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.
