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A selection from 'Strange Meetings' Poems by Harold Monro OVERHEARD ON A SALTMARSH Nymph, nymph, what are your beads? Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them? Give them me. No. Give them me. Give them me. No. Then I will howl all night in the reeds, Lie in the mud and howl for them.
Goblin, why do you love them so?
They are better than stars or water, Better than voices of winds that sing, Better than any man’s fair daughter, Your green glass beads on a silver ring.
Hush I stole them out of the moon.
Give me your beads, I desire them. No. I will howl in a deep lagoon For your green glass beads, I love them so. Give them me. Give them. No. 1912
ASPIDISTRA STREET Go along that road, and look at sorrow. Every window grumbles. All day long the drizzle fills the puddles, Trickles in the runnels and the gutters, Drips and drops and dripples, drops and dribbles, While the melancholy aspidistra Frowns between the parlour curtains.
Uniformity, dull Master!— Birth and marriage, middle-age and death; Rain and gossip: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday . . .
Sure, the lovely fools who made Utopia Planned it without any aspidistra. There will be a heaven on earth, but first We must banish from the parlour Plush and poker-work and paper flowers, Brackets, staring photographs and what-nots, Serviettes, frills and etageres, Anti-macassars, vases, chiffoniers;
And the gloomy aspidistra Glowering through the window-pane, Meditating heavy maxims, Moralising to the rain.
1916
BITTER SANCTUARY I She lives in the porter’s room; the plush is nicotined. Clients have left their photos there to perish. She watches through green shutters those who press To reach unconsciousness. She licks her varnished thin magenta lips, She picks her foretooth with a finger nail, She pokes her head out to greet new clients, or To leave them (to what torture) waiting at the door. II Heat has locked the heavy earth, Given strength to every sound, He, where his life still holds him to the ground, In anæsthesia, groaning for re-birth, Leans at the door. From out the house there comes the dullest flutter; A lackey; and thin giggling from behind that shutter. III His lost eyes lean to find and read the number. Follows his knuckled rap, and hesitating curse. He cannot wake himself; he may not slumber; While on the long white wall across the road Drives the thin outline of a dwindling hearse. IV Now the door opens wide. He: “Is there room inside?” She: “Are you past the bounds of pain?” He: “May my body lie in vain Among the dreams I cannot keep!” She: “Let him drink the cup of sleep.” V Thin arms and ghostly hands; faint sky-blue eyes; Long drooping lashes, lids like full-blown moons, Clinging to any brink of floating skies: What hope is there? What fear?—Unless to wake and see Lingering flesh, or cold eternity. O yet some face, half living, brings Far gaze to him and croons: She: “You’re white. You are alone. Can you not approach my sphere?” He: “I’m changing into stone.” She: “Would I were! Would I were!” Then the white attendants fill the cup. VI In the morning through the world, Watch the flunkeys bring the coffee; Watch the shepherds on the downs, Lords and ladies at their toilet, Farmers, merchants, frothing towns. But look how he, unfortunate, now fumbles Through unknown chambers, unheedful stumbles. Can he evade the overshadowing night? Are there not somewhere chinks of braided light? VII How do they leave who once are in those rooms? Some may be found, they say, deeply asleep In ruined tombs. Some in white beds, with faces round them. Some Wander the world, and never find a home. c 1931 |