Autumn Journal

I

Close and slow, summer is ending in Hampshire,
Ebbing away down ramps of shaven lawn where close-
clipped yew
Insulates the lives of retired generals and admirals
And the spyglasses hung in the hall and the prayer-
books ready in the pew
And August going out to the tin trumpets of nasturtiums
And the sunflowers’ Salvation Army blare of brass
And the spinster sitting in a deck-chair picking up
stitches
Not raising her eyes to the noise of the ’planes that
pass
Northward from Lee-on-Solent. Macrocarpa and cypress
And roses on a rustic trellis and mulberry trees
And bacon and eggs in a silver dish for breakfast
And all the inherited assets of bodily ease
And all the inherited worries, rheumatism and taxes,
And whether Stella will marry and what to do with
Dick
And the branch of the family that lost their money in Hatry
And the passing of the Morning Post and of life’s
climacteric
And the growth of vulgarity, cars that pass the gate-lodge
And crowds undressing on the beach
And the hiking cockney lovers with thoughts directed
Neither to God nor Nation but each to each.
But the home is still a sanctum under the pelmets,
All quiet on the Family Front,
Farmyard noises across the fields at evening
While the trucks of the Southern Railway dawdle . . .
shunt
Into poppy sidings for the night—night which knows no
passion
No assault of hands or tongue
For all is old as flint or chalk or pine-needles
And the rebels and the young
Have taken the train to town or the two-seater
Unravelling rails or road,
Losing the thread deliberately behind them
—
Autumnal palinode.
And I am in the train too now and summer is going
South as I go north
Bound for the dead leaves falling, the burning bonfire,
The dying that brings forth
The harder life, revealing the trees’ girders,
The frost that kills the germs of laissez-faire;
West Meon, Tisted, Farnham, Woking, Weybridge,
Then London’s packed and stale and pregnant air.
My dog, a symbol of the abandoned order,
Lies on the carriage floor,
Her eyes inept and glamorous as a film star’s,
Who wants to live, i.e. wants more
Presents, jewellery, furs, gadgets, solicitations
As if to live were not
Following the curve of a planet or controlled water
But a leap in the dark, a tangent, a stray shot.
It is this we learn after so many failures,
The building of castles in sand, of queens in snow,
That we cannot make any corner in life or in life’s
beauty,
That no river is a river which does not flow.
Surbiton, and a woman gets in, painted
With dyed hair but a ladder in her stocking and eyes
Patient beneath the calculated lashes,
Inured for ever to surprise;
And the train’s rhythm becomes the ad nauseam
#
repetition
Of every tired aubade and maudlin madrigal,
The faded airs of sexual attraction
Wandering like dead leaves along a warehouse wall:
y ‘I loved my love with a platform ticket,
A jazz song,
A handbag, a pair of stockings of Paris Sand—
I loved her long.
I loved her between the lines and against the clock,
Not until death
But till life did us part I loved her with paper money
And with whisky on the breath.
I loved her with peacock’s eyes and the wares of
Carthage,
With glass and gloves and gold and a powder puff
With blasphemy, camaraderie, and bravado
And lots of other stuff.
I loved my love with the wings of angels
Dipped in henna, unearthly red,
With my office hours, with flowers and sirens,
With my budget, my latchkey, and my daily bread.’
And so to London and down the ever-moving
Stairs
Where a warm wind blows the bodies of men together
And blows apart their complexes and cares.

II

Spider, spider, twisting tight
—
But the watch is wary beneath the pillow
—
I am afraid in the web of night
When the window is fingered by the shadows of
branches,
When the lions roar beneath the hill
And the meter clicks and the cistern bubbles
And the gods are absent and the men are still—
Noli me tangere, my soul is forfeit.
Some now are happy in the hive of home,
Thigh over thigh and a light in the night nursery,
And some are hungry under the starry dome
And some sit turning handles.
Glory to God in the Lowest, peace beneath the earth,
Dumb and deaf at the nadir;
I wonder now whether anything is worth
The eyelid opening and the mind recalling.
And I think of Persephone gone down to dark,
No more a virgin, gone the garish meadow,
But why must she come back, why must the snowdrop
mark
That life goes on for ever?
There are nights when I am lonely and long for love
But to-night is quintessential dark forbidding
Anyone beside or below me; only above
Pile high the tumulus, good-bye to starlight.
Good-bye the Platonic sieve of the Carnal Man
But good-bye also Plato’s philosophising;
I have a better plan
To hit the target straight without circumlocution.
If you can equate Being in its purest form
With denial of all appearance,
Then let me disappear—the scent grows warm
For pure Not-Being, Nirvana.
Only the spider spinning out his reams
Of colourless thread says Only there are always
Interlopers, dreams,
Who let no dead dog lie nor death be final;
Suggesting, while he spins, that to-morrow will out-
weigh
To-night, that Becoming is a match for Being,
That to-morrow is also a day,
That I must leave my bed and face the music.
As all the others do who with a grin
Shake off sleep like a dog and hurry to desk or engine
And the fear of life goes out as they clock in
And history is reasserted.
Spider, spider, your irony is true;
Who am I—or I—to demand oblivion?
I must go out to-morrow as the others do
And build the falling castle;
Which has never fallen, thanks
Not to any formula, red tape or institution,
Not to any creeds or banks,
But to the human animal’s endless courage.
Spider, spider, spin
Your register and let me sleep a little,
Not now in order to end but to begin
The task begun so often.