Seasons Of The Soul

To the memory of John Peale Bishop, 1892-1944

Attor porsi la mano un poco avante,

e colsi un ramicel da un gran pruno;

e U tronco suo gridd: Perchd mi schiante?

I.  SUMMER

Summer, this is our flesh,

The body you let mature;

If now while the body is fresh

You take it, shall we give

The heart, lest heart endure

The mind's tattering

Blow of greedy claws?

Shall mind itself still live

If like a hunting king

It falls to the lion's jaws?

Under the summer's blast

The soul cannot endure

Unless by sleight or fast

It seize or deny its day

To make the eye secure.

Brothers-in-arms, remember

The hot wind dries and draws

With circular delay

The flesh, ash from the ember,

Into the summer's jaws.

It was a gentle sun

When, at the June solstice

Green France was overrun

With caterpillar feet.

No head knows where its rest is

Or may lie down with reason

When war's usurping claws

Shall take the heart escheat-

Green field in burning season

To stain the weevil's jaws.

The southern summer dies

Evenly in the fall:

We raise our tired eyes

Into a sky of glass,

Blue, empty, and tall

Without tail or head

Where burn the equal laws

For Balaam and his ass

Above the invalid dead,

Who cannot lift their jaws.

When was it that the summer

(Daylong a liquid light)

And a child, the new-comer,

Bathed in the same green spray,

Could neither guess the night?

The summer had no reason;

Then, like a primal cause

It had its timeless day

Before it kept the season

Of time's engaging jaws.

Two men of our summer world

Descended winding hell

And when their shadows curled

They fearfully confounded

The vast concluding shell:

Stopping, they saw in the narrow

Light a centaur pause

And gaze, then his astounded

Beard, with a notched arrow,

Part back upon his jaws.

II. AUTUMN

It had an autumn smell

And that was how I knew

That I was down a well:

I was no longer young;

My lips were numb and blue,

The air was like fine sand

In a butcher's stall

Or pumice to the tongue:

And when I raised my hand

I stood in the empty hall.

The round ceiling was high

And the gray light like shale

Thin, crumbling, and dry:

No rug on the bare floor

Nor any carved detail

To which the eye could glide;

I counted along the wall

Door after closed door

Through which a shade might slide

To the cold and empty hall.

I will leave this house, I said,

There is the autumn weather-

Here, nor living nor dead;

The lights burn in the town

Where men fear together.

Then on the bare floor,

But tiptoe lest I fall,

I walked years down

Towards the front door

At the end of the empty hall.

Two men of our summer world

Descended winding hell

And when their shadows curled

They fearfully confounded

The vast concluding shell:

Stopping, they saw in the narrow

Light a centaur pause

And gaze, then his astounded

Beard, with a notched arrow,

Part back upon his jaws,

It had an autumn smell

And that was how I knew

That I was down a well:

I was no longer young;

My lips were numb and blue,

The air was like fine sand

In a butcher's stall

Or pumice to the tongue:

And when I raised my hand

I stood in the empty hall.

The round ceiling was high

And the gray light like shale

Thin, crumbling, and dry:

No rug on the bare floor

Nor any carved detail

To which the eye could glide;

I counted along the wall

Door after closed door

Through which a shade might slide

To the cold and empty hall.

I will leave this house, I said,

There is the autumn weather-

Here, nor living nor dead;

The lights burn in the town

Where men fear together.

Then on the bare floor,

But tiptoe lest I fall,

I walked years down

Towards the front door

At the end of the empty hall.

The door was false-no key

Or lock, and I was caught

In the house; yet I could see

I had been born to it

For miles of running brought

Me back where I began.

I saw now in the wall

A door open a slit

And a fat grizzled man

Come out into the hall:

As in a moonlit street

Men meeting are too shy

To check their hurried feet

But raise their eyes and squint

As through a needle's eye

Into the faceless gloom,-

My father in a gray shawl

Gave me an unseeing glint

And entered another room!

I stood in the empty hall

And watched them come and go

From one room to another,

Old men, old women slow,

Familiar; girls, boys;

I saw my downcast mother

Clad in her street-clothes,

Her blue eyes long and small.

Who had no look or voice

For him whose vision froze

Him in the empty hall.

III.  WINTER

Goddess sea-born and bright,

Return into the sea

Where eddying twilight

Gathers upon your people-

Cold goddess, hear our plea!

Leave the burnt earth, Venus,

For the drying God above,

Hanged in his windy steeple,

No longer bears for us

The living wound of love.

All the sea-gods are dead.

You, Venus, come home

To your salt maidenhead,

The tossed anonymous sea

Under shuddering foam-

Shade for lovers, where

A shark swift as your dove

Shall pace our company

All night to nudge and tear

The livid wound of love.

And now the winter sea:

Within her hollow rind

What sleek facility

Of sea-conceited scop

To plumb the nether mind!

Eternal winters blow

Shivering flakes, and shove

Bodies that wheel and drop-

Cold soot upon the snow

Their livid wound of love.

Beyond the undertow

The gray sea-foliage

Transpires a phosphor glow

Into the circular miles:

In the centre of his cage

The pacing animal

Surveys the jungle cove

And slicks his slithering wiles

To turn the venereal awl

In the livid wound of love.

Beyond the undertow

The rigid madrepore

Resists the winter's flow-

Headless, unageing oak

That gives the leaf no more.

Wilfully as I stood

Within the thickest grove

I seized a branch, which broke;

I heard the speaking blood

(From the livid wound of love)

Drip down upon my toe:

"We are the men who died

Of self-inflicted woe,

Lovers whose stratagem

Led to their suicide."

I touched my sanguine hair

And felt it drip above

Their brother who, like them,

Was maimed and did not bear

The living wound of love.

IV. SPRING

Irritable spring, infuse

Into the burning breast

Your combustible juice

That as a liquid soul

Shall be the body's guest

Who lights, but cannot stay

To comfort this unease

Which, like a dying coal,

Hastens the cooler day

Of the mother of silences.

Back in my native prime

I saw the orient corn

All space but no time,

Reaching for the sun

Of the land where I was born:

It was a pleasant land

Where even death could please

Us with an ancient pun-

All dying for the hand

Of the mother of silences.

In time of bloody war

Who will know the time?

Is it a new spring star

Within the timing chill,

Talking, or just a mime,

That rises in the blood-

Thin Jack-and-Jilling seas

Without the human will?

Its light is at the flood,

Mother of silences!

It burns us each alone

Whose burning arrogance

Burns up the rolling stone,

This earth-Platonic cave

Of vertiginous chance!

Come, tired Sisyphus,

Cover the cave's egress

Where light reveals the slave,

Who rests when sleeps with us

The mother of silences.

Come, old woman, save

Your sons who have gone down

Into the burning cave:

Come, mother, and lean

At the window with your son

And gaze through its light frame

These fifteen centuries

Upon the shirking scene

Where men, blind, go lame:

Then, mother of silences,

Speak, that we may hear;

Listen, while we confess

That we conceal our fear;

Regard us, while the eye

Discerns by sight or guess

Whether, as sheep foregather

Upon their crooked knees,

We have begun to die;

Whether your kindness, mother,

Is mother of silences.