Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ENEMIES, by JOHN FREEMAN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ENEMIES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: As fish that take the motion of the sea
Last Line: But god who made me so?
Subject(s): Death; Enemies; Finality; Hearing; Love - Unrequited; Self; Sight; Touch (sense); Winter; Dead, The


I. SIGHT

As Fish that take the motion of the sea,
Or otters the dark heaving of the stream,
Wave-like rippling,
And but a moment slide where pale lights gleam;

So pouring through the tunnel of your sight
I find but images reflected there,
Or gazing outward
My eyes see with your seeing everywhere.

Natural sight is gone. Confused with love
I see not fair things fair except you see:
A mortal stigma
Disturbs my vision with dark necromancy.

Colours are as you name them; things admired
In seeing's infancy are now contemned.
I make obeisance
To idols whose rude shape had made me ashamed.

And I, alack, am meanly gratified,
Thinking it riches to be made so poor,
Seduced so utterly
I scarce remember what I was before.

—But no! It is not you, it is my eyes
Seduced me and still hold me in their bond;
Eyes are my enemy,
Teasing me with false hues and semblance fond.

I look, and then my mind as by a spell
Is laid asleep. The seasons' hurrying show
On thoughts sepulchral
Falls like narcotic flowers; the ebb and flow

Of coloured months, the shape of hills, and trees
Like Gods—forms, faces coveted, the advance
Of serpent figures
Playing a visible air in supple dance;

Or purer, happier play of gloom and shine
Of cave-like, hermit trees and sunny meadows;
Or moon-snow sprinkled
Sparsely mid the black snow of willow shadows—

These, these entrance my sense and blind the spirit.
And if my eyelids shut, images wake,
Like quick procession
Of heathen crowds that to the Altar take

Captives anointed, branch-bound, tossed with flowers
And fumed with censers, smiling to the pyre;
While prayers pursue them,
And some few sad, but most strain towards the fire.

So, though my lids be sealed, myself I see
Bound to the senses' car and scarce afraid
Of that fierce anguish
That's called Delight, whereon my spirit is laid.

Forgive me, spirit despised, that on this altar
Of burning sense your holy limbs have bound.
Shut now my vision,
Let darkness hover like a mist above the ground.

—O proud delusion of the eye and flesh,
Not lightly remembered, never lightly forgot!
Eyes be my servants,
Not wanton lovers wreathing amid my thought.

So, maybe, after discipline of seeing,
Even night's hot flushing dream to discipline
Shall make submission,
Nor one wild memory out of torment whine.

II. HEARING

I HEARD the Fall of Winter, like the ruin
Of some sea-shouldering Fortress that endures
From generation to generation, until
Sapped by loud tides, or age with noiseless paw,
Suddenly sinks the castellated Tower
Into a shroud of tamarisk and thorn,
Making a great noise in the silent span.
So Winter fell, that seemed as never to fall.
I heard the fall, the very moment marked
When with the Winter's ruin silence broke
And shivered in loud fragments on the shoal.

The snow had poured, and lay secure as earth
On buried earth under the grieving stones
By the hill churchyard; heavy as earth the snow,
Day after day lying undisturbed in death.
But a soft air had thinned it secretly
Until it was a mask of Death, not Death
Himself unchangeably.
I looked beneath the noon
Of bright sun and cold air, and now beheld
Dimples of snow in cheeks of crumpled fern
And snowy drifts 'neath huge limbs stretched along
The northern ridge. And now the snow was rippling
Like noisy rain under the eaves, where creepers
Trail their tough combings and drop, drop, drop, drop
A myriad tappings on the greening stones.
Like rain that sings incessant monotony
The melting snow rippled and sang and sang
Of Winter fallen and of another Spring.
Even the rough road was music, and the ditch
By snowy bracken hid lifted up songs
Of Winter fallen, fallen. The copse in sparse
Snow pools now shook and tinkled with the tapping
Of slenderest fingers upon singing wires—
Rain tapping upon new-melted shallow snow.
A mile of snow was now a mile of water,
Bearing the noisy fragments of old Winter
Away to the river and away then to the sea.

Never was music sweeter than these broken
Voices of water falling everywhere.
And by the river's swelling tributary
Pausing, I heard
Far off streams plucking from the ruined stones
Water's solemn tones:
Winter was fallen, fallen, and new green
Already thrust the broken towers between.

Hearing that singing I forgot your voice,
And if you spoke I heard but knew it not:
Your voice that had the old power over me
Still, as when youth and passion ran together,
And everything was strange and sorrow joy
If one but heard the other's voice within
The stumbling words that came but as they could
From lips that had no need of words. Your voice
Lost now its spell; I heard you, and heard not,
For Winter's Tower had fallen, broken its silence,
And singing everywhere fulfilled my ears
With Eden, so I heard no serpent voice
Entreating; and in amplitude of sense
A while was free from the captivity
Of sensual hearing.

Winter's Tower had fallen.

III. TOUCH

ON water, when the white pear-blossom falls
Shivering, or on wet sparkling grass,
Or snowflakes wandering at intervals
Of sun and gloom, to cling to creviced walls
Like frozen birds or white moths numb with winter:—

A touch light as a flower or flake of snow
That stirs the sense to dream though feeling slept.
Eyes may see not nor hearing hear, but O
Her fingers' touch, that makes the Arctic glow
With June's swift sunrise and delayed sunsetting!

Half innocent, half guilty, then upstart,
Like rebels wavering on which side to fight,
Every quick sentience, while the drumming heart
Beats and beats on. And the soul sits apart
Indignant or abashed, shrinking in silence.

If but her hand had never touched my hand,
If but her lips had never on my lips fall'n,
Then might I pulseless and unshaking stand
Nor sink ashamed at the severe demand
Whispered at last by that indignant spirit.

Might not the senses battle against deceit,
Against the deceitful simpleness of Love?
Like Saxon against smooth Norman all the heat
Of summer day and eve, and only beat
Slowly, by subtle-armed and sly invaders?

But at her fingers' faint approach they all—
Traitorous senses—leap to welcome her.
Why will not Judgment yield and with them fall,
Why sits she apart as though an Arctic wall
Rose icy against the far hues of Antarctic?

Body to body leans, and now delight
Shows innocence—a germ of guilt at core.
Now every gleam is crushed from shamefast sight,
Now every sound or sigh is muted quite.
She is fire to fire, in her fire I am smoking.

Take your hands from me, and I quick escape
From this deluding servitude of love.
You do not love me, but your curving shape
Loves mine as I love yours from heel to nape,
Though eyes and face and form be shut in darkness.

Eyes could resist you, hearing could be deaf—
It is your hand that strangles all but flesh.
Each sense beside is frailly poised, and brief
In motion, dying with the first Autumn leaf:
Remains the strong coarse tyranny of touch.

EPILOGUE

THESE three, Sight, Hearing, Touch,
Have I loved overmuch,
Thinking in them alone
My spirit might find its own
Energy and delight.
But in the night
They sleep, those false allies,
Smiling enemies.
Then to see, hear, embrace
That which no semblance has
To shape and sound miscalled
Real, and unappalled
Endure an hour, a night,
Supreme, severe Delight!

But as in cold high lands
The Arab sleeps on sands
Crusted with sudden frost,
And wakes to find him host
To serpent curled beside,
Heat-loving; so, if I hide
Myself from sense the form
Abhorred slides near, that Worm
Called Death, to sun him by
My spirit's agony.
Who shall deliver me?
I pray, and shuddering hang
Watching that trembling fang,
The lidless eye,
Death's mottled livery.
Who shall deliver, who
But God who made me so?





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