I WENT to bed with time.
Through the blue dark, sublime,
I watched Orion rise
And all the stars’ fireflies
Through distance climb.
Quite still I lay awake,
Hearing time’s spectre make
Dynastic moan, more far
Than midnight’s millionth star,
For love’s dead sake.
Softly the curtain flapped
As though a ball had dapped
And then bounced out again;
And through my brain
Thoughts traveled and were trapped.
The universe enshrined
Stared from my mummied mind;
I heard my beating blood;
One near me stood:
I smiled inside the wind.
I listened. Time like sand
Slid through a hidden hand;
Although no step was heard
It seemed a shadow stirred:
My dark was manned.
Then, while I listened still,
A voice from near the sill
More low, more wavering
Than curlew’s call in Spring,
Made my flesh thrill:
‘Possess new time, possess
New time, or nothingness.
The spoils of sleep
That other gives. I keep
Spoil-spurning nakedness.’
Desire contended there
With one so fair,
My pulse stopped as I turned
To that new life which burned
With upright hair.
Then sprang a sweat of fear,
For where soul thrust a spear
Blood rose immense,
The light was so intense,
The shade so near.
Then, when all thoughts were summed
And the small flies had hummed
Around the passive bone,
I gave so great a groan
That time was dumbed.
Deeper and far more tender
That groan to my life-lender
Floated, than songs of praise,
For the firm pulse of days
Was locked in my surrender.
Once more the Near One spoke:
‘Lie still. Your fist then broke
The hour-glass that has cursed
Man from the first
With superstition’s cloak.
Time built your room three-walled
Where Fear, a nursling, crawled,
But at the fourth wall I
Bring the starred sky
And the scented world.’
Confusion of the dark,
Snuffing of the spark,
Unclothed the shades
For which we had used spades
In the priests’ sad park.
Confusion tenebrous
Brought spoilers covetous,
But naked in the sheet
It was uniquely sweet
To lie so generous.
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