He: Blue, blue eternally, dark waves and sky
Blue – and beyond unending deeps of blue,
This and the emerald earth, the sapphire
world,
Deny all hidden joy the boon of speech;
And so a vortex of gyrating thought
Uprearing blinds and suffocates me, yet
Could we but keep this glory, keep henceforth
This second now – so might we know remorse !
She : And like a bird with broken flight you fall.
He: No. I am unresolved. Could life be good
Were we not always hampered by some doubt?
Then, as I waited, in one blink I saw
Earth callow from all downy space become
This sphere of earth and water, all the seas
Wide-eyed with staring, flapping monsters, then
The new strange order of our lesser kind
Men enigmatic came before me, then
This world of cities, parliaments, and pomp.
And flaunting trade signs, hideous, unashamed.
Loud with the cult of gold, the instinct kept
Of children saving pebbles being made
The creed of all our rulers everywhere.
She: If I could keep this sea and sky, these flowers,
I should be happy but recurring thoughts
– Look, like those clouds across the sun – would
shadow
That isolated second. But there are
Bright balls and theatres, such a world of life;
And if you had the sun –
He: I’d barter it.
All for a rosebud or a memory,
Most likely, out of pity for this dust.
And then surrender all to doubt again
Yet fasting days and days I searched my soul
For wisdom which once found I would reject.
Moreover, I have watched the ceiling gape.
Swart faces slanting downward fell and fell.
Appearing, jeering, veering, leering, rearing.
Monotonous and voiceless and alive –
This when the night had cast me forth again.
Life out of death, a wonder to be tried
Again I So glad days revelled – I was there –
So was I bound by time or was I free,
I who was dead yet saw myself apart
Beholding life, indifferent of myself? ….
And is it best then now to strive and strive
Till timeless, changeless, centred on one thing,
On star or sound or truth or thought or deed
One blends himself as now, one with this sea? . . .
Thus Truth and Soul are one She does not
hear
To-morrow I shall never see her face –
Day struck from life, day chosen from all time
For this damnation – how shall to-morrow lag,
Lag like a thousand years ! And in a week
I go whence I have come and she shall be
Only the phantom of a strange sweet dream. . .
Life and my boundless soul, how shall this time
Lapse swifter than a meteor which, a streak,
Drops from the utmost height into the void!
(E J Rupert Atkinson)
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