Conrad Aiken - The Charnel Rose: A Symphony: Part III lyrics

1 Bright hair, turning in sunlight, and turning feet, Brown hands turning in air,-- They are gone forever; they are no longer fleet. She, whose mouth I was once so crazed with kissing, Whose eyes were like deep fires,-- The gra** that puffs in fields is far more lovely. Now let the shadows lengthen before me, And old men die in the street: Let the sun pa**: we seek fantastic darkness. Light now the lanterns and let us see your faces, New friends of goblin birth!-- Ah, but the heart sinks, leaving thus that sunlight. He turned, and saw the world go down behind him, Into the sounding darkness; Voices out of tumult cried to remind him, Wailed, and were lost in wind; Desolate darkness, darkness of sad adventure, Peril with watchful eyes, Shut closely about him. Night blew out the lanterns. Rapt clouds devoured the skies. 2 Red is the coor of blood, and I will seek it: I have sought it in the gra**, It is the color of steep sun seen through eyelids. It is hidden under the suave flesh of women,-- Flows there, quietly flows. It mounts from the heart to the temples, the singing mouth-- As cold sap climbs the rose. I am confused in webs and knots of scarlet Spun from the darkness; Or shuttled from the mouths of thirsty spiders. Madness for red! I devour the leaves of autumn. I tire of the green of the world. I am myself a mouth for blood. Here, in the golden haze of the late slant sun, Let us walk, with the light in our eyes, To a single bench, from the outset predetermined. Look: there are sea gulls in these city skies, Kindled against the blue! But I do not think of the sea gulls, I think of you. Your eyes, with the late sun in them, Are like blue pools dazzled with yellow petals. This pale green suits them well. Here is your finger, with an emerald on it: The one I gave you. I say these things politely-- But what I think beneath them, who can tell? November sun is sunlight poured through honey: Old things, in such a light, grow subtle and fine. Bare oaks are like still fire. Talk to me: now we drink the evening's wine. Look, how our shadows creep along the gravel!-- And this way, how the gravel begins to shine! This is the time of day for recollections? For sentimental regrets, oblique allusions? Rose-leaves, shrivelled in a musty jar. Scatter them to the wind! There are tempests coming. It is dark, with a malign star. If human mouths were really roses, my dear,-- (Why must we link things so?--) I would tear yours petal from petal with slow murder. I would pluck the stamens, the pistils, The gold and the green,-- Spreading the subtle sweetness that was your breath On a cold wave of d**h. Now let us walk back, slowly, as we came. We will light the room with candles; they may shine Like rows of yellow eyes. Your hair is like spun fire, by candle-flame. You smile at me--say nothing. You are wise. For I think of you, flung down brutal darkness; Crushed and red, with pale face. I think of you, with your hair disordered and dripping, And myself rising red from that embrace. 3 Music, withdrawing to a point of silence, Took his heart down over the edge of the world: Cliffs, and the sea, and stars. Sleep might be merciful, if it were dreamless; But sleep was a rage of winds. Dusk, withdrawing to a single lamplight At the end of an infinite street-- He saw his ghost walk down that street forever, And heard the eternal rhythm of his feet. And if he should reach at last that final gutter, Today, or tomorrow, Or, maybe, after the d**h of himself and time; And stand at the ultimate curbstone by the stars: Would the secret of his desire Blossom out of the dark with a burst of fire? Or would he hear the eternal arc-lamp sputter, Only that; and see lewd shadows crawl; And find the stars were street-lamps after all? Music, quivering to a point of silence, Drew his heart down over the edge of the world. Dancers arose; he had not seen them; Hissing cymbals clashed; Scarlet and green together writhed in darkness, Billows of saffron rolled against the darkness, White arms shot up, eyes flashed, The gra** rose vivid green against the black . . . But this was idle. His youth would not come back. And the music whispered down to a breath of silence, Sighing his heart down over the edge of the world. 4 He reeled in a poppy field, and dreamed: Live scarlet crackled and crawled and gleamed; And before him, over red fields, ran A shape half woman and half man. Cold cypresses, in formal row, Marched to a blue hill, bald with snow; Cold flutes on shivering air were blown, Thin and faint in sober tone, And he went forward, guessing there New incense on the haunted air. Under that azure cypress grove He saw white feet like silver move, And white hands deftly lifted up For dusky gleam of golden cup; A voice in ritual speech he heard, Measuring d**h in every word. Through the veins of men like these Flowed warm blood,--or froth of seas? Reedy were these hands: and chill. His heart, beneath such eyes, lay still. Roses out of the cool earth bloom, To flourish on a rain-dark tomb; And music just as sweetly springs From rain-cold silver strings. Feeding on pale mouths, he learned That they, no less than scarlet, burned; Touching hands as cold as sea, Foam in fire they seemed to be. Here was no day, but always night; The leaves on all the trees blew white; And yet, within them, he was told, The sap flowed reddish, and not cold. Pale hands,--drop my heart! he cried. They pressed around him to deride. With delicate claws they plucked at him, With delicate mouths they leered at him. He was not one of them, said they,-- Only the dull and brutish clay. He heard them mimic, one by one, Out of his blood. He saw the sun. And cymbals clashed: he thought their sound was scarlet. And he was shouting between them, a thing of red. 5 The sun's blood turns to orange, and round the sky, Flows in a broad low band. The street lamp winks in the twilight a dismal eye. The eternal mistress lifts her hand To rearrange for the thousandth time her hair, With amber things out of an ancient tomb, For the d**hless lover who climbs and climbs the stair. The stars above us,--they are pale streaming bubbles Seen by a sea-shape in translucent noon. Globed and green, bursting to disappear. Listen; and through the immortal hush you'll hear Persistent, those eternal footsteps climb, Up creaking gas-lit stairs in perfect time. What does it matter? there are white sands here: Rippled with the secular musings of the sea. We have seen her comb her hair, With her elbows shining bare; And seen her turn the small brown sensuous head. We have seen old roses opening by a mirror, And darkness filled with rain, And the hot unsteady lamplight on a bed. But here, in the sifted dusk, Where only a pure light settles out of the world, We meet in eternal quiet,--talk musingly,-- On a white sand, silvered with spectral shells, Rippled with the green musings of the sea. Something there is in roses--you remember-- That's poisonous and red, torrid, malignant. There was a ssavage music in them That filled the innocent blood with swarm of petals. But beloved, now we are free: Now we are set in a love of d**hless shape, Immutable, brooded on by the sea. Yet, it is strange--behind that altar, Carved with colad foam of time, Skeletons lay: I saw them in the dusk. Shells winked between the ribs, and over the hands Rippled the obedient sands. 6 The sun's blood turns to orange, and round the sky Flows in a broad low band. The eternal mistress lifts her hand, To rearrange her hair, For the d**hless lover who climbs and climbs the stair. Have we not seen him climb,--or climbed, ourselves,-- Up the eternal azure of those stairs? Ridiculous, to those who stay behind, Or chuckle, meditating, from afar: The small pathetic back, in silhouette, Dwindling against a star. Why do we think these things in retrospect? Must we, being cold, Reach out to sunset fires to warm our hands? It is as if we were growing old; And sought, in disillusionment, to cling To something loved in youth, some daybreak thing. Something about you fades . . . you are not he Whom I saw first: Your garments, once so subtle, Dull to the insistent stare; and now your mind Is a garden whose pools and paths I know too well. Here's change, in changelessness: and we go down Once more to the old chaos. Lost hands repel and cling, the last waves break, Once more we are forgotten, and forsake. The sun's blood fades to orange; now the sky Shrinks to a faint green bubble above our hands. The gliding street lamp winks a sinister eye, Around it swirl grey skeletons on the sands. I will seek the eternal secret in this darkness: The little seed that opens to gulf the world.