Read Ebook: Open Water by Stringer Arthur

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Ebook has 93 lines and 8631 words, and 2 pages

FACES

I tire of these empty masks, These faces of city women That seem so vapid and well-controlled. I get tired of their guarded ways And their eyes that are always empty Of either passion or hate Or promise or love, And that seem to be old And are never young! I think of the homelier faces That I have seen, The vital and open faces In the by-ways of the world: A Polish girl who met Her lover one wintry morning Outside the gaol at Ossining; A lean young Slav violinist And the steerage women about him, Held by the sound of his music; A young and deep-bosomed Teuton Suckling her shawl-wrapped child On a grey stone bridge in Detmold; A group of girls from Ireland, Crowding the steps of a colonist-car And singing half-sadly together As their train rocked on and on Over the sun-bathed prairie; A mournful Calabrian mother Standing and staring out Past the mists of Ischia After a fading steamer; A Nautch girl held by a sailor Who'd taken a knife from her fingers But not the fire from her eyes; And a silent Sicilian mother Standing alone in the Marina Awaiting her boy who had been Long years away!-- These I remember! And of these I never tire!

THERE IS STRENGTH IN THE SOIL

There is strength in the soil; In the earth there is laughter and youth. There is solace and hope in the upturned loam. And lo, I shall plant my soul in it here like a seed! And forth it shall come to me as a flower of song; For I know it is good to get back to the earth That is orderly, placid, all-patient! It is good to know how quiet And noncommittal it breathes, This ample and opulent bosom That must some day nurse us all!

LIFE-DRUNK

On opal Aprilian mornings like this I seem dizzy and drunk with life. I waken and wander and laugh in the sun; With some mystical knowledge enormous I lift up my face to the light. Drunk with a gladness stupendous I seem; With some wine of Immensity god-like I reel; And my arm could fling Time from His throne; I could pelt the awed taciturn arch Of Morning with music and mirth; And I feel, should I find but a voice for my thought, That the infinite orbits of all God's loneliest stars That are weaving vast traceries out on the fringes of Night Could never stand more than a hem on the robe of my Song!

MY HEART STOOD EMPTY

My heart stood empty and bare, So I hung it with thoughts of a woman. The remembered ways of this woman Hung sweet in my heart. So I followed where thought should lead, And it led to her feet. But the mouth of this woman was pain, And the love of this woman, regret; And now only the thought Of all those remembered thoughts Of remembered ways, Is shut in my heart!

ONE NIGHT IN THE NORTHWEST

When they flagged our train because of a broken rail, I stepped down out of the crowded car, With its clamour and dust and heat and babel of broken talk. I stepped out into the cool, the velvet cool, of the night, And felt the balm of the prairie-wind on my face, And somewhere I heard the running of water, I felt the breathing of grass, And I knew, as I saw the great white stars, That the world was made for good!

DREAMERS

There's a poet tombed in you, Man of blood and iron! There's a dreamer dead and buried Deep beneath your cynic frown, Deep beneath your toil!

And deep beneath my music, There's a strong man stirs in me; There's a ghost of blood and granite Coffined in this madness Carpentered of Song!

You live your day and drain it; I weave my dream and lose it; But the red blood lost in me awakens still at times, At all your city's sky-line, At all your roaring market-place, At all its hum of power-- And the poet dead within you stirs Still at the plaintive note or two Of a dreamer's plaintive song!

THE QUESTION

Glad with the wine of life, Reeling I go my way, Drunk with the ache of living And mouthing my drunken song! Then comes the lucid moment And the shadow across the lintel; And I hear the ghostly whisper, And I glimpse with startled eyes The Door beyond the doorway, And I see the small dark house Where I must sleep.

Then song turns sour on my lips, And the warmth goes out of my blood, And I turn me back to the beaker, And re-draining my cup of dream, I drown the whispering voices, I banish the ghostly question As to which in the end is true: The wine and the open road? Or the waiting Door?

THE GIFT OF HATE

Empty it seems, at times, their cry about Love, Their claim that love is the only thing that survives. For I who am born of my centuries strewn with hate, Who was spewed into life from a timeless tangle of sin, I can hate as strong and as long as I love!

There are hours and issues I hate; There are creeds and deeds and doubts I hate; There are men I hate to the uttermost; And although in their graves they listen and weep, Earth's mothers and wistful women who cried for peace, I hate this King of Evil who has crowned my heart with Hate!

THE DREAM

ONE ROOM IN MY HEART

One room in my heart shall be closed, I said; One chamber at least in my soul shall be secret and locked! I shall hold it my holy of holies, and no one shall know it! But you, calm woman predestined, with casual hands, You came with this trivial key, And ward by obdurate ward the surrendering lock fell back, And disdainfully now you wander and brood and wait In this room that I thought was my own!

THE MEANING

It isn't the Sea that I love, But the ships That must dare and endure and defy and survive it! It isn't the flesh that I love, But the spirit That guides and derides and controls and outlives it! It isn't this earth that I love, But the mortals Who give to it meaning and colour and passion and life! For what is the Sea without ships? And what is the flesh without soul? And what is a world without love?

THE VEIL

You have said that I sold My life for a song; Laid bare my heart That men might listen And go their ways-- My inchoate heart That I dare not plumb, That goes unbridled To the depths of Hell, That sings in the sun To the brink of Heaven! I have tossed you the spindrift Born of its fretting On its shallowest coast, But over the depths of it Bastioned in wonder And silent with fear God sits with me!

THE MAN OF DREAMS

All my lean life I garnered nothing but a dream or two, These others gathered harvests And grew fat with grain. But no man lives by bread, And bread alone. So, forgetful of their scorn, When starved, they cried for life, I gave them my last dreams, I bared for them my heart, That they might eat!

APRIL ON THE RIALTO

A canyon of granite and steel, A river of grim unrest, And over the fever and street-dust Arches the azure of dream. And fretting along the tumult, Threading the iron curbs, Tawdry in tinsel and feather Drift the daughters of pleasure, The sad-eyed traders in song, The makers of joy, The Columbines of the city Seeking their ends! But under the beaded eye-lash, Under the lip with its rouge, Under the mask of white Splashed with geranium-red, As God's own arch of azure Leans softly over the street, Surely, this day, runs warmer The blood through a wasted breast!

THE SURRENDER

Must I round my life to a song, As the waves wear smooth the shore-stone? Shall the mortal beat and throb Of this heart of mine Be only to crumble a dream, And fashion the pebbles of fancy, That the tides of time may cover, Or a child may find?

Little in truth it matters; But this at the most I know: Infinite is the ocean That thunders upon man's soul, And the sooner the soul falls broken, The smoother will be its song!

THE PASSING

Ere the thread is loosed, And the sands run low, And the last hope fails, Wherever we fare, O Fond and True, May it fall that we come in the end, Come back to the crimson valleys, Back to the Indian Summer, Back to the northern pine-lands, And the grey lakes draped with silence, And the sunlight thin and poignant, And the leaf that flutters earthward, And the skyline green and lonely, And the ramparts of the dead world Ruddy with wintry rose! May we fare, O Fond and True, Through our soft-houred Indian Summer, Through the paling twilight weather, And facing the lone green uplands, And greeting the sun-warmed hills, Step into the pineland shadows And enter the sunset valley And go as the glory goes Out of the dreaming autumn, Out of the drifting leaf And the dying light!

PROTESTATIONS

If I tire of you, beautiful woman, I know that the fault is mine; Yet not all mine the failure And not all mine the loss! In loveliness still you walk; But I have walked with sorrow! I have threaded narrows, And I have passed through perils That you know nothing of! And I in my grief have gazed In eyes that were not yours; And my emptier hours have known The sigh of kindlier bosoms, The kiss of kindlier mouths! Yet the end of all is written, And nothing, O rose-leaf woman, You ever may dream or do Henceforth can bring me anguish Or crown my days with joy!

I SAT IN THE SUNLIGHT

I sat in the sunlight thinking of life; I sat there, dreaming of Death. And a moth alit on the sun-dial's face, And the birds sang sleepily, And the leaves stirred, And the sun lay warm on the hills, And the afternoon grew old.

So, some day I knew the birds would sing, And the leaves would stir, And the afternoon grow old-- And I would not be there. And the warmth went out of the day, And a wind blew out of the West where I sat, And the birds were still!

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