Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme) by Robert Graves

Numbers, no longer arithmetical,

  Dance like lambs, fly like doves;

  And silence falls at last, though silken branches

  Gently heave in the near olive-yard

  And vague cloud labours on.

  Whose was the stroke of summer genius

  Flung from a mountain fastness

  Where the griffon-vulture soars

  That let us read our shrouded future

  As easily as a book of prayer

  Spread open on the knee?

  Beyond Giving

  (1969)

  PART I

  SONG: TO A ROSE

  Queen of Sharon in the valley,

  Clasp my head your breasts between:

  Darkly blind me to your beauty –

  Rose renowned for blood-red berries

  Ages earlier than for fragrant

  Blossom and sweet hidden honey,

  Save by studious bees.

  SONG: DREAM WARNING

  A lion in the path, a lion;

  A jewelled serpent by the sun

  Hatched in a desert silence

  And stumbled on by chance;

  A peacock crested with green fire,

  His legs befouled in mire;

  Not less, an enlacement of seven dreams

  On a rainbow scale returning

  To the drum that throbs against their melodies

  Its dark insistent warning.

  SONG: BEYOND GIVING

  There is a giving beyond giving:

  Yours to me

  Who awoke last night, hours before the dawn,

  Set free

  By one intolerable lightning stroke

  That ripped the sky

  To understand what love withholds in love,

  And why.

  TRIAL OF INNOCENCE

  Urged by your needs and my desire,

  I first made you a woman; nor was either

  Troubled by fear of hidden evil

  Or of temporal circumstance;

  For circumstances never alter cases

  When lovers, hand in hand, face trial

  Pleading uncircumstantial innocence.

  POISONED DAY

  The clouds dripped poisonous dew to spite

  A day for weeks looked forward to. True love

  Sickened that evening without remedy:

  We neither quarrelled, kissed, nor said good-night

  But fell asleep, our arms around each other,

  And awoke to the gentle hiss of rain on grass

  And thrushes calling that the worst was over.

  SUPERSTITION

  Forget the foolishness with which I vexed you:

  Mine was a gun-shy superstition

  Surviving from defeat in former loves

  And banished when you stood staring aghast

  At the replacement of your sturdy lover

  By a disconsolate waif.

  Blame the foul weather for my aching wounds,

  Blame ugly history for my wild fears,

  Nor ever turn from your own path; for still

  Despite your fancies, your white silences,

  Your disappearances, you remain bound

  By this unshakeable trust I rest in you.

  Go, because inner strength ordains your journey,

  Making a necessary occasion seem

  No more than incidental. Love go with you

  In distillation of all past and future –

  You, a clear torrent flooding the mill-race,

  Forcing its mill to grind

  A coarse grain into flour for angels’ bread.

  IN THE NAME OF VIRTUE

  In the name of Virtue, girl,

  Why must you try so hard

  In the hard name of Virtue?

  Is not such trying, questioning?

  Such questioning, doubting?

  Such doubting, guessing?

  Such guessing, not-knowing?

  Such not-knowing, not-being?

  Such not-being, death?

  Can death be Virtue?

  Virtue is from listening

  To a private angel,

  An angel overheard

  When the little-finger twitches –

  The bold little-finger

  That refused education:

  When the rest went to college

  And philosophized on Virtue,

  It neither went, nor tried.

  Knowing becomes doing

  When all we need to know

  Is how to check our pendulum

  And move the hands around

  For a needed golden instant

  Of the future or past –

  Then start time up again

  With a bold little-finger

  In Virtue’s easy name.

  WHAT WE DID NEXT

  What we did next, neither of us remembers….

  Still, the key turned, the wide bronze gate creaked open

  And there before us in profuse detail

  Spread Paradise: its lawns dappled with petals,

  Pomegranate trees in quincunx, corn in stocks;

  Plantations loud with birds, pools live with fish,

  And unborn children blue as bonfire-smoke

  Crouching entranced to see the grand serpent

  Writhe in and out of long rock-corridors,

  Rattling his coils of gold –

  Or the jewelled toad from whose immense mouth

  Burst out the four great rivers…. To be there

  Was always to be there, without grief, always,

  Superior to all chance, or change, or death….

  What we did next, neither of us remembers.

  COMPACT

  My love for you, though true, wears the extravagance of centuries;

  Your love for me is fragrant, simple and millennial.

  Smiling without a word, you watch my extravagances pass;

  To check them would be presumptuous and unmaidenly –

  As it were using me like an ill-bred schoolboy.

  Dear Live-apart, when I sit confused by the active spites

  Tormenting me with too close sympathy for fools,

  Too dark a rage against hidden plotters of evil,

  Too sour a mind, or soused with sodden wool-bales –

  I turn my eyes to the light smoke drifting from your fire.

  Our settled plan has been: never to make plans –

  The future, present and past being already settled

  Beyond review or interpretative conjecture

  By the first decision of truth that we clasped hands upon:

  To conserve a purity of soul each for the other.

  SONG: NEW YEAR KISSES

  Every morning, every evening,

  Kisses for my starving darling:

  On her brow for close reflection,

  On her eyes for patient watching,

  On her ears for watchful listening,

  On her palms for careful action,

  On her toes for fiery dancing –

  Kisses that outgo perfection –

  On her nape for secrecy,

  On her lips for poetry,

  On her bosom bared for me

  Kisses more than three times three.

  SONG: THE CLOCKS OF TIME

  The clocks of time divide us:

  You sleep while I wake –

  No need to think it monstrous

  Though I remain uneasy,

  Watchful, albeit drowsy,

  Communing over wastes of sea

  With you, my other me.

  Too strict a concentration,

  Each on an absent self,

  Distracts our prosecution

  Of what this love implies:

  Genius, with its complexities

  Of working backwards from the answer

  To bring a problem near.

  But when your image shortens

  (My eyes thrown out of focus)

  And fades in the far distance –

  Your features indistinguishable,<
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  Your gait and form unstable –

  Time’s heart revives our closeness

  Hand in hand, lip to lip.

  GOLD CLOUD

  Your gold cloud, towering far above me,

  Through which I climb from darkness into sleep

  Has the warmth of sun, rain’s morning freshness

  And a scent either of wood-smoke or of jasmine;

  Nor is the ascent steep.

  Our creature, Time, bends readily as willow:

  We plan our own births, that at least we know,

  Whether in the lovely moment of death

  Or when we first meet, here in Paradise,

  As now, so years ago.

  SONG: BASKET OF BLOSSOM

  Jewels here lie heaped for you

  Under jasmine, under lilac –

  Leave them undisclosed awhile;

  If the blossoms be short-lasting

  Smile, but with your secret smile.

  I have always from the first

  Made my vow in honour’s name

  Only thus to fetch you jewels,

  Never vaunting of the same.

  SONG: WHEREVER WE MAY BE

  Wherever we may be

  There is mindlessness and mind,

  There is lovelessness and love,

  There is self, there is unself,

  Within and without;

  There is plus, there is minus;

  There is empty, there is full;

  There is God, the busy question

  In denial of doubt.

  There is mindlessness and mind,

  There is deathlessness and death,

  There is waking, there is sleeping,

  There is false, there is true,

  There is going, there is coming,

  But upon the stroke of midnight

  Wherever we may be,

  There am I, there are you.

  WHAT IS LOVE?

  But what is love? Tell me, dear heart, I beg you.

  Is it a reattainment of our centre,

  A core of trustful innocence come home to?

  Is it, perhaps, a first wild bout of being,

  The taking of our own extreme measure

  And for a few hours knowing everything?

  Or what is love? Is it primeval vision

  That stars our course with oracles of danger

  And looks to death for timely intervention?

  SONG: THE PROMISE

  While you were promised to me

  But still were not yet given,

  There was this to be said:

  Though wishes might be wishes,

  A promise was a promise –

  Like the shadow of a cedar,

  Or the moon overhead,

  Or the firmness of your fingers,

  Or the print of your kisses,

  Or your lightness of tread,

  With not a doubt between us

  Once bats began their circling

  Among the palms and cedars

  And it was time for bed.

  SONG: YESTERDAY ONLY

  Not today, not tomorrow,

  Yesterday only:

  A long-lasting yesterday

  Devised by us to swallow

  Today with tomorrow.

  When was your poem hidden

  Underneath my pillow,

  When was your rose-bush planted

  Underneath my window –

  Yesterday only?

  Green leaves, red roses,

  Blazoned upon snow,

  A long-lasting yesterday,

  Today with tomorrow,

  Always and only.

  PART II

  SEMI-DETACHED

  Her inevitable complaint or accusation

  Whatever the Major does or leaves undone,

  Though, being a good wife, never before strangers,

  Nor, being a good mother, ever before their child…

  With no endearments except for cats and kittens

  Or an occasional bird rescued from cats…

  Well, as semi-detached neighbours, with party-walls

  Not altogether sound-proof, we overhear

  The rare explosion when he retaliates

  In a sudden burst of anger, although perhaps

  (We are pretty sure) apologizing later

  And getting no forgiveness or reply.

  He has his own resources – bees and gardening –

  And, we conclude, is on the whole happy.

  They never sleep together, as they once did

  Five or six years ago, when they first arrived,

  Or so we judge from washing on their line –

  Those double sheets are now for guests only –

  But welcome streams of visitors. How many

  Suspect that the show put on by both of them,

  Of perfect marital love, is apology

  In sincere make-believe, for what still lacks?

  If ever she falls ill, which seldom happens,

  We know he nurses her indefatigably,

  But this she greets, we know, with sour resentment,

  Hating to catch herself at a disadvantage,

  And crawls groaning downstairs to sink and oven.

  If he falls ill she treats it as affront –

  Except at the time of that car-accident

  When he nearly died, and unmistakable grief

  Shone from her eyes for almost a whole fortnight,

  But then faded…

  He receives regular airmail

  In the same handwriting, with Austrian stamps.

  Whoever sends it, obviously a woman,

  Never appears. Those are his brightest moments.

  Somehow they take no holidays whatsoever

  But are good neighbours, always ready to lend

  And seldom borrowing. Our child plays with theirs;

  Yet we exchange no visits or confidences.

  Only once I penetrated past their hall –

  Which was when I fetched him in from the wrecked car

  And alone knew who had caused the accident.

  IAGO

  Iago learned from that old witch, his mother,

  How to do double murder

  On man and woman fallen deep in love;

  Lie first to her, then lie again to him,

  Make each mistrustful of the honest other.

  Guilt and suspicion wear the same sick face –

  Two deaths will follow in a short space.

  AGAINST WITCHCRAFT

  No smile so innocent or angelic

  As when she nestled to his wounded heart,

  Where the slow poison worked within

  And eggs of insane fever incubated…

  Out, witch, out! Here are nine cloves of garlic

  That grew repellent to the Moon’s pull;

  Here too is every gift you ever gave him,

  Wrapped in a silken cloth.

  Your four-snake chariot awaits your parting

  And here I plant my besom upside down.

  TROUBLESOME FAME

  To be born famous, as your father’s son,

  Is a fate troublesome enough, unless

  Like Philip’s Alexander of Macedon

  You can out-do him by superb excess

  Of greed and profligacy and wantonness.

  To become famous as a wonder-child

  Brings no less trouble, with whatever art

  You toyed precociously, for Fame had smiled

  Malevolence at your birth… Only Mozart

  Played on, still smiling from his placid heart.

  To become famous while a raw young man

  And lead Fame by the nose, to a bitter end,

  As Caesar’s nephew did, Octavian

  Styling himself Augustus, is to pretend

  Peace in the torments that such laurels lend.

  To become famous in your middle years

  For merit not unblessed by accident –

  Encountering cat-calls, missiles, jeers and
sneers

  From half your uncontrollable parliament –

  Is no bad fate, to a good sportsman sent…

  But Fame attendant on extreme old age

  Falls best. What envious youth cares to compete

  With a lean sage hauled painfully upstage,

  Bowing, gasping, shuffling his frozen feet –

  A ribboned hearse parked plainly down the street?

  TOLLING BELL

  ‘But why so solemn when the bell tolled?’

  ‘Did you expect me to stand up and caper?’

  ‘Confess, what are you trying to hide from me?

  Honor of death?’

  ‘That seventeenth-century

  Skeletal effigy in the Church crypt?’

  ‘Or is it fear, perhaps, of a second childhood?

  Of incurable sickness? Or of a strange someone

  Seated in your own chair at your own table?

  Or worse, of that chair gone?’

  ‘Why saddle me

  With your own nightmares?’

  ‘Fear of the other world?’

  ‘Be your own age! What world exists but ours?’

  ‘Distaste for funerals?’

  ‘Isn’t it easier

  To play the unweeping corpse than the pall-bearer?’

  ‘Why so mysterious?’

  ‘Why so persistent?’

  ‘I only asked why you had looked solemn

  When the bell tolled.’

  ‘Angered, not solemn, angered

  By all parochially enforced grief.

  Death is a private, ungainsayable act.’

  ‘Privately, then, what does Death mean to you?’

  ‘Only love’s gentle sigh of consummation,

  Which I have little fear of drawing too soon.’

  BLANKET CHARGE

  This fever doubtless comes in punishment

  For crimes discovered by your own conscience:

  You lie detained here on a blanket charge

  And between blankets lodged.

  So many tedious hours of light and dark

  To weigh the incriminatory evidence –

  With your head somewhat clearer by midday

  Than at its midnight worst.

  Ignorance of the Law is no defence

  In any Court; but can you plead ‘not guilty

  Of criminal intent’ without a lawyer

  To rise on your behalf?