Collected Poems 1931-74 Read Free Page A

that Auntie Maud’s had twins (both boys),
    And all the family is knitting clothes—
    It makes me want to stamp and make a noise:
    I wish that George would pay me what he owes.
    I realise that Cousin Jane is ‘dear’,
    And that sweet Minnie has such ‘grace and poise’,
    But why should they be planning to come here,
    When Winifred my manuscript destroys,
    And dearest little Bertie mis-employs
    His time by crying when he sees my nose—
    It makes me want to stamp and make a noise:
    I wish that George would pay me what he owes.
    How can a man withstand the atmosphere,
    This hell compounded of such strange alloys?
    Grandma’s too old to do a thing but leer,
    And call the home-made mince-pies ‘saveloys’.
    Grandpa keeps drooling on about sepoys,
    The Indian situation and the snows—
    It makes me want to stamp and make a noise:
    I wish that George would pay me what he owes.
ENVOI
    Prince, if I once disturbed your equipoise,
    By sending you my old discarded hose—
    Perhaps you’d help me stamp and make a noise,
    And wish that George would pay me what he owes?
    1980/ Christmas, 1932

TULLIOLA
    â€˜â€¦ there was found the body of a young lady swimming in a kind of bath of precious oyle or liquor, fresh and entire as if she had been living, neither her face discolour’d, nor her hair disorder’d: at her feete burnt a lamp which suddainely expir’d at the opening of the vault; having flam’d, as was computed, now 1,500 yeares, by the conjecture that she was Tulliola, the daughter of Cicero whose body was thus found, as the inscription testified.’
    Only the night remains now, only the dark.
    This my forever and my nevermore.
    Impalpable eclipse!
    Persistent as the muzzle of a dog,
    Nosing me out for ever and for ever….
    God! that my body slips
    Between smooth liquors like a floating log,
    Spinning on tides of wine
    So slow that not a flaw can shift
    The symmetry of liquid in this basin:
    Nor a chaotic wave can lift
    My nostrils to the surface-fume of spice,
    Bitter and odorous in gloom.
    Pity me, swimming here.
    Pity me, Cicero’s daughter.
    All the embalmer’s poor artifice was this:
    To strip me of the cogs and wheels of sense—
    Those inner toys of motion,
    Purse up my dead lips in a kiss,
    And freeze the small shell of me,
    Freeze me so stiff and regimental,
    Then launch me in this vault’s aquarium
    Upon a tide of spices.
    Pity me, swimming here.
    Pity me, Cicero’s daughter,
    Partnered by inner darkness and one solemn light.
    1980/ 1934

LYRIC
    I am this spring,
    This interlocked torment of growth.
    I am leaf folding,
    Leaves falling and folding,
    Leaf upon leaf upon spray,
    Sweet pod and sticky:
    Buds that are speckled, bursting, breaking-
    I am this hour.
    O unbearable sliding and twining
    Sinews of creeper,
    Unbearable fret in the burdenous mould!
    I am seed pressing,
    Seeds straining and scoring
    A runnel to dayshine:
    All seed and all potence,
    Invincible growth,
    Clamped in the moist clog of soil.
    I am the surge:
    The shaking and loosing of strands:
    Weed creaking,
    Earth slipping from fingers of tendrils
    And bindings of moss.
    Hear me you earth-drums
    Babbing and drubbing
    Invincibly onward to life!
    Hear me!
    Â Â Â            I am this spring,
    I am this forest in flux,
    Urging and burgeoning.
    1980/ 1934

WHEAT-FIELD
    For Leslie
    And all this standing butter-coloured flood
    Where the vast field goes tilting to the sky,
    Tilting and lifting to a red dancing sun,
    A man destroys, destroys….
    Old arms, brown arms,
    Twinkles the grinning scythe-blade in the wheat….
    Though the dry wind, defensive,
    Break cover and descend,
    Shuffling the yellow heads like cards,
    Hampered and driving:
    Though there is consternation and amaze,
    A man destroys, destroys,
    While the sun freckles the orchard
    A man in a red cloak destroys.
    Â Â  I have been so in dreams: rooted
    And standing with the