THE FIRST YEAR [ALL SOULS’ DAY]
Reading edition
47(i)
Here in my darkness
I lie in the depths of things,
As in a black wood whereof flowers and boughs are the roots,
And the moist-branching tendrils and ligaments,
Woven or spiralled or spreading, the roof of my head,
Blossomless, birdless, starless, skied with black earth,
A ponderous heaven.
But they forget,
Too often forget, and too soon, who above us
Brush the dead leaves from our mounds,
Scrape the moss from our names,
And feel safe,
They forget that one day in the year our earth becomes ether,
And the roots binding us loosen
As Peter’s chains dropped for the Angel,
In that old story they read there;
Forget—do they seek to remember?—
That one day in the year we are with them,
Rejoin them, hear them, behold them, and walk the old ways with them—
One!
To-morrow....
And already I feel
The harsh arms of ivy-coils loosening
Like a dead man’s embrace,
I feel the cool worms from my hair
Rain like dew,
And the soft-muzzled moles boring deeper,
Down after the old dead that stir not,
Or just grumble: “Don’t wake me,” and turn
The nether side of their skulls to their head-slab....
While I ... I their one-year neighbour,
Thrusting up like a willow in spring,
From my hair
Untwine the thick grass-hair carefully,
Unbind the cool roots from my lids,
48Straining up, straining up with thin hands,
Scattering the earth like a cloud,
And stopping my ears from the cry,
Lower down,
Persistent, like a sick child’s wail,
The cry of the girl just below me:
“Don’t go, don’t go ...” the poor coward!
(ii)
How light the air is!
I’m dizzy ... my feet fly up ...
And this mad confusion of things topsy-turvey,
With the friendly comprehensible roots all hidden,
In this queer world where one can’t see how things happen,
But only what they become....
Was it always so queer and inexplicable?
Yes, but the fresh smell of things ...
Are these apples in the wet grass, I wonder?
Sweet, sweet, sweet, the smell of the living!
And the far-off sky, and the stars,
And the quiet spaces between,
So that one can float and fly ...
Why used we only to walk?
This is the gate—and the latch still unmended!
Yet how often I told him.... Ah, the scent of my box-border!
And a late clove-pink still unfrozen.
It’s what they call a “mild November” ...
I knew that, below there, by the way the roots kept pushing,
But I’d forgotten how tender it was on the earth ...
So quickly the dead forget!
And the living? I think, after all, they remember,
With everything about them so unchanged,
And no leaden loam on their eyes.
Yes, surely, I know he remembers;
Whenever he touches the broken latch,
He thinks: “How often she asked me,
And how careless I was not to mend it!”
And smiles and sighs; then recalls
How we planted the box-border together,
Knee to knee in the wet, one November ...
And the clove-pinks—
49Here is the window.
They’ve put the green lamp on the table,
Where his books lie, heaped as of old—
Ah, thank God for the old disorder!
How I used to hate it, and now—
Now I could kiss the dust on the mirror, the pipe-ashes
Over everything—all the old mess
That no strange hand interferes with ...
Bless him for that!
(iij)
Just at first
This much contents me; why should I peer
Past the stripped arms of the rose, the metallic
Rattle of clematis dry as my hair,
There where June flushes and purples the window like sunset? I know
So well the room’s other corner: the hearth
Where autumn logs smoulder,
The hob,
The kettle, the crane, the cushion he put for my feet,
And my Chair—
O Chair, always mine!
Do I dare?
What—the room so the same, his and mine,
Not a book changed, the inkstand uncleaned,
The old pipe-burn scarring the table,
The old rent in the rug, where I tripped
And he caught me—no woman’s hand here
Has mended or marred; all’s the same!
Why not dare, then? Oh, but to think,
If I stole to my chair, if I sat there,
Feet folded, arms stretched on the arms,
So quiet,
And waited for night and his coming ...
Oh, think, when he came
And sank in the other chair, facing me,
Not a line of his face would alter,
Nor his hands fall like sun on my hair,
Nor the old dog jump on me, grinning
Yet cringing, because she half-knew
I’d found out the hole in my border,
And why my tallest auratum was dead—
50But his face would be there, unseeing,
His eyes look through me;
And the old dog—not pausing
At her bowl for a long choking drink,
Or to bite the burrs from her toes, and stretch
Sideward to the fire, dreaming over their tramp in the stubble—
Would creep to his feet
Bristling a little ...
And I,
I should be there, in the old place,
All the old life bubbling up in me,
And to him no more felt than the sap
Struggling up unseen in the clematis—
Ah, then, then, then I were dead!
But what was I, then? Lips and hands only—
Since soul cannot reach him without them?
Oh, heavy grave of the flesh,
Did I never once reach to him through you?
I part the branches and look....
(iv)
O my Chair ...
But who sits in you? One like me
Aflame yet invisible!
Only I, with eyes death-anointed,
Can see her young hair, and the happy heart riding
The dancing sea of her breast!
Then she too is waiting—
And young as I was?
Was she always there?
Were her lips between all our kisses?
Did her hands know the folds of his hair?
Did she hear what I said when I loved him?
Was the room never empty? Not once?
When I leaned in that chair, which one of us two did he see?
Did he feel us both on his bosom?
How strange! If I spoke to her now she would hear me,
She alone ...
Would tell me all, through her weeping,
Or rise up and curse me, perhaps—
As I might her, were she living!
51But since she is dead, I will go—
Go home, and leave them together ...
I will go back to my dungeon,
Go back, and never return;
Lest another year, in my chair,
I find one sitting,
One whom he sees, and the old dog fears not, but springs on ...
I will not suffer what she must have suffered, but creep
To my bed in the dark,
And mind how the girl below called to me,
Called up through the mould and the grave-slabs:
“Do not go! Do not go! Do not go!”
53