No More Learning

. .

_Jeered at? Well, let them laugh. _




JOHN GOULD FLETCHER




A REBEL


Tie a bandage over his eyes,
And at his feet
Let rifles drearily patter
Their death-prayers of defeat.

Throw a blanket over his body,
It need no longer stir;
Truth will but stand the stronger
For all who died for her.

Now he has broken through
To his own secret place;
Which, if we dared to do,
We would have no more power left to look on that dead face.




THE ROCK


This rock, too, was a word;
A word of flame and force when that which hurled
The stars into their places in the night
First stirred.

And, in the summer's heat,
Lay not your hand on it, for while the iron hours beat
Gray anvils in the sky, it glows again
With unfulfilled desire.

Touch it not; let it stand
Ragged, forlorn, still looking at the land;
The dry blue chaos of mountains in the distance,
The slender blades of grass it shelters are
Its own dark thoughts of what is near and far.
Your thoughts are yours, too; naked let them stand.




BLUE WATER


Sea-violins are playing on the sands;
Curved bows of blue and white are flying over the pebbles,
See them attack the chords--dark basses, glinting trebles.
Dimly and faint they croon, blue violins.
"Suffer without regret," they seem to cry,
"Though dark your suffering is, it may be music,
Waves of blue heat that wash midsummer sky;
Sea-violins that play along the sands. "




PRAYERS FOR WIND


Let the winds come,
And bury our feet in the sands of seven deserts;
Let strong breezes rise,
Washing our ears with the far-off sounds of the foam.
Let there be between our faces
Green turf and a branch or two of back-tossed trees;
Set firmly over questioning hearts
The deep unquenchable answer of the wind.




IMPROMPTU


My mind is a puddle in the street reflecting green Sirius;
In thick dark groves trees huddle lifting their branches like
beckoning hands.
We eat the grain, the grain is death, all goes back to the earth's
dark mass,
All but a song which moves across the plain like the wind's
deep-muttering breath.
Bowed down upon the earth, man sets his plants and watches for the
seed,
Though he be part of the tragic pageant of the sky, no heaven will
aid his mortal need.
I find flame in the dust, a word once uttered that will stir again,
And a wine-cup reflecting Sirius in the water held in my hands.




CHINESE POET AMONG BARBARIANS


The rain drives, drives endlessly,
Heavy threads of rain;
The wind beats at the shutters,
The surf drums on the shore;
Drunken telegraph poles lean sideways;
Dank summer cottages gloom hopelessly;
Bleak factory-chimneys are etched on the filmy distance,
Tepid with rain.
It seems I have lived for a hundred years
Among these things;
And it is useless for me now to make complaint against them.
For I know I shall never escape from this dull barbarian country,
Where there is none now left to lift a cool jade winecup,
Or share with me a single human thought.




SNOWY MOUNTAINS


Higher and still more high,
Palaces made for cloud,
Above the dingy city-roofs
Blue-white like angels with broad wings,
Pillars of the sky at rest
The mountains from the great plateau
Uprise.

But the world heeds them not;
They have been here now for too long a time.
The world makes war on them,
Tunnels their granite cliffs,
Splits down their shining sides,
Plasters their cliffs with soap-advertisements,
Destroys the lonely fragments of their peace.

Vaster and still more vast,
Peak after peak, pile after pile,
Wilderness still untamed,
To which the future is as was the past,
Barrier spread by Gods,
Sunning their shining foreheads,
Barrier broken down by those who do not need
The joy of time-resisting storm-worn stone,
The mountains swing along
The south horizon of the sky;
Welcoming with wide floors of blue-green ice
The mists that dance and drive before the sun.




THE FUTURE


After ten thousand centuries have gone,
Man will ascend the last long pass to know
That all the summits which he saw at dawn
Are buried deep in everlasting snow.

Below him endless gloomy valleys, chill,
Will wreathe and whirl with fighting cloud, driven by the wind's
fierce breath;
But on the summit, wind and cloud are still:--
Only the sunlight, and death.

And staggering up to the brink of the gulf man will look down
And painfully strive with weak sight to explore
The silent gulfs below which the long shadows drown;
Through every one of these he passed before.

Then since he has no further heights to climb,
And naught to witness he has come this endless way,
On the wind-bitten ice cap he will wait for the last of time,
And watch the crimson sunrays fading of the world's latest day:

And blazing stars will burst upon him there,
Dumb in the midnight of his hope and pain,
Speeding no answer back to his last prayer,
And, if akin to him, akin in vain.