrap my frozen and bitter songs about me,
In one grey drift, and rest.
III
Fluttering and soft the snow
Flings outward, swirls and settles,
But when I try to seize it,
The wind tears it away.
Through poised green platforms of enormous pines,
I see far hilltops pushing up blue roofs.
Snow comes,
And hums
Through the woof
Of the lower branches.
It skips and dances:
It drops in sluggish folds
Of grey,
To where the frozen rhododendron bushes
With lower air-gusts play,
And the earth hushes
Its movement.
Fluttering and soft the snow is blent
In long loose spirals with my dream.
It is all I have, the snow,
And I know
That when I chase it, it will fly from me;
Beyond the lifeless green,
Beyond the low blue hills,
Beyond the pale straw-coloured glare,
Down in the west
It goes;
Straight southward where the purple-orange flare
Of sunset flows,
And into the blackened heart of my last rose
Pours its despair.
Fluttering, soft, and dim
Regrets that skip and skim
Grey in the grey twilight;
Slim and weary whirls the snow,
And where it goes I too shall go.
IV
Of my long nights afar in alien cities
I have remembered only this:
They were black scarves all dusted over with silver,
In which I wrapped my dreams;
They were black screens on which I made those pictures
That faded out next day.
Youth without glory, manhood one mad struggle,
Maturity a battle without trumpet calls:
Long gleams from pallid suns seen only in my dreaming
Struck those dissolving walls.
And of my days,
I only know
They slipped and fell,
Like too-brief sunsets,
Into the hill-ravines that held the snow.
Three lofty pines
At the corners of my heart
Waited, apart.
They only see
In the mystery
Of the grey sky,
The jaggled clouds that fly,
Endlessly.
POPPIES OF THE RED YEAR
(A Symphony in Scarlet)
I
The words that I have written
To me become as poppies:
Deep angry disks of scarlet flame full-glowing in the stillness
Of a shut room.
Silken their edges undulate out to me,
Drooping on their hairy stems;
Flaring like folded shawls, down-curved like rockets starting
To break and shatter their light.
Wide-flaunting and heavy, crinkle-lipped blossom,
Darting faint shivers through me;
Globed Chinese lanterns on green silk cords a-swaying
Over motionless pools.
These are lamps of a festival of sleep held each night to welcome me,
Crimson-bursting through dark doors.
Out to the dull, blue, heavy fumes of opium rolling
From their rent red hearts, I go to seek my dream.
II
A riven wall like a face half torn away
Stares blankly at the evening:
And from a window like a crooked mouth
It barks at the sunset sky.
And over there, beyond,
On plains where night has settled,
Ten-like encampments of vaporous blue smoke or mist,
Three men are riding.
One of them looks and sees the sky:
One of them looks and sees the earth:
The last one looks and sees nothing at all.
They ride on.
One of them pauses and says, "It is death."
Another pauses and says, "It is life."
The last one pauses and says, "'Tis a dream."
His bridle shakes.
The sky
Is filled with oval violet-tinted clouds
Through which the sun long settled strikes at random,
Enkindling here and there blotched circles of rosy light.
These are poppies,
Unclosing immense corollas,
Waving the horsemen on.
Over the earth, upheaving, folding,
They ride: their bridles shake:
One of them sees the sky is red:
One of them sees the earth is dark:
The last man sees he rides to his death,
Yet he says nothing at all.
III
There will be no harvest at all this year;
For the gaunt black slopes arising
Lift the wrinkled aching furrows of their fields, falling away,
To the rainy sky in vain.
But in the furrows
There is grass and many flowers.
Scarlet tossing poppies
Flutter their wind-slashed edges,
On which gorged black flies poise and sway in drunken sleep.
The black flies hang
Above the tangled trampled grasses,
Grey, crumpled bundles lie in them:
They sprawl,
Heave faintly;
And between their stiffened fingers,
Run out clogged crimson trickles,
Spattering the poppies and standing in beads on the grass.
IV
I saw last night
Sudden puffs of flame in the northern sky.
The sky was an even expanse of rolling grey smoke,
Lit faintly by the moon that hung
Its white face in a dead tree to the east.
Within the depths of greenish greyish smoke
Were roars,
Crackles and spheres of vapour,
And then
Huge disks of crimson shooting up, falling away.
And I said these are flower petals,
Sleep petals, dream petals,
Blown by the winds of a dream.
But still the crimson rockets rose.
They seemed to be
One great field of immense poppies burning evenly,
Casting their viscid perfume to the earth.
The earth is sown with dead,
And out of these the red
Blooms are pushing up, advancing higher,
And each night brings them nigher,
Closer, closer to my heart.
V
By the sluggish canal
That winds between thin ugly dunes,
There are no passing boats with creaking ropes to-day.
But when the evening
Crouches down, like a hurt rabbit,
Under the everlasting raincloud whirling up the north horizon,
Downwards on the stream will float
Glowing points of fire.
Orange, coppery, scarlet,
Crimson, rosy, flickering,
They pass, the lanterns
Of the unknown dead.
Out where the sea, sailless,
Is mouthing and fretting
Its chaos of pebbles and dried sticks by the dunes.
By the wall of that house
That looks like a face half torn away,
And from its flat mouth barks at the sky,
The sky which is shot with broad red disks of light,
Petals drowsily falling.
VI
"It was not for a sacred cause,
Nor for faith, nor for new generations,
That unburied we roll and float
Beneath this flaming tumult of drunken sleep-flowers.
But it was for a mad adventure,
Something we longed for, poisonous, seductive,
That we dared go out in the night together,
Towards the glow that called us,
On the unsown fields of death.
"Now we lie here reaped, ungarnered,
Red swaths of a new harvest:
But you who follow after,
Must struggle with our dream:
And out of its restless and oppressive night,
Filled with blue fumes, dull, choking,
You will draw hints of that vision
Which we hold aloof in silence."
THE END