PORTRAIT OF A LADY 1

I

Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—
With "I have saved this afternoon for you";

And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,

And atmosphere of Juliet's tomb

Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips.
"So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends

Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room."
-And so the conversation slips

Among velleities and carefully caught regrets

Through attenuated tones of violins

Mingled with remote cornets

And begins.

"You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, And how, how rare and strange it is, to find

In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends

(For indeed I do not love it . . . you knew? You are not blind! How keen you are!)

To find a friend who has these qualities,

Who has, and gives

She has a bowl of lilacs in her room

And twists one in her fingers while she talks.

"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know

1 Compare the poem by Ezra Pound on the same theme on page 346.

The October night comes down; returning as before Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease

I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door

And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.

"And so you are going abroad; and when do you return? But that's a useless question.

You hardly know when you are coming back;

You will find so much to learn."

My smile falls heavily among the bric-à-brac.

"Perhaps you can write to me."

My self-possession flares up for a second;
This is as I had reckoned.

"I have been wondering frequently of late
(But our beginnings never know our ends!)
Why we have not developed into friends."

I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
Suddenly, his expression in a glass.

My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

"For everybody said so, all our friends,
They all were sure our feelings would relate
So closely! I myself can hardly understand.
We must leave it now to fate.

You will write, at any rate.
Perhaps it is not too late.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends.”

And I must borrow every changing shape
To find expression dance, dance
Like a dancing bear,

Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.

Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance

Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,

Afternoon gray and smoky, evening yellow and rose;
Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand

With the smoke coming down above the housetops;
Doubtful, for quite a while

Not knowing what to feel or if I understand.
Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon
Would she not have the advantage, after all?
This music is successful with a "dying fall”
Now that we talk of dying-

And should I have the right to smile?

CONVERSATION GALANTE

I observe: "Our sentimental friend, the moon!
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)

It may be Prester John's balloon

Or an old battered lantern hung aloft

To light poor travelers to their distress."
She then: "How you digress!"

And I then: "Someone frames upon the keys
That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain

The night and moonshine; music which we seize
To body forth our vacuity."

She then: "Does this refer to me?"

"Oh, no, it is 1 who am inane.

"You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute,

Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute-"
And-"Are we then so serious?"

GERONTION

Thou hast nor youth nor age

But as it were an after dinner sleep

Dreaming of both.

Here I am, an old man in a dry month,

Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates

Nor fought in the warm rain

Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
Bitten by flies, fought.

My house is a decayed house,

And the Jew squats on the window sill, the owner,
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,

Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.
The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;
Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.

The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.

A dull head among windy spaces.

I an old man,

Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign":
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger

In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk

Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero

With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;
By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room

Shifting the candles; Fräulein von Kulp

Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles

Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,

An old man in a draughty house

Under a windy knob.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now

She gives when our attention is distracted

And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,

In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon.
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues

Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.

These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I

Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation

Of the backward devils.

I would meet you upon this honestly.

I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.

I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?

I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use it for your closer contact?

These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety

In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do,
Suspend its operations, will the weevil

Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled

Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear

In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits

Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,

White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,

And an old man driven by the Trades

To a sleepy corner.

Tenants of the house,

Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.