Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme) Read online

  Cooled with dew and cherries eating.

  Merry, merry,

  Take a cherry;

  Mine are sounder,

  Mine are rounder,

  Mine are sweeter

  For the eater,

  When the dews fall.

  And you’ll be fairies all.

  PART II. – Poems Written Before La Bassée – 1915

  ON FINDING MYSELF A SOLDIER

  My bud was backward to unclose,

  A pretty baby-queen,

  Furled petal-tips of creamy rose

  Caught in a clasp of green.

  Somehow, I never thought to doubt

  That when her heart should show

  She would be coloured in as out,

  Like the flush of dawn on snow:

  But yesterday aghast I found,

  Where last I’d left the bud,

  Twelve flamy petals ringed around

  A heart more red than blood.

  THE SHADOW OF DEATH

  Here’s an end to my art!

  I must die and I know it,

  With battle murder at my heart –

  Sad death for a poet!

  Oh my songs never sung,

  And my plays to darkness blown!

  I am still so young, so young,

  And life was my own.

  Some bad fairy stole

  The baby I nursed:

  Was this my pretty little soul,

  This changeling accursed?

  To fight and kill is wrong –

  To stay at home wronger:

  Oh soul, little play and song,

  I may father no longer!

  Here’s an end to my art!

  I must die and I know it,

  With battle murder at my heart –

  Sad death for a poet!

  A RENASCENCE

  White flabbiness goes brown and lean,

  Dumpling arms are now brass bars,

  They’ve learnt to suffer and live clean,

  And to think below the stars.

  They’ve steeled a tender, girlish heart,

  Tempered it with a man’s pride,

  Learning to play the butcher’s part

  Though the woman screams inside –

  Learning to leap the parapet,

  Face the open rush, and then

  To stab with the stark bayonet,

  Side by side with fighting men.

  On Achi Baba’s rock their bones

  Whiten, and on Flanders’ plain,

  But of their travailings and groans

  Poetry is born again.

  THE MORNING BEFORE THE BATTLE

  To-day, the fight: my end is very soon,

  And sealed the warrant limiting my hours:

  I knew it walking yesterday at noon

  Down a deserted garden full of flowers.

  …Carelessly sang, pinned roses on my breast,

  Reached for a cherry-bunch – and then, then, Death

  Blew through the garden from the North and East

  And blighted every beauty with chill breath.

  I looked, and ah, my wraith before me stood,

  His head all battered in by violent blows:

  The fruit between my lips to clotted blood

  Was transubstantiate, and the pale rose

  Smelt sickly, till it seemed through a swift tear-flood

  That dead men blossomed in the garden-close.

  LIMBO

  After a week spent under raining skies,

  In horror, mud and sleeplessness, a week

  Of bursting shells, of blood and hideous cries

  And the ever-watchful sniper: where the reek

  Of death offends the living…but poor dead

  Can’t sleep, must lie awake with the horrid sound

  That roars and whirs and rattles overhead

  All day, all night, and jars and tears the ground;

  When rats run, big as kittens: to and fro

  They dart, and scuffle with their horrid fare,

  And then one night relief comes, and we go

  Miles back into the sunny cornland where

  Babies like tickling, and where tall white horses

  Draw the plough leisurely in quiet courses.

  THE TRENCHES

  (Heard in the Ranks)

  Scratches in the dirt?

  No, that sounds much too nice.

  Oh, far too nice.

  Seams, rather, of a Greyback Shirt,

  And we’re the little lice

  Wriggling about in them a week or two,

  Till one day, suddenly, from the blue

  Something bloody and big will come

  Like – watch this fingernail and thumb! –

  Squash! and he needs no twice.

  NURSERY MEMORIES

  I. – THE FIRST FUNERAL

  (The first corpse I saw was on the German wires, and couldn’t be buried)

  The whole field was so smelly;

  We smelt the poor dog first:

  His horrid swollen belly

  Looked just like going burst.

  His fur was most untidy;

  He hadn’t any eyes.

  It happened on Good Friday

  And there was lots of flies.

  And then I felt the coldest

  I’d ever felt, and sick,

  But Rose, ’cause she’s the oldest,

  Dared poke him with her stick.

  He felt quite soft and horrid:

  The flies buzzed round his head

  And settled on his forehead:

  Rose whispered: ‘That dog’s dead.

  ‘You bury all dead people,

  When they’re quite really dead,

  Round churches with a steeple:

  Let’s bury this,’ Rose said.

  ‘And let’s put mint all round it

  To hide the nasty smell.’

  I went to look and found it –

  Lots, growing near the well.

  We poked him through the clover

  Into a hole, and then

  We threw brown earth right over

  And said: ‘Poor dog, Amen!’

  II. – THE ADVENTURE

  (Suggested by the claim of a machine-gun team to have annihilated an enemy wire party: no bodies were found however)

  To-day I killed a tiger near my shack

  Among the trees: at least, it must have been,

  Because his hide was yellow, striped with black,

  And his eyes were green.

  I crept up close and slung a pointed stone

  With all my might: I must have hit his head,

  For there he died without a twitch or groan,

  And he lay there dead.

  I expect that he’d escaped from a Wild Beast Show

  By pulling down his cage with an angry tear;

  He’d killed and wounded all the people – so

  He was hiding there.

  I brought my brother up as quick’s I could

  But there was nothing left when he did come:

  The tiger’s mate was watching in the wood

  And she’d dragged him home.

  But, anyhow, I killed him by the shack,

  ’Cause – listen! – when we hunted in the wood

  My brother found my pointed stone all black

  With the clotted blood.

  III. – I HATE THE MOON

  (After a moonlight patrol near the Brickstacks)

  I hate the Moon, though it makes most people glad,

  And they giggle and talk of silvery beams – you know!

  But she says the look of the Moon drives people mad,

  And that’s the thing that always frightens me so.

  I hate it worst when it’s cruel and round and bright,

  And you can’t make out the marks on its stupid face,

  Except when you shut your eyelashes, and all night

  The sky looks green, and the world’s a horrible place.

  I like the stars, and
especially the Big Bear

  And the W star, and one like a diamond ring,

  But I hate the Moon and its horrible stony stare,

  And I know one day it’ll do me some dreadful thing.

  BIG WORDS

  ‘I’ve whined of coming death, but now, no more!

  It’s weak and most ungracious. For, say I,

  Though still a boy if years are counted, why!

  I’ve lived those years from roof to cellar-floor,

  And feel, like grey-beards touching their fourscore,

  Ready, so soon as the need comes, to die:

  And I’m satisfied.

  For winning confidence in those quiet days

  Of peace, poised sickly on the precipice side

  Of Lliwedd crag by Snowdon, and in war

  Finding it firmlier with me than before;

  Winning a faith in the wisdom of God’s ways

  That once I lost, finding it justified

  Even in this chaos; winning love that stays

  And warms the heart like wine at Easter-tide;

  Having earlier tried

  False loves in plenty; oh! my cup of praise

  Brims over, and I know I’ll feel small sorrow,

  Confess no sins and make no weak delays

  If death ends all and I must die to-morrow.’

  But on the firestep, waiting to attack,

  He cursed, prayed, sweated, wished the proud words back.

  THE DEAD FOX HUNTER

  (In memory of Captain A. L. Samson, 2nd Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, killed near Cuinchy, Sept. 25th, 1915)

  We found the little captain at the head;

  His men lay well aligned.

  We touched his hand – stone cold – and he was dead,

  And they, all dead behind,

  Had never reached their goal, but they died well;

  They charged in line, and in the same line fell.

  The well-known rosy colours of his face

  Were almost lost in grey.

  We saw that, dying and in hopeless case,

  For others’ sake that day

  He’d smothered all rebellious groans: in death

  His fingers were tight clenched between his teeth.

  For those who live uprightly and die true

  Heaven has no bars or locks,

  And serves all taste… or what’s for him to do

  Up there, but hunt the fox?

  Angelic choirs? No, Justice must provide

  For one who rode straight and in hunting died.

  So if Heaven had no Hunt before he came,

  Why, it must find one now:

  If any shirk and doubt they know the game,

  There’s one to teach them how:

  And the whole host of Seraphim complete

  Must jog in scarlet to his opening Meet.

  IT’S A QUEER TIME

  It’s hard to know if you’re alive or dead

  When steel and fire go roaring through your head.

  One moment you’ll be crouching at your gun

  Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun:

  The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast –

  No time to think – leave all – and off you go…

  To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow,

  To lovely groves of mango, quince and lime –

  Breathe no goodbye, but ho, for the Red West!

  It’s a queer time.

  You’re charging madly at them yelling ‘Fag!’

  When somehow something gives and your feet drag.

  You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain

  And find…you’re digging tunnels through the hay

  In the Big Barn, ’cause it’s a rainy day.

  Oh springy hay, and lovely beams to climb!

  You’re back in the old sailor suit again.

  It’s a queer time.

  Or you’ll be dozing safe in your dug-out –

  A great roar – the trench shakes and falls about –

  You’re struggling, gasping, struggling, then…hullo!

  Elsie comes tripping gaily down the trench,

  Hanky to nose – that lyddite makes a stench –

  Getting her pinafore all over grime.

  Funny! because she died ten years ago!

  It’s a queer time.

  The trouble is, things happen much too quick;

  Up jump the Bosches, rifles thump and click,

  You stagger, and the whole scene fades away:

  Even good Christians don’t like passing straight

  From Tipperary or their Hymn of Hate

  To Alleluiah-chanting, and the chime

  Of golden harps…and…I’m not well to-day…

  It’s a queer time.

  1915

  I’ve watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow,

  In the fields between La Bassée and Béthune;

  Primroses and the first warm day of Spring,

  Red poppy floods of June,

  August, and yellowing Autumn, so

  To Winter nights knee-deep in mud or snow,

  And you’ve been everything,

  Dear, you’ve been everything that I most lack

  In these soul-deadening trenches – pictures, books,

  Music, the quiet of an English wood,

  Beautiful comrade-looks,

  The narrow, bouldered mountain-track,

  The broad, full-bosomed ocean, green and black,

  And Peace, and all that’s good.

  OVER THE BRAZIER

  What life to lead and where to go

  After the War, after the War?

  We’d often talked this way before.

  But I still see the brazier glow

  That April night, still feel the smoke

  And stifling pungency of burning coke.

  I’d thought: ‘A cottage in the hills,

  North Wales, a cottage full of books,

  Pictures and brass and cosy nooks

  And comfortable broad window-sills,

  Flowers in the garden, walls all white.

  I’d live there peacefully and dream and write.’

  But Willie said: ‘No, Home’s no good:

  Old England’s quite a hopeless place,

  I’ve lost all feeling for my race:

  But France has given my heart and blood

  Enough to last me all my life,

  I’m off to Canada with my wee wife.

  ‘Come with us, Mac, old thing,’ but Mac

  Drawled: ‘No, a Coral Isle for me,

  A warm green jewel in the South Sea.

  There’s merit in a lumber shack,

  And labour is a grand thing…but –

  Give me my hot beach and my cocoanut.’

  So then we built and stocked for Willie

  His log-hut, and for Mac a calm

  Rock-a-bye cradle on a palm –

  Idyllic dwellings – but this silly

  Mad War has now wrecked both, and what

  Better hopes has my little cottage got?

  GOLIATH AND DAVID

  (1916)

  THE BOUGH OF NONSENSE

  (An Idyll)

  Back from the Somme two Fusiliers

  Limped painfully home; the elder said,

  S. ‘Robert, I’ve lived three thousand years

  This Summer, and I’m nine parts dead.’

  R. ‘But if that’s truly so,’ I cried, ‘quick, now,

  Through these great oaks and see the famous bough

  ‘Where once a nonsense built her nest

  With skulls and flowers and all things queer,

  In an old boot, with patient breast

  Hatching three eggs; and the next year…’

  S. ‘Foaled thirteen squamous young beneath, and rid

  Wales of drink, melancholy and psalms, she did.’

  Said he, ‘Before this quaint mood fails,

  We’ll sit and weave a nonsense hymn,’
/>   R. ‘Hanging it up with monkey tails

  In a deep grove all hushed and dim…’

  S. ‘To glorious yellow-bunched banana-trees,’

  R. ‘Planted in dreams by pious Portuguese,’

  S. ‘Which men are wise beyond their time,

  And worship nonsense, no one more.’

  R. ‘Hard by, among old quince and lime,

  They’ve built a temple with no floor,’

  S. ‘And whosoever worships in that place

  He disappears from sight and leaves no trace.’

  R. ‘Once the Galatians built a fane

  To Sense: what duller God than that?’

  S. ‘But the first day of autumn rain

  The roof fell in and crushed them flat.’

  R. ‘Ay, for a roof of subtlest logic falls

  When nonsense is foundation for the walls.’

  I tell him old Galatian tales;

  He caps them in quick Portuguese,

  While phantom creatures with green scales

  Scramble and roll among the trees.

  The hymn swells; on a bough above us sings

  A row of bright pink birds, flapping their wings.

  GOLIATH AND DAVID

  (For Lieut. David Thomas, 1st Batt. Royal Welch Fusiliers, killed at Fricourt, March, 1916)

  ‘If I am Jesse’s son,’ said he,

  ‘Where must that tall Goliath be?’

  For once an earlier David took

  Smooth pebbles from the brook:

  Out between the lines he went

  To that one-sided tournament,

  A shepherd boy who stood out fine

  And young to fight a Philistine

  Clad all in brazen mail. He swears

  That he’s killed lions, he’s killed bears,

  And those that scorn the God of Zion

  Shall perish so like bear or lion.

  But…the historian of that fight

  Had not the heart to tell it right.

  Striding within javelin range,

  Goliath marvels at this strange

  Goodly-faced boy so proud of strength.

  David’s clear eye measures the length;

  With hand thrust back, he cramps one knee,

  Poises a moment thoughtfully,

  And hurls with a long vengeful swing.

  The pebble, humming from the sling

  Like a wild bee, flies a sure line

  For the forehead of the Philistine;

  Then…but there comes a brazen clink,