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Seasons Of The Soul

To the memory of John Peale Bishop,

Attor porsi la mano un poco avante,e colsi un ramicel da un gran pruno;e U tronco suo gridd:

Perchd mi schiante?

I.

Summer, this is our flesh,

The body you let mature;

If now while the body is

You take it, shall we

The heart, lest heart

The mind's

Blow of greedy claws?

Shall mind itself still

If like a hunting

It falls to the lion's jaws?

Under the summer's

The soul cannot

Unless by sleight or

It seize or deny its

To make the eye secure.

Brothers-in-arms,

The hot wind dries and

With circular

The flesh, ash from the ember,

Into the summer's jaws.

It was a gentle

When, at the June

Green France was

With caterpillar feet.

No head knows where its rest

Or may lie down with

When war's usurping

Shall take the heart escheat-Green field in burning

To stain the weevil's jaws.

The southern summer

Evenly in the fall:

We raise our tired

Into a sky of glass,

Blue, empty, and

Without tail or

Where burn the equal

For Balaam and his

Above the invalid dead,

Who cannot lift their jaws.

When was it that the summer(Daylong a liquid light)And a child, the new-comer,

Bathed in the same green spray,

Could neither guess the night?

The summer had no reason;

Then, like a primal

It had its timeless

Before it kept the

Of time's engaging jaws.

Two men of our summer

Descended winding

And when their shadows

They fearfully

The vast concluding shell:

Stopping, they saw in the

Light a centaur

And gaze, then his

Beard, with a notched arrow,

Part back upon his jaws.

II.

It had an autumn

And that was how I

That I was down a well:

I was no longer young;

My lips were numb and blue,

The air was like fine

In a butcher's

Or pumice to the tongue:

And when I raised my handI stood in the empty hall.

The round ceiling was

And the gray light like

Thin, crumbling, and dry:

No rug on the bare

Nor any carved

To which the eye could glide;

I counted along the

Door after closed

Through which a shade might

To the cold and empty hall.

I will leave this house,

I said,

There is the autumn weather-Here, nor living nor dead;

The lights burn in the

Where men fear together.

Then on the bare floor,

But tiptoe lest I fall,

I walked years

Towards the front

At the end of the empty hall.

Two men of our summer

Descended winding

And when their shadows

They fearfully

The vast concluding shell:

Stopping, they saw in the

Light a centaur

And gaze, then his

Beard, with a notched arrow,

Part back upon his jaws,

It had an autumn

And that was how I

That I was down a well:

I was no longer young;

My lips were numb and blue,

The air was like fine

In a butcher's

Or pumice to the tongue:

And when I raised my handI stood in the empty hall.

The round ceiling was

And the gray light like

Thin, crumbling, and dry:

No rug on the bare

Nor any carved

To which the eye could glide;

I counted along the

Door after closed

Through which a shade might

To the cold and empty hall.

I will leave this house,

I said,

There is the autumn weather-Here, nor living nor dead;

The lights burn in the

Where men fear together.

Then on the bare floor,

But tiptoe lest I fall,

I walked years

Towards the front

At the end of the empty hall.

The door was false-no

Or lock, and I was

In the house; yet I could seeI had been born to

For miles of running

Me back where I began.

I saw now in the wallA door open a

And a fat grizzled

Come out into the hall:

As in a moonlit

Men meeting are too

To check their hurried

But raise their eyes and

As through a needle's

Into the faceless gloom,-My father in a gray

Gave me an unseeing

And entered another room!

I stood in the empty

And watched them come and

From one room to another,

Old men, old women slow,

Familiar; girls, boys;

I saw my downcast

Clad in her street-clothes,

Her blue eyes long and small.

Who had no look or

For him whose vision

Him in the empty hall.

II.

Goddess sea-born and bright,

Return into the

Where eddying

Gathers upon your people-Cold goddess, hear our plea!

Leave the burnt earth,

Venus,

For the drying God above,

Hanged in his windy steeple,

No longer bears for

The living wound of love.

All the sea-gods are dead.

You,

Venus, come

To your salt maidenhead,

The tossed anonymous

Under shuddering foam-Shade for lovers, whereA shark swift as your

Shall pace our

All night to nudge and

The livid wound of love.

And now the winter sea:

Within her hollow

What sleek

Of sea-conceited

To plumb the nether mind!

Eternal winters

Shivering flakes, and

Bodies that wheel and drop-Cold soot upon the

Their livid wound of love.

Beyond the

The gray

Transpires a phosphor

Into the circular miles:

In the centre of his

The pacing

Surveys the jungle

And slicks his slithering

To turn the venereal

In the livid wound of love.

Beyond the

The rigid

Resists the winter's flow-Headless, unageing

That gives the leaf no more.

Wilfully as I

Within the thickest groveI seized a branch, which broke;

I heard the speaking blood(From the livid wound of love)Drip down upon my toe:"We are the men who

Of self-inflicted woe,

Lovers whose

Led to their suicide."I touched my sanguine

And felt it drip

Their brother who, like them,

Was maimed and did not

The living wound of love.

IV.

Irritable spring,

Into the burning

Your combustible

That as a liquid

Shall be the body's

Who lights, but cannot

To comfort this

Which, like a dying coal,

Hastens the cooler

Of the mother of silences.

Back in my native primeI saw the orient

All space but no time,

Reaching for the

Of the land where I was born:

It was a pleasant

Where even death could

Us with an ancient pun-All dying for the

Of the mother of silences.

In time of bloody

Who will know the time?

Is it a new spring

Within the timing chill,

Talking, or just a mime,

That rises in the blood-Thin Jack-and-Jilling

Without the human will?

Its light is at the flood,

Mother of silences!

It burns us each

Whose burning

Burns up the rolling stone,

This earth-Platonic

Of vertiginous chance!

Come, tired Sisyphus,

Cover the cave's

Where light reveals the slave,

Who rests when sleeps with

The mother of silences.

Come, old woman,

Your sons who have gone

Into the burning cave:

Come, mother, and

At the window with your

And gaze through its light

These fifteen

Upon the shirking

Where men, blind, go lame:

Then, mother of silences,

Speak, that we may hear;

Listen, while we

That we conceal our fear;

Regard us, while the

Discerns by sight or

Whether, as sheep

Upon their crooked knees,

We have begun to die;

Whether your kindness, mother,

Is mother of silences.

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Allen Tate

John Orley Allen Tate (November 19, 1899 – February 9, 1979), known professionally as Allen Tate, was an American poet, essayist, social comment…

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