Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ELEGY: THE HAMBONE AND THE HEART; TO PAVEL TCHELITCHEW, by EDITH SITWELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ELEGY: THE HAMBONE AND THE HEART; TO PAVEL TCHELITCHEW, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Here in this great house in the barrack square
Last Line: The worm where once the kiss clung, and that last less chasm-deep farewell.


A Girl speaks:
"HERE in this great house in the barrack square,
The plump and heart-shaped flames all stare
Like silver empty hearts in wayside shrines.
No flame warms ever, shines,
Nor may I ever tire.

Outside, the dust of all the dead,
Thick on the ground is spread
Covering the tinsel flowers
And pretty dove-quick hours,

Among the round leaves, Cupid-small
Upon the trees so wise and tall.
O dust of all the dead, my heart has known
That terrible Gehenna of the bone
Deserted by the flesh, -- with Death alone!

Could we foretell the worm within the heart,
That holds the households and the parks of heaven,
Could we foretell that land was only earth,
Would it be worth the pain of death and birth,
Would it be worth the soul from body riven?

For here, my sight, my sun, my sense,
In my gown white as innocence,
I walked with you. Ah, that my sun
Loved my heart less than carrion.

Alas! I dreamed that the bare heart could feed
One who with death's corruption loved to breed, --
This Dead, who fell, that he might satisfy
The hungry grave's blind need, --

That Venus stinking of the Worm!
Deep in the grave, no passions storm:
The worm's a pallid thing to kiss;
She is the hungering grave that is

Not filled, that is not satisfied!
Not all the sunken Dead that lies
Corrupt there, chills her luxuries.

And fleet, and volatile her kiss,
For all the grave's eternities!
And soon another Dead shall slake
Her passion, till that dust, too, break.

Like little pigeons small dove-breasted flowers,
Were cooing of far-off bird-footed showers,
My coral neck was pink as any rose
Or like the sweet pink honey-wax that grows,
Or the fresh coral beams of clear moonlight,
Where leaves like small doves flutter from our sight.

Beneath the twisted rose-boughs of the heat
Our shadows walked like little foreigners,
Like small unhappy children dressed in mourning,
They listened by the serres-chaudes waterfalls
But could not understand what we were saying,
Nor could we understand their whispered warning, --
There by the waterfalls we saw the Clown,
As tall as Heaven's golden town,
And in his hands, a Heart, and a Hambone
Pursued by loving vermin; but deserted, lone,
The Heart cried to my own:

The Heart speaks:
Young girl, you dance and laugh to see,
The thing that I have come to be.
Oh, once this heart was like your own.
Go, pray that yours may turn to stone.

This is the murdered heart of one
Who bore and loved an only son.
For him, I worked away mine eyes,
My starved breast could not still his cries.

My little lamb, of milk bereft . . .
My heart was all that I had left.
Ah, could I give thee this for food,
My lamb, thou knowest that I would.

Yet lovely was the summer light
Those days . . . I feel it through this night.
Once Judas had a childish kiss,
And still his mother knows but this.

He grew to manhood. Then one came,
False-hearted as Hell's blackest shame

To steal my child from me, and thrust
The soul I loved down to the dust.

Her hungry wicked lips were red
As that dark blood my son's hand shed;
Her eyes were black as Hell's own night;
Her ice-cold breast was winter-white.

I had put by a little gold
To bury me when I was cold.
That fanged wanton kiss to buy,
My son's love willed that I should die.

The gold was hid beneath my bed, --
So little, and my weary head
Was all the guard it had. They lie
So quiet and still who soon must die.

He stole to kill me while I slept,
The little son who never wept,
But that I kissed his tears away
So fast, his weeping seemed but play.

So light his footfall. Yet I heard
Its echo in my heart and stirred
From out my weary sleep to see
My child's face bending over me.

The wicked knife flashed serpent-wise,
Yet I saw nothing but his eyes
And heard one little word he said,
Go echoing down among the Dead.

* * * * *

They say the Dead may never dream.
But yet I heard my pierced heart scream
His name within the dark. They lie
Who say the Dead can ever die.

For in the grave I may not sleep,
For dreaming that I hear him weep.
And in the dark, my dead hands grope
In search of him. O barren hope!

I cannot draw his head to rest,
Deep down upon my wounded breast;
He gave the breast that fed him well
To suckle the small worms of Hell.

The little wicked thoughts that fed
Upon the weary helpless Dead,
They whispered o'er my broken heart, --
They struck their fangs deep in the smart.

"The child she bore with bloody sweat
And agony has paid his debt.
Through that bleak face the stark winds play,
The crows have chased his soul away, --

His body is a blackened rag
Upon the tree, -- a monstrous flag,"
Thus one worm to the other saith,
Those slow mean servitors of Death,

They chuckling, said: "Your soul grown blind
With anguish, is the shrieking wind
That blows the flame that never dies
About his empty lidless eyes."

I tore them from my heart, I said:
"The life-blood that my son's hand shed --
That from my broken heart outburst,
I'd give again to quench his thirst.

He did no sin. But cold blind earth
The body was that gave him birth.
All mine, all mine the sin. The love
I bore him was not deep enough."

* * * * *

The Girl speaks:
O crumbling heart, I too, I too have known
The terrible Gehenna of the bone
Deserted by the flesh. . . . I too have wept
Through centuries like the deserted bone
To all the dust of all the Dead to fill
That place. . . . It would not be the dust I loved.

For underneath the lime-tree's golden town
Of Heaven, where he stood, the tattered Clown
Holding the screaming Heart and the Hambone,
You saw the Clown's thick hambone, life-pink carrion,
That Venus perfuming the summer air.
Old pigs, starved dogs, and long worms of the grave
Were rooting at it, nosing at it there.

Then you, my sun, left me and ran to it
Through pigs, dogs, grave-worms' ramparted tall waves.

* * * * *

I know that I must soon have the long pang
Of grave-worms in the heart. . . . You are so changed,
How shall I know you from the other long
Anguishing grave-worms? I can but foretell
The worm where once the kiss clung, and that last less chasm-deep farewell.





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