Poems Read online

Here in my path,

  And as suddenly you have brought

  The freshness of your hands,

  While bringing in your hair all the summers of the earth.

  *

  You have come

  And even my sunniest dream

  Could never dare imagine you so beautiful,

  And yet, right here and now,

  I recognise you.

  Right here and now, up close to you,

  And how proud you are, and such a proper damsel,

  A little gay old woman on your arm;

  And it seems as if you choose to lead,

  At a leisurely pace surely, and practically

  Beneath your parasol, me to the summer-house,

  Yes, and to my childhood’s dreamy place.

  To some peaceful house with nests in its roofs,

  While, within its yard, wisteria shadows the doorstep,

  Some lovely building with two

  Turrets and maybe a name

  Like the titles of those prize-awarded books

  We used to enjoy in July.

  See, you have come to spend the afternoon with me,

  Where? Who knows? In The Turtle-Dove House?

  *

  You are going in, you are entering,

  Through all the sparrows’ chit-chat on the roof,

  Through the shadow bars of the gate that shuts behind us,

  Shaking down the petals of a climbing rose:

  Light petals, balmy and burning: snow-coloured,

  Gold-coloured, flame-coloured, fluttering

  Down onto flower-beds, borders with green benches,

  And down each allée festooned as if for a saint’s day.

  I’m coming too, we are tracing, together

  With your dear old thing, this oh so lovely allée.

  It’s where, this evening, your dress,

  On our return, will gather up softly

  Scents that are coloured by your tresses.

  And then to be allowed, the two of us,

  In the dark of the drawing room,

  Such meetings as enable us

  To celebrate the ritual of sweet nothings.

  Or beside you now, reading near the pigeon loft,

  On a garden bench where the chestnut

  Wafts its shade, using up the evening

  Reading to the coo of those doves who are startled

  Merely by the turn of a page.

  Let’s choose a novel of some noble age,

  Or Clara d’Ellébeuse,

  Stay out there, till supper, until nightfall,

  Right up to the time when pail gets drawn from well,

  And on cooling paths the play of children can’t help but amuse.

  *

  It was there, to be near to my ‘far away’ fair

  I was going, and you never came,

  Though my dream was to dog your steps,

  But only my dream ever got to you,

  Got to that castle, where sweetly vain,

  You were the châtelaine.

  It was there that we were going surely,

  That Sunday in Paris, along that lointaine

  Avenue made to comply with our dream?

  More silent, ever more lengthy, and empty ever after …

  And then, on some deserted quay, on a bank of the Seine,

  And then after that, even closer to you, in the boat,

  To the quiet purr of its motor through the water …

  ROAD SONG

  ‘… main roads where nothing happens’

  Jules Laforgue

  One invader, then all of them, sing:

  We caught the fever

  From your marshes,

  Caught the fever and we went away.

  We had been warned

  That we would discover

  Nothing but the sun

  In the depths of your forests.

  We have been through stories

  Of broken stretchers,

  Lost horseshoes, wounded horses

  And worn-out donkeys in a sweat

  Stubbornly refusing to advance.

  We have lost all memory of those tales

  That one tells at the end of the day.

  We have lost all hope of the day ever ending.

  And now we have taken their saddles

  To make shoes for ourselves.

  We have set out again, on foot

  Through your broom

  Which bloodies the feet,

  And our feet bleed blood

  Till they dry in your dust

  As we march,

  And so we cure our wounds

  By grinding as we go

  The balsams and the balms

  From your maquis.

  We could have sat and waited

  In the shelter of your ditches,

  Our bodies steaming and tormented.

  We had nothing to say, not a shred of hope,

  Nothing to say, and not a thing to drink.

  We opted for retreat, a rout

  Without an end

  To highways and horizons:

  Defeated horizons which retreated,

  And miles left behind in the dust

  To entrap those glimpsed from afar

  With their signs indicating

  Towns with faraway names,

  With names which ring like the stones

  Of your roads beneath our heels.

  We’ll not reach the wonderful cities

  Which are no more than names with a ring to them,

  Cities dead of the sun.

  But we still want to live in the sun of your skies

  With all our heads aglow

  And ring out the rankings of glory forever,

  Sending out sparks from our soles;

  Sing with the throats of victory

  Songs that will send us out drinking again,

  For we have caught the fever

  At midday from your harsh parched marshes,

  From your dust-choked roads

  And from your towns which prove mirages.

  Caught the fever from your forests without shade

  And your tussocks on the dunes

  With their russet look, their savage scent:

  These are what gave us the fever.

  THE REMAINS OF WARMTH

  2nd September

  Under what remains

  Of a mild September sun,

  Perfumed, bright and gilded like a bee,

  My mind returns to that little old woman,

  An orchard, her small, hurried steps

  Ten years ago today.

  And just as in previous years

  I long to shake down the pears

  In that neglected orchard;

  Long to believe her there,

  Her handkerchief knotted round her head,

  Her face crinkled as she concentrates

  On her September task,

  There, under the pear trees,

  Filling up her apron

  Or giving over the whole

  Of her old village soul

  To hanging out the laundry on the raspberries.

  In these last balmy days,

  I know that she is a spirit there

  In the gardens

  Half way up from the coast,

  And that she expects me,

  Since there are always stories to tell

  On the bench:

  Ancient tales of her youth

  Under the dear old sky of September,

  And plenty of pears to gather

  In the gardens of her children:

  Fruit that smells like her cupboard,

  It’s been ten years, of honey and amber.

  Perhaps, back there,

  No one now senses

  That all of this is her soul

  Palpitating gently.

  There’s no one but me.

  Only I can open the gate

  And enter

  Without troubling the prayer

  Of
that hushed enclosure and the wilderness orchard

  Which so suits her nature.

  No one in the village knows,

  No one.

  And it’s me every year

  Who makes this pilgrimage

  Before the great wild wind of autumn

  Comes howling in to shake the orchards,

  Using big mad brutal hands

  To break the branches, blow forgotten pears

  To smithereens, as one evening,

  Ten years ago, and every year after that,

  After I had gone away,

  It came howling, to blow out the candle

  And the spirit of the dear old thing,

  One evening, down the valleys, from the sky.

  THE EARLY MISTS OF SEPTEMBER

  ‘Believe me, it’s over for sure, until next year.’

  Jules Laforgue

  The early mists of September

  Over the ferns and heathers,

  On the moors, down the rides, in the firs.

  The first fires lit in the villages, blazing

  From first light, which crackle and glow

  In the dark rooms of taverns, on the farms,

  As well as in the cottages at dawn.

  Coming from afar along the crisp main roads

  In his covered wagon,

  The hawker stops to chat, to make a sale

  And warm his hands.

  Leaving his team to clink and steam

  Through the half-open doors.

  And I glimpse on the walls, by breaks of light,

  Before they open the shutters,

  The pictures and the daguerreotypes

  That will be seen all winter, ruddily shown

  Above each hearth, in the dark, low rooms

  Of those cottages, taverns and farms:

  Elegant ladies in muffs and furs

  Situated in snowscapes.

  And I hear, ‘not warm, this morning.

  Here comes a proper chill.

  There must have been a frost last night

  In the woods on the hill.’

  We’ve seen such lovely summers!

  But don’t you think this evening

  We should seal the château doors?

  It’s time to get going, get back,

  Enveloped in our overcoats,

  Down chestnut-guarded roads

  Rapidly shedding as we freeze

  In our ass-drawn carts and barouches

  Loaded with worries and little despairs,

  Our holidays over. It’s back to our cares.

  AND NOW THAT IT’S THE RAIN

  And now that it’s the rain, and the big January wind,

  And the panes of the conservatory,

  In which I’m sort of a refugee,

  Making little glassy sounds all day,

  And the wind, which blows the smoke back down the chimney,

  Wresting the Virginia creeper free

  So that it tosses wildly down the tunnelled bower,

  I don’t know where she is. Oh, where is she?

  *

  There are footprints full of water on the pathways.

  They are printed in the soaked-through sand

  Of the garden that was our dream in June …

  And now on her way she has gone.

  And the house

  Where, all summer long,

  Under the leaves of its well-watered avenues,

  We just imagined our lives going on and on,

  Like one simply beautiful season …

  That house, in my heart,

  Is abandoned now. It’s chilly too,

  With its slate roof pale

  In the rain, and the sparrows’ nests

  All dislodged and rotting, dangling from

  The cornices and trailing in the gale.

  *

  It will soon be night,

  And the great drizzling wind

  Turns up the umbrellas

  And makes the ladies’ faces wet

  As they come from the village and unlatch the gate.

  Mon amie,

  My lovely girl,

  Who isn’t here,

  This hour I’m in goes by

  And the gate never squeaks,

  And it’s not that I’m waiting,

  Not that I lift any curtain to get

  Any glimpse of you coming

  Through the wind and the wet.

  This hour goes by, my dear,

  And it’s not really one of ‘our’ hours …

  But we would have loved it nevertheless

  Like all the others of a whole lifetime

  Brought to me simply by your serious hands,

  The hands of a lovely woman.

  *

  You have gone on your way.

  And it just keeps drizzling down

  In each allée,

  Where you feel the damp

  Up to your ankles.

  It drizzles down on the chestnut trees,

  Gloomy and confusing,

  Wets the benches where,

  This summer, in the shade,

  You would have been sitting,

  And oh how blond you stayed.

  It drizzles down on the house and on its gate

  And on the yews of the drive,

  Where perhaps for the very last time

  I do look out, while musing to myself

  In the lowest of voices, perhaps

  For the very last time of all times:

  ‘She is far way … where is she? That serious brow

  Pressed against which window sill?’

  *

  At the fall of night,

  The dripping shutters

  Battering against the windows here

  Will need to be properly shut.

  And I’ll have to go out to the lawn

  To bring in that forgotten croquet set

  Which is getting wet.

  ON THE PATH WHICH LOSES ITSELF

  On the path which loses itself at the farm

  To sunlight stained with shade, between two hedges

  Where the hens go in and then come out again –

  There appeared, at the gate of a field,

  Having come through the wheat,

  And held up now with a negligent gesture,

  That laundered dress with its trailed parasol –

  It was you, you were back,

  You had come by the hazel-tree track,

  Back to the mansion of our abandoned passion.

  Oh ceremonious friend, far away from me,

  You will not find the Fine-House of last summer:

  That other summer, that other love is gone,

  And what has come back is the harsh sun

  Among bumpkins, and all the hovels of old,

  Just as it’s always been and as it always will be.

  Yet still, you’re my serious pal,

  My silent, my faithful, my faraway friend,

  So don’t be afraid to turn up or to follow

  Me into the homes of those dignified folk,

  Silent and slow: real country people;

  Go with me into the yard

  Where one hitches up the mare

  For you to sit yourself

  Down on the leather swing

  That’s burning hot! Which hangs

  By two ropes behind the seat of the cart.

  Open your parasol,

  There, just like that!

  The peasant comes to say, ‘Mademoiselle,

  You will do better up front.’

  Say to him sweetly,

  As if you existed, ‘I won’t.’

  And let’s stay swinging. Shaken so,

  You are quite a sight!

  We’re stopping. Whoa!

  There, where the cart-track has turned,

  After the escarpments, twists, bends and descents,

  Of that back country, into a street:

  It’s where the wheelwright has his carriage out

  To dry, and w
here, on the side with the shade,

  The women sew by dark windows,

  And we’ve drawn up, in the broadest daylight,

  There, in front of a house.

  Don’t be afraid

  To negotiate the bridge above the ditch.

  Here’s the white gate. Do let me lift up the latch,

  And under the trellis, here

  In the little yard with its walls of bouquets,

  At last, a little awkwardly, as before,

  Here are your hands

  On the black handle of that stiff old door.

  They’re not expecting us.

  No one’s come out, shielding an eye,

  To peer at who may have arrived.

  The carriage goes on its way,

  And here we are, the two of us,

  Hardly daring to go in, or to push open the wing

  That cuts the rustic door in half,

  And show ourselves now to the old folks within.

  Don’t be afraid, except to have not sufficiently

  Madly adored that madly impossible day.

  And let’s be off again! Off towards the roofs,

  Spilt between the trees, under the flowering white

  Of a blossoming sky, off towards the horizon

  Like fragments of pebbles, mirrors in grass, buckwheat flowers …

  My little willowy thing,

  They would say, on the land,

  That your waist would fit

  Into the belt of a

  Hand joined to a hand.

  My blond, my passion manifest,

  That yellow hair!

  We all want you to wear the crown.

  It’s you who should be honoured,

  With harvest blooms excited by the sun

  And gathered at the height of when

  The threshing machines can be heard

  Snoring all over the countryside,

  Then wheezing and expectorating

  Straw dust in each yard.