POEMS
287
but prodding the impossible, he doubted
nothing of the murder in the heart
that might- so long the distance
!
- be blessing in the eyes:
knowing murder in the eyes was from sacked heart.
Obliged, therefore obliging; owning disorder within,
he observed a gentleman's disregard without.
"Laurel at table, ivy would spread," he said,
"through after-talk, over the sere and sore."
He put the oldest inchoate shapes in words
that rushed, as animals rush before they spring,
to a sharp halt, cresting, then falling fell.
The quiet in his voice was drenched in strength
-always a kind of violence in gear.
A man of family, ancestors were like children:
subject to expectation, certain to disappoint,
always a part of the self- the unfinished part.
A man of state,
his
privilege to claim none.
An
extravagant man, could .not afford protection.
In talk he reached straight through what lay between
without quite reaching, so deep the pit he reached from–
so deep you could not tell what depth brimmed there.
Therefore as soldier he cast himself a role
that needed ancestors and children to play;
behind, ahead; dragon slaying dragon.
Folly is more acceptable if played
half by memory, half expectation,
and violence loses unreality.
"Never was an army made less career of war,"
he wrote, and wrote again as I write now,
"so safe from mockery and fond applause."
Never a hopeful man, yet he was hope,
the necessary, upwelling swaddling cry
that man's might and towering skill, man's hand,
might end what fellowed them, in single blow,
then shudder only in the birth of dream.
Man has created that one cry as good;
this shudder of it what we grieve, and praise.
R. P.
BLACKMUR
