No More Learning

Your lights are but dank shoals,
slate and pebble and wet shells
and seaweed fastened to the rocks.

It was evil--evil
when they found you,
when the quiet men looked at you--
they sought a headland
shaded with ledge of cliff
from the wind-blast.

But you--you are unsheltered,
cut with the weight of wind--
you shudder when it strikes,
then lift, swelled with the blast--
you sink as the tide sinks,
you shrill under hail, and sound
thunder when thunder sounds.
You are useless--
when the tides swirl
your boulders cut and wreck
the staggering ships.


II

You are useless,
O grave, O beautiful,
the landsmen tell it--I have heard--
you are useless.

And the wind sounds with this
and the sea
where rollers shot with blue
cut under deeper blue.

O but stay tender, enchanted
where wave-lengths cut you
apart from all the rest--
for we have found you,
we watch the splendour of you,
we thread throat on throat of freesia
for your shelf.

You are not forgot,
O plunder of lilies,
honey is not more sweet
than the salt stretch of your beach.


III

Stay--stay--
but terror has caught us now,
we passed the men in ships,
we dared deeper than the fisher-folk
and you strike us with terror
O bright shaft.

Flame passes under us
and sparks that unknot the flesh,
sorrow, splitting bone from bone,
splendour athwart our eyes
and rifts in the splendour,
sparks and scattered light.

Many warned of this,
men said:
there are wrecks on the fore-beach,
wind will beat your ship,
there is no shelter in that headland,
it is useless waste, that edge,
that front of rock--
sea-gulls clang beyond the breakers,
none venture to that spot.


IV

But hail--
as the tide slackens,
as the wind beats out,
we hail this shore--
we sing to you,
spirit between the headlands
and the further rocks.

Though oak-beams split,
though boats and sea-men flounder,
and the strait grind sand with sand
and cut boulders to sand and drift--

your eyes have pardoned our faults,
your hands have touched us--
you have leaned forward a little
and the waves can never thrust us back
from the splendour of your ragged coast.




MID-DAY


The light beats upon me.
I am startled--
a split leaf crackles on the paved floor--
I am anguished--defeated.
A slight wind shakes the seed-pods--
my thoughts are spent
as the black seeds.
My thoughts tear me,
I dread their fever.
I am scattered in its whirl.
I am scattered like
the hot shrivelled seeds.

The shrivelled seeds
are spilt on the path--
the grass bends with dust,
the grape slips
under its crackled leaf:
yet far beyond the spent seed-pods,
and the blackened stalks of mint,
the poplar is bright on the hill,
the poplar spreads out,
deep-rooted among trees.

O poplar, you are great
among the hill-stones,
while I perish on the path
among the crevices of the rocks.




PURSUIT


What do I care
that the stream is trampled,
the sand on the stream-bank
still holds the print of your foot:
the heel is cut deep.
I see another mark
on the grass ridge of the bank--
it points toward the wood-path.
I have lost the third
in the packed earth.

But here
a wild-hyacinth stalk is snapped:
the purple buds--half ripe--
show deep purple
where your heel pressed.

A patch of flowering grass,
low, trailing--
you brushed this:
the green stems show yellow-green
where you lifted--turned the earth-side
to the light:
this and a dead leaf-spine,
split across,
show where you passed.

You were swift, swift!
here the forest ledge slopes--
rain has furrowed the roots.
Your hand caught at this;
the root snapped under your weight.

I can almost follow the note
where it touched this slender tree
and the next answered--
and the next.

And you climbed yet further!