Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the
     hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not
     resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains-but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter,
     the love,-
They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and
     curled
Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do
     not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses
     in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.




Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only underground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.




Conscientious Objector

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.

I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter
     on the barn floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Bal-
     kans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle while he cinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself: I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with the whip, I will not tell him
     which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black
     boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not
     on his payroll.

I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends nor of my      enemies either.
Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to
     any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men
     to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with
     me; never through me
Shall you be overcome.
_________________________________________________

x

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love's self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you-think not but I would!-
And see another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I am most true.

___________________________
xv

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu, -farewell! - the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The colour and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

____________________________

Rendezvous

Not for these lovely blooms that prank your chambers
         	did I come.  Indeed,
I could have loved you better in the dark;
That is to say, in rooms less bright with roses, rooms
more casual, less aware
Of History in the wings about to enter with benevolent
	air
On ponderous tiptoe, at the cue "Proceed."
Not that I like the ash-trays over-crowded and the 
	place in a mess,
Or the monastic cubicle too unctuously austere and
	stark,
But partly that these formal garlands for our Eighth
	Street Aphrodite are a bit too Greek,       
And partly that to make the poor walls rich with our
	unaided loveliness
Would have been more chic.

Yet here I am, having told you of my quarrel with the
	taxi driver over a line of Milton, and you laugh
	and you are you, none other.
Your laughter pelts my skin with small delicious 
blows.
But I am perverse: I wish you had not scrubbed-with
	pumice, I suppose-
The tobacco stains from your beautiful fingers.  And I 
	wish that I did not feel like your mother.