Classic Poem

The years had done their worst, and these who were
Lonely enough kept growing lonelier:
The hardening mouth, the dulling eye, that dazed
Indifferent stupor—all that once amazed
Their glittering senses slackened, dangling loose,
Sleep an evasion, work a ghastly ruse.
Still the moon cutting silver and the shout
Of April and the young stars running out;
Still in cold beauty from a tattered cocoon
Uncoiled the moist wings of an early moon.
What gesture, what insidious little trick
Had pinched the soot, had snuffed the candle wick,
Had left them staring in a stony place
With colour ebbing out of each other's face?

There was a time when these two touching grass
Or earth had felt their bodies mix and pass
Fluidly into the green spear or the black
Churning underfoot and then surge back
To them retrieved and altered in some strange
Bright chemistry of change and interchange.
The catch in her breath when she said certain things,
Threading the syllables on twisted strings
Through his heart—what suddenly turned her into this

Unlovely woman out of Genesis?
And he, in whom the elements had stirred
Their golden auspices of phrase and word
So that the hills stood in his eyes and he
Poised like a cliff-bound eagle perpetually—
What death had beaten him down till he became
A name she lived with that was like her name?

Easy enough to cry the thing's as common
As dirt, as any man or any woman;
The point is, this particular man had taken
Toll of this woman, had been stormed and shaken
By the trumpeter swans and whooping cranes that crowd
Music into the heart when the blood is loud
With love and the hammers of spring. . . . But life had pressed
Stone and steel and every stark unrest
Feverishly between her eyes and his:
Prisoners trapped in a mad parenthesis
Of time and place and motion, cornered between
The tongs of swift frustration, slow routine.

So night after night after night she would feel the fist
Of this grim dynasty upon her wrist,
And stiffen with terror and strain out to reach
His hands, his hair—and lie there reft of speech;
And so night after night, night after night
This livid incubus that gripped her tight;
And he, a round-faced imperturbable ghost,
Twitching a little beside her in a most
Casual sleep. . . . She'd think of the druggist's wife
In Chekhov's story and it was like a knife;
She wanted to scream, tear all the skyscrapers down
With her nails, batter the perpendicular town
To a pulp: it was a duel for a dream
Between her and the sinister daily scheme
That put him on a train and at a desk,
Distorted love to something sick, grotesque,
Indecent … ugh! like nausea. . . .
And then one night,
With late March brawling in the firelight,
Whether it was the smudge on his cravat,
Or whether it was because he coughed and spat
On a gold-spotted log that blistered—she
Whipped out upon him, snarling savagely:
And the wind and the wood and the woman all were tongues
Metallic, terrible; and there were gongs
Beating in her temples; and she struck
An ugly short word at him—and as luck
Would have it, he flushed copper, chuckled, said
“Hell, Kate, you've been drinking. Go to bed!”
But here was mutiny and of a sort
Not to be clapped in irons by a retort
And with a snarl dismissed. And so the grin
Froze into a half-sneer, saccharine
At first, and then a dark stain as he gazed
And saw a certain woman whose eyes blazed
And whose mouth blazed biting the words out: “Yes!
Drinking! … that's right! … I have been drinking! … I guess
You ought to know! … at least … who else but you
Could read the recipe of your own brew
Hell-cooked and curdled in the lovely vat
Of your contempt! … eleven years of that! …
And now, O Christ, the jar kicks off its lid
And his jaw goes agape because it did!”—
The words dug in like nails and his absurd
“Drinking,” cut under deep; he choked on the word
“Drinking,” stiffening there—the taunt recurred:
“Yes, I have been drinking! Now it's your turn!
You'll drink until you know how it feels to burn
Up with wanting something more than just
Dead walls and clocks with dead hands and the dust
Of stale desires … something else … if only
To shut out this forever being lonely!”—

He made a heavy effort, tried to speak,
Failed thickly; she went on in a hard streak,
Lunging her phrases at him like a beak:
“God, don't you see, we can't go on … like this …
Much longer! … and we can't sniffle and kiss
And make up! … oh, it isn't as if the both
Of us didn't care … we did … you'll take your oath
On that! … I tell you, it's the nasty growth
Stuck to our souls … like things I touch sometimes
In the cellar and the contact creeps and slimes
All over me. . . . Well, that's what's happened … we've let
Dead things touch our hands and we are wet
Rotten with the foul smear. . . . And the one
Thing that mattered hardly had begun
To matter before the fungus got it, the city,
That clever silver leprosy. . . . Christ, the pity!
Well, Christ can take care of it. . . . And now I'm going
To sleep … perhaps … and after that, there's no knowing
What I'll do … sleep more perhaps. . . . You might
Make sure the outer pantry door is tight—
You left the door wide open the other night.”

She left him sitting lumped up in his chair,
He heard her drag her feet from stair to stair
As though she were lifting stones and putting them there.
The fire sucked a little, guttered and spit
Once or twice, gasped out. He looked at it
Blankly. . . . And now staccato on the roof
The wind coughed and the rain betrayed his hoof.
He rose all cold and quiet with a white
Frozen lustre in his eyes, a light
Glittering like ice; and suddenly he'd flung
The doors and windows open, and had sprung
Up the stairs and into her room, and said
“Come down, Kate. There's a something that was dead
That's trying to live again.” … She pulled a brown
Bathrobe around her and so they started down
Into the splash of wind and as they went
She whispered, “You're shivering.” And he said, “I meant
To shut that door—and couldn't—because the scent
Of April wedged between me and the door—
That's what I went upstairs and got you for.”

They moved like children stepping through a dream;
Black pools of shadow slid away; the scream
Of lightning clawed at the air and lightning scratched
At their faces as they passed; the whole unlatched
House and heaven merged until the house
Scampered with the sky like a grey mouse
Scuffling with a yellow footless cat;
The rapid night spattered her bells down, spat
Caressing vowels on one consonant;
The sky was a blue bowl tilted to a slant
Of spilling lines. . . . And under it they stood
Drenched while the downpour staggered through their blood,
And they said nothing, and their eyes were wet
Because the storm was beautiful, and yet
They said nothing, only laughed and cried together
Like children stepping through gigantic weather
Toward some adventure, afraid to speak on pain
Of slipping back to yesterday again.