Only part of the pattern would appear at once while the rest of it went on sounding from somewhere a long way off. When all the parts came together the poem was made. You felt as if you had made it long ago, and had forgotten it and remembered.
III.
The room held her close, cold and white, a nun's cell. If you counted the window-place it was shaped like a cross. The door at the foot, the window at the head, bookshelves at the end of each arm. A kitchen lamp with a tin reflector, on a table, stood in the breast of the cross. Its flame was so small that she had to turn it on to her work like a lantern.
"Dumpetty, dumpetty dum. Tell them that Bion is dead; he is dead, young Bion, the shepherd. And with him music is dead and Dorian poetry perished—"
She had the conceited, exciting thought: "I am translating Moschus, the
Funeral Song for Bion."
Moschus was Bion's friend. She wondered whether he had been happy or unhappy, making his funeral song.
If you could translate it all: if you could only make patterns out of
English sounds that had the hardness and stillness of the Greek.
"'Archet', Sikelikai, to pentheos, archet' Moisai,
adones hai pukinoisin oduramenai poti phullois.'"
The wind picked at the pane. Through her thick tweed coat she could feel the air of the room soak like cold water to her skin. She curved her aching hands over the hot globe of the lamp.
—Oduromenai. Mourning? No. You thought of black crape, bunched up weepers, red faces.