Irradiations; Sand and Spray

by John Gould Fletcher

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CONTENTS
[IRRADIATIONS]
[EPILOGUE]
[SAND AND SPRAY (A SEA-SYMPHONY)]
[PART I. THE GALE]
[PART II. VARIATIONS]
[(1) SAILBOATS]
[(2) THE TIDE]
[(3) THE SANDS]
[(4) THE GULLS]
[(5) STEAMERS]
[(6) NIGHT OF STARS]
[PART III. VARIATIONS]
[(1) THE GROUNDSWELL]
[(2) SNOW AT SEA]
[(3) THE NIGHT WIND]
[(4) THE WRECK]
[(5) TIDE OF STORMS]
[PART IV. THE CALM]

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IRRADIATIONS

I
The spattering of the rain upon pale terraces
Of afternoon is like the passing of a dream
Amid the roses shuddering 'gainst the wet green stalks
Of the streaming trees—the passing of the wind
Upon the pale lower terraces of my dream
Is like the crinkling of the wet grey robes
Of the hours that come to turn over the urn
Of the day and spill its rainy dream.
Vague movement over the puddled terraces:
Heavy gold pennons—a pomp of solemn gardens
Half hidden under the liquid veil of spring:
Far trumpets like a vague rout of faded roses
Burst 'gainst the wet green silence of distant forests:
A clash of cymbals—then the swift swaying footsteps
Of the wind that undulates along the languid terraces.
Pools of rain—the vacant terraces
Wet, chill and glistening
Towards the sunset beyond the broken doors of to-day.
II
Gaunt sails—bronze boats of the evening—
Float along the river where aloft
Like dim swans the clouds die
Softly.
I am afraid to traverse the long still streets of evening;
For I fear to see the ghosts that stare at me
From the shadows.
I will stay indoors instead and await my wandering dream.
She is about me, fluid yet, and formless;
The wind in her hair whispers like dim violins:
And the faint glint of her eyes shifts like a sudden movement
Over the surface of a dark pool.
She comes to me slowly down the lost streets of the evening,
And their immutable silence is in her feet.
Let no lamps flare—be still, my heart—hands, stay:
For I would touch the lips of my new love with my lips.
III
In the grey skirts of the fog seamews skirl desolately,
And flick like bits of paper propelled by a wind
About the flabby sails of a departing ship
Crawling slowly down the low reaches
Of the river.
About the keel there is a bubbling and gurgling
Of grumpy water;
And as the prow noses out a way for itself,
It seems to weave a dream of bubbles and flashing foam,
A dream of strange islands whereto it is bound:
Pear-islands drenched with the dawn.
The palms flash under the immense dark sky,
Down which the sun dives to embrace the earth:
Drums boom and conches bray,
And with a crash of crimson cymbals
Suddenly appears above the polished backs of slaves
A king in a breastplate of gold
Gigantic
Amid tossed roses and swaying dancers
That melt into pale undulations and muffled echoes
'Mid the bubbling of the muddy lumpy water,
And the swirling of the seamews above the sullen river.
IV
The iridescent vibrations of midsummer light
Dancing, dancing, suddenly flickering and quivering
Like little feet or the movement of quick hands clapping,
Or the rustle of furbelows or the clash of polished gems.
The palpitant mosaic of the midday light
Colliding, sliding, leaping and lingering:
O, I could lie on my back all day,
And mark the mad ballet of the midsummer sky.
V
Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds;
Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street.
Whirlpools of purple and gold,
Winds from the mountains of cinnabar,
Lacquered mandarin moments, palanquins swaying and balancing
Amid the vermilion pavilions, against the jade balustrades.
Glint of the glittering wings of dragon-flies in the light:
Silver filaments, golden flakes settling downwards,
Rippling, quivering flutters, repulse and surrender,
The sun broidered upon the rain,
The rain rustling with the sun.
Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds;
Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street.
VI
The balancing of gaudy broad pavilions
Of summer against the insolent breeze:
The bellying of the sides of striped tents,
Swelling taut, shuddering in quick collapse,
Silent under the silence of the sky.
Earth is streaked and spotted
With great splashes and dapples of sunlight:
The sun throws an immense circle of hot light upon the world,
Rolling slowly in ponderous rhythm
Darkly, musically forward.
All is silent under the steep cone of afternoon:
The sky is imperturbably profound.
The ultimate divine union seems about to be accomplished,
All is troubled at the attainment
Of the inexhaustible infinite.
The rolling and the tossing of the sides of immense pavilions
Under the whirling wind that screams up the cloudless sky.
VII
Flickering of incessant rain
On flashing pavements:
Sudden scurry of umbrellas:
Bending, recurved blossoms of the storm.
The winds came clanging and clattering
From long white highroads whipping in ribbons up summits:
They strew upon the city gusty wafts of appleblossom,
And the rustling of innumerable translucent leaves.
Uneven tinkling, the lazy rain
Dripping from the eaves.
VIII
The fountain blows its breathless spray
From me to you and back to me.
Whipped, tossed, curdled,
Crashing, quivering:
I hurl kisses like blows upon your lips.
The dance of a bee drunken with sunlight:
Irradiant ecstasies, white and gold,
Sigh and relapse.
The fountain tosses pallid spray
Far in the sorrowful, silent sky.
IX
The houses of the city no longer hum and play:
They lie like careless drowsy giants, dumb, estranged.
One presses to his breast his toy, a lighted pane:
One stirs uneasily: one is cold in death.
And the late moon, fearfully peering over an immense shoulder,
Sees, in the shadow below, the unpeopled hush of a street.
X
The trees, like great jade elephants,
Chained, stamp and shake 'neath the gadflies of the breeze
The trees lunge and plunge, unruly elephants:
The clouds are their crimson howdah-canopies,
The sunlight glints like the golden robe of a Shah.
Would I were tossed on the wrinkled backs of those trees
XI
The clouds are like a sombre sea:
On shining screens of ebony
Are carven marvels of my heart.
'Gainst crimson placques of cinnabar
Shrills, like a diamond, dawn's last star.
The gardens of my heart are green:
The rain drips off the glistening leaves.
In the humid gardens of my soul,
The crimson peonies explode.
I am like a drop of rose-flushed rain,
Clinging to crimson petals of love.
In the afternoon, over gold screens,
I will brush the blue dust of my dreams.
XII
The pine, rough-bearded Pan of the woods
Whispered in my ear his sleepy-sweet song.
Like liquid fire it ran through my veins.
Thus he piped: Sad, lonely son of the woods,
Lie down in the long still grass and sleep,
Ere the dawn has hidden her swelling breasts,
Ere the morning has covered her massive flanks,
With the flame-coloured mantle of noon.
Lie down in the dewless grass nor awake
To see whether afternoon has hurried in
From the rim of her purple robe dropping dim flowers
Golden flowers with pollen-dusty cups,
Flowers of silence. Heed not though eve
Should sail, a grey swan, in the pool of the sky,
Spreading low ripples. Heed these not!
Only awake when slim twilight
Plunges her body in the last blown spray of the sun!
Awake, then, for twilight and dawn are your day:
Therefore lie down in the long dim grass and sleep,
And I will blow my low pipes over you.
XIII
As I went through the city by day
I saw shadows in sunlight:
But in the night I saw everywhere
Stars within the darkness.
(A coldly fluting breeze:
Dark Pan under the trees.
Low laughter: up the sky
A star like a street-lamp left on high.)
As I went through the city by day
I was hustled by jostling people.
But in the night, the wind of the darkness
Whispered, "Hush!" to my soul.
XIV
Brown bed of earth, still fresh and warm with love,
Now hold me tight:
Broad field of sky, where the clouds laughing move,
Fill up my pores with light:
You trees, now talk to me, chatter and scold or weep,
Or drowsing stand:
You winds, now play with me, you wild things creep,
You boulders, bruise my hand!
I now am yours and you are mine: it matters not
What Gods herein I see:
You grow in me, I am rooted to this spot,
We drink and pass the cup, immortally.
XV
O seeded grass, you army of little men
Crawling up the long slope with quivering, quick blades of steel:
You who storm millions of graves, tiny green tentacles of Earth,
Interlace yourselves tightly over my heart,
And do not let me go:
For I would lie here forever and watch with one eye
The pilgrimaging ants in your dull, savage jungles,
The while with the other I see the stiff lines of the slope
Break in mid-air, a wave surprisingly arrested,
And above them, wavering, dancing, bodiless, colourless, unreal,
The long thin lazy fingers of the heat.
XVI
An ant crawling up a grass-blade,
And above it, the sky.
I shall remember these when I die:
An ant and a butterfly
And the sky.
The grass is full of forget-me-nots and poppies:
Through the air darts many a fly.
The ant toils up its grass-blade,
The careless hours go by.
The grass-blades bow to the feet of the lazy hours:
They walk out of the wood, showering shadows on flowers.
Their robes flutter vaguely far off there in the clearing:
I see them sometimes from the corner of my eye.
XVII
The wind that drives the fine dry sand
Across the strand:
The sad wind spinning arabesques
With a wrinkled hand.
Labyrinths of shifting sand,
The dancing dunes!
I will arise and run with the sand,
And gather it greedily in my hand:
I will wriggle like a long yellow snake over the beaches.
I will lie curled up, sleeping,
And the wind shall chase me
Far inland.
My breath is the music of the mad wind;
Shrill piping, stamping of drunken feet,
The fluttering, tattered broidery flung
Over the dunes' steep escarpments.
The fine dry sand that whistles
Down the long low beaches.
XVIII
Blue, brown, blue: sky, sand, sea:
I swell to your immensity.
I will run over the endless beach,
I will shout to the breaking spray,
I will touch the sky with my fingers.
My happiness is like this sand:
I let it run out of my hand.
XIX
The clouds pass
Over the polished mirror of the sky:
The clouds pass, puffs of grey,
There is no star.
The clouds pass slowly:
Suddenly a disengaged star flashes.
The night is cold and the clouds
Roll slowly over the sky.
XX
I dance:
I exist in motion:
A wind-shaken flower spilling my drops in the sunlight.
I feel the muscles bending, relaxing beneath me;
I direct the rippling sweep of the lines of my body;
Its impact crashes through the thin walls of the atmosphere,
I dance.
About me whirls
The sombre hall, the gaudy stage, the harsh glare of the footlights,
And in the brains of thousands watching
Little flames leap quivering to the music of my effort.
I have danced:
I have expressed my soul
In unbroken rhythm,
Sorrow, and flame.
I am tired: I would be extinguished beneath your beating hands.
XXI
Not noisily, but solemnly and pale,
In a meditative ecstasy you entered life:
As performing some strange rite, to which you alone held the clue.
Child, life did not give rude strength to you;
from the beginning, you would seem to have thrown away,
As something cold and cumbersome, that armour men use against death.
You would perhaps look on him face to face, and so learn the secret
Whether that face wears oftenest a smile or no?
Strange, old, and silent being, there is something
Infinitely vast in your intense tininess:
I think you could point out, with a smile, some curious star
Far off in the heavens, which no man has seen before.
XXII
The morning is clean and blue and the wind blows up the clouds:
Now my thoughts gathered from afar
Once again in their patched armour, with rusty plumes and blunted swords,
Move out to war.
Smoking our morning pipes we shall ride two and two
Through the woods.
For our old cause keeps us together,
And our hatred is so precious not death or defeat can break it.
God willing, we shall this day meet that old enemy
Who has given us so many a good beating.
Thank God we have a cause worth fighting for,
And a cause worth losing and a good song to sing.
XXIII
Torridly the moon rolls upward
Against the smooth immensity of midsummer sky,
Changeless, inexhaustible:
The city beneath is still:
Heaven and Earth are clasped together,
Momently life grows as careless
As the life of the intense stars.
Out of the houses climbing,
Fuming up windows, flickering from every roof-top,
Rigid on sonorous pinnacles,
Silently swirl aloft
Love's infinite flamelets.
XXIV
O all you stars up yonder,
Do you hear me? Beautiful, winking, sullen eyes,
I am tired of seeing you in the same old places,
Night after night in the sky.
I hoped you would dance—but after twenty-six years,
I find you are determined to stay as you are.
So I make it known to you, stars clustered or solitary,
That I want you to fall into my lap to-night.
Come down, little stars, let me play with you:
I will string you like beads, and shovel you together,
And wear you in my ears, and scatter you over people—
And toss you back, like apples, if I choose.
XXV
As I wandered over the city through the night,
I saw many strange things:
But I have forgotten all
Except one painted face.
Gaudy, shameless night-orchid,
Heavy, flushed, sticky with narcotic perfume,
There was something in you which made me prefer you
Above all the feeble forget-me-nots of the world.
You were neither burnt out nor pallid,
There was plain, coarse, vulgar meaning in every line of you
And no make-believe:
You were at least alive,
When all the rest were but puppets of the night.
XXVI
Slowly along the lamp-emblazoned street,
Amid the last sad drifting crowds of midnight
Like lost souls wandering,
Comes marching by solemnly
As for some gem-bedecked ritual of old,
A monotonous procession of black carts
Full crowded with blood-red blossom:
Scarlet geraniums
Unfolding their fiery globes upon the night.
These are the memories of day moulded in jagged flame:
Lust, joy, blood, and death.
With crushed hands, weary eyes, and hoarse clamour,
We consecrate and acclaim them tumultuously
Ere they pass, contemptuous, beyond the unpierced veil of silence.
XXVII
I think there was an hour in which God laughed at me,
For as I passed along the street,
saw that all the women—although their bodies were dexterously concealed—
Were thinking with all their might what men were like:
And the men, mechanically correct, cigars at lips,
Were wanting to rush at the women,
But were restrained by respectability or timidity,
Or fear of the consequences or vanity or some puerile dream
Of a pale ideal lost in the vast grey sky.
So I said to myself, it is time to end all this:
I will take the first woman that comes along.
And then God laughed at me—and I too smiled
To see that He was in such good humour and that the sun was shining.
XXVIII
I remember, there was a day
During which I did not write a line of verse:
Nor did I speak a word to any woman,
Nor did I meet with death.
Yet all that day I was fully occupied:
My eyes saw trees, clouds, streets, houses, people;
My lungs breathed air;
My mouth swallowed food and drink;
My hands seized things, my feet touched earth,
Or spurned it at my desire.
On that day I know I would have been sufficiently happy,
If I could have kept my brain from bothering at all
About my next trite poem;
About the tedious necessities of sex;
And about the day on which I would at last meet death.
XXIX
It is evening, and the earth
Wraps her shoulders in an old blue shawl.
Afar off there clink the polychrome points of the stars,
Indefatigable, after all these years!
Here upon earth there is life, and then death,
Dawn, and later nightfall,
Fire, and the quenching of embers:
But why should I not remember that my night is dawn in another part of
the world,
If the idea fits my fancy?
Dawns of marvellous light, wakeful, sleepy, weary, dancing dawns,
You are rose petals settling through the blue of my evening:
I light my pipe to salute you,
And sit puffing smoke in the air and never say a word.
XXX
I have seemed often feeble and useless to myself,
And many times I have wished that the tedium of my life
Lay at last dissolved in the cold acid of death:
Yet I have not forgotten
The sparkling of waters in the sunlight,
The sound of a woman's voice,
Gliding dancers,
Chanting worshippers,
A child crying,
The wind amid the hills.
These I can remember,
And I think they are more of me
Than the wrinkles on my face and the hungry ache at my heart.
XXXI
My stiff-spread arms
Break into sudden gesture;
My feet seize upon the rhythm;
My hands drag it upwards:
Thus I create the dance.
I drink of the red bowl of the sunlight:
I swim through seas of rain:
I dig my toes into earth:
I taste the smack of the wind:
I am myself:
I live.
The temples of the gods are forgotten or in ruins:
Professors are still arguing about the past and the future:
I am sick of reading marginal notes on life,
I am weary of following false banners:
I desire nothing more intensely or completely than this present;
There is nothing about me you are more likely to notice than my being:
Let me therefore rejoice silently,
A golden butterfly glancing against an unflecked wall.
XXXII
Today you shall have but little song from me,
For I belong to the sunlight.
This I would not barter for any kingdom.
I am a wheeling swallow,
Blue all over is my delight.
I am a drowsy grass-blade
In the greenest shadow.
XXXIII
My desire goes bristling and growling like an angry leopard;
My ribs are a hollow grating, my hair is coarse and hard,
My flanks are like sharp iron wedges, my eyes glitter as chill glass;
Down below there are the meadows where my famished hopes are feeding,
I will waylay them to windward, stalking in watchful patience,
I will pounce upon them, plunging my muzzle in the hot spurt of their
blood.
XXXIV
The flag let loose for a day of festivity;
Free desperate symbol of battle and desire,
Leaping, lunging, tossing up the halyards;
Below it a tumult of music,
Above it the streaming wastes of the sky,
Pinnacles of clouds, pyres of dawn,
Infinite effort, everlasting day.
The immense flag waving
Aloft in glory:
Over seas and hilltops
Transmitting its lightnings.
XXXV
What weave you, what spin you,
What wonder win you,
You looms of desire?
Sin that is splendour,
Love that is shameless,
Life that is glory,
Life that is all.
XXXVI
Like cataracts that crash from a crumbling crag
Into the dull-blue smouldering gulf of a lake below,
Landlocked amid the mountains, so my soul
Was a gorge that was filled with the warring echoes of song.
Of old, they wore
Shining armour, and banners of broad gold they bore:
Now they drift, like a wild bird's cry,
Downwards from chill summits of the sky.
Fountains of flashing joy were their source afar;
Now they lie still, to mirror every star.
In circles of opal, ruby, blue, out-thrown,
They drift down to a dull, dark monotone.
Pluck the loose strings, singer,
Thrum the strings;
For the wind brings distant, drowsy bells of song.
Loose the plucked string, poet,
Spurn the strings,
For the echoes of memory float through the gulf for long.
My songs seem now one humming note afar:
Light as ether, quivering 'twixt star and star,
But yet, so still
I know not whence they come, if mine they are.
Yet that low note
Increases in force as if it said, "I will":
Kindled by God's fierce breath, it would the whole world fill.
Till steadily outwards thrown,
By trumpets blazoned, from the sky downblown,
It grows a vast march, massive, monotonous, known
Of old gold trumpeteers
Through infinite years:
Bursting the white, thronged vaults of the cool sky.
Till hurtling down there falls one mad black hammer-blow:
Then the chained echoes in their maniac woe
Are loosed against the silence, to shriek uncannily.
The strings shiver faintly, poet:
Strike the strings,
Speed the song:
Tremulous upward rush of wheeling, whirling wings.
EPILOGUE
The barking of little dogs in the night is more remembered than
the shining of the stars:
Only those who watch for long may see the moon rise:
And they are mad ever after and go with blind eyes
Nosing hungrily in the gutter for the scraps that men throw to the dogs;
Few heed their babblings.

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SAND AND SPRAY

A SEA-SYMPHONY

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PART I. THE GALE
Allegro furioso.
Pale green-white, in a gallop across the sky,
The clouds retreating from a perilous affray
Carry the moon with them, a heavy sack of gold;
Sharp arrows, stars between them shoot and play.
The wind, as it strikes the sand,
Clutches with rigid hands
And tears from them
Thin ribbons of pallid sleet,
Long stinging hissing drift,
Which it trails up inland.
I lean against the bitter wind:
My body plunges like a ship.
Out there I see grey breakers rise,
Their ravelled beards are white,
And foam is in their eyes.
My heart is blown from me tonight
To be transfixed by all the stars.
Steadily the wind
Rages up the shore:
In the trees it roars and battles,
With rattling drums
And heavy spears,
Towards the housefronts on it comes.
The village, a loose mass outflung,
Breaks its path.
Between the walls
It bounces, tosses in its wrath.
It is broken, it is lost.
With green-grey eyes,
With whirling arms,
With clashing feet,
With bellowing lungs,
Pale green-white in a gallop across the sky,
The wind comes.
The great gale of the winter flings himself flat upon earth.
He hurriedly scribbles on the sand
His transient tragic destiny.