Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE EMPTY DAYS, by JOHN GOULD FLETCHER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE EMPTY DAYS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Along the street
Last Line: Slide, one white tear, into the night.


I

Along the street
In the afternoon,
Dismally perched on a crazy cart
That creaks and wobbles dolefully,
With a starved white horse
Between the shafts,
Goes the giver of empty days.

The while he goes he blows his horn.
In the afternoon,
Golden and blue,
It bellows out
Over the world,
It swells unechoing,
Toneless and void.

But the people in the city scarcely stir to listen to it,
They know that he has nothing to offer them at all;
They know that long ago, on some black-visaged instant,
Their lives were crushed, their courage failed;
They have not even tears to weep at his slow passing,
The towers of aspiring reach wearily beyond to silence,
And between them and those towers there passes very slowly
Only the image of another empty day.

Along the street
In the afternoon,
Passes his shadow gaunt as death;
As he sits above
The shafts, and rocks
His crazy head;
But it is not death he sells but days,
Long days, unchanged; grey, futile days.
So no one buys from him any more,
They would all rather have death instead.

To me he has given love that has failed and fallen
Into a soulless, cloudless depth of blue despair;
To me he too has offered
A Dead-Sea husk of memory that burns and dries my throat;
The ashes of opportunity burnt out, of experience shattered,
Drawn from the fires that once beat up and flared about me,
Until my foot no longer kicked a blue glow from their stillness,
Nor a single spark of warmth, nor a pang of misery.

Along the street
In the afternoon,
Blowing his futile horn that tears an ache from my heart --
His trump of doom --
Jogging behind a sickly horse,
And grinning at me,
Goes the giver of empty days.

II

Lonely sea that stretches out millions of curled tossing breakers,
To where my loved one waits;
Sea untravelled, sea that awaits in silence,
Open to me your gates;
Lend me your winds again that to the one I have not forgotten
I may come and take a kiss;
Sea over which the light and shade fall evenly,
Grant me this.

Love has bound us together with scarlet threads of suffering,
Death only will make us twain.
Sea that has forgotten even the cause of its passion,
Tell me again
What white thing is that flitting out there in the distance,
What broken white thing that seeks?
Cold sea gleaming beneath your drifting shadows,
Why do you bare your teeth?

Lonely sea, forgotten, sailless in the morning,
Under unblinking sky;
Sea where the night has stalked weeping and raging with passion,
Into your dawn I fly;
Out over glittering cold inhuman distances,
To the gate where the east displays
Its immense beauty of violet-shrouded silence,
I go from my empty days.

III

The day when they brought the evil news to me,
Was one great turquoise over which the sun
Threw a strange network of golden threads that glinted
On the horizon, held in the cup of the sea;
And after the evil news was brought to me,
I went out to the beach where in the wet
The sun splashed coppery paints over the blue
Curled ruffles of the wave that beat beneath.

The horizon was hung in veils of violet haze;
They enclosed me from the one I sought apart.
I should have stayed with her -- ah, the crape smoke
Of my regrets that blew across the seas!

But I would come again -- a failing wave
After the full-tide mark was left upon the shore!
I had no love, nor hope, nor joy, nor heart;
I only knew, dully, that all was dead;
I only knew, dully, that earth was fair;
I only knew, dully, my toil was lost.

IV

Quite patiently,
Content to wait
Without complaint;
I sit and watch the empty days.

I am as one that is blinded
By marching too long against the sun;
Seeking too lofty cities
That are carven on its face.

Oh, sun of mine, enter my burnt-out heart;
Kindle the altar-fires
Death-flaming in the stillness
Of those black, polished walls.

Quite patiently,
Content to dream,
Without a word
I sit and watch the day grow noon.

Out of the deep blue lake my memories rise;
They follow me beyond the rocky crest
That swings up past the pines,
Where in an empty temple
Once long ago I stood with one
Whom I may never meet again.

Windflowers shatter in the quiet garden;
The asters break their stalks,
The roses crumple, fall.

Quite patiently
Content with death;
Knowing I failed,
I pass through afternoon which is a dream

Dim memories of the morning
Stir and rustle in my heart; --
Where is my day?

A bit of wreckage floated about the seas,
For days on days;
I moulder at last on some sand-pit, unnoted,
And about me settle thoughts, my pale-grey gulls.

Quite patiently,
Content to wait;
I sit and watch the evening star
Slide, one white tear, into the night.





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