Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, REPETITIONS, by HAZEL HALL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

REPETITIONS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I plunge at the rearing hours
Last Line: (who has not waked may not yet sleep.)
Subject(s): Sewing; Spring


I plunge at the rearing hours --
Life is a steed of pride,
Who so high above me towers
I cannot mount and ride.

TWO SEWING

The wind is sewing with needles of rain;
With shining needles of rain
It stitches into the thin
Cloth of earth -- in,
In, in, in.
(Oh, the wind has often sewed with me! --
One, two, three.)

Spring must have fine things
To wear, like other springs.
Of silken green the grass must be
Embroidered. (One and two and three.)
Then every crocus must be made
So subtly as to seem afraid
Of lifting color from the ground.
And after crocuses the round
Heads of tulips, and all the fair
Intricate garb that Spring will wear
The wind must sew with needles of rain,
With shining needles of rain
Stitching into the thin
Cloth of earth -- in,
In, in, in --
For all the springs of futurity.
(One, two, three.)

INSTRUCTION

My hands that guide a needle
In their turn are led
Relentlessly and deftly,
As a needle leads a thread.

Other hands are teaching
My needle; when I sew
I feel the cool, thin fingers
Of hands I do not know.

They urge my needle onward,
They smooth my seams, until
The worry of my stitches
Smothers in their skill.

All the tired women,
Who sewed their lives away,
Speak in my deft fingers
As I sew today.

THREE SONGS FOR SEWING

I

A fibre of rain on a window-pane
Talked to a stitching thread:
In the heaviest weather I hold together
The weight of a cloud!

To the fibre of rain on a window-pane
The talkative stitches said:
I hold together with the weight of a feather
The heaviest shroud!

II

My needle says: Don't be young,
Holding visions in your eyes,
Tasting laughter on your tongue! --
Be very old and very wise,
And sew a good seam up and down
In white cloth, red cloth, blue and brown.

My needle says: What is youth
But eyes drunken with the sun,
Seeing farther than the truth;
Lips that call, hands that shun
The many seams they have to do
In white cloth, red cloth, brown and blue!

III

One by one, one by one,
Stitches of the hours run
Through the fine seams of the day;
Till like a garment it is done
And laid away.

One by one the days go by,
And suns climb up and down the sky;
One by one their seams are run --
As Time's untiring fingers ply
And life is done.

COWARDICE

Discomfort sweeps my quiet, as a wind
Leaps at trees and leaves them cold and thinned.
Not that I fear again the mastery
Of winds, for holding my indifference dear
I do not feel illusions stripped from me.
And yet this is a fear --

A fear of old discarded fears, of days
That cried out at irrevocable ways.
I cower for my own old cowardice --
For hours that beat upon the wind's broad breast
With hands as impotent as leaves are: this
Robs my new hour of rest.

I thought my pride had covered long ago
All the old scars, like broken twigs in snow;
I thought to luxuriate in rich decay,
As some far-seeing tree upon a hill;
But, startled into shame for an old day,
I find that I am but a coward still.

FLASH

I am less of myself and more of the sun;
The beat of life is wearing me
To an incomplete oblivion,
Yet not to the certain dignity
Of death. (They cannot even die
Who have not lived.)
The hungry jaws
Of space snap at my unlearned eye,
And time tears in my flesh like claws.

If I am not life's, if I am not death's,
Out of chaos I must re-reap
The burden of untasted breaths.
(Who has not waked may not yet sleep.)





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