Sarah Simon - Part 1

Old Sarah lived upon a patch of ground
Set on an island-peak that tops the sea
Some hundred feet or so, and then slopes down
Amid the hills of aquid atmosphere
Where fins are wings, and ever-hungry lives
Seem cruel utilities beyond our ken.
There other-beauty sickens in our eyes,
And sympathy dies at the water's edge
Where our experience halts — upon a star
That might have been all water — almost is.
Scarce can we sympathize from zone to zone.
Or pass from town to country with a heart
And brain at one, much less appreciate
Creatures of other ethers than our own.
Yet simple Sarah Simon found a way.
Her ninety years have fitted like a key
Into the lock of life, and the huge door
She is about to open, she can face
Like some full grown and amply pinioned bird
That waits upon a leafless nesting bough
Ready to make the long instinctive flight,
It asks not why, yet knows that it must go.
So Sarah waits upon her patch of ground.
" That is important, for a while, " she says.
" Where would I go in this my present shape?
I still must stay a bit. " And so she bides
Her time amid the chickens and her goats,
Some cackling geese, a cat, — the dog has died.

Nine several dogs have died since Sarah came,
To keep her tidy cottage near the beach,
The strong, young wife of Simon, fisherman,
An able coper with the ways of sea,
Yet somewhere on its plains his craft went down
Where glides the waterspout; where Summer stands
Shifting her glowing raiment cloud by cloud,
Till August. Then the naked season strides
Burning beneath her rainbows past the isles
To play with Hurricanoe's progeny.
Out of her careless arms a squall leaped down,
Whistling from cloudy cheeks, and when he passed,
The faithful sea dog Simon followed him,
And Sarah was a widow, suddenly.
All that she had was courage and some land,
Clear brain, and two strong hands not cunning yet,
And a half-finished house that Simon left —
And that was all there was if you except
A few thin clothes for body and for bed.
And a young dog, the second of his tribe.
A long-lived race they were that bore with fleas
And hard humanity almost ten years.
Sarah told time by dogs, arithmetic
That writes her down about a century old.

Sarah first found herself when Simon left.
What went before she scarcely seems to know:
A child that played in shadows and in gleams,
A mother with dark legends of the strand
Down which the cormoram slaver used to blow,
Dolls that were made from grinning cocoanuts
And rocked to sleep before the cloudy glow
Of deep-set chimneys under cedar beams
With eery " hushaby " and " byalow, "
Tunes that are wraiths now even in her brain —
Vanished from lips a hundred years ago —
As vanished in the chain of day on day
Her girlhood on long beaches pink with shells,
Faces and voices — everything to slow
Memories like music of abandoned bells
When winds without shake towers where they sway,
Waking old voices of past joys and woe
That leave the bells, although they tremble yet ...

And so —

It seemed to Sarah she was permanent,
Rooted too deep to die, and like a tree
To generations of the withering grass
Or birds within its branches. And she found
From this pervasive feeling of her soul
The way to keep on living till it seemed
As if she were the pattern of a plan
And characterized to fit a scheme of things
Longer and larger than the world about
Of men, and beasts, and tender seasonal plants
That died, and left her living by the sea.
For thus I found her.
Sarah Simon lived
Down a white lane with tender tamarisk lined.
A sudden turn, and you come out upon
An oval meadow sloping toward the bay,
With morning-glory-blue that seemed to blend
With the horizon's hue, which just above
Her low-eaved, milk-white house with latticed blinds
Stenciled a god-ruled line along the sky.
Here the goats fed all day with tinkling bells,
Bleating to bounding kids. The red birds flashed,
And sang their thicket notes. Salt breezes blew.
Or on soft " winter " days the lazy smoke
Of fragrant cedar wood from Sarah's fire
Drifted its hazy plume into the sky,
While ripples chimed, and the long tides drew back
Showing the teeth of rocks. A place to dream,
It was. A stony path worn hollow by
The ceaseless passing of old Sarah's feet
Led to the green, clear cove wherein a boat
Cast shadows on the sponges, and white sand
Beat back the light blue-tinged and tangent-red
To blue and scarlet flowers by the shore.

Sequestered and hill-sheltered from the sea,
A dimple where the treacherous coastline smiled,
Here by her secret harbor Sarah made
A garden all about her whitewashed house.
Geraniums smoldered mid banana leaves
Even by moonlight, and the larkspur rang
In Gothic steeples carillons of bells.
A thousand lilies lolled their yellow tongues,
The spider-flower over whips of green
Twinkled its web-like fronds in lacy-haze
Against the tall casava's classic leaves.
And round the garden mottled match-me-can
Its hedge of terra cotta closed about,
And lifted proudly walls against the wind.
Through it an archway passed, and here in spring
A tent of Bougainvillaea dripped and shed
Clusters of grape-dark blossoms, purple gloom
That ran like wine in sunlight. And the green
Of fennel, tall and feathery, in a wave
Melting with airial yellows, surged about
The meadow's cedared shores and tossed like spray,
Splashing the walls of tamarisk down the lane.

Somewhat mysterious here old Sarah moved
Around her bowered house, now, much eschewed
By all the cottagers who lived about,
Whose simple generations lived and died
While tales of Sarah took a tinge of fear:
How she was miserly and buried gold
By moon-dark, and charmed warts, and how
Unbidden cows that cropped her meadow died,
Or birds lit on her fingers when she called.
Certain it is she had a bed of herbs
And brewed old nostrums that have always thrived
In spite of Æsculapius and his ways,
Half magic things with lunar sympathies,
Soothing, or pungent, or salubrious,
Especially when the sun swings north in spring,
Heating the blood of poor humanity.
Lemons, and onions, tansy, and henbane,
With cedar berries, and Sargasso weed
Swept by the Gulf Stream from a mystic sea,
Peppers, and pawpaws, and five several kinds
Of lilies that breathe love through summer days
Hung from her rafters with wild thyme, and mint
That springs in wagon ruts along old roads
Where funerals pass with sleepy influence.

Herbs she was skillful with, and many a scared
But hopeful, barefoot, dusky lover sat
And watched her brew them in her spider pots,
Then crossed her shining palms with Yankee dimes,
Or shillings of Victoria as a girl.
Dames they must be and young and comely, too.
No fat George thirds with slaughtering George would do;
No bearded kings, or eagles! They buy hate,
Whether in gold or silver, Sarah knew:
So they would come by night thus, boy or girl,
And sometimes even trembling youngsters came,
Rolling white eyes still tinged with puppy-blue,
Stretching afflicted palms for Sarah's aid
To charm the warts away that gold-eyed toads
Big as a plowman's boot, with bellows throats,
Had vengefully left upon their meddling hands.
For every wart she knotted twisted threads
And hung them in a nutshell round brown necks,
And rubbed sore palms with lemon essence strong
From little bottles buried in the sand
That colors vials like the summer sea,
And in four moons these warts would pine away!
Scarce was a wound of heart, or hide, or limb
That Sarah did not have a lotion for,
Some simple vegetable-magic old as time,
Based on dim analogues from nature's ways
Of likes or differences; and old half-truths
Older than gods or science, that began
Before the star bore cities and will last
Till the earth grows tired of us and we return
From reason back to childhood; asking still
Some comfort from stepmother nature's ways
For hurts and bruises; comfort more than cure.

Sarah dispensed this, as old women can,
To all her tribe about, the pagan heart
Of half her island lost amid the seas,
Its sybil, mightier than the white man's lore,
While offerings they left upon a stone
Proclaimed the gratitude of simple minds.
Duck eggs she found at morning wrapped in grass,
Fruit in fresh leaves; often a squawking hen
Tethered at midnight fluttered till the dawn
And Sarah came to end its frantic plight.
Pigeons, and even kids with budding horns,
Crying the ancient formula of " Ma, "
Thus found themselves by magic in her flock
And servants of the Priestess of the Isle.

This through half-jealous eyes the curate saw,
And with broad Oxford " a's " denounced to me
In walks about his tropic parish bounds.
And told me much of Sarah: how she came
Sometimes, not often, to the little church,
But never took the cup, but sat alone,
While overhead the bells that Anna gave
Summoned the black man to an English heaven,
And angels golden-haired and Saxon-eyed
Looked at dark faces from the glass and smiled.
The " accidie " and well bred sermon rolled
From false analogy to platitude —
" Swahd of th' Lawd and Gideon, be-lov-ed. "
The liquid hands lolled in the flowing sleeves,
That might grow longer and more flowing still,
If their suave owner lived to play the game,
And those proud ships he saw down in the bay,
Dauntless , Wisteria , and Heliotrope ,
But kept their powder dry ... " God save the King
And all the royal family, Lawd, ahmen, "
While Sarah watched him with her ancient eyes.

Often at Sunday dinners came those eyes
Of Sarah, dark and brown, inscrutable,
Over the plate a rich slave owner gave
To serve Christ's servant at the parsonage,
Troubling the future bishop and his plan
So sure, so based on the humanities
That dons teach by the Isis and the Cam.
And he would rise and leave his wife alone
To twitter to the children, half afraid —
While he read letters Pliny junior wrote
To Trajan, in the library, or slept
With Doctor Pusey's Sermons on his knee —
Or pondered over Sarah and her kind,
Dark spots upon the map that was so red,
So royally red, till Mr. Gladstone came!
" Someone had blundered. . . . " So he told me how
Sarah was slightly crazy and would talk
Aloud and to herself. How old she was,
And how she gave her harlot's dower away
To half-caste children years and years ago,
Whose pale descendants were church pillars now
And hated their grandmother, but the land
Sarah had kept and lived on, and lived on ...
" My God! " they said. " Why doesn't Grandma die? "
Then died themselves while Sarah kept the land.

Thus from the curate, and from sons of sons,
And granddaughters of Sarah I had heard
Conflicting rumors; and her story grew
Till one day meeting her within her lane
I overheard her stream of muttered talk
That fell like prophecy from ancient lips —
At first I thought as foolish — but I found
Hers was no senile jargon, visioned-sound,
But large communion with her inner self
In a wise talk with all of nature round.
Words for the flowers, and low tones for trees,
And many little animal sounds she knew.
To her the kids would gallop. It was true
Birds lit upon her fingers. Down the lane
Behind her through the damasked tamarisk
The scarlet ghosts of silvan cardinals,
Bright red birds, heard her twitter, came for crumbs,
And sparrows fought for them about her feet.
Scarce would the pigeons flutter from her hand.
Such animal confidence begot strange fear
In some who spied upon her, but I came
Charmed like the birds by something natural,
And sat beside her while she milked her goats.
Her talk ran on in tones impersonal,
Based on primeval and essential thoughts,
In which, herself forgotten, she enlarged
And focused broadly gathered rays of light
With subtle clarity on minor things
That long had lain in shadow to my eyes.
Honoring her listener with the same address
She used for kids and oceans, birds or trees,
She waited for her answers till they came.
These words of hers all stood for something real,
A thing, a thought, an act original.
Direct communion with the summer light
In all the cups that held it had been hers
For more than ninety years, day after day.
Her mouth was savory of it. And this dew
Of freshest thought fell on my bookman's ears
Like heavenly news to angels far from home.
No nervous generation trimmed her crown
Of life-fulfilled with paper flowers of youth;
Full-ripened seed pods nodded on her brows,
Ready to burst with rich exuberance,
Yet strong and beautiful upon the vine.
No oft repeated printings caged her in
With echoes of far-off experience;
No set experiments enfoiled her mind.
She dealt alone with the majestic spheres
Of facts empirical: what weathers came
And when but never why, what fish arrived
By season, how the hens laid in the spring
But took a rest in summer, and what slips
Did best in sunlight, others by the wall,
What seeds to sow in winter, how to make
A garden give more beauty, shade, and food,
And animals to thrive — a total scheme
Of living by the kindliness of earth
Through observation bent on primary things.
Thus looked her mind upon terrestial ways
Like a small sun — more than a pleasant moon
With dead reflected light — and drawing up
The needful waters let them down again
Upon the proper place to make things grow,
From early morning till the twilight fell.
Her rest was but light's absence in the night.

And this I noticed too of Sarah's talk,
Her body, face, and hands, though they were old,
Still they were beautiful, and fresh, and cool,
And living as the air at morning is,
Blowing through cedars from the open sea.
Along the curves of beaches many a day
I went to see her for my spirit's good,
Taking some seeds or younglings of my plants,
And asking what to plant, and when and where.
Thus with small problems easily solved by her,
Who had a century's answer to them all,
I finally came to sit within her house,
While she baked white casava by the fire,
And talked of things that used to be, and men,
And women, and the daily round of life
Upon that island, a sequestered world
One brain could grasp in all, perhaps to find
Analogies for worlds of larger scope
Likewise dependent on the lore of plants
And seasons, but disguised by man-made things.
Finally, but bit by bit, her story came,
Sometimes pieced out by others that I knew,
But mostly talk from Sarah by the fire,
While the rain washed upon December nights
Off of the stones laid on the cedar beams,
Before mild, tropic winter settled down —
Giving a pause to flowers — and the sea
Beat with monotonous tones upon the beach,
Flooded the island's coral, and fell back,
Like old emotions ebbing from a brain.