O I would take my pen and write
In might of words
A pounding dytheramb
Alight with teasing fires of hate,
Or drone to numbness in the spell
Of old loves long lived away
A drowsy vilanelle.
O I would build an Ark of words,
A safe ciborium where to lay
The secret soul of loveliness.
O I would weave of words in rhythm
A gaudily wrought pall
For the curious cataphalque of fate.
But my pen does otherwise.
All I can write is the orange tinct with crimson
of the beaks of the goose
and of the wet webbed feet of the geese
that crackle the skimming of ice
and curve their white plump necks to the water
in the manure-stained rivulet
that runs down the broad village street;
and of their cantankerous dancings and hissings,
with beaks tilted up, half open
and necks stiffly extended;
and the cure's habit blowing in the stinging wind
and his red globular face
like a great sausage burst in the cooking
that smiles
as he takes the shovel hat off his head with a gesture,
the hat held at arm's length,
sweeping a broad curve, like a censor well swung;
and, beyond the last grey gabled house in the village,
the gaunt Christ
that stretches bony arms and tortured hands
to embrace the broad lands leprous with cold
the furrowed fields and the meadows
and the sprouting oats
ghostly beneath the grey bitter blanket of hoarfrost.
_Sausheim_
X
In a hall on Olympus we held carouse,
Sat dining through the warm spring night,
Spilling of the crocus-colored wine
Glass after brimming glass to rouse
The ghosts that dwell in books to flight
Of word and image that, divine,
In the draining of a glass would tear
The lies from off reality,
And the world in gaudy chaos spread
Naked-new in the throbbing flare
Of songs of long-fled spirits;--free
For the wanderer devious roads to tread.
Names waved as banners in our talk:
Lucretius, his master, all men who to balk
The fear that shrivels us in choking rinds
Have thrown their souls like pollen to the winds,
Erasmus, Bruno who burned in Rome, Voltaire,
All those whose lightning laughter cleaned the air
Of the minds of men from the murk of fear-sprung gods,
And straightened the backs bowed under the rulers' rods.
A hall full of the wine and chant of old songs,
Smelling of lilacs and early roses and night,
Clamorous with the names and phrases of the throngs
Of the garlanded dead, and with glasses pledged to the light
Of the dawning to come ...
O in the morning we would go
Out into the drudging world and sing
And shout down dustblinded streets, hollo
From hill to hill, and our thought fling
Abroad through all the drowsy earth
To wake the sleeper and the worker and the jailed
In walls cemented of lies to mirth
And dancing joy; laughingly unveiled
From the sick mist of fear to run naked and leap
And shake the nations from their snoring sleep.
O in the morning we would go
Fantastically arrayed
In silk and scarlet braid,
In rich glitter like the sun on snow
With banners of orange, vermillion, black,
And jasper-handed swords,
Anklets and tinkling gauds
Of topaz set twistingly, or lac
Laid over with charms of demons' heads
In indigo and gold.
Our going a music bold
Would be, behind us the twanging threads
Of mad guitars, the wail of lutes
In wildest harmony;
Lilting thumping free,
Pipes and kettledrums and flutes
And brazen braying trumpet-calls
Would wake each work-drowsed town
And shake it in laughter down,
Untuning in dust the shuttered walls.
O in the morning we would go
With doleful steps so dragging and slow
And grievous mockery of woe
And bury the old gods where they lay
Sodden drunk with men's pain in the day,
In the dawn's first new burning white ray
That would shrivel like dead leaves the sacred lies,
The avengers, the graspers, the wringers of sighs,
Of blood from men's work-twisted hands, from their eyes
Of tears without hope ... But in the burning day
Of the dawn we would see them brooding to slay,
In a great wind whirled like dead leaves away.
In a hall on Olympus we held carouse,
In our talk as banners waving names,
Songs, phrases of the garlanded dead.
Yesterday I went back to that house ...
Guttered candles where were flames,
Shattered dust-grey glasses instead
Of the fiery crocus-colored wine,
Silence, cobwebs and a mouse
Nibbling nibbling the moulded bread
Those spring nights dipped in vintage divine
In the dawnward chanting of our last carouse.
_1918--1919_