What's O'Clock

Front matter

WHAT'S O'CLOCK

Books by Amy Lowell

PUBLISHED BY

East, West, North, and South of a Man

WHAT'S O'CLOCK

No flute man this, to sigh at a lady's elbow. This is a trumpet fellow, proper for jousting or battle, Mary Madonna, To hack an enemy to pieces, and scale his castle wall. O Mary, Mary, A point for piercing, an edge for shearing, a weight for pounding, a voice for thundering, And a fan-gleam light to shine down little alleys Where twisted houses make a jest of day.

There are dead men in his hand, Mary Madonna, And sighing women out beyond his thinking. O Mary, Mary, He will not linger here or anywhere. He will go about his business with an ineradicable complaisance, Leaving his dead to rot, his women to weep and regret,

his sons to wax into his likeness, Never dreaming that the absurd lie he believes in Is a gesture of Fate forcing him to the assumption of a vast importance Quite other than the blazoning of ceremonial banners to wave above a tomb.

<>II

Hot with oranges and purples, In a flowing robe of a marigold colour, He sweeps over September spaces. Scheherezade, do you hear him, And the clang of his scimitar knocking on the gates? The tawny glitter of his turban, Is it not dazzling— With the saffron jewel set like a sun-flower in the midst? The brown of his face! Aye, the brown like the heart of a sun-flower.

Who are you to aspire beyond the petals, To touch the golden burning beneath the marigold robe? His sash is magnificence clasped by an emerald; His scimitar is the young moon hanging before a sunset; His voice is the sun in mid-heaven Pouring on whirled ochre dahlias; His fingers, the flight of Autumn wasps through a honey-coloured afternoon. So, Scheherezade, he has passed the dragon fountains And is walking up the marble stairway, stopping to caress the peacocks. He will lean above you, Scheherezade, like September above an orchard of apples. He will fill you with the sweetness of spice-fed flames. Will you burn, Scheherezade, as flowers burn in September sunlight? Hush, then, for flame is silence, And silent is the penetrating of the sun.

The dragon fountains splash in the court-yards, And the peacocks spread their tails. There are eyes in the tails of the peacocks, But the palace windows are shuttered and barred.

<>III

Pipkins, pans, and pannikins, China teapots, tin and pewter, Baskets woven of green rushes. Maudlin, Jennifer, and Prue, What is lacking in your kitchens? Are you needing skewers or thimbles, Spools of cotton, knots of ribbon, Or a picture for your pantry, Or a rag-rug for the bed-side? Plodding, plodding, through the dusty Lanes between the hawthorn hedges, My green wheels all white and dusty,

I as dusty as a miller, White as any clown among them Dancing on the London stages. Here I have Grimaldi's latest, Songs and ballads, sheets of posies For your feet to ring-a-rosy. Songs to make you sigh and shudder, Songs to win you bright eye-glances, Choruses, and glees, and catches. Do your cupboards need refilling? Take a peep into these hampers. I have goods to loose your purse-strings: Smocks, and shifts, and fine clocked stockings Aprons of a dozen sizes, Muslin dresses sprigged and patterned. Can you look and not be buying? Maudlin, Jennifer, and Prue, Here are dainties for sweetheartings, Tinsel crackers plumped with mottoes,

Twisted barley sticks and pear-drops. Here are ear-rings, chains, and brooches, Choose what gift you'll have him give you. If the sweetheart days are over, I have silver forks and bodkins, Leather breeches, flannel bed-gowns, Spectacles for eyes grown feeble, Books to read with them and candles To light up the page,of evenings. Toys, too, to delight the children, Rocking-horses, tops, and marbles, Dolls with jointed arms, and flying Kites, and hoops, and even the Royal Game of Goose the world is playing. When I camp out on a common, Underneath an oak or linden, And my horse crops at his supper, Finding it along the hedge-rows, Then I play at Goose with one hand

Taking sides against the other. First my right hand holds the dice-cup, Then my left, each has its counter. 'Tis a pastime never tires. Coppers, coppers, for the pedlar. Maudlin, Jennifer, and Prue, Fare you well, I must be jogging. Horse-bells tinkle at the lane-sides, Green wheels growing whiter, whiter, Lurching van of whims and whimsies Vanishing into the distance.

<>IV

Who would read on a ladder? But who can read without a ladder? Cheerful paradox to be resolved never. Book by book, he steps up and off to all the four quarters Of all the possible distances.

Minerva have a care of him, For surely he has none for himself. His eyes are dim with the plague of print, But he believes them eagle-seeing. His spectacles have grown to his nose, But he is unaware of the fact since he never takes them off. A little black cap on his head; A rusty dressing-gown, with the quilts run together, To keep out the cold; A window out of which he never looks; A chair from which he never rises. But do you not know a wharf-side when you see it, And are you not moved at watching the putting off of the caravels of dream? Food gets into his mouth by accident As though fish swam the seas to come there, And cattle crowded the thoroughfares to reach his lips. If there are intermediaries, he is unconscious of them,

As he is of everything but his cat, Who shares his vigils And has discovered the art of projecting herself into his visions. He loves a thousand ladies, and foregathers with a thousand caravans. To-day is as remote as yesterday, And he is avid of either with the intensity of a partaker of each; He could hobnob as blithely with Julius Cæsar as with King George or Samuel Gompers, And his opinions on affairs of the moment are those of an eye-witness Although he never sets foot out-of-doors. Indeed, Minerva, you should watch the step of this gentleman, For he runs so swiftly past events and monuments it seems incredible he should not trip. The walls of forbidden cities fall before him;

He has but to tap a sheepskin to experience kingdoms, And circumstance drips from his fingers like dust. An habituated eye sees much through a pin-prick, And are not his observations folio wide? He eats the centuries And lives a new life every twenty-four hours, So lengthening his own to an incalculable figure. If you think you see only an old man mouldering between four walls, You are greatly mistaken. Minerva over the door could tell you better If her stone face would speak. Talk to him and he will not hear you; Write a book and he knows you better than you know yourself. Draw the curtains, then, and bring in tea, with plenty of buttered scones. Since neither the old gentleman nor Minerva will speak to us, I think we had best ignore them and go on as we are.

Evelyn Ray

A noble meadow, so broad each way It took three good scythes to mow in a day.

Just where the field broke into a wood A knotted old catalpa stood,

And in the old catalpa-tree A cat-bird sang immoderately.

The sky above him was round and big And its centre seemed just over his twig.

The earth below him was fresh and fair, With the sun's long fingers everywhere.

The cat-bird perched where a great leaf hung, And the great leaf tilted, and flickered, and swung.

The cat-bird sang with a piercing glee Up in the sun-specked catalpa-tree.

He sang so loud and he sang so long That his ears were drowned in his own sweet song.

But the little peering leaves of grass Shook and sundered to let them pass,

To let them pass, the men who heard Nothing the grass said, nothing the bird.

Each man was still as a shining stone, Each man's head was a buzzing bone

Wherein two words screeched in and out Like a grinding saw with its turn about:

"Evelyn Ray," each stone man said, And the words cut back and forth through his head, And each of them wondered if he were dead.

The cat-bird sang with his head cocked up Gazing into the sky's blue cup.

The grasses waved back into place, The sun's long fingers stroked each face,

Each grim, cold face that saw no sun. And the feet led the faces on and on.

They stopped beside the catalpa-tree, Said one stone face to the other: "See!"

The other face had nothing to say, Its lips were frozen on "Evelyn Ray."

They laid their hats in the tall green grass Where the crickets and grasshoppers pass and pass.

They hung their coats in the crotch of a pine And paced five feet in an even line.

They measured five paces either way, And the saws in their heads screeched "Evelyn Ray."

The cat-bird sang so loud and clear He heard nothing at all, there was nothing to hear.

Even the swish of long legs pushing Through grass had ceased, there was only the hushing

Of a windless wind in the daisy tops, And the jar stalks make when a grasshopper hops.

Every now and then a bee boomed over The black-eyed Susans in search of clover,

And crickets shrilled as crickets do: One—two. One—two.

The cat-bird sang with his head in the air, And the sun's bright fingers poked here and there,

Past leaf, and branch, and needle, and cone. But the stone men stood like men of stone.

Each man lifted a dull stone hand And his fingers felt like weaving sand,

And his feet seemed standing on a ball Which tossed and turned in a waterfall.

Each man heard a shot somewhere Dropping out of the distant air.

But the screaming saws no longer said "Evelyn Ray," for the men were dead.

I often think of Evelyn Ray. What did she do, what did she say? Did she ever chance to pass that way?

I remember it as a lovely spot Where a cat-bird sang. When he heard the shot, Did he fly away? I have quite forgot.

When I went there last, he was singing again Through a little fleeting, misty rain, And pine-cones lay where they had lain.

This is the tale as I heard it when I was young, from a man who was threescore and ten. A lady of clay and two stone men.

A pretty problem is here, no doubt, If you have a fancy to work it out: What happens to stone when clay is about?

Muse upon it as long as you will, I think myself it will baffle your skill, And your answer will be what mine is—nil.

But every sunny Summer's day I am teased with the thought of Evelyn Ray, Poor little image of painted clay. And Heigh-o! I say. What if there be a judgment-day?

What if all religions be true, And Gabriel's trumpet blow for you And blow for them—what will you do?

Evelyn Ray, will you rise alone? Or will your lovers of dull grey stone Pace beside you through the wan

Twilight of that bitter day To be judged as stone and judged as clay, And no one to say the judgment nay?

Better be nothing, Evelyn Ray, A handful of buttercups that sway In the wind for a children's holiday.

For earth to earth is the best we know, Where the good blind worms push to and fro

Turning us into the seeds which grow,

And lovers and ladies are dead indeed, Lost in the sap of a flower seed. Is this, think you, a sorry creed?

Well, be it so, for the world is wide And opinions jostle on every side. What has always hidden will always hide.

And every year when the fields are high With oat grass, and red top, and timothy, I know that a creed is the shell of a lie.

Peace be with you, Evelyn Ray, And to your lovers, if so it may, For earth made stone and earth made clay.

The Swans

The swans float About the moat, And another swan sits still in the air Above the old inn. He gazes into the street And swims the cold and the heat, He has always been there, At least so say the cobbles in the square. They listen to the beat Of the hammered bell, And think of the feet Which beat upon their tops; But what they think they do not tell.

And the swans who float Up and down the moat Gobble the bread the Bishop feeds them. The slim bronze men beat the hour again,

But only the gargoyles up in the hard blue air heed them.

When the Bishop says a prayer, And the choir sing "Amen," The hammers break in on them there: Clang! Clang! Beware! Beware! The carved swan looks down at the passing men, And the cobbles wink: "An hour has gone again." But the people kneeling before the Bishop's chair Forget the passing over the cobbles in the square.

An hour of day and an hour of night, And the clouds float away in a red-splashed light, The sun, quotha? or white, white Smoke with fire all alight.

An old roof crashing on a Bishop's tomb, Swarms of men with a thirst for room,

And the footsteps blur to a shower, shower, shower, Of men passing—passing—every hour, With arms of power, and legs of power, And power in their strong, hard minds. No need then For the slim bronze men Who beat God's hours: Prime, Tierce, None. Who wants to hear? No one. We will melt them, and mold them, And make them a stem For a banner gorged with blood, For a blue-mouthed torch. So the men rush like clouds, They strike their iron edges on the Bishop's chair And fling down the lanterns by the tower stair. They rip the Bishop out of his tomb And break the mitre off of his head. "See," say they, "the man is dead; He cannot shiver or sing. We'll toss for his ring."

The cobbles see this all along the street Coming—coming—on countless feet. And the clockmen mark the hours as they go. But slow—slow— The swans float In the Bishop's moat. And the inn swan Sits on and on, Staring before him with cold glass eyes. Only the Bishop walks serene, Pleased with his church, pleased with his house, Pleased with the sound of the hammered bell, Beating his doom. Saying "Boom! Boom! Room! Room!" He is old, and kind, and deaf, and blind, And very, very pleased with his charming moat And the swans which float.

One Jericho

And the loosestrife called out that somebody was treading on its toes. But the rye never heeded. "Bread! Bread!" it shouted, and wagged its golden beards. "Bread conquering the forest." I stood with the little cinquefoil Crushed back against a bush of sheep's laurel. "T am sorry if I crowd you," said I. "But the rye is marching And the green and yellow banners blind me, Also the clamour of the great trumpets Is confusing." "But you are trampling me down," wailed the loosestrife. "Alas! Even so. Yet do not blame me, For I too have scarcely room to stand."

Then a gust of wind ran upon the tall rye, And it flung up its glittering helmets and shouted "Bread!" again and again, And the hubbub of it rolled superbly under the balancing pines.

"Three times the trumpets," thought I, And I picked the cinquefoil. "Why not on my writing-table," I said, caressing its petals with my finger. And that, I take it, is the end of the story.

Merely Statement

The passion-flower holds my eyes, And the light-under-light of its blue and purple dyes Is a hot surprise. How then can I keep my looks From the passion-flower leaning sharply over the books? When one has seen The difficult magnificence of a queen On one's table, Is one able To observe any colour in a mignonette? I will not think of sunset, I crave the dawn, With its rose-red light on the wings of a swan, And a queen pacing slowly through the Parthenon, Her dress a stare of purple between pillars of stone.

Footing up a Total

You are neither blue, nor violet, nor red, But all these colours blent and faded to a charming weariness of tone. I glare; you blossom. Yes, alas! and when they have clanged me to my grave Wrapped gaudily in pale blue and magenta; When muted bugles and slacked drums Have brayed a last quietus; What then, my friend?

Why, someone coming from the funeral Will see you standing, nodding underneath a hedge (Picking or not is nothing). Will that person remember bones and shouting do you think? I fancy he will listen to the music Shaken so lightly from your whispering bells And think how very excellent a thing A flower growing in a hedge most surely is.

And so, a fig for rotting carcasses!

Waiter, bring me a bottle of Lachrima Christi, And mind you don't break the seal. Your health, my highly unsuccessful confrère, Rocking your seed-bells while I drift to ashes. The future is the future, therefore— Damn you!

Twenty-Four Hokku on a Modern Theme

<>IV

I hear many words. Set an hour when I may come Or remain silent.

<>V

In the ghostly dawn I write new words for your ears— Even now you sleep.

<>VI

This then is morning. Have you no comfort for me Cold-coloured flowers?

<>VII

My eyes are weary Following you everywhere. Short, oh short, the days!

<>VIII

When the flower falls The leaf is no more cherished. Every day I fear.

<>IX

Even when you smile Sorrow is behind your eyes. Pity me, therefore.

<>X

Laugh—it is nothing. To others you may seem gay, I watch with grieved eyes.

<>XI

Take it, this white rose. Stems of roses do not bleed; Your fingers are safe.

<>XII

As a river-wind Hurling clouds at a bright moon, So am I to you.

<>XIII

Watching the iris, The faint and fragile petals— How am I worthy?

<>XIV

Down a red river I drift in a broken skiff. Are you then so brave?

<>XV

Night lies beside me Chaste and cold as a sharp sword. It and I alone.

<>XVI

Last night it rained. Now, in the desolate dawn, Crying of blue jays.

<>XVII

Foolish so to grieve, Autumn has its coloured leaves— But before they turn?

<>XVIII

Afterwards I think: Poppies bloom when it thunders. Is this not enough?

<>XIX

Love is a game—yes? I think it is a drowning: Black willows and stars.

<>XX

When the aster fades The creeper flaunts in crimson. Always another!

<>XXI

Turning from the page, Blind with a night of labour, I hear morning crows.

<>XXII

A cloud of lilies, Or else you walk before me. Who could see clearly?

<>XXIII

Sweet smell of wet flowers Over an evening garden. Your portrait, perhaps?

<>XXIV

Staying in my room, I thought of the new Spring leaves. That day was happy.

The Anniversary

Knowing my weakness, Spread your hands above my head. See only your hands.

Watching you daily, I dare not think what I see. It is better so.

Since I am only What you may consider me, Have merciful thoughts.

Shield me from myself. At times I have wounded you. I do not forget.

Take what I give you. Foolishness is in my words, But not in my heart.

Cease urging your ears, My speech has little for them. Hearken otherwise.

You wrong me, saying: One death will not kill us both. Your veins hold my sap.

Keep in remembrance: Peonies do not blossom Till Spring is over.

You prefer Spring? Why? A season's length of hours— Incalculable.

Days and days—what then? Is not recurrence a smile On the face of age?

Now, in the pale dawn, How strange to consider time. What is it to us?

Grains of rice counted— Can any one so spend life? Be spacious and wise.

The bowl is still full. We will not be niggardly. Plunge in both your hands.

I have known terror. I swear to know it no more, Each day a new dawn.

Youth is incautious. Wisdom learns to tread softly, Valuing moments.

Cherishing what is, The wise man sees it depart Without emotion.

Time is rhetoric, A mad logician's plaything. O pitiful world!

Listen to the wind; Man has not learnt to measure The wind of his thought.

Blowing asunder, Yet we shall be as the air Still undivided.

Sleep until day-spring. With morning we start again, Another ten years.

Song for a Viola d'Amore

ppoem| start=follow| But darkness drifting up and down Divides to let her silken gown Gleam there beside the clematis. How marvellously white it is! Five white blossoms and she are there Like candles in a fluttering air Escaping from a tower stair.

{italic} Be still you cursed, rattling leaf, This is no time to think of grief.

The night is soft, and fire-flies Are very casual, gay, and wise, And they have made a tiny glee Just where the clematis and she Are standing. Since the sky is clear, Do they suppose that, once a year, The moon and five white stars appear Walking the earth; that, so attended, |end=follow

Diana came and condescended To hold speech with Endymion Before she came at last alone.

The lady of my choice is bright As a clematis at the fall of night. Her voice is honeysuckle sweet, Her presence spreads an April heat Before the going of her feet. She is of perfectness complete. The lady whom my heart perceives As a clematis above its leaves, As a purple-hearted clematis. And what is lovelier than that is?

In Excelsis

Your fancies are the gold-and-black striped wasps buzzing among red apples. I drink your lips, I eat the whiteness of your hands and feet. My mouth is open, As a new jar I am empty and open. Like white, water are you who fill the cup of my mouth, Like a brook of water thronged with lilies.

You are frozen as the clouds, You are far and sweet as the high clouds. I dare reach to you, I dare touch the rim of your brightness. I leap beyond the winds, I cry and shout, For my throat is keen as a sword Sharpened on a hone of ivory. My throat sings the joy of my eyes,

The rushing gladness of my love.

How has the rainbow fallen upon my heart? How have I snared the seas to lie in my fingers And caught the sky to be a cover for my head? How have you come to dwell with me, Compassing me with the four circles of your mystic lightness, So that I say "Glory! Glory!" and bow before you As to a shrine?

Do I tease myself that morning is morning and a day after? Do [think the air a condescension, The earth a politeness, Heaven a boon deserving thanks? So you—air—earth—heaven— I do not thank you, I take you,

I live. And those things which I say in consequence Are rubies mortised in a gate of stone.

White Currants

Shall we call it white currants? You may consider it as a symbol if you please. You may find them tart, or sweet, or merely agreeable in colour, So long as you accept them, And me.

Mackerel Sky

Although I make a brave show in armour of green and carnation Rivetted with the flowers which are called "you-love-me-not" of white and yellow, And on my shield a waning moon in a field of azure, I am gayer in my colours than in my heart.

The On-Looker

Such to a woman stretched upon a bed of battle, Who bargained for this only in the whispering arras Enclosed about a midnight of enchantment.

Lilacs

Holding quiet conversations with an early moon; Lilacs watching a deserted house Settling sideways into the grass of an old road; Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom Above a cellar dug into a hill. You are everywhere. You were everywhere. You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon, And ran along the road beside the boy going to school. You stood by pasture-bars to give the cows good milking. You persuaded the housewife that her dish pan was of silver And her husband an image of pure gold. You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms Through the wide doors of Custom Houses— You, and sandal-wood, and tea,

Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks When a ship was in from China. You called to them: "Goose-quill men, goose-quill men, May is a month for flitting," Until they writhed on their high stools And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers. Paradoxical New England clerks, Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the "Song of Solomon" at night, So many verses before bed-time, Because it was the Bible. The dead fed you Amid the slant stones of graveyards. Pale ghosts who planted you Came in the night-time And let their thin hair blow through your dusted stems.

You are of the green sea, And of the stone hills which reach a long distance. You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell kites and marbles, You are of great parks where everyone walks and nobody is at home. You cover the blind sides of greenhouses And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass To your friends, the grapes, inside.

Lilacs, False blue, White, Purple, Colour of lilac, You have forgotten your Eastern origin, The veiled women with eyes like panthers, The swollen, aggressive turbans of jewelled Pashas.

Now you are a very decent flower, A reticent flower, A curiously clear-cut, candid flower, Standing beside clean doorways, Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles, Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.

Maine knows you, Has for years and years; New Hampshire knows you, And Massachusetts And Vermont. Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Is- land; Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea. You are brighter than apples, Sweeter than tulips, You are the great flood of our souls

Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts, You are the smell of all Summers, The love of wives and children, The recollection of the gardens of little children, You are State Houses and Charters And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows. May is lilac here in New England, May is a thrush singing "Sun up!" on a tip-top ash-tree, May is white clouds behind pine-trees Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky. May is a green as no other, May is much sun through small leaves, May is soft earth, And apple-blossoms, And windows open to a South wind. May is a full light wind of lilac From Canada to Narragansett Bay.

Lilacs, False blue, White, Purple, Colour of lilac. Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England, Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England, Lilac in me because I am New England, Because my roots are in it, Because my leaves are of it, Because my flowers are for it, Because it is my country And I speak to it of itself And sing of it with my own voice Since certainly it is mine.

Purple Grackles

I am persuaded that grackles are birds; But when they are settled in the trees, Tam inclined to declare them fruits And the trees turned hybrid blackberry vines. Blackness shining and bulging under leaves, Does not that and blackberries, I ask you? Nonsense! The grackles have come.

Nonchalant highwaymen, pickpockets, second-story burglars, Stealing away my little have of Summer. There is no stealthy robbing in this. Who ever heard such a gabble of thieves' talk! It seems they delight in unmasking my poor pretence. Yes, now I see that the hydrangea blooms are rusty; That the hearts of the golden glow are ripening to lustreless seeds;

That the garden is dahlia-coloured, Flaming with its last over-hot hues; That the sun is pale as a lemon too small to fill the picking-ring. I did not see this yesterday, But to-day the grackles have come.

They drop out of the trees And strut in companies over the lawn, Tired of flying, no doubt; A grand parade to limber legs and give wings a rest. I should build a great fish-pond for them, Since it is evident that a bird-bath, meant to accommodate two goldfinches at most, Is slight hospitality for these hordes. Scarcely one can get in, They all peck and scrabble so, Crowding, pushing, chasing one another up the bank with spread wings.

"Are we ducks, you, owner of such inadequate comforts, That you offer us lily-tanks where one must swim or drown, Not stand and splash like a gentleman?" I feel the reproach keenly, seeing them perch on the edges of the tanks, trying the depth with a chary foot, And hardly able to get their wings under water in the bird-bath. But there are resources I had not considered, If I am bravely ruled out of count. What is that thudding against the eaves just beyond my window? What is that spray of water blowing past my face? Two—three—grackles bathing in the gutter, The gutter providentially choked with leaves. I pray they think I put the leaves there on purpose; I would be supposed thoughtful and welcoming

To all guests, even thieves. But considering that they are going South and I am not, I wish they would bathe more quietly, It is unmannerly to flaunt one's good fortune.

They rate me of no consequence, But they might reflect that it is my gutter. I know their opinion of me, Because one is drying himself on the window-sill Not two feet from my hand. His purple neck is sleek with water, And the fellow preens his feathers for all the world as if I were a fountain statue. If it were not for the window, I am convinced he would light on my head. Tyrian-feathered freebooter, Appropriating my delightful gutter with so extravagant an ease,