Kitabı oku: «The Uncertain Land and Other Poems», sayfa 2

Part I: Poems

Blitz poetry

Lines of unpredictable merit written on the back of Miss Patz, a rough-haired Dachshundin in the year of Grace a thousand nine hundred and forty-one, on Wednesday, the eighth day of January, at about half after one in the afternoon, it being a cold day, dismal with half molten snow.

The people of this [Chelsea ambulance] station are disconsolate and rude,

All English to the tonsils, and filled with British phlegm.

They blow their noses horribly, and between the blast is spewed

A flux of ghastly small-talk. Why, O God, did you make them?

¿Was other clay not handy?

Was there nothing else to please?

O Lord that gave us brandy

And lamb and fresh green peas

¿Why did You turn your hand to these?

The last line is (I think) an Alexandrine,

which is very clever indeed, probably.

That is affected, I must admit. ¿But am

I inferior to a Spaniard? ¡No!

In dispraise of the Personnel of 22 St[ation].

L.A.A.S.^fn1

The people of this station are disconsolate and rude

they are English to the tonsils, and with British phlegm embued

In proof of this opinion to their handkerchiefs I point

And not only to their kerchiefs, but oyster eyes and rheumy joint.

But also to their tempers, habitually vile

The fruit of grave distempers and coagulated bile.

All wart-hogs in comparison are quite high-souled and mild

Which leads to the conclusion that the better beasts are wild.

This may be sung (though the notion is grim)

To the tune of a well-known American hymn.

viz., or vide licet, if you should prefer the word

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord …

[Miss Patz]

Patz went out in the dead of the night,

in the dead of the night went she.

But first she carefully put out the light,

And closed the door with a key.

[Miss Patz’s invitation to the pub]

Sie sagte sich «Im ein Augenblick»

Ich werde haben ein grosse Trink.

Und so in kleiner

Moment werdet in meiner

Turn, zwei-drei steiner

Sein, oder bier als wein.

Gut. Geh’ich nach Klub.

Nein; erst hab ich lust für ein Pub.

She went quite straight to the Lion called Black^fn2

Tossed down a quick pint, and never looked back

For a wicked old Owl, who took his dram raw

Determined to try the truth of the saw …

mark the Saw.

In wommin vinident [‘full of wine’] is no defence,

ðus knoweth lechours by experience.

Dan C[haucer].

So he plied her with whiskey, with gin and with rum

And said that he wished she would instantly come

To a very fine party to be held at a club

So complaisant and willing she then left the pub.

At the club she encountered a motley crew

Hard-drinking and raffish and lecherous too

They drank bottles of whiskey and magnums of gin

Till Patz felt uncertain what state she was in.

The Owl broke off in the midst of a tale

(It was singularly dirty – exclusively male)

And said ‘Liebe Fraülein, what makes you so pale?

Come, drink up a glass of red pepper and ale.’

She said ‘it’s my head, the air, heat and the smoke,’

And giggled like one who has just made a joke.

The Owl thought, ‘Aha, now may I eat grass,

But this is the time when I make the first pass.’

And through his foul mind there passed devious shapes

Of libidinous bitches and lecherous apes.

[Jetzt kommt er bei Patz,^fn3

Und flüßtert ganz leise

‘Heraus liegt ein Auto,

Kommst Du für ein Reise?’

‘Ach nein! Du alt Teufel!

Wie kannst du mir’s fragen?

Ich weiß schon gehörts

L.C.C. dieser Wagon!’

Alors les autres

Se mettaient à rire

En se moquant de l’hibou

Qui ne savait quoi dire.

Il saisit d’un coup

Une bouteille de vin,

La vidait toute suite

Et la jettait du main.

‘Je paris’, dit-il,

‘Je ne quitterai pas

Avant que la chienne

Se sert dans mes bras’.]

‘The sea and the sky are silent’

The sea and the sky are silent:

they wait.

The sea and the sky are silent:

the girl is late.

The sea and the sky are silent:

the girl is late.

The sea and the sky are waiting:

let her come to her fate.

Mrs Koren

Couplets in favour of Mrs W. Koren, who sent (per JBC)^fn1 jam to the O’Brians [at Collioure] in time of dearth

All Attic virtues, beauty, wisdom, wit,

Take which you will, she doth excel in it

All these and yet one more th’Atlantic dame

Hath to illumine her noble spouse’s name,

Mark there the Greek with Chian wine and oil

Comes bearing gifts, and see how vain his toil.

Yet here Transpontine Ceres freely sends

Imprison’d comfits, Polemarchus’ blends, …

And dreams not fear nor anger (see above)

But grateful intercessions and our love

The pallid bread glows purple, and the dew

Of anxious gleed bespreads each wizen’d brow

Encrimson’d mouths gape sated at the last

Such admirable tins of jam as these

Are apt to promote international pese

May Heaven reward Mrs Koren

Who is undoubtedly a pearl among women.

The recipient of jam were [sic] undoubtedly a moron

‘The harsh dry polished rattle’

The harsh dry polished rattle of the palm fronds

stirring in the breeze. I had supposed

But not our London sparrow, magpie, crow

Still less the stars by night, our Plough, old Bear

the same Orion, Rigal, Altair there

and through the trees the shining Procyon.

‘You will come to it’

You will come to it

Do not suppose their motions pantomime

because the thing they dig is dark, unseen

the mattock and the shovel swing in time

a near approach will show you what they mean.

The Olive Harvest

Cold from the silent leaden sky, unmoving, full of snow.

Cold, and the sounds far on the smoky air –

the rackle, hoe in stones, the stoney vineyard high

and the working man much farther than the sound

All through the terraced valley, sounds.

The vines are bare, the spare leaves redden:

they prune: and everywhere they grub with shining tools

And in the silence sounds – on silence beads, the sounds.

Now there are women.

gabbling

Where are the women? There

gabbling

above the road, the vines, the olives

the prim the graceful olive trees

the women picking there the olives

a tilted plane, the trees, the women

and then the sky, one-coloured, leaden.

Neat, clear, unworldly, Pieter Brueghel.

I do not like to see the women.

Black. Not shining. Black entirely.

head to foot, and cheesey faces.

Eager, hard and clacking voices: and the hands

are deadly white for ever groping,

They stand as high, and monstrously

they stand as high, as does the tree.

Their hands

are deadly white, for ever groping.

Emasculating

in the trees.

The Inine

The winter hillside

brown

sharp, clear, distinct

and figures running

tiny, shortened, struggling with space.

A plouff of smoke

is drifting on the field

larger: larger, vague: and now the bang

the echoes clapping in the hills, hard hills,

and now the rain

reversed: the rattle

cruel ripping tearing hail

of stones that fell

in time disturbed, before.

tibi donum offero

I am poor about loving, so

tibi donum offero

It is a present as you see

extractum ex operi

quod ex libro domini

extractum est, alas by me

theft it was, but theft or no

tibi donum offero.

A present

A present is chiefly a fragment, a token

of affection and love.

And then there is the strong pleasure of giving

a visible proof of unbroken

kindness and more

But, the interchanging pleasure apart

and discounted

A ring is a token of marriage; a book

of the spirit that made it.

and a present of love.

But the marriage is more than the ring

and the mind than the book.

French verses
Mal du pays

Les vignes, les chênes-lièges, oliviers et thym

les Catalans

le sein

vierge du Canigou

le vent vif des montagnes

et tous

ces pics fiers, hautains

d’Espagne.

J’avais prévu.

Mais pas le moineau anglais, ni la pie

le corbeau parlant gallois, même ici.

Et renard, je t’ai déjà vu

t’ai chassé, là, dans mon pays.

Et à travers les feuilles semées

(étranges feuilles des palmiers)

vieilles étoilles, là notr’ Charrue

Rigel, Altair: à perte de vue

nos douces Pleïades, les mêmes que celles

qui hantent les gens de Camberwell.

Le bois des oiseaux

vent qui chant dans le bois des oiseaux

et vert le soleil dans les feuilles, jeunes feuilles.

Courbé, courbé sur les pierres

les pierres vertes de Coed Tŷ

yeux fixes, aveugles sur la terre

la terre moussue de Coed Tŷ

je tenais dans mes mains la peine

la peine, la peine, cher Dieu la peine

la peine atroce là, dans mon coeur.

Espagnols exilés ^fn1

Une femme qui chante

et dans la rue étroite soleil qui fait

des ombres durs, rigides et rectilignes

rien ne bouge

mais dans la rue

le Chant qui tombe, se meurt, gitane

à fendre le coeur, mi corazón.

Oh querido, mi corazón.

Ils chantent ici, les Espagnols

dans le pays d’autres, pays étranger,

dans un autre pays qui n’est pas le leur.

‘A dog bit his master’

A dog bit his master

who in order to leave to posterity an account of this disaster

took an unusually large piece of pink-and-yellow mottled alabaster

which, having been found at the mouth of a Pyrenean river

did not, by that unforeseen circumstance, cost him anything at all: not so much as a stiver.

Goat

A man long used to affection (a roof, as it were;

a condition of being)

Withers strangely when it is removed.

His days grow incommensurably long

He abbreviates his nights with pills Guaranteed

Nepenthe four new pence

Shrivels, old and surly, says Do not say

I stabbed myself with my own lance.

Do not say ‘You in the person of an aging goat

put the fire to your own thatch’

I do not feel the want of shelter any less

Looking towards the south

Beyond my window the mountain hangs like a curtain

pinned at one end by the castle.

Vineyards almost half way up it, vines in rows;

then a dull-green and tawny waste.

Partridges breed in the wasteland and call throughout the spring

asparagus grows there wild

and as the year wears on

a snake-eagle rides steady on the wind

gazing down with orange eyes:

august moons rise behind the castle

and in the winter the dog-star

heaves up, a splendid lamp.

Foxes surprised

We looked over the cliff and there were foxes

little foxes playing among the boulders

skipping wrangling scratching their fleas

and the vixen laying her length in the sun.

In and out among the boulders, tag, king of the castle

like so many lambs

and one threw a crab in the air.

A sound, perhaps a whiff of scent on the eddy

and instantly they were hard old foxes

hard wary old foxes without a second’s transition.

They vanished into the rocks and the cove

was utterly silent: rocks, the heat dancing

and a calm sea stretching away and away.

Epitaph

I too walked in churchyards and spelt out the stones

the directory of a world that I should never know

I too was quite immortal then

And never even heard their universal cry

‘Profit by what little sun is left

Eat up all your bread and wine.’