The Heart Is Strange: New Selected Poems Read online

  Hopes marriage will preserve him from his fans.

  News of one day, one afternoon, one time.

  If it were possible to take these things

  Quite seriously, I believe they might

  Curry disorder in the strongest brain,

  Immobilize the most resilient will,

  Stop trains, break up the city’s food supply,

  And perfectly demoralize the nation.

  11 May 1939

  The Animal Trainer (2)

  I told him: The time has come, I must be gone.

  It is time to leave the circus and circus days,

  The admissions, the menagerie, the drums,

  Excitements of disappointment and praise.

  In a suburb of the spirit I shall seize

  The steady and exalted light of the sun

  And live there, out of the tension that decays,

  Until I become a man alone of noon.

  Heart said: Can you do without these animals?

  The looking, licking, smelling animals?

  The friendly fumbling beast? The listening one?

  The standing up and worst of animals?

  What will become of you in the pure light

  When all your enemies are gone, and gone

  The inexhaustible prospect of the night?

  —But the night is now the body of my fear,

  These animals are my distraction! Once

  Let me escape the smells and cages here,

  Once let me stand naked in the sun,

  All their performances will be forgotten.

  I shall concentrate in the sunlight there.

  Said the conservative Heart: These animals

  Are occupation, food for you, your love

  And your despair, responsibility:

  They are the travellers by which you live.

  Without you they will pace and pine, or die.

  —What soul-delighting tasks do they perform?

  They quarrel, snort, leap, lie down, their delight

  Merely a punctual meal and to be warm.

  Justify their existence in the night!

  —The animals are coupling, and they cry

  ‘The circus is, it is our mystery,

  It is a world of dark where animals die.’

  —Animals little and large, be still, be still:

  I’ll stay with you. Suburb and sun are pale.

  —Animals are your destruction, and your will.

  Desire Is a World by Night

  The history of strangers in their dreams

  Being irresponsible, is fun for men,

  Whose sons are neither at the Front nor frame

  Humiliating weakness to keep at home

  Nor wince on principle, wearing mother grey,

  Honoured by radicals. When the mind is free

  The catechetical mind can mince and tear

  Contemptible vermin from a stranger’s hair

  And then sleep.

  In our parents’ dreams we see

  Vigour abutting on senility,

  Stiff blood, and weathered with the years, poor vane;

  Unfortunate but inescapable.

  Although this wind bullies the windowpane

  Are the children to be kept responsible

  For the world’s decay? Carefully we choose

  Our fathers, carefully we cut out those

  On whom to exert the politics of praise.

  Heard after dinner, in defenceless ease,

  The dreams of friends can puzzle, dazzle us

  With endless journeys through unfriendly snow,

  Malevolent faces that appear and frown

  Where nothing was expected, the sudden stain

  On spotless window-ledges; these we take

  Chuckling, but take them with us when we go,

  To study in secret, late, brooding, looking

  For trails and parallels. We have a stake

  In this particular region, and we look

  Excitedly for situations that we know.

  —The disinterested man has gone abroad;

  Winter is on the by-way where he rode

  Erect and alone, summery years ago.

  When we dream, paraphrase, analysis

  Exhaust the crannies of the night. We stare,

  Fresh sweat upon our foreheads, as they fade:

  The melancholy and terror of avenues

  Where long no single man has moved, but play

  Under the arc-lights gangs of the grey dead

  Running directionless. That bright blank place

  Advances with us into fearful day,

  Heady and insuppressible. Call in friends,

  They grin and carry it carefully away,—

  The fathers can’t be trusted,—strangers wear

  Their strengths, and visor. Last, authority,

  The Listener borrow from an English grave

  To solve our hatred and our bitterness . .

  The foul and absurd to solace or dismay.

  All this will never appear; we will not say;

  Let the evidence be buried in a cave

  Off the main road. If anyone could see

  The white scalp of that passionate will and those

  Sullen desires, he would stumble, dumb,

  Retreat into the time from which he came

  Counting upon his fingers and his toes.

  The Moon and the Night and the Men

  On the night of the Belgian surrender the moon rose

  Late, a delayed moon, and a violent moon

  For the English or the American beholder;

  The French beholder. It was a cold night,

  People put on their wraps, the troops were cold

  No doubt, despite the calendar, no doubt

  Numbers of refugees coughed, and the sight

  Or sound of some killed others. A cold night.

  On Outer Drive there was an accident:

  A stupid well-intentioned man turned sharp

  Right and abruptly he became an angel

  Fingering an unfamiliar harp,

  Or screamed in hell, or was nothing at all.

  Do not imagine this is unimportant.

  He was a part of the night, part of the land,

  Part of the bitter and exhausted ground

  Out of which memory grows.

  Michael and I

  Stared at each other over chess, and spoke

  As little as possible, and drank and played.

  The chessmen caught in the European eye,

  Neither of us I think had a free look

  Although the game was fair. The move one made

  It was difficult at last to keep one’s mind on.

  ‘Hurt and unhappy’ said the man in London.

  We said to each other, The time is coming near

  When none shall have books or music, none his dear,

  And only a fool will speak aloud his mind.

  History is approaching a speechless end,

  As Henry Adams said. Adams was right.

  All this occurred on the night when Leopold

  Fulfilled the treachery four years before

  Begun—or was he well-intentioned, more

  Roadmaker to hell than king? At any rate,

  The moon came up late and the night was cold,

  Many men died—although we know the fate

  Of none, nor of anyone, and the war

  Goes on, and the moon in the breast of man is cold.

  A Poem for Bhain

  Although the relatives in the summer house

  Gossip and grumble, do what relatives do,

  Demand, demand our eyes and ears, demand us,

  You and I are not precisely there

  As they require: heretics, we converse

  Alert and alone, as over a lake of fire

  Two white birds following their profession

  Of flight, together fly, loom, fall and rise,

  Certain of the nature and station of
their mission.

  So by the superficial and summer lake

  We talk, and nothing that we say is heard,

  Neither by the relatives who twitter and ache

  Nor by any traveller nor by any bird.

  Canto Amor

  Dream in a dream the heavy soul somewhere

  struck suddenly & dark down to its knees.

  A griffin sighs off in the orphic air.

  If (Unknown Majesty) I not confess

  praise for the wrack the rock the live sailor

  under the blue sea,—yet I may You bless

  always for hér, in fear & joy for hér

  whose gesture summons ever when I grieve

  me back and is my mage and minister.

  —Muses: whose worship I may never leave

  but for this pensive woman, now I dare,

  teach me her praise! with her my praise receive.—

  Three years already of the round world’s war

  had rolled by stoned & disappointed eyes

  when she and I came where we were made for.

  Pale as a star lost in returning skies,

  more beautiful than midnight stars more frail

  she moved towards me like chords, a sacrifice;

  entombed in body trembling through the veil

  arm upon arm, learning our ancient wound,

  we see our one soul heal, recovering pale.

  Then priestly sanction, then the drop of sound.

  Quickly part to the cavern ever warm

  deep from the march, body to body bound,

  descend (my soul) out of dismantling storm

  into the darkness where the world is made.

  . . Come back to the bright air. Love is multiform.

  Heartmating hesitating unafraid

  although incredulous, she seemed to fill

  the lilac shadow with light wherein she played,

  whom sorry childhood had made sit quite still,

  an orphan silence, unregarded sheen,

  listening for any small soft note, not hopeful:

  caricature; as once a maiden Queen,

  flowering power comeliness kindness grace,

  shattered her mirror, wept, would not be seen.

  These pities moved. Also above her face

  serious or flushed, swayed her fire-gold

  not earthly hair, now moonless to unlace,

  resisted flame, now in a sun more cold

  great shells to whorl about each secret ear,

  mysterious histories, white shores, unfold.

  New musics! One the music that we hear,

  this is the music which the masters make

  out of their minds, profound solemn & clear.

  And then the other music, in whose sake

  all men perceive a gladness but we are drawn

  less for that joy than utterly to take

  our trial, naked in the music’s vision,

  the flowing ceremony of trouble and light,

  all Loves becoming, none to flag upon.

  Such Mozart made,—an ear so delicate

  he fainted at a trumpet-call, a child

  so delicate. So merciful that sight,

  so stern, we follow rapt who ran a-wild.

  Marriage is the second music, and thereof

  we hear what we can bear, faithful & mild.

  Therefore the streaming torches in the grove

  through dark or bright, swiftly & now more near

  cherish a festival of anxious love.

  Dance for this music, Mistress to music dear,

  more, that storm worries the disordered wood

  grieving the midnight of my thirtieth year

  and only the trial of our music should

  still this irresolute air, only your voice

  spelling the tempest may compel our good:

  Sigh then beyond my song: whirl & rejoice!

  The Nervous Songs

  YOUNG WOMAN’S SONG

  The round and smooth, my body in my bath,

  If someone else would like it too.—I did,

  I wanted T. to think ‘How interesting’

  Although I hate his voice and face, hate both.

  I hate this something like a bobbing cork

  Not going. I want something to hang to.—

  A fierce wind roaring high up in the bare

  Branches of trees,—I suppose it was lust

  But it was holy and awful. All day I thought

  I am a bobbing cork, irresponsible child

  Loose on the waters.—What have you done at last?

  A little work, a little vague chat.

  I want that £3.10 hat terribly.—

  What I am looking for (I am) may be

  Happening in the gaps of what I know.

  The full moon does go with you as yóu go.

  Where am I going? I am not afraid . .

  Only I would be lifted lost in the flood.

  THE SONG OF THE DEMENTED PRIEST

  I put those things there.—See them burn.

  The emerald the azure and the gold

  Hiss and crack, the blues & greens of the world

  As if I were tired. Someone interferes

  Everywhere with me. The clouds, the clouds are torn

  In ways I do not understand or love.

  Licking my long lips, I looked upon God

  And he flamed and he was friendlier

  Than you were, and he was small. Showing me

  Serpents and thin flowers; these were cold.

  Dominion waved & glittered like the flare

  From ice under a small sun. I wonder.

  Afterward the violent and formal dancers

  Came out, shaking their pithless heads.

  I would instruct them but I cannot now,—

  Because of the elements. They rise and move,

  I nod a dance and they dance in the rain

  In my red coat. I am the king of the dead.

  A PROFESSOR’S SONG

  (. . rabid or dog-dull.) Let me tell you how

  The Eighteenth Century couplet ended. Now

  Tell me. Troll me the sources of that Song—

  Assigned last week—by Blake. Come, come along,

  Gentlemen. (Fidget and huddle, do. Squint soon.)

  I want to end these fellows all by noon.

  ‘That deep romantic chasm’—an early use;

  The word is from the French, by our abuse

  Fished out a bit. (Red all your eyes. O when?)

  ‘A poet is a man speaking to men’:

  But I am then a poet, am I not?—

  Ha ha. The radiator, please. Well, what?

  Alive now—no—Blake would have written prose,

  But movement following movement crisply flows,

  So much the better, better the much so,

  As burbleth Mozart. Twelve. The class can go.

  Until I meet you, then, in Upper Hell

  Convulsed, foaming immortal blood: farewell.

  THE CAPTAIN’S SONG

  The tree before my eyes bloomed into flame,

  I rode the flame. This was the element,

  Forsaking wife and child, I came to find,—

  The flight through arrowy air dark as a dream

  Brightening and falling, the loose tongues blue

  Like blood above me, until I forgot.

  . . Later, forgetting, I became a child

  And fell down without reason and played games

  Running, being the fastest, before dark

  And often cried. Certain things I hid

  That I had never liked, I leapt the stream

  No one else could and darted off alone . .

  You crippled Powers, cluster to me now:

  Baffle this memory from my return,

  That in the coldest nights, murmuring her name

  I sought her two feet with my feet, my feet

  Were warm and hers were ice and I warmed her

  With both of mine. Will
I warm her with one?

  THE SONG OF THE TORTURED GIRL

  After a little I could not have told—

  But no one asked me this—why I was there.

  I asked. The ceiling of that place was high

  And there were sudden noises, which I made.

  I must have stayed there a long time today:

  My cup of soup was gone when they brought me back.

  Often ‘Nothing worse now can come to us’

  I thought, the winter the young men stayed away,

  My uncle died, and mother broke her crutch.

  And then the strange room where the brightest light

  Does not shine on the strange men: shines on me.

  I feel them stretch my youth and throw a switch.

  Through leafless branches the sweet wind blows

  Making a mild sound, softer than a moan;

  High in a pass once where we put our tent,

  Minutes I lay awake to hear my joy.

  —I no longer remember what they want.—

  Minutes I lay awake to hear my joy.

  The Lightning

  Sick with the lightning lay my sister-in-law,

  Concealing it from her children, when I came.

  What I could, did, helpless with what I saw.

  Analysands all, and the rest ought to be,

  The friends my innocence cherished, and you and I,

  Darling,—the friends I qualm and cherish and see.

  . . The fattest nation!—wé do not thrive fat

  But facile in the scale with all we rise

  And shift a breakfast, and there is shame in that.

  And labour sweats with vice at the top, and two

  Bullies are bristling. What he thought who thinks?

  It is difficult to say what one will do.

  Obstinate, gleams from the black world the gay and fair,

  My love loves chocolate, she loves also me,

  And the lightning dances, but I cannot despair.

  The Long Home

  bulks where the barley blew, time out of mind

  Of the sleepless Master. The barbered lawn

  Far to a grey wall lounges, the birds are still,

  Rising wind rucks from the sill

  The slack brocade beside the old throne he dreams on.

  The portraits’ hands are blind.

  Below these frames they strain on stones. He mumbles . .

  Fathers who listen, what loves hear

  Surfacing from the lightless past? He foams.

  Stillness locks a hundred rooms.