Sarah Simon - Part 8

Like fish left in a shallow marshy lake
With silted opening to the living sea;
Beyond the reach of any ocean tides,
Or seasonal visitors from depths; cut off
From everything except the clouds above
And the slow change of seasons, or the rings
The deadly fisher or the stork might make,
Upon the surface of their stagnant mere —
The villagers dwelt in the hamlet close
By Sarah's house. Their passing half-shades fell
Translucently upon the shimmering sand,
Then drifted slowly into shadows while
Those that were left kept breathing steadily
With large, incurious, and unseeing eyes
Suspended as it were in sleepy light.
Summer, the dreamer, slumbered in their streets.

Into this stagnant neighborhood of men
Sarah's sleek daughters easily merged their lives;
They married and they left their mother's house;
Eager to drop its onerous earthy tasks,
Care of the bees, the flowers, and the birds;
The sea, the wind, the sunshine dull to them.
They grew ashamed of all their mother's ways
And only came to visit her by night
When gossip was dried up, or neighbors failed.
Or when they needed things that Sarah had.
Scarce might grandchildren toddle round her house
For fear the curious ways that Sarah had
Of kinship with the earth that lay about
Might wean these babies from the world of men.
Sarah alone grew firmer in her strength;
Increased a dignity that year by year
Dwarfed her own progeny and made them seem
Poor to themselves when they would visit her.
She lived to be; they only lived to have.
What Being said to Having was so nil
They always came with baskets, filled them full —
After some words perfunctory by the hearth —
And left their mother looking at the fire.
Then laughed and felt themselves at ease again,
Out in the dark, with baskets on their arms,
Heavy with something gravity made real,
Till they heard Sarah talking to herself,
Talking aloud now that she had grown old,
As if she spoke with someone that was near!

This is the act that lets the spirit pray
Within itself; that finds another there
Beyond the earth, the water and the air.
This is the truth the church keeps hid away;
This is the hope beyond all bitter care,
St. Francis and the birds, the natural prayer.
This is the life, well hated by the state,
With which philosophy can never mate —
Until she rides upon a poet's pen —
Something not found within the measurer's den
That merges being with a strength beyond.
Then Boston thunders down on Walden Pond.
And man can only speak with man again.

So Sarah grew a mystery to her own
Who looked upon her as a source for gifts
And nothing more. Impatient at her way
Of living, and of doling mite by mite,
Her children kept on harping on the things —
Much grown by legend — that the neighbors said
Sarah still kept in chests their father brought.
Sometimes they came and questioned her of him
And what he gave her, and a rumor brought,
Which had come wandering from a tropic clime
Over the Southern shoulder of the world,
Of how, forgetfully, James Trevlock rode
In phaitons on Demerara's bund
With a rich merchant's daughter by his side,
And children smiling through their golden hair.
This Sarah heard, and pondered, and put down
Into her well of sorrow deep and cool,
Amid the shadows where the rank ferns grew
In twilight of lost hopes and memories —
And walked amid her garden — and lived on.

James was a lawyer now, young James, her son,
Much profiting by Stephen Oldfields' zeal,
Who taught him at the parsonage year by year
After that day that Sarah came to church —
Careful no careless words should mar a name
He once had marred in England, careful now!
And many an evening Jimmy used to spout
The Bard to Sarah, Hamlet and King Lear:
" Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout ... "
And Sarah knew how hurricanoes spout,
And how this boy had come to her from them,
Who now was full of nothing but the sound
Of useless words — with gestures — on he went:
Lear wandered in the storm without a house,
And cursed his children who had gotten all.
But Sarah laid Lear's misery to her heart,
Against a time she knew must surely come,
And profited thus far by clanging words
That Stephen Oldfields wrapped about her son
To draw him from her in their woven net,
While only she felt what they really meant —
Not that she had a name for tragedy,
But with the poet triumphed through the storm.

Yet here was sorrow, too, for Sarah knew
That if this man with gift of ancient words,
And all his friends with all their gifts of words
Had never found her house beside the sea,
She might have kept her children and alone
Brought them the things words stand for; let them feel
What life is by sheer living it in acts.
There was a life she knew, that they called " God, "
And went to church about it, but she felt
And saw, and dealt with; it with her. And round
Her head was wrapped its mystery of stars;
Its voice was in the wind, and in the light
And warmth she felt it beating, and beheld
The ebb and flow of it from plant to seed,
And down the generations of the birds
And dogs and goats that lived about her door.
It ran in warmth of milk across her hands;
It streamed in endless mornings from the sun,
When he came suddenly out of the sea;
Was still about her at the cool of night
And yet again at morning — glory out
Of glory out of glory, hence removed
But only changed when something stopped to die.
This was the golden wellspring of her soul,
Sparkling with life beyond the needs of men
Who seemed to her to have withdrawn from it,
And not to know they were a part of it,
And still might share, for it was all about
But they had words that once had root in things
And then had lost them. So they now had words
Without the life to make the sound alive.

So things she gave to James and to the girls,
For that was all she had that they could take.
They had the gold their father left for them,
The girls when they were married, and for Jim
The last gold pieces when called to the bar,
The talk of twenty hamlets. Still she gave;
Still as the years went on they came for more,
The cloth, the chairs, the things their father brought.
Their mother was a fountain spouting things,
And all her strength they thought must be in them;
Must flow from pots and carpets. She was strong;
And they were weak. They felt it, and they lacked,
And lacked, and asked — and still they asked for more.
All that she had at last, for James had grown
Cunning with little wisdom, and he drew
A document that Sarah was to sign
To let her children have the house and plot
With all else she still had, but live with them —
Either with him or at a daughter's house,
Or at a daughter's house, or else with him.
Only in that James was a little vague;
Just when, and where, and how was somewhat dim.
Thus for an evening in the little house
He and his sisters argued 'round the lamp
While Sarah sat, her face between her hands.
Sometimes in Egypt in the burning skies
That glare for centuries on a rainless place,
A cloud is seen, and lightning, and there rolls
Thunder amid the thirsty hills, and rain
Falls in a torrent, then is seen no more,
Then light reverberates again in space.
So Sarah's anger fell on them that night;
So flashed her eyes, and so her deepened tones
Rumbled it seemed at first, and then flashed out
Upon a generation that sat numb
Under the sudden storm of words, and tears
That rained upon the table and the floor
And in the chests while she dragged forth the things,
Heaping them in the centre of the room,
And bringing pots that rattled, and white spoons
Of silver, and the plates, and glittering knives,
And clocks, and stuffs, and carpets, and carved chairs,
And many a rustling dress and gauzy scarf
From long kept secret places. All she had,
Down to the last red feather Trevlock brought,
She piled beside the table where the lamp
Shed a warm glow upon the tangled mass,
Like sunset on a lucky wrecker's hoard
Piled on the beach before the carters come.
Across this now she faced her children, three
Tense faces, waiting for they knew not what,
Until she spoke, scarce mistress of herself.
Sarah was laughing-crying, yet amused,
Yet trembling now and then like an old leaf
That flutters after having braved the storm;
Trembling when memories shook her, yet she said,
" Take it; and take it all! I keep the house,
And only what my hands and I have made,
All you despise. The ground you shall not have,
Nor have this roof, not even when I die,
For these are mine and are a part of me
I cannot give unless I give myself.
You might have had me too, and all with me —
If you knew what " all" meant — but take the things —
All that I have that is not of myself.
Only one thing I keep I have not made,
This gift to me your father Trevlock brought. "
Then from a pot inside the window space
She spilled the flowers and the black earth out,
And groping in the mold, drew forth a string
Of flashing beads that rippled in the light,
Till each looked at the other and forgot
The pile of spoil before them. Sarah laughed,
Seeing their avid faces. How she laughed!
A sound more terrible than gasping sobs,
For her laugh choked her. Suddenly her arms
Flashed up, and with it flashed the twinkling string.
With all her force she dashed it on the floor,
Where the cord broke; the beads went rolling 'round,
And after them her children on their knees,
Scrambling and snatching, while their mother's voice,
Released as if from some long agony,
Pealed in victorious laughter; caroled and rang.
And her long hands leaped out and seized a broom
And swept the rolling beads out of the door,
And beat about the children till they fled
Half crouching, and still clutching after things,
Until the whole pile followed, and the door
Banged — and the bar shot home, and Sarah sat
Panting beside the table with her broom,
Alone with her own soul and what it made.
All things that fortune brought her had been swept
Into the outer darkness and the past,
Where voices growled about them in the night,
And lanterns bobbed, and bickerings went on,
Then died away still quarreling over things,
A horrid noise of fighting, family war.
But peace remained with Sarah; silence, too,
And while the lamp burned smoothly and the moths
Came battering about the crystal glare,
Her head drooped slowly to her pillowed arms
Folded upon the table, and she slept.
Into the darkness streamed her little light
Unheeded till its essence burned away.