Wildtrack by John Wain.
Title: Wildtrack.
Author: John Wain.
Genre: Literature, poetry, politics, philosophical.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1965.
Summary: Discontinuous in method, using a lavish and unpredictable variety of means (from highly-wrought lyrics to conversational semi-metre and prose) the poem builds from many materials-historical, personal, anthropological-a sustained meditation on the theme of human interdependence. Leans heavily on the poem The Twelve by Alexander Blok (written in response to the October Revolution of 1917, and describing the march of twelve Bolshevik soldiers (likened to the Twelve Apostles) through the streets of revolutionary Petrograd, with a fierce winter blizzard raging around them), as well as works by Swift and other major authors and works.
My rating: 8/10.
My review:
♥ Engrave the snowflake. But without hindering its downward
dance. Carve your biography in images,
one for each flake, and take as many
flakes as you need. But (this is your legendary
task) never hold one in your hand. The warm
touch of human skin melts them to water. (As
the man said, one's name cannot be written
there.) Engrave an image of each tumbling
weightless flake. Above, the opaque grey
future: underfoot, the trodden slush
of the past (dog-pee and fag-end speckle
an outline of geological dignity.)
Only the falling snowflake is the Now.
To write of the Now on the down-drifting
frozen angel-feather of This, the revolving
snowflake in its carelessness of before
and after, to engrave particular facts,
specific adventures of eye and finger-tip,
and always with no break in the resigned
eager dance of the snowflakes, their fist and winnow:
this is your task:
BEGIN
♥ Old Russia
is dead. Old Russian ways
are dead and here come
the Twelve leaning against the wind
stumping in the snow
one lags behind
thinking of Katya
a dead piece of free-market
luxury with a sweet birthmark
on her shoulder but never mind
the dog's tail is well down
♥ Alexander Blok with his face pressed to the pane
saw twelve snowflakes fall that can never fall again
Clumsy cracked boots stamped through the spiralling snow
the Twelve were marching the way they had to go
their history was already written, they had no choice
only the dog howled, only the old woman's voice
came to Alexander Blok's ears as he gazed down
from his unsleeping window and saw the town
the streets the markets the canals and the faces
upturned to the pitiless snowstorm that left no traces
of the beggar's spittle or the bourgeois' terrified eyes
or the Kerenkas wedged in the warmth of Katya's thighs
Speak to me tense poet from your visionary gloom
say why you leave your chair and pace about your room
confess Alexander Blok confess what you see
as the twelve march straight ahead singing softly
Confess that your eyes grow wide and your reason rambles
as you smell the hot blood from the human shambles
when the Twelve shall break open the vials of their wrath
and pity like that starved cur be kicked from their path
Confess Alexander Blok that you hear the screams
of children at night dragged from the warmth of their dreams
running to hide in alleys full of demented figures
running blindly as the Twelve press their steel triggers
You who see Jesus Christ at the head of the Twelve
is it the wounds if humanity he comes to salve
or is it nor rather a new furnace he prepares
for the flesh that only in death lays down is cares
is it not rather the mighty embrace of death
he has ready for these creatures of blood and breath
Blok you foresee the hour that must come to birth
when you will cry 'the woodlouse has inherited the earth'
These will be the years of the mindless gnawing louse
when central and eastern Europe is one huge torture-house
when the Rhine and the Moskva flow between aching walls
and the sky is empty where the human victim calls
You Alexander Blok foresee this in your agony
and you are right to see Jesus Christ who cannot die
Leading the Twelve into those years of crucifixion
for Christ walks on earth only in one direction
it is always towards the blood-soaked Cross that he moves
to the sounds of distant trumpets and approaching hooves
for Christ's way forward lies through the gates of pain
and he has come to be crucified again
with the children hiding in the alleys and the shivering brutes
who were men until the Twelve began to shoot
but when they heard the guns went down on hands and knees
and chewed bitter grass under the leafless trees
Confess confess Blok you see the children's eyes
as dry and empty as the unpitying skies
the cell doors will slam, the soldiers will strut like geese
Christ will be crucified by the secret police
and to see the white streak of hope beyond this night
is beyond the reach of your pale dilated sight
you will sink without hope into silence and neglect
and hour world be left to the mad dog and the insect
you window will be blank above the windy square
when your eyes have closed with weariness and despair
and yet despair is not the end, Blok your voice will sound
when the Twelve you loved lie deep in the frozen ground
for you watched them move forward against the mocking wind
you saw the tattered cloth of revolt that they pinned
over their naked flesh in that freezing air
you saw their harsh humanity as they laughed and swore
and as you watched the Twelve marching with iron feet
you loved them, you longed for sheaves of golden wheat
ripe fruits and flowers to toss on the hard stone
that the Twelve might have something they could call their own
beyond the frown of vengeance and the doubled first
and so you saw dimply in the freezing mist
the figure of Jesus Christ arisen from his sleep
leading the twelve like shepherds to the hungry sheep
this was your vision on the night of the black sky
and I honour you Alexander Blok with your dilated eye
you felt the hunger of those lost and homeless crowds
and your pity called down Christ from above the clouds:
I feel it too, mindless as the falling snow
that prints its ironic kiss on the white faces below
I see the faced upturned amid the unceasing snowflakes
and I see the poet who weeps and aches
seeing already the world of the woodlouse-state
in which the cry of the living man will come too late
longing to walk with the twelve, to share their load
yet fearing the eyeless walls which line that road
fearing the dead bricks and the soundproof air
where the footsteps of the Twelve echo only despair
confess Alexander Blok you fear those walls
between which the twelve go forward like doomed animals
and the figure of Christ dwindles to a scarf of mist
and becomes again the pale Christ whom Judas kissed!
♥ The day-self moves in a broad shaft
The night-self is secret and daft
The day-self joins with eager others.
The night-self has no friends, only brothers.
The day-self is poltroon or hero:
The night-self is picaro, pierrot.
The day-self can choose to tell lies.
The night-self speaks truth, or he dies.
♥ This is Chronos devouring his sons. The last maker
of history swallows all previous history down.
How they
hated him, the clever ones!
How they
wanted to kick back and hurt!
Henry Ford,
who threatened all they lived by,
with his long spanner and his hard contempt.
..How they hated him,
minds to whom the past was rich with meaning!
♥ This is_____the dance of mass-production
weaving______________the pattern of the future
treading_____________the past into oblivion
fingers______________of immigrant and native
muscles______________of german and italian
polish_______________and jewish eyes in focus
sinews_______________of negro and armenian
dancing______________the dance of mass-production
speeding_____________components on to wholeness
engines______________to couple with transmission
gearbox______________and tyres and rims uniting
building_____________the Model-T together
making_______________the one out of many
speaking_____________the language of to-morrow
grammar______________of time and motion study
syntax_______________of orchestrated effort
WHERE NOW____________IS HISTORY THE OGRE?
faded________________like the moonlight in the morning
still________________there but faded in the morning
♥ That's history. We get dragged in too. So what?
This is the last time round. History is dead,
now no one has to stay in the same place
from birth to death, now common men can move,
roll up this dusty earth which held them apart
and gave them different languages and names.
The Model T is born. History dies.
Fortunate boys and girls, homogenize!
♥ Who is Vassarionovich Dzhugashvili?
The man in the Kremlin. He gives the orders.
Why do the people wish to oppose his will?
Instinctively they fear the great machine.
What will he do when they oppose his will?
He will destroy them. Five million will die,
the rest will live in slavery and fear.
How will the five million die?
Of hunger. When
they have killed their beasts and left their grain to rot.
These actions are their gesture. Now they wait.
Do they expect to die?
No. They believe
no ruler would let so many people starve.
And what does Vassarionovich Dzhugashvili say?
He gives them leave to lie in their huts and die.
Has he no mercy, this Vassarionovich?
He has invented a nature for himself.
He has abandoned his limped Georgian name
and commanded that they call him Stalin, steel.
Have the peasants, then, no chance?
No chance at all.
It is the nature of steel to beat them down:
it is the nature of steel to chew their flesh,
to flatten them, to cut them into shapes
that can be fitted to the great machine.
♥ (Hymn to Steel:
for 5 million human voices)
..In you our strength
therefore destroy us
In you our hope
therefore destroy us
From you we have the unanswerable word
that we have become our own enemies
if our enemies live we must surely perish
therefore destroy us
Bite through the soft tendons of our children
Bite through the dried flesh of our elders:
Drink the strength of our men
the fertility of our women
and stamp all tears into the mud.
This we ask
in the sacred name
the surgical, liturgical name
(ever to be praised by the dazed
ever to be acclaimed by the maimed
unceasingly to be said by the dead)
name
of
STEEL
I believe that the fundamental need of the Russian soul is a thirst for suffering, a constant thirst in everything and from all time.
Dostoievsky, Diary of an Author
Five million die. The rest homogenize.
♥ (lament of the
Homogenized Man)
The moon swings low over the white fields.
Irresolute I stand, a black full stop
in her calm discourse.
I turn to walk back to the dusty street.
My shadow lopes like a wolf
The night hates me.
I want to apologize to the cool grass.
Something is ticking in my ears:
It is my metal heart.
Khasan Israelov, dead in an unknown grave,
I speak in a voice that wishes it were yours.
The Chechen-Ingush, a mountain people in the northern Caucasus, resisted domination by Catherine the Great of Russia, and were not finally subdued till 1859; they revolted against the Czars in 1867, 1877 and 1905, and after the Soviets came to power they continued to resist absorption and collectivization. They rebelled in 19430, and were crushed. In 1941, the Chechen-Ingush struck for their freedom one last time, under the leadership of a young poet. Khasan Israelov. Stalin's answer was to obliterate the entire nation by execution and mass deportation on February 23, 1944. Under the direction of General Serov, the entire operation, whereby 500,000 people were swept off to death or slavery, took just twenty-four hours.
..3.
Eryri or Wicklow, half a world away
I read on hill-paths that were never yours
and pluck the fragrant heather where I lie.
Mountains are many, but their voice is one,
still crying freedom!in the world's ear,
though by each bluff stiffen the defiant dead.
4.
Climb with me, Khasan, till bitterness is dead.
I have not the strength to face an end like yours.
But take this homage, do not turn away.
I hear your mountain music, though my ear
is dulled with cowardice: you are the one
to guide me where the quiet heroes lie.
5.
Khasan, your written chronicle is a brief one.
Such sagas are banned from the captive ear.
Soldiers have killed, how bureaucrats must lie.
Five hundred thousand truths to sponge away.
If your name lives, the victory will be yours.
Your strength cannot be tamed now you are dead.
6.
The wild chamois is your symbol, if you need one:
Who, chased to the final edge where the hunt stops dead,
Leaps down, with a delicate madness much like yours.
May its gentle ghost be welcome where your bones lie,
Who thought rather to throw life steeply away
Than make a story pleasant to the huntsman's ear!
Khasan, only courage like yours can burn hatred away.
Unstop your ear: pity me from where you lie:
Climb with me, turbulent one, till bitterness is dead!
♥ (Attitude of Humanity
towards the Irreducible I)
They pin their faith
entirely on this indestructible wraith
Who, ages upon ages,
has coolly survived the fury of outrages.
In the stone pinnacle
of the fortress they construct from dream and miracle
tangible and assertive,
he comforts those whose happiness is abortive.
Knight without armour,
high chanticleer, spirit's alarmer,
secret soothsayer,
he reveals the strategies of Time the betrayer
Because he is one,
his children and lovers are never entirely alone:
because he is single
their multiple faces are free to shuttle and mingle.
he asks no prayers:
he fulfills his own nature in fulfilling theirs.
His terms are simple:
he has no metaphysical crust and no temple.
He is part of creation:
a figure, like us, in God's difficult equation.
We know him well, there is no need to prove him.
Our cold curses follow those who would remove him.
We are still human while none is set above him.
Therefore,
we love him.
♥ (Sonnet:
Feigned to be spoken by
The Maniac among the Tombs-
St. Mark, Chapter 5)
If now I roar, and gash myself with stones,
it is to draw him to the fight. I hoard
in these mad cells those that must call him lord.
I tempt the fiends to pasture in these bones.
Two thousand beasts could not contain my sins.
Not one but many devils claw my sides.
It is my ribs the foul night-hag bestrides,
through whose dry lips all lust and hatred grins.
Because my name is Legion, and my brain
is swarming with the maggots of despair,
he hears the trumpet of my sufferings:
they will do battle on this narrow plain.
Already, through the dark death-smelling air,
I hear the clapping of their furious wings.
..Worship by parody!
Crazed with their sufferings, skeletal or bloated
arms raised to pull down mercy on their matted heads,
the sick jostle and crane. Will the king come? Will
the anointed palm press on this aching flesh?
Theirs is a sweating faith. A crew of wretched Soules.
Bless thy people. Will the king come? His touch bind up
the rents and pockholes in their pitiful skin?
On the fourth day, the noose and the two razors.
Bless thy people. Bless thy people. Rolled
in the dirt by a conqueror they never challenged,
poison-splashed, stamped on by unseen boots,
they hold up their hands to majesty, not their eyes.
In the bright face of heaven they dare not look.
The king is their best magic.
..In some tribes of Fazoql the king had to administer justice daily under a certain tree. If from sickness or any other cause he was unable to discharge this duty for three whole days, he was hanged on the tree in a noose, which contained two razors so arranged that when the noose was drawn tight by the weight of the king's body they cut his throat. --Frazer, The Golden Bough.
♥ Miracles have no evidence. The Age
of Reason was no reasonable.
♥ March, 1712. The coach
grinds down from Lichfield. Damp-faced Sam
is sick. Human misery
never changes. A crew of wretched Soules
that stay his Cure.
..Gently, Sarah, lift your son
(Thirty moths old, and like to die)
To where the springs of pity run:
Her pale hand on his paler face
Transmits an ancient dogged grace
Illumined by her royal eye.
An ancient dogged grace still lives
In faith that flowers out of pain.
Here God still judges and forgives.
Gently, Sarah, lift your child
Pain and sadness have defiled:
Bathe him in that magic rain.
London is huge, and we are small
(Thirty months old, and wilting fast):
Is death the dark that curtains all?
Michael is old: my loins grow dry:
Sweet Jesus, let our Sam not die!
Make London's clouds rain joy at last!
Do not speak: she knows your fear.
Her charity brims cool and fresh.
Love and pity brought you here.
Let the Lichfield women know
Sarah's child will live and grow:
Love and pity healed his flesh
And he will rule in Reason's town
In future years: yet in his brain
Some saving root will channel down
To where the springs of pity flow:
Some images will live and know
Deep within the human grain.
So this child's inheritance
(Thirty months old, and not to die)
Shall be to know the secret dance
Of dream and reason, day and night:
And with his bookish urban sight
To read the language of the sky.
♥ It was the approach of death that whipped his mind.
A man may cry to heaven and still burn.
His brain grasped out for something still to learn.
These islanders the world had left behind:
had they perhaps a wisdom, handed on
through blood and custom? His old bones were sore,
but through the autumn weather he must ride,
still hoping to be couched and healed once more.
Too late, too late! That ancient world was gone:
progressive Boswell chattered by his side.
Theirs was the century of madness, the lid screwed tight:
the stately wig,
lice clinging on the scalp:
the great controlled art, a shout from under the stairs.
'And China's earth receives the smoking tide'
poised in the balance of a pirouette
above that other smoking tide of blood.
These were not prudes. Their sombre art
searched that darkness to its heart.
But their dignity and grace
combed agony, and washed its face.
Mozart and Fragonard ignore
the breath of the gin-sleeping whore.
Gulliver never travelled where
the London sewers stun the air.
Their general names for evil
masked every actual devil.
The balance is difficult. The classic portico
slips sideways into the mud.
There is
so much that must be stamped down out of sight.
♥ (The Little Woman
addresses the Child
in her Womb)
..'The least woman there ever was with child.'
Does God work miracles in idleness?
Their minds are sealed in large stupidity.
Their eyes are set too far above the ground.
They cannot guess your secret,
little emperor, my secret master. Lie
at anchor in your estuary there.
So many meaty hands upon the rail,
such staring... sometimes I have to pity them.
Cast out, disowned, the wrong shape for their size.
Only the cattle should lumber and bellow.
..They pay to stare. it is an idle sport.
If they could know I hold their future here!
My little lord shall drive them howling out.
Already rumours are abroad among them-
a crazed parson has wandered to a country
which he calls Lilliput.
Across the seas
are many islands where our people thrive.
It must be so. The parson would not lie.
..Madness stalks them.
They cannot keep away from raree-shows.
Curiosity is their illness. To see an oddity
they travel stony miles. This is a sign
they draw towards their end. Blood drowns their sun.
♥ (Sonnet: Dean Swift
contemplates the
little Woman)
..Frog-legs kick, moth-wings flutter in her womb.
Deceived by pain, she dreams enormous things:
a gnat's thin trumpet is the blast of doom:
she will be mother to a line of kings.
Her agony is mine, though not her dreams.
My fabled Lilliput was England's truth.
In bitter Ireland now I shun men's sight.
But eyes like hers, where holy hatred gleams
I welcome still: we share one sharp delight,
I in my deanery, she in her booth.
♥ For:
belief in magic keeps
humanity from devouring its
own entrails.
Swift went
mad because he saw too clearly
where dreams end and wakefulness begins.
♥ To have a king is to say:
We will dream of a magic person, and
when we wake that person shall
still, by our will, be magic.
♥ A moment, and the hesitation passed.
Reckless, a sun flared out behind his eyes,
And by its light he saw the coming age,
People with serious monsters. Lone, aghast,
He watched them rearing, heard their first blind cries:
Then turned, and started on his pilgrimage.
In France, the magic did not hold.
Above a choppy sea of gazers
King Louis bowed his head. It rolled.
This was the noose and the two razors.
♥ (Sonnet feigned to be spoken
by the Witch of Endor-Samuel, I, xxviii)
Great kings are strong. I am alone, and old.
And yet they creep to me at night, disguised.
Death they can bear, but not to be surprised:
and stubborn ghosts ignore their blood and gold.
King Saul resents the present like a cage.
I gave my being to this cruel art
for the same reason, long ago. My heart
was flaring with the same forbidden rage.
Altar and priest have failed. My magic brings
stern Samuel to break his holy sleep
Saul, God is your enemy. You are to die.
This Saul was merciful. Now see him weep.
He finds no pardon, who could not satisfy
the vengeful hunger of the King of Kings.
♥ There, nothing dies.
What is discarded sinks
and pulses alluvial, feeding the deep roots.
Daylight is filtered here, and darkness lit
by phosphorescence. The presence of the forest
never sleeps, nor ever quite awakes.
To move in the forest I discard flesh.
Only the mind has passport here, for time
is cruel to the body, tolerating
only that shudder of loin on loin that brings
futurity in the endless line of births.
No flesh can walk in the forest. The still air
blows easily into the porous cells of thought
and only thought.
I moved among the trunks
and heavy stems, I heard the dripping leaves
conversing with the moss, and the thick stems
of rubbery marsh-plants eased to let me pass.
I went along the path that was no path
and the forest took me, silent, welcoming:
and as my vision opened in the gloom
of that green stillness, I saw others there.
..Each held, like a prize too joyous to put down,
the thing that he had made. Only this magic
was strong enough to lull the wrath of time,
and bring each maker into his fulfillment, here,
under the inexhaustibly fertile boughs.
Who first coiled springs? Fashioned a stirrup, or
thought of a book which opened on a hinge?
Drew sounds from wood and string, or named a bird?
His liberated self was here.
I trod
the unmapped forest, marvelling, and not
I only, but others among living men:
the thoughtful-eyed, those able for an hour
to turn from the highway of the Here and Now,
leaving the flesh to cool itself awhile,
and wander for their delight in the quiet shade,
meeting now this achievement, and now that:
all turbulent minds now quiet, all fulfilled
in joyous contemplation: how this one had
designed a palace, that one distilled a drug
that could heal pain, another found a sea,
a fourth made fables that enriched men's lives.
..Back in the world of time, I hungered, gasped
in the raw air of contingency, and gripped
what solace I could find, like all the rest.
But the rain-forest is with me in my dreams:
and at some moment of freedom, when I fell
the hot clasp of the body slacken, and
the steel cuffs of necessity click apart,
I shall walk once again beneath those boughs,
and breathe the air of the place where nothing dies.
♥ Rich blood disturbed my thought
I knew no shape nor size
I wondered, and was not:
Cradled in salt, I had
No tears to dim my eyes:
My coupled veins were glad.
Love held me cradled there:
But still I dreamed of air.
Love held me soft and coiled
O but the mind, the mind!
That tenderness was foiled:
I fed on love alone
Yet in its tender rind
My brain cried out for bone.
I writhed in my own heat:
I willed my heart to beat.
I shouldered love aside
the cold air spoke my name:
I clutched the air, and cried!
My mother's flesh lay spent,
Cool ashes after flame.
Sighing, she gave consent:
Caressed by light, I lay
Small in the human day.
♥ Not only friends.
Protection ended back there.
This world is full of sharpness. A bird
sings, then twangs and chops a worm.
Toads get squashed. My heart knots,
hard as a stone with pity. Perplexed,
a beetle kicks on his back. Won't someone help him?
Not me.
I'm afraid.
Then
the change of gear, climbing whine and scream
of the machine running faster and wilder,
its driver helpless, eyeing the dials,
his hands in his swaying lap. Madness
stalks the arteries. The thrush sings
in a forgotten tongue. Who wished this trouble on me?
♥ Now my body is made,
Now I stand in my fulness,
the road climbs always uphill.
♥ In London or
Bombay, the beggar curses the weather
and waits.
His eyes are
old as poverty. He has digested
the almanac of the centuries.
His patience is hard as the pavement.
♥ Let's appreciate: wealth makes
fine things, not for itself
alone. Even its lovely
mistakes give colour and shape
to foolishness.
♥ (Dialogue:
The Beggar and the Astronaut)
A. Stars drunk with their own brilliance crowd my sky.
I hunt lost worlds, flung beyond calculation.
B. The furthest is not lonelier than I.
Not all their maps could plot my desperation.
A. My charts and figures ring the universe.
B. I blot them with my hunger's silent curse.
A. I risk my life: does not that risk outweigh
The cold reproaches of your life's neglect?
B. My life is mine if you toss yours away:
I hunger still, though your swift shell lay wrecked.
A. New knowledge will not wait till you are fed.
B. Knowledge breed knowledge: so are beggars bred.
♥ we admit now what we have always denied
what we share with you goes deeper than our pride
for want and misery lay hold of us in nightmare
our ribs are naked as yours to the whipping air
our self-sufficiency is an unconvinced parade
we are all beggars and we are all afraid
we must beg each day for the things that keep us alive
to be loved, to be needed, to walk upright, to survive
and everything goes down with the setting sun
night's forgetfulness levels all we have done
and our beggary, like yours, is endlessly renewed
in the salt deserts of our solitude
admit us therefore, we ask, into the ranks
of those whose only service is to give thanks
since our deepest needs are met only by largesse
teach us your art, brothers, to curse and bless
now is the moment when barriers collapse
admit us to your domain: we need no maps,
we are at home there, we know it well,
we have lived beside you longer than we dare tell
for beggary is our element as it is yours
the shriek of a rabbit in the eagle's claws
we are helpless before the things we have created
we have maimed what we loved, worshipped what we hated
and it is our injustice shines cold through your eyes
shaming the falsity of our vanished disguise
there can be no progress till you forgive us
and into your chaste fellowship receive us
let there be no talk of plans and fresh starts
while the world still mirrors the granite of our hearts
we confess to your helplessness and your greed
speak the word by which our chained hands may be freed
for who knows his own needs has mapped a cruel city
the roads go between walls and the wind is gritty
the most we can ask, the last we can give, is pity
♥ Only those unseen wings within him flapped
wild to be soaring in unperfumed air.
They itched beneath his skin. He paced the room,
sick with that throbbing pain: but flew nowhere.
His naked shoulders never grew a plume.
It was his lust, not yours, that held him trapped.
♥ Hold tight for a steep dive. Bolt your
stomach into place, Jack. An insanely
intrepid dive through the steep surprising
air. Then smack into (with a plume
of spray) the salt water of our beginnings.
The bitter water that gives life. The end
of all our dreams of coolness and purity.
But first, a climb. Our dive starts from the
spindly ladders of a cosmic farce.
♥ No disrespect,
I like jokes myself. They held one to face
seriousness, by coming at it sidelong.
♥ Ay, thou poor ghost, we will imagine that.
That sleep of Adam's, that thick restless swoon,
that coma hung with shadows and sharp dreams,
snakes crawling down the walls, fat spiders in
the bath (look that one up in Freud, fellows),
eyes sealed by God's occluding touch, teeth clenched,
look how his hands open and shut-he wants
to fight the beasts that attack him in his dream!
Hear him keep meaning? Adam, I would not
wish such a sleep on you.
♥ His eyelids opened. Light hammered in his nerves.
The tall grass heaved, with fever or desire.
The garden rocked him with its gentle curves.
The loneliness that coiled its rusty wire
about his heart, had parted. He was free.
Love shimmered like the air above a fire.
This was the miracle that had to be.
Naked, confiding, near enough to touch,
motionless in the moving light stood she.
Was he not blest beyond analysis?
His body had no doubts: its good was here:
and, dolphin-jumping in those waves of bliss.
worshipped the moon that burned so hard and clear,
worshipped the tides that made the waters dance.
O gentle earth! O crystal atmosphere!
Yet there was fear within his avid glance.
♥ Torchlight danced on his forehead:
I wanted to touch his eyes,
They were the colour of longing.
♥ 'Paint till a horse may mire upon your face!'
Mad Timon screamed to those two pleasure-girls,
Raving to drown them in his own disgrace:
What did they answer? Shrug, and toss their curls?
Furs, silks, fine hangings, asses' milk, and pearls
Lying in cups of wine: a scented place
Among the cushions: spasms and cunning twirls,
The stallion member upright as a mace-
Things without words! Talk was stink of breath.
Bodies like theirs were made to drive men mad:
What woulds he have them do? Scrub kitchen floors?
Years later, dying amid rags and sores,
They thought of Timon's frenzy, and were glad:
His curses warmed their blood, that cooled towards death.
♥ My need is fish, buffalo, piston:
and you are all. In the tall wheat
the mouse builds a swaying house:
long tails twine for love.
Thin fish dark, but an oyster swims
slower than a tree grows:
every grace, any place is
yours. Like printed eyes
that stare from torn paper on a hoarding
you hold my gaze. All
life is your holy mountain.
I see you now Katya
even so distant, I see you
against the black sky of threats and questions
my eyes hold you
not even a woman
not even a feminine shape
but a streak of light
red and flowing, cool and gleaming
light from a fire of comfort
or the hot coals of desire
or light from a beacon
the pale urgency of a flare
or light from the steady moon:
every kind of light has majesty
and authority, and you
have all, at all times
Katya
unknown woman of the night
of Alexander Blok
and of my clinging night
I see you there so clearly
as stripe of light
against the black
the signal of our longing, our suffering
the ecstasy of our fulfillment
and the promise of our human future
unquenchable