No More Learning

Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.

Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?




THE HELMSMAN


O be swift--
we have always known you wanted us.

We fled inland with our flocks,
we pastured them in hollows,
cut off from the wind
and the salt track of the marsh.

We worshipped inland--
we stepped past wood-flowers,
we forgot your tang,
we brushed wood-grass.

We wandered from pine-hills
through oak and scrub-oak tangles,
we broke hyssop and bramble,
we caught flower and new bramble-fruit
in our hair: we laughed
as each branch whipped back,
we tore our feet in half buried rocks
and knotted roots and acorn-cups.

We forgot--we worshipped,
we parted green from green,
we sought further thickets,
we dipped our ankles
through leaf-mould and earth,
and wood and wood-bank enchanted us--

and the feel of the clefts in the bark,
and the slope between tree and tree--
and a slender path strung field to field
and wood to wood
and hill to hill
and the forest after it.

We forgot--for a moment
tree-resin, tree-bark,
sweat of a torn branch
were sweet to the taste.

We were enchanted with the fields,
the tufts of coarse grass
in the shorter grass--
we loved all this.

But now, our boat climbs--hesitates--drops--
climbs--hesitates--crawls back--
climbs--hesitates--
O be swift--
we have always known you wanted us.




THE SHRINE

("SHE WATCHES OVER THE SEA")


I

Are your rocks shelter for ships--
have you sent galleys from your beach,
are you graded--a safe crescent--
where the tide lifts them back to port--
are you full and sweet,
tempting the quiet
to depart in their trading ships?

Nay, you are great, fierce, evil--
you are the land-blight--
you have tempted men
but they perished on your cliffs.

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.