FLOWERS

Even iron can put forth, Even iron. This is the iron age, But let us take heart Seeing iron break and bud, Seeing rusty iron puff with clouds of blossom. The almond-tree, December’s bare iron hooks sticking out of earth. The almond-tree, That knows the deadliest poison, like a snake In supreme bitterness. Upon the iron, and upon the steel, Odd flakes as if of snow, odd bits of snow, Odd crumbs of melting snow. But you mistake, it is not from the sky; From out the iron, and from out the steel, Flying not down from heaven, but storming up, Strange storming up from the dense under-earth Along the iron, to the living steel In rose-hot tips, and flakes of rose-pale snow Setting supreme annunciation to the world. Nay, what a heart of delicate super-faith, Iron-breaking, The rusty swords of almond-trees. Trees suffer, like races, down the long ages. They wander and are exiled, they live in exile through long ages Like drawn blades never sheathed, hacked and gone black, The alien trees in alien lands: and yet The heart of blossom, The unquenchable heart of blossom! Look at the many-cicatrised frail vine, none more scarred and frail, Yet see him fling himself abroad in fresh abandon From the small wound-stump. Even the wilful, obstinate, gummy fig-tree Can be kept down, but he’ll burst like a polyp into prolixity. And the almond-tree, in exile, in the iron age! This is the ancient southern earth whence the vases were baked, amphoras, craters, cantharus, œnochœ, and open-hearted cylix, Bristling now with the iron of almond-trees Iron, but unforgotten, Iron, dawn-hearted, Ever-beating dawn-heart, enveloped in iron against the exile, against the ages. See it come forth in blossom From the snow-remembering heart In long-nighted January, In the long dark nights of the evening star, and Sirius, and the Etna snow-wind through the long night. Sweating his drops of blood through the long-nighted Gethsemane Into blossom, into pride, into honey-triumph, into most exquisite splendour. Oh, give me the tree of life in blossom And the Cross sprouting its superb and fearless flowers! Something must be reassuring to the almond, in the evening star, and the snow-wind, and the long, long, nights, Some memory of far, sun-gentler lands, So that the faith in his heart smiles again And his blood ripples with that untellable delight of once-more-vindicated faith, And the Gethsemane blood at the iron pores unfolds, unfolds, Pearls itself into tenderness of bud And in a great and sacred forthcoming steps forth, steps out in one stride A naked tree of blossom, like a bridegroom bathing in dew, divested of cover, Frail-naked, utterly uncovered To the green night-baying of the dog-star, Etna’s snow-edged wind And January’s loud-seeming sun. Think of it, from the iron fastness Suddenly to dare to come out naked, in perfection of blossom, beyond the sword-rust. Think, to stand there in full-unfolded nudity, smiling, With all the snow-wind, and the sun-glare, and the dog-star baying epithalamion. Oh, honey-bodied beautiful one, Come forth from iron, Red your heart is. Fragile-tender, fragile-tender life-body, More fearless than iron all the time, And so much prouder, so disdainful of reluctances. In the distance like hoar-frost, like silvery ghosts communing on a green hill, Hoar-frost-like and mysterious. In the garden raying out With a body like spray, dawn-tender, and looking about With such insuperable, subtly-smiling assurance, Sword-blade-born. Unpromised, No bounds being set. Flaked out and come unpromised, The tree being life-divine, Fearing nothing, life-blissful at the core Within iron and earth. Knots of pink, fish-silvery In heaven, in blue, blue heaven, Soundless, bliss-full, wide-rayed, honey-bodied, Red at the core, Red at the core, Knotted in heaven upon the fine light. Open, Open, Five times wide open, Six times wide open, And given, and perfect; And red at the core with the last sore-heartedness, Sore-hearted-looking. Fontana Vecchia.

Who gave us flowers? Heaven? The white God? Nonsense! Up out of hell, From Hades; Infernal Dis! Jesus the god of flowers——? Not he. Or sun-bright Apollo, him so musical? Him neither. Who then? Say who. Say it—and it is Pluto, Dis, The dark one, Proserpine’s master. Who contradicts——? When she broke forth from below, Flowers came, hell-hounds on her heels. Dis, the dark, the jealous god, the husband, Flower-sumptuous-blooded. Go then, he said. And in Sicily, on the meadows of Enna, She thought she had left him; But opened around her purple anemones, Caverns, Little hells of colour, caves of darkness, Hell, risen in pursuit of her; royal, sumptuous Pit-falls. All at her feet Hell opening; At her white ankles Hell rearing its husband-splendid, serpent heads, Hell-purple, to get at her— Why did he let her go? So he could track her down again, white victim. Ah mastery! Hell’s husband-blossoms Out on earth again. Look out, Persephone! You, Madame Ceres, mind yourself, the enemy is upon you. About your feet spontaneous aconite, Hell-glamorous, and purple husband-tyranny Enveloping your late-enfranchised plains. You thought your daughter had escaped? No more stockings to darn for the flower-roots, down in hell? But ah my dear! Aha, the stripe-cheeked whelps, whippet-slim crocuses, At ’em, boys, at ’em! Ho golden-spaniel, sweet alert narcissus, Smell ’em, smell ’em out! Those two enfranchised women. Somebody is coming! Oho there! Dark blue anemones! Hell is up! Hell on earth, and Dis within the depths! Run, Persephone, he is after you already. Why did he let her go? To track her down; All the sport of summer and spring, and flowers snapping at her ankles and catching her by the hair! Poor Persephone and her rights for women. Husband-snared hell-queen, It is spring. It is spring, And pomp of husband-strategy on earth. Ceres, kiss your girl, you think you’ve got her back. The bit of husband-tilth she is, Persephone! Poor mothers-in-law! They are always sold. It is spring. Taormina.

When he pushed his bush of black hair off his brow: When she lifted her mop from her eyes, and screwed it in a knob behind —O act of fearful temerity! When they felt their foreheads bare, naked to heaven, their eyes revealed: When they felt the light of heaven brandished like a knife at their defenceless eyes, And the sea like a blade at their face, Mediterranean savages: When they came out, face-revealed, under heaven, from the shaggy undergrowth of their own hair For the first time, They saw tiny rose cyclamens between their toes, growing Where the slow toads sat brooding on the past. Slow toads, and cyclamen leaves Stickily glistening with eternal shadow Keeping to earth. Cyclamen leaves Toad-filmy, earth-iridescent Beautiful Frost-filigreed Spumed with mud Snail-nacreous Low down. The shaking aspect of the sea And man’s defenceless bare face And cyclamens putting their ears back. Long, pensive, slim-muzzled greyhound buds Dreamy, not yet present, Drawn out of earth At his toes. Dawn-rose Sub-delighted, stone-engendered Cyclamens, young cyclamens Arching Waking, pricking their ears Like delicate very-young greyhound bitches Half-yawning at the open, inexperienced Vista of day, Folding back their soundless petalled ears. Greyhound bitches Sending their rosy muzzled pensive down, And breathing soft, unwilling to wake to the new day Yet sub-delighted. Ah Mediterranean morning, when our world began! Far-off Mediterranean mornings, Pelasgic faces uncovered, And unbudding cyclamens. The hare suddenly goes uphill Laying back her long ears with unwinking bliss. And up the pallid, sea-blenched Mediterranean stone-slopes Rose cyclamen, ecstatic fore-runner! Cyclamens, ruddy-muzzled cyclamens In little bunches like bunches of wild hares Muzzles together, ears-aprick Whispering witchcraft Like women at a well, the dawn-fountain. Greece, and the world’s morning Where all the Parthenon marbles still fostered the roots of the cyclamen. Violets Pagan, rosy-muzzled violets Autumnal Dawn-pink, Dawn-pale Among squat toad-leaves sprinkling the unborn Erechtheion marbles. Taormina.

Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark! It’s the socialists come to town, None in rags and none in tags, Swaggering up and down. Sunday morning, And from the Sicilian townlets skirting Etna The socialists have gathered upon us, to look at us. How shall we know them when we see them? How shall we know them now they’ve come? Not by their rags and not by their tags, Nor by any distinctive gown; The same unremarkable Sunday suit And hats cocked up and down. Yet there they are, youths, loutishly Strolling in gangs and staring along the Corso With the gang-stare And a half-threatening envy At every forestière, Every lordly tuppenny foreigner from the hotels, fattening on the exchange. Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark! It’s the socialists in the town. Sans rags, sans tags, Sans beards, sans bags, Sans any distinction at all except loutish commonness. How do we know then, that they are they? Bolshevists. Leninists. Communists. Socialists. -Ists!-Ists! Alas, salvia and hibiscus flowers. Salvia and hibiscus flowers. Listen again. Salvia and hibiscus flowers. Is it not so? Salvia and hibiscus flowers. Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark! Salvia and hibiscus flowers. Who smeared their doors with blood? Who on their breasts Put salvias and hibiscus? Rosy, rosy scarlet, And flame-rage, golden-throated Bloom along the Corso on the living, perambulating bush. Who said they might assume these blossoms? What god did they consult? Rose-red, princess hibiscus, rolling her pointed Chinese petals! Azalea and camellia, single peony And pomegranate bloom and scarlet mallow-flower And all the eastern, exquisite royal plants That noble blood has brought us down the ages! Gently nurtured, frail and splendid Hibiscus flower— Alas, the Sunday coats of Sicilian bolshevists! Pure blood, and noble blood, in the fine and rose-red veins; Small, interspersed with jewels of white gold Frail-filigreed among the rest; Rose of the oldest races of princesses, Polynesian Hibiscus. Eve, in her happy moments, Put hibiscus in her hair, Before she humbled herself, and knocked her knees with repentance. Sicilian bolshevists, With hibiscus flowers in the buttonholes of your Sunday suits, Come now, speaking of rights, what right have you to this flower? The exquisite and ageless aristocracy Of a peerless soul, Blessed are the pure in heart and the fathomless in bright pride; The loveliness that knows noblesse oblige; The native royalty of red hibiscus flowers; The exquisite assertion of new delicate life Risen from the roots: Is this how you’ll have it, red-decked socialists, Hibiscus-breasted? If it be so, I fly to join you, And if it be not so, brutes to pull down hibiscus flowers! Or salvia! Or dragon-mouthed salvia with gold throat of wrath! Flame-flushed, enraged, splendid salvia, Cock-crested, crowing your orange scarlet like a tocsin Along the Corso all this Sunday morning. Is your wrath red as salvias, You socialists? You with your grudging, envious, furtive rage, In Sunday suits and yellow boots along the Corso. You look well with your salvia flowers, I must say. Warrior-like, dawn-cock’s-comb flaring flower Shouting forth flame to set the world on fire, The dust-heap of man’s filthy world on fire, And burn it down, the glutted, stuffy world, And feed the young new fields of life with ash, With ash I say, Bolshevists, Your ashes even, my friends, Among much other ash. If there were salvia-savage bolshevists To burn the world back to manure-good ash, Wouldn’t I stick the salvia in my coat! But these themselves must burn, these louts! The dragon-faced, The anger-reddened, golden-throated salvia With its long antennæ of rage put out Upon the frightened air. Ugh, how I love its fangs of perfect rage That gnash the air; The molten gold of its intolerable rage Hot in the throat. I long to be a bolshevist And set the stinking rubbish-heap of this foul world Afire at a myriad scarlet points, A bolshevist, a salvia-face To lick the world with flame that licks it clean. I long to see its chock-full crowdedness And glutted squirming populousness on fire Like a field of filthy weeds Burnt back to ash, And then to see the new, real souls sprout up. Not this vast rotting cabbage patch we call the world; But from the ash-scarred fallow New wild souls. Nettles, and a rose sprout, Hibiscus, and mere grass, Salvia still in a rage And almond honey-still, And fig-wort stinking for the carrion wasp; All the lot of them, and let them fight it out. But not a trace of foul equality, Nor sound of still more foul human perfection. You need not clear the world like a cabbage patch for me; Leave me my nettles, Let me fight the wicked, obstreperous weeds myself, and put them in their place, Severely in their place. I don’t at all want to annihilate them, I like a row with them, But I won’t be put on a cabbage-idealistic level of equality with them. What rot, to see the cabbage and hibiscus-tree As equals! What rot, to say the louts along the Corso In Sunday suits and yellow shoes Are my equals! I am their superior, saluting the hibiscus flower, not them. The same I say to the profiteers from the hotels, the money-fat-ones, Profiteers here being called dog-fish, stinking dog-fish, sharks. The same I say to the pale and elegant persons, Pale-face authorities loitering tepidly: That I salute the red hibiscus flowers And send mankind to its inferior blazes. Mankind’s inferior blazes, And these along with it, all the inferior lot— These bolshevists, These dog-fish, These precious and ideal ones, All rubbish ready for fire. And I salute hibiscus and the salvia flower Upon the breasts of loutish bolshevists, Damned loutish bolshevists, Who perhaps will do the business after all, In the long run, in spite of themselves. Meanwhile, alas For me no fellow-men, No salvia-frenzied comrades, antennæ Of yellow-red, outreaching, living wrath Upon the smouldering air, And throat of brimstone-molten angry gold. Red, angry men are a race extinct, alas! Never To be a bolshevist With a hibiscus flower behind my ear In sign of life, of lovely, dangerous life And passionate disqualify of men; In sign of dauntless, silent violets, And impudent nettles grabbing the under-earth, And cabbages born to be cut and eat, And salvia fierce to crow and shout for fight, And rosy-red hibiscus wincingly Unfolding all her coiled and lovely self In a doubtful world. Never, bolshevistically To be able to stand for all these! Alas, alas, I have got to leave it all To the youths in Sunday suits and yellow shoes Who have pulled down the salvia flowers And rosy delicate hibiscus flowers And everything else to their disgusting level, Never, of course, to put anything up again. But yet If they pull all the world down, The process will amount to the same in the end. Instead of flame and flame-clean ash Slow watery rotting back to level muck And final humus, Whence the re-start. And still I cannot bear it That they take hibiscus and the salvia flower. Taormina.