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Other books by Lola Ridge

<> THE GHETTO (1918) SUN-UP (1920) RED FLAG (1927)

PAYSON & CLARKE LTD NEW YORK MCMXXIX

Part I

ppoem|{it} Marvel that a day, serene as most, Should be singled from the anonymous host Of days that seem begotten but to weave Sunlight in old devices on the sand And pass upon the waters glamorously, Leaving no trace—save on the youngling rye And corn and the sweet secret grapes that lean Big with the juice of festivals, and all The brave assorted fruitage of the sun That pay bright homage to oblivion. Ponder a day as fair as this— Transfigured now and changed beyond redress— Smelling of loam and horses and soft airs A tingle with an April eagerness— How it was called to stand there in God's way In stubborn glory, like a golden ass Forefeet, planted against time, that shall not pass With light-shod hoofs in darkness. Let there rise Sands upon its columns infinitely, Obliterating sands upon its bones, And on the pillared temples it shall blaze, Caparisoned, apart from other days.

1. The day was arteried with fire. Beyond The golden body of the sand That stretched out torpidly, the sun Came raging on Jerusalem. A yelping wind ran with the sand It lifted like a yellow mane And cast into his face.

Above him, in the plumbless space Wherein it seemed no thing could fly, Against the azure mist there burned A mote in the sun's eye. He watched it slowly circling, No bigger than his hand, As gracefully it wheeled—a thing Not swerving claw-breadth as it turned In gliding circuit from the rim Indurable, it traced on air, A lustrous circle, vanishing, That found its central point in him.

He may have heard a woman wail Who kneeled far off—upon a mound In the bright sunshine—like a bird

With white wings folded. If He heard Or longed to wrap his wounds around In her blue cooling shadow, she Had never known by any sign— Not though his draining heart delayed One beat … to close upon the sound As a wound closes on a blade.

And when day sank, at menopause, In blue obesity, to lean Low upon the curving spine Of the horizon—at that hour Stagnate like a knot in time When no bright gesturings obscure The changeless core of being—coiled As in the primal chrysalis— When light palls and the heart loses Pride of propelling to such things As gnaw, unheard, save in imaginings On under sides of leaves Or propagate beneath the stones Or crawl out, wingless, from the slime Of water holes … and nature oozes At all her pores as with a pus And torpid flies are venomous—

His spindling body, like a vine Was stretched as still twixt earth and sky As anything alive might lie Between two lions' paws.

He felt the Roman soldiers' reek— Who spat the highest hit his feet— He smelled the resin in the cross As it worked amid the heat. He smelled the thieves at either hand. One was old; his sweat was rank; His ordure dropped upon the sand; But one smelled of the sea. The first one cursed him where He lay— That He could not stay the breeding flies Nor wipe the sand from out their eyes Nor take them down from off the Cross— And cursed the honey-bearing day With all the host of flying things That bore its pollen on their wings. But one cried like an albatross And he smelled of the sea … Each man suffered his own cross, Each knew his own agony;

But one man wore the rose of pain, That flowered in each red place, as though It were some precious thing … and He Endured three crosses silently. Until the sixth hour came He heard The shriven thieves complain.

The yellow growth of day—yet whole, Though tremulous, about to fall— Endured above the ocean … wind Touched him in the old way … he saw Light foam upon Jerusalem, The golden many braceleted Jerusalem—to pleasure her, Before the purple-togaed night Should lean tiaraed; pridefully Shroud and bear him from all sight— Came out from her portals, wearing Peace, the white lie of the soul, About her like an aureole … When, curious, she looked on him Who spun, the pivot of the world, Erect upon her wheeling skies The amber light upon her rim Shone like a lion's eyes.

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Those scribes, who feared the shadow flung Of that great flame upon the scrolls On which for daylight they had wrought To trick the word out, aping thought, And furbish it, that they likewise Might glister and their meager souls Attain more stature in men's eyes, Picked, of sly habit, warily From off the oiled quiver of the tongue, Some sentient dart to cast at him, There nailed on the horizon's rim, And climbed to mark him as He hung.

But He Looked from the crosshead broodingly Into the fulgent eye of the sun— They two now level as men of one height, Bloodshot eye to eye, and met unflinchingly That inhuman stare, till the horizon rose And He, its crest, hung gazing on alone.

Gnats stung him and a yellow butterfly, Frail as though compounded of air and light, Fanned him with the wafers of her wings And with her inaudible heartbeats stirred

The down upon his cheek; He heard the incessant Crackle of a palmtree … this Identifiable and clear sound … then He saw— Burning in bright points to flame, as prayer Burns upward, ending in delirium— The marble apices on temple hill Suddenly darken … And the palace of Herod, diamonded, Blaze for a moment and grow dim As a jewel on which a heel is set.

Light moved, in infinite order streaming, In shining numbers to the sea That rocked like a trapeze of fire, light— Beautiful upon eyeless reaches where only dolphins Disport before … the peacock of the sun … Turned from Judea, humped and creeping Himward along her sands. Darkness hooded Her erect and several heads; staunchless Darkness flowed in on him and He felt

The sinking earth beneath him keel, Three crosses turning like a wheel And whirled betwixt their spinning bands Two thieves that clutched with bleeding hands And bleated at the sky,

Wherefrom the moon crawled sluggishly To feast upon the three; The moon was like a silver leech He could not lift a hand to reach And pluck from off his eye. The blind that He had taught to see Jigged upon the keeling ground; As in a pale green mist He saw Young hills veiled in lavender And with an argent nimbus crowned Pace before him solemnly, Circle thrice and bend the knee As the kine did on that night As they stood in the sweet straw.

He felt the Roman soldiers tread Upon his body, stretched apart, A trestle between earth and heaven; He gave them of his peace unriven, The silver silence of his heart He broke like a sweet fruit for them Till each unknowingly was shriven.

But they, marking his lip quiver, caught a faint word or so And mocked him to each other, saying, He hath forgiven us. The linked hills flung back, forgiven us, and they, too,

Smelling in the tufted evening the wisps of broom upon their sides, Rippled with a mellow and secret laughter. Yet not all laughed, or with the lips only and for good fellowship; And these, seeing blood trickle in the baked meat, For that day and the next ate only grapes and a wild honey. And to listening women his word was as a date pit To be sloughed out of red mouths, not tasting of its bronze and iron, That should swing in a great arc from east to west and smite horizons like a gong.

2. Young Romans sauntered, delicately perfumed, With a fine insouciance up the stark way Toward the appointed spectacle that loomed Athwart the adventitious path, whereon they Anointed casually the April air, And masked with nice semblance of satiety The unfastidious ardor of their stare.

Into the dark piths, into the iron cores; Till the clear form of beauty be released To curve about the daylights in a bow … Forever drawn … before some eastern gate— And all the shining wood, articulate, Uplift to light the paeans of its doors.

They—whose feet were narrow on the mountains, Quarrying marble for the shining town, Slipping on the steep sides, with puny pull Of bone and sinew dragging mountains down, Subdued, to a king's feet; (such men as these, With anonymous fingers beautiful On the gates they might not enter in, Upreared the pilasters of Megaron) They—greatly fingering great stones, those keys From which there should ascend high harmonies To mount in lucent marble to the sky, Or rise about the cities in a wall Not all inflowing sands should cover quite, But leave some snatch of stone upon the light To show unborn centuries … with mass-psalms Clangorous and terrible on their lips Of stone and iron … the bondmen of this Had song too in their hearts …

They, bent with straining sinews interlocked In a vast cradle whereupon they rocked The world securely, so not one bright drop Of all her leaning goblets overflowed To spill delight upon their lips, had little time, (Whose dimmer dreams, aborted on each road They builded, stirred and died without a cry) To ponder him, or how his dreams had grown To overgrowths within the temple bone And spired, pulling their bright fabric down.

But moneychanger, Levite, publican, Headmen from the slaves' quarters where they bred Slaves in each other's arms, old men, Creeping up the dusty buttocks of the hill, With trays of many fruits, intent to sell Ere holy Sabbath, here and there a woman, Discreetly without ornament—all came With various purpose, but a common aim— To gain some sweet memento of his torment— Some final reticence, folded about pain That should be at the end stripped off—which they Might seize and share between them … as the cerement Of one who had proclaimed men equal—aye Even unto slaves and women—and had pried

Open some ultimate wisdom like a fruit, None might retain apart but all divide, And babbled of some communal bright heaven.

Yet in the crowd— Allied by privy purpose, in which all Disparities of race, garb, color, all That hues the chrysalis whereon light hovers, And defalcation of its ray begins, And differentiates each forkèd norm, Assume like textures as do grains of skins, When smoothed to parchment one writing covers— There worked a darker ferment than all these.

An angle holding its clear sided form in the circle closing, Mary Took the difficult path. Tears flowing through the long night Had washed away the violet markings of her eyes, staring one way; At the arcs, diminished to points in the blue irises, there swam minute, Yet complete unto each curve of agony, the gleaming figure on the cross. She did not see the small thick man, head round as a mushroom, mouth thrust forward,

Till his hot fingers closed upon her arm. Dost thou weep for him? he said. Mary Looking down into eyes, the color of marshwater, the lustrous peripheries still, but the deeps Quick with a secret motion, felt her exposed heart quiver, it is the beginning … Why should I weep for him? He who this night shall be honoured of the angels. It is for myself I weep, she answered, smiling from old habit, but her eyes That beat like two blue wings about the cross, disdained him. Thou shouldst not gaze on him, so long, made fast against that light. There is no light, she said, But her heart screamed, O let there be no light! Pluck out thy jewel from its azure, God, And hide it from all sight and let it burn … a secret diamond in thy breast. He said, Thy grief hath made thee mad! mine eyes behold the sun there fairly vomiting with light. Then let my darkness shine for thee; she would have pulled away her arm but he stammered, Clinging, I am a stone-cutter; a man from Joppa—my name is—She did not listen, Yet relaxing under his touch, finding it vaguely comforting.

The little blunt pebbles of his words, falling in her ear as through an open hand, Even lulled her till she heard, It is the perfect moment, picked of his fine cunning— What is it thou sayest? Nay, believe me, I too feel his nails—I— Your words no more hold content of your heart than—An old courtesy held back the name That yet grazed him with an invisible point. He noted For the first time hollows in her throat, yet beautifully pillaring From the bluish basins of its bone, and broke into a spurious laughter. Thou laughest easily for one who feeleth nails that are not in his palms. But in my soul, he said, and not to be plucked out, and Mary, Who had seen desire in the faces of many men, but rarely that which she could not fill, Beheld, in the shining strangers of his eyes, of the color of still water, coiling With a secret and perpetual motion, some hunger that she could not quite Identify; till, of those black deposits old days had left in her, there flared

A moment when she had lain, rabid and foaming on the earth and seen Between her and the sky a face. She said, I saw thee on a day in Magdala, but he, blank-eyed: I know not Magdala, then smirked, a goodly town, I've heard, with comely Women and kind. Thou fool, she said, again tried to shake him off; but he cried, I have a thing to say—a story will interest thee. I knew once a young man Who jumped from off a cliff into the sea—a great high cliff … ee-e-e hadst thou but seen The waters fairly boil there!—Why did he jump from off the cliff? He did not find some things the way men said they would be or he thought they would be When he came, a stranger into Joppa … he was a crazed man talking … but he had an eye, Like his there, with a flame in it. It was a comely day … the town made holiday … He was a fool, she said, to make your holiday. Wind, blowing out her robe, spread her odor Like a warm stain on the air. And he, thrust from her borders, feeling invisible areas of her suddenly hostile, babbled,

But I have not finished … there is something more … I am ashamed you should think there should be Nothing more—As a trampled fire begins again to glow A flame grew in the drowned eyes and before their too near blaze That which worked overtly in his own, sank down from out the light. Feeling an old fear chatter in him, he let go her arm, and Mary, Released from the warm touch upon her flesh, as passive in their strife As the slow-breathing earth to the wild traffic on her hill, Turned on him in fury, Thou weevil in the ear, thou populous sick worm! I will call upon the captain of the guard, I will tell him— But the man from Joppa slunk into the crowd.

Mishael, small merchant of the market place, munching on a fig, meditatively Waggled his black beard. His eyes, luminous and alert, pools of ink and a fly Crawling … crawling … with inattention, as a weary man leans pack upon a stone, Rested on the cross the litter of his thought. He was thinking, perhaps, Of his perfumes lost on the road from Damascus, when the camel

Shook itself … and the driver, fathered by a jackal, dozing … Or of his lastborn—harp-gold hair, benign blue eyes, smiling with the gentle Condescension of the angels when they flew through the cedars of Lebanon—who Liked to sit in gutters after rain, pouring slime on her bright hair … Mary Wished to tear at the smooth beard, the wide mouth champing, see complacency Change into amaze, amaze to fear … measured her distance … I am too tired … She heard the chattering of the scribes, one to the other; ye less than a rushlight, That passing from hand to hand, scorcheth the last finger, there is here a flame shall out-bide you all. She looked on him with pride; then her eyes, clearing of the teardrift, saw him plain: Desolate and stark flesh … curling about the nailheads … flies About the withered garden of the mouth … only the eyes, burning yet supreme, Putting his will upon her and hasping it with a look … He … Dangled before these figurines … that earth

Might vomit over … or the super-stone crush without animus. She turned, Burying her eyes in the crowd as in muddied waters, and there Beheld John with Mary the mother on his arm, And observing thus these two In tremulous communion making three with him they looked upon, she, Who had born no man-god to the world, felt arise in her a dim hate That, like a face uplifted from a bier to affright a lone watcher and sink down, died as it flared … And she moved toward them with gladness as to his beloved. But the mother, putting back her veil that she might the better see, and beholding Between her and the cross that bright rapacious head, said softly unto John, How wildly she doth look, and he, who would not look so upon such a day; but the old Mary, There was that on the blue tip of her glance … grazed me as it leapt away … I have never liked those eyes she burns against, like a woman sitting naked at her window … The wind caught up the low uttered words and cast them like a larger sand

Out of its dry throat into the young haggard face, that wavered as a thing caught between two winds, Then the bright head like a parrot's lifted and went on alone.

Three years ago this spring time, Mother Mary said to John, He was at home with me … before the olives darkened … He had gone. Thou shouldst have seen him then—legs like two pillars of the temple. He hath lost much flesh Since the last wine-treading. Had he come home to me, I had well cared for, I had fed him Goats' milk from the pails at morning when it is rich and sweet with the good juice Night brews in the dark bellies … but He … would not come home. John did not answer; he whose quiet was as a shield pressed down hard upon a flame Pondered this calm that flowed out from her, surrounding her, He felt himself drawn as by a slow suction into its stilly waters So that he too felt islanded, cut off from all this violent life beating upon them. His face had a blurred look, as though long nearness to a flame had melted the fine lineaments.

His eyes were not identical; one sheared astray from the straight pure bevel of his glance; Yet to be sure of this one had to look again. She at his side moved with a peasant majesty. Her eyes were deep depositaries, bedding Old wisdoms of the loam and its unending patience and all green abiding habits of the earth— Save there were no expectancies, merely old pain, might have been sharp once … now Worn down by long acceptance had no edge. Her feet held earth with certitude, As sure of their estate; she stood erect as a date palm, her broad-leafed hand, Made for large hospitalities, felt of her great breasts that hung Low unto her girdle, and pressed them secretly as though she Sensed in their deep reservoirs working an old sap That soon should issue, taking the old way … And He, too, seemed to gaze upon her there, Hemmed in the shadow of their hostile heads, As though He saw, traversing the blue day, The very substance of her blood and bone Outravel from her teats in two white threads That played two streams of music on the air.

A senile April prickled in their parts, Syrians, Greeks, Jews From Alexandria, Chios, Rome, come unto the feast of Passover, Jostled her as they passed. Some turned to look back at the gaudy head, but most Sought but for vantage at the spectacle that should set this day bannered and apart And festoon their memories of this white walled town. But there were some, out of Jerusalem, observing things. A gangling Youth with a sharp meager face, eye acrid as a quince, indrawn Mouth like the slit in a tin flute, was first to cry on him. At the pebble of his word, skating on its taut mood, the mob Became a vast ribald mouth, uttering raging noises. Mary Turning on him who had made the first jibe, cried in a harsh high voice like a desert bird's, He shall arise—ye shall be as palms under his feet—He shall confound you utterly! Hearing which some said, she is of his women—let us tell the soldiers; But others, seeing she was still young, with that in her eye whereof they knew, Guffawed loudly, and one, He hath the nose of a good honey-beater, this Jew,

At which his fellows laughed the more, and they were of a pleasant humour, till a hand Zigzagged toward her, wavered and then rallied, snatching feebly at her robe. She struck; It recoiled with precipitation, but in its place a dozen Hands—not hesitant now or stretched of impure purpose, but with the righteous Certainty of the group-errant—strove for hands, hair, gown, but she, Shaped to the superior swiftness of things long hunted, Slid from out their hold, in a moment was forgotten. The mob Oscillated, foaming along its crest, vociferating Mouths spat out a fine spray, eyes, as with some fierce pressure from within Crushing the fine membrane, always the mass surged, As though straining for some ghastly equilibrium, Inward about the cross, there—halted by the spears and the sprawling Bodies of the soldiers—became a drove, docile, bewilderedly piling one upon the other— Needing but a word, defining that which yet moved symbolless in the dark body— To charge again, even upon spears. Mary, wedged between its raving units,

Working, as with a maniacal desire for closeness, Like grain upon grain of sand some force was pressing into stone, Met again the eyes of Mishael, not gentle now but focused on some dim desire— Not for his Hanna, who had borne him thirteen, nor for his lost Perfumes, nor for any sin of which he had heard or read … She looked in the eyes of women, eyes pleasuredly chanting, not my Husband, lover, son, yet here, too, an alien wholeness … women Did not need this cardinal on white design, furrowing the sunset … women Spun whirled, not whirling, in the male dance … turning … the hill is turning … God, Send down thy chariots! Her hands clawed with a rending motion at the sky, Serene, softly ebullient, an immense blurred harmony In which all things blended or were made solvent, one dark note weaving Endlessly in tireless circles, bearing without break the clear theme … She turned, struck madly at the swirling faces, eyelids Flickered with a vague irritation, undeflected

Stares not turning her way, hands brushed away her hands as one brushes away flies. The tide of heads, necks craning in a single neck, Bobbed, sank, rose again, stringently humming heads on heads Light coiled in them like a thread, unravelling, leaping to fusions … Light … burning to obscene revelation … Floating over the mass in an envelope of fire not yet struck to flame … O God Let loose Thy lions, Thy rams straining beyond the gate! From the matrix of the black cloud back of his head, A beam played on his breast, glancing from his breast slantwise in the crowd, Into the dirt, lice, stench, by way of the shining and clean place … Something wavered in her sight, not frangible, like a strong web cleaving To the crowd-shape … she thrust in it her hand … no substance … announce Thyself beloved … the Face Was moulded with a flagrant grace, the mouth Like the mouth of a mask curled back and up; the attrahent Eyes, in which desire was naked and unashamed as a child's cry,

Burned with a terrible innocence, a corruption like the rot of light … And when He … Not now inert but erect with lifted head, etched as in a livid lightning That swam in blazing colors as she stared, looked upon them The eyes bayed. Jerusalem Shall have no heal in her but fire and devastation, She shall burn with a great heat And the waters of her eyes be as boiling springs … Her light shall be visible unto Orion … The stars in their shining multitudes shall gaze Down on her with a long look … Jerusalem Shall suspire green flames … Corianders shall blow out of her wide doors … The thrust of narcissus Shall put floors asunder.

3. On the taut string He was the night bowed somberly its ancient music; And He, attuned to diapasons, Heard in the conch shell of darkness the murmur of many peoples. Inevitably, crowds had sought him, without thought as they functioned, turning to him as to mate or eat; Always, in their eyes, beyond the pleas for succor or surcease or for the celestial valleys, The desire for some delirious intimacy; always He had fled from crowds, Over sands, upon waters, into caves … but to return, putting his will upon them; Now for him the love chase ended, that for them was at the dark beginning. How should they have endured that ray of an inhuman clarity the desert Gives to her communicants; those who, in that Light of which they are the violent shadows, Grow bladed and of the fiber of lightning: he who beholds After what arduous windings and lone watches— The arcanum of light, coring all things— Must not seek to lead men by a straight path unto its bright edge.

He who would lead men must see with them or beyond only a little way. Not all, Even of the importunate, shall be admitted to the cabalas of the light, Who knoweth not this shall not see beyond it by that farther ray, He, whom the god-breath blew through, held there in him as a reed holds song. What matter, before the incendiary spark, driving to inevitable impact, The long or short road to one end: there shall remain, thumb-printed on the quarried stone, Splintered of the mountains, things done this day in Judea, now No more than a fleck of ash on the pomegranate of the sunset.

He felt strange fluxions in him and tender and sharp vibrations; Mob cries, the kisses of the whip that were as mouths pressed too close; the faltered Kiss of Judas, faintly malodorou. like a jonquil that had lain too long on the breast of a dead man, Chill yet on his cheek; the warm kiss of Mary and pressure of John's bright head All blent in a vast music not again To sound apart in any separate strain,

But move in the clear whole wherein He whirled Incandescent, in the pillared flame Of music that is time made audible With all its massed formations high in air And wheeling columns streaming out of sight— To what bright conquest or achieved despair Or flaming end past compass or compute— Music, over time made absolute, Holding eternal, in the light that moves From sun to sun an octave in its flight, The little hatreds and the chiming loves.

He in lone days in the desert had known Strange songs of passage, on those desolate airs, That rested in their flight on him who sat So still there in the silence, listening, The sands o'erflowed the arches of his feet They all but covered as they cover stone. And He, under the immense shadows pressing A strange bright torsion on his soul, had fed Them honey of his heart and snared some few That He might share their music with his people. Yet when He strove—hearing all dissonant Voices and unpremeditated notes In one vast choral blending—to intone

A clear strain of the profuse harmony, Some string, no more responsive to his touch, Hung thawn and twanging without music. Now Bereft of the winged blood that once had borne The song to glamorous ascension, He Heard the supreme moment pass …

Strange things grew in the night—as in a vast April moving on the void, And monstrously flowered. From unknown territories, jungle and primal loam, Unnameable resurrections, ungainly and gross signs life at heat Made out of her first slime, watched him with small fierce eyes, asking a dim question Flowers He had seen no like of nor colors to surpass their shining Beat about his face like dragonflies about a flame, and there, Drifting in the current of his breath, went out like lights. And when He for their bright sakes would have put forth warding hands, A birdfoot rested on each palm and would not be denied …

Pain died in him in heaps; He lay Watching the strange figures night dandled in her soft dark hands; yet heeding under all

The far-off mutter of the desert, licking her dry parts … her sands Lolling in the darkness … tufts of grass on the bare hills … the stretched Sinews between mountains, bowelled with iron … He missed no least vibration Of the savage beautiful body or cadence of its organic music. Strange figures circled him, stark trees that bore strange carvings on their boles, inhuman Over growths of form and face, whereof each driven line—running in a fierce stopless sweep as though the hand That ploughed the stubborn wood had reached out anguished from a flame— Seemed dedicate to some appalling purpose. Here was that to which was no appeal; No weakness, wheedling the shut heart to cherish or retrieve from the bright holocaust Beloved thing. As each stalked by it could be said the mask moved … there was a perceptible Motion of the large lips, drawn back in a vast snarl shaping, It is He. In the cavernous Eyeholes, lit by a dull glow as of fires that had fiercely burned, yet smouldering, He discerned As across infinite spaces, confused figures, but whether of man or beast