Read Ebook: Look! We Have Come Through! by Lawrence D H David Herbert

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Ebook has 509 lines and 20273 words, and 11 pages

Sudden a dark-faced stranger With his back to the sun, holds out His arms; so she lights from her palfrey And turns her round about.

She has given the child to Joseph, Gone down to the flashing shore; And Joseph, shading his eyes with his hand, Stands watching evermore.

SECOND PART

THE sea in the stones is singing, A woman binds her hair With yellow, frail sea-poppies, That shine as her fingers stir.

While a naked man comes swiftly Like a spurt of white foam rent From the crest of a falling breaker, Over the poppies sent.

He puts his surf-wet fingers Over her startled eyes, And asks if she sees the land, the land, The land of her glad surmise.

THIRD PART

AGAIN in her blue, blue mantle Riding at Joseph's side, She says, "I went to Cythera, And woe betide!"

Her heart is a swinging cradle That holds the perfect child, But the shade on her forehead ill becomes A mother mild.

So on with the slow, mean journey In the pride of humility; Till they halt at a cliff on the edge of the land Over a sullen sea.

While Joseph pitches the sleep-tent She goes far down to the shore To where a man in a heaving boat Waits with a lifted oar.

FOURTH PART

THEY dwelt in a huge, hoarse sea-cave And looked far down the dark Where an archway torn and glittering Shone like a huge sea-spark.

He said: "Do you see the spirits Crowding the bright doorway?" He said: "Do you hear them whispering?" He said: "Do you catch what they say?"

FIFTH PART

THEN Joseph, grey with waiting, His dark eyes full of pain, Heard: "I have been to Patmos; Give me the child again."

Now on with the hopeless journey Looking bleak ahead she rode, And the man and the child of no more account Than the earth the palfrey trode.

Till a beggar spoke to Joseph, But looked into her eyes; So she turned, and said to her husband: "I give, whoever denies."

SHE gave on the open heather Beneath bare judgment stars, And she dreamed of her children and Joseph, And the isles, and her men, and her scars.

And she woke to distil the berries The beggar had gathered at night, Whence he drew the curious liquors He held in delight.

He gave her no crown of flowers, No child and no palfrey slow, Only led her through harsh, hard places Where strange winds blow.

She follows his restless wanderings Till night when, by the fire's red stain, Her face is bent in the bitter steam That comes from the flowers of pain.

Then merciless and ruthless He takes the flame-wild drops To the town, and tries to sell them With the market-crops.

So she follows the cruel journey That ends not anywhere, And dreams, as she stirs the mixing-pot, She is brewing hope from despair.

TRIER

THE night was a failure but why not--?

In the darkness with the pale dawn seething at the window through the black frame I could not be free, not free myself from the past, those others-- and our love was a confusion, there was a horror, you recoiled away from me.

Now, in the morning As we sit in the sunshine on the seat by the little shrine, And look at the mountain-walls, Walls of blue shadow, And see so near at our feet in the meadow Myriads of dandelion pappus Bubbles ravelled in the dark green grass Held still beneath the sunshine--

It is enough, you are near-- The mountains are balanced, The dandelion seeds stay half-submerged in the grass; You and I together We hold them proud and blithe On our love. They stand upright on our love, Everything starts from us, We are the source.

BEUERBERG

No, now I wish the sunshine would stop, and the white shining houses, and the gay red flowers on the balconies and the bluish mountains beyond, would be crushed out between two valves of darkness; the darkness falling, the darkness rising, with muffled sound obliterating everything.

I wish that whatever props up the walls of light would fall, and darkness would come hurling heavily down, and it would be thick black dark for ever. Not sleep, which is grey with dreams, nor death, which quivers with birth, but heavy, sealing darkness, silence, all immovable.

What is sleep? It goes over me, like a shadow over a hill, but it does not alter me, nor help me. And death would ache still, I am sure; it would be lambent, uneasy. I wish it would be completely dark everywhere, inside me, and out, heavily dark utterly.

WOLFRATSHAUSEN

THE pale bubbles The lovely pale-gold bubbles of the globe-flowers In a great swarm clotted and single Went rolling in the dusk towards the river To where the sunset hung its wan gold cloths; And you stood alone, watching them go, And that mother-love like a demon drew you from me Towards England.

Along the road, after nightfall, Along the glamorous birch-tree avenue Across the river levels We went in silence, and you staring to England.

So then there shone within the jungle darkness Of the long, lush under-grass, a glow-worm's sudden Green lantern of pure light, a little, intense, fusing triumph, White and haloed with fire-mist, down in the tangled darkness.

Then you put your hand in mine again, kissed me, and we struggled to be together. And the little electric flashes went with us, in the grass, Tiny lighthouses, little souls of lanterns, courage burst into an explosion of green light Everywhere down in the grass, where darkness was ravelled in darkness.

Still, the kiss was a touch of bitterness on my mouth Like salt, burning in. And my hand withered in your hand. For you were straining with a wild heart, back, back again, Back to those children you had left behind, to all the aeons of the past. And I was here in the under-dusk of the Isar.

At home, we leaned in the bedroom window Of the old Bavarian Gasthaus, And the frogs in the pool beyond thrilled with exuberance, Like a boiling pot the pond crackled with happiness, Like a rattle a child spins round for joy, the night rattled With the extravagance of the frogs, And you leaned your cheek on mine, And I suffered it, wanting to sympathise.

At last, as you stood, your white gown falling from your breasts, You looked into my eyes, and said: "But this is joy!" I acquiesced again. But the shadow of lying was in your eyes, The mother in you, fierce as a murderess, glaring to England, Yearning towards England, towards your young children, Insisting upon your motherhood, devastating.

Still, the joy was there also, you spoke truly, The joy was not to be driven off so easily; Stronger than fear or destructive mother-love, it stood flickering; The frogs helped also, whirring away. Yet how I have learned to know that look in your eyes Of horrid sorrow! How I know that glitter of salt, dry, sterile, sharp, corrosive salt! Not tears, but white sharp brine Making hideous your eyes.

I have seen it, felt it in my mouth, my throat, my chest, my belly, Burning of powerful salt, burning, eating through my defenceless nakedness. I have been thrust into white, sharp crystals, Writhing, twisting, superpenetrated.

Ah, Lot's Wife, Lot's Wife! The pillar of salt, the whirling, horrible column of salt, like a waterspout That has enveloped me! Snow of salt, white, burning, eating salt In which I have writhed.

Lot's Wife!--Not Wife, but Mother. I have learned to curse your motherhood, You pillar of salt accursed. I have cursed motherhood because of you, Accursed, base motherhood!

I long for the time to come, when the curse against you will have gone out of my heart. But it has not gone yet. Nevertheless, once, the frogs, the globe-flowers of Bavaria, the glow-worms Gave me sweet lymph against the salt-burns, There is a kindness in the very rain.

Therefore, even in the hour of my deepest, pas- sionate malediction I try to remember it is also well between us. That you are with me in the end. That you never look quite back; nine-tenths, ah, more You look round over your shoulder; But never quite back.

Nevertheless the curse against you is still in my heart Like a deep, deep burn. The curse against all mothers. All mothers who fortify themselves in motherhood, devastating the vision. They are accursed, and the curse is not taken off It burns within me like a deep, old burn, And oh, I wish it was better.

BEUERBERG

IN front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost ribbon of rainbow; And between us and it, the thunder; And down below in the green wheat, the labourers Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat.

You are near to me, and your naked feet in their sandals, And through the scent of the balcony's naked timber I distinguish the scent of your hair: so now the limber Lightning falls from heaven.

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