Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles upon a cake
As the sun went down the sky,
A momentary flash
Yet there was time to wish
Before the break light could die
If I had known what to wish
As once I must have known
Bending above the clean candlelit tablecloth
To blow them out with a breath
Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London,
He too set me the riddle.
Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me:
"I was once your father."
When I was young my heart and head were light,
And I was gay and feckless as a colt
Out in the fields, with morning in the may,
Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom.
O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free
And all the paths led on from hawthorn-time
Across the carolling meadows into June.
But now my heart is heavy-laden. I sit
Burning my dreams away beside the fire:
For death has made me wise and bitter and strong;
And I am rich in all that I have lost.
Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight,
(Under Lord Derby’s Scheme). I died in hell—
(They called it Passchendaele). My wound was slight,
And I was hobbling back; and then a shell
Burst slick upon the duck-boards: so I fell
Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.
At sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew,
He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare:
For, though low down upon the list, I’m there;
‘In proud and glorious memory’ ... that’s my due.
Two bleeding years I fought in France, for Squire:
Meintjes Kopje! Meintjes Kopje!
Do the purple daisies grow
On your rugged slopes in spring-time
As they did in years ago,
When I walked with one who loved me,
In the days when love was young;
When our eyes held glinted laughter
And our sighs were songs unsung?
But the laughter fell and faded,
And the wonder-song is still,
And the track goes all untrodden
Past the pool and up the hill.
Meintjes Kopje! Meintjes Kopje!
Other years your flowers restore,
For Michael Hamburger
Barn owl
daughter of snow,
subject to the night wind,
yet taking root
with her talons
in the rotten scab of walls,
beak face
with round eyes,
heart-rigid mask
of feathers a white fire
that touches neither time nor space.
Coldly the wind blows
against the old homestead,
in the yard pale folk,
sledges, baggage, lamps covered with snow,
in the pots death,
in the pitchers poison,
the last will nailed to a post.
My ev'ry thought and wish was thine;
Alas! thou know'st too well—
The ties that bind thy soul and mine,
How lasting need I tell.
Oh! I have lov'd thee tenderly—
Too dearly love thee still!
I feel that thought can never die—
That wish no time can kill.
The life that spreads before me now
Is one vast wilderness;
No fairy vales the scene can show
That smile to cheer and bless.
All dreary spreads the frowning waste—
A desert, gloomy, bare;
I lie stretched out upon the window-seat
And doze, and read a page or two, and doze,
And feel the air like water on me close,
Great waves of sunny air that lip and beat
With a small noise, monotonous and sweet,
Against the window -- and the scent of cool,
Frail flowers by some brown and dew-drenched pool
Possesses me from drowsy head to feet.
This is the time of all-sufficing laughter
At idiotic things some one has done,
And there is neither past nor vague hereafter.
"Once...Once upon a time..."
Over and over again,
Martha would tell us her stories,
In the hazel glen.
Hers were those clear gray eyes
You watch, and the story seems
Told by their beautifulness
Tranquil as dreams.
She'd sit with her two slim hands
Clasped round her bended knees;
While we on our elbows lolled,
And stared at ease.
Her voice and her narrow chin,
Her grave small lovely head,
Seemed half the meaning
Of the words she said.
Mother of man's time-travelling generations,
Breath of his nostrils, heartblood of his heart,
God above all Gods worshipped of all nations,
Light above light, law beyond law, thou art.
Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder
Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things;
The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder
Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings.
Angels and Gods, spirit and sense, thou takest
In thy right hand as drops of dust or dew;
The temples and the towers of time thou breakest,
