POEMS
139
And the tall
grains
foamed in their
bills;
Always goodbye to the fires of the
face,
For the crab-backed dead on the
sea-bed rose
And scuttled over her eyes,
The
blind, cla.wed stare is cold as
sleet.
The
tempter under the eyelid
Who shows to the selves asleep
Mast-high moon-white women naked
Walking in wishes and lovely for
shame
Is
dumb and gone with his flame of
brides.
Susannah's drowned in the bearded
stream
And no-one stirs at Sheba's side
But the hungry kings of the tides ;
Sin who had a woman's shape
Sleeps till Silence blows on a cloud
And all the lifted waters walk and
leap.
Lucifer that bird's dropping
Out
of the sides of the north
Has
melted away and is lost
Is
always lost in her vaulted breath,
Venus
lies star-struck in her wound
And the sensual ruins make
Seasons over the liquid world,
White springs in the dark.
Always goodbye, cried the voices
through the shell,
Goodbye always for the flesh is cast
And the fisherman winds his reel
With no more desire than a ghost.
Always good luck, praised the finned
in the feather
Bird after dark and the laughing
fish
A.
the sails drank up the hail of
thunder
And the long-tailed lightning lit his
catch.
The boat swims into the six-year
weather,
A wind throws a shadow and it
freezes fast.
See what the gold gut drags from
under
Mountains and galleries to the crest!
See what clings to hair and skull
As the boat skims on with drinking
wings!
The statues of great rain stand still,
And the flakes fall like hills.
Sing and strike his heavy haul
Toppling up the hoatside in a snow
of light!
His decks are drenched with mira–
cles.
Oh miracle of fishes! the long dead
bite!
Out of the urn the size of a man,
Out of the room the weight of his
trouble
Out of the house that holds a town
lr. the continent of a fossil
One by one in dust and shawl,
Dry as echoes and insect-faced,
His fathers cling to the hand of the
girl
And the dead hand leads the past,
Leads them as children and as air
On to the blindly tossing tops;
The centuries throw back their hair
And the old men sing from newborn
lips:
Time is hearing another son.
Kill Time ! She turns in her pain !
The oak is felled in the acorn
And the hawk in the egg kills the
wren.
He who blew the great fire in
And died on a hiss of flames
Or walked on the earth in the eve–
ning
Counting the denials of the grains
