Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LIFE GOES ON, by CALE YOUNG RICE


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LIFE GOES ON, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Wade ross turned from vesta his wife to the window
Last Line: On the beach-curve by a flood-tide spent and forgotten.
Subject(s): Grief; Guilt; Life; Love; Marriage; Memory; Sorrow; Sadness; Weddings; Husbands; Wives


Wade Ross turned from Vesta his wife to the window,
Love and guilt and desire to keep the thought of his guilt
Hid from her eyes -- or the sight she had without eyes --
Sent sharp feelers of apprehension backward toward her.
He looked down over his land to the foggy coastline,
Along which plumed breakers marched shoreward,
To writhe their foamy ranks out on the sands,
And felt rebellion in him. So in his heart he cried,
"If it is true life was born in the slime yonder,
Between the tides and the rocks that make the spine of the world,
Am I indeed a slimy beast for using it
As I have -- or have wished to -- for its own purpose?
No... and again no! And yet..." He stopped, for behind him
He felt the frail face of Vesta stir in the shadow
Cast by a spur of the Santa Inez that beetled over
His ranch house of stone, built ten years before
For her and the lusty children he meant her to give him.

The day had been a day of brooding and breeding,
Of good and ill that had brought forth each after its kind.
But to Wade it had seemed ill only -- with something yet
Left in its torn womb that fate had not ripped out;
Though overcharged of mood, and restless because of it,
He half craved calamity as his eye swept
The uneasy immensity of the Pacific that lay
Beyond him in the twilight -- like another immensity
Without shore he had made for himself within himself.
For down below, on the beach curve three miles leeward
Where houses were strewn like abalone shells cast up
By an undue tide, was that of Denise his mistress,
Which now he doubly shunned to look toward
For fear the face behind him might see his thought upon it --
And his purpose of walking the sands again tonight secretly
Under the burning passion points of the high stars.

The gray sunset was passing slowly beyond the waters
Like a funeral pomp toward calm dissolution.
And as he watched, his mind, without volition,
Placed at the dark catafalque center of it
A form that he did not name or see shaped forth clearly
yet knew that he wanted there -- a trick of thought that stirred him
With sudden self-disgust and the confused question,
"What is obsessing me? Why, like a puling poet,
Do I put death or the trappings of it everywhere?
Before I went to Denise I didn't... Before? God!
It's always that! Hadn't I right to go to her?
Hasn't a man a right to children -- not to grow old
And die without a son to graft his name on the future?
I've lived with Vesta ten years -- and the house is empty.
A woman without a child at her breast is not a woman,
Or grows, in time, meaningless -- even a Vesta...
Though it is lies if I say I sought the house on the beach
For that only. The red gold hair of Denise,
And the white limbs and the hot laughing life of her
Have gotten into me like Spring, like a bewitching.
So am I worse than God if..." He was going to add,
"If I want to sweep all uncreative things away
And live as rich as a God..." but a poignant voice
Of conscience suddenly shot a naked answer,
A steely accusation, that struck quivering in him:
"What you want's to be rid of Vesta; you want her to die!"
And the shock of the accusal echoed so loud in him,
The shame of it, sprangling through each vein and fiber,
That fearing Vesta had heard he turned about quickly
As if to meet her mortally wounded bosom.
But when he saw that she only started up fearfully,
As if her flesh had sensed misfortune hanging over her,
And turned a warm quivering flood of brightness
Into the amber shade of a lamp near her,
He hurriedly sought to cover his guilt in the quick rags
Of thin querulous words, rasping out hoarsely,
As she stood, lips parted, and eyes dark with fear,
"I'm sick of the house -- and all in it. I'm going out somewhere.
Nothing fares right -- or thrives here, that I want to thrive.
The fruit rots -- or the wheat.... Three foals died today...
I sold the mares to Pedro -- though the scoundrel cheats us
Penny and pound.... What is the use of hoping or trying?
Why do we live? The world's too big -- or too little,
I don't know which -- and it doesn't matter. It's empty both ways:
And emptiness is the worst prison of any to bear,
For it hasn't even walls that a man can beat and shatter --
Or hope to, in the end.... Do not look at me so...
I won't be back until late -- perhaps tomorrow."

Whereon, having taken crop and cap from the wall,
Where he had hung them ready, he would have left her so,
Had not such a bewildering pain sprung to her eyes,
Such pleading and foreboding, that a memory rose
Of the night when he, her lover, had come like a wind from the hills
And swept her with his youth and passion from her home
In the city where her beauty had been the desire of many.
Yet such is the heart of man that, while he felt remorse
And fear again lest she should glimpse his hidden wish
To be rid of her, and his shame was such that feigning again
He would have donned ragged words, had she herself not quickly,
With hands folded across her body as if to protect it,
Said, "Don't go, Wade, again tonight. I don't ask often.
I want you to be free and happy. But I'm afraid --
Or not well, maybe. It's foolish. I shouldn't speak of it,
And wouldn't, but a dismay sinks me, as if something
Were going to happen -- some misfortune, about to crash
Over us, over the ranch, over everything.
Stay in tonight, if you don't mind. You do love me?
There's something I want to tell you... something I'm sure of now...
Wade... what is the matter?" The dread her question carried
Was drawn out of her by his mien. But it fell like a spark
On the tinder of his intolerance; for he saw thwarted
His love-night on the star-symphonied sands with Denise.
"Can't you ask anything else than 'What is the matter?'" he cried,
"When I say I'm sick of the ranch? I tell you a man
Wants more than going nowhere or grubbing the soil
For a wealth that isn't in it -- or that sun or rain
Can wash away or ruin -- or that an epidemic
Can..."
"What, Wade? What does a man want?"
Her eyes stood before him, firm as questioning angels
That he at last must answer, and that demanded further:
"And tell me what you want? Where do you go so often
Of nights? ... What house is it you look toward
Down on the beach yonder when you stand at the window?"
And instantly with the question started such a tide
Of crimson up his cheek -- such chagrin at a prescience
Pushing out tentacles of discovery toward him --
That, cutting at them, he cried, "You've taken to spying then?"
And, seeing them fall low before the scythe of his words,
"I go to a house I want to go to." Then, more reckless,
For desperation is driven ever by need
To ease or end itself. "I go to the house
Of another woman. A man must find ..."
"What, Wade?"
The angels of her eyes seemed to shake as she asked,
And all her body, as if it had been a shrine smitten.
But he, ridden unheedingly by his demon, answered,
"For generations the Ross blood, mine -- you know it! --
Has run red and living, never a sterile house
Here or anywhere to fail of giving a son
To seed the future with its strain of pride and passion.
Love is much, and the vows of love. And I won't say
You haven't been a good wife. But ..." In his pause for words
The angels fell slowly, mistily, out of her eyes,
As if swept down by tears from unsealed fountains in her.
But he cried on against the strangling sight of them,
"I want children -- even if they are not yours.
I want a son, and since ..." He saw she was taking the words
As arrows into her heart, and that she let them stay,
As if to draw them out would draw her life out with them.
Then . . . "Yes," she said at length, "Children. I understand.
Children -- and a mistress. And now that I ... But no ..."
She checked the tears and folding the shawl she wore about her
With a high pride, like one who must conceal something
That never must be known now, she said again
In a voice chill as that of a departing spirit
Utterly wounded by earth, "I understand. But children
Are not begotten thus; they are only slain so."
After which she went from the room, leaving upon
Its amber glow a sense of wrong done so heavy
That Wade stood as if embalmed in the maze of it.

II

A eucalyptus sighing dry in the wind without,
A willow's leafy withes sighing wet and soft,
Venus slanting silvery down to dip her beauty
Under the western waters at the world's end,
Sufficed to dissolve the maze that fixed Wade for a moment.
Then crushing his cap on his head he strode, with teeth ground,
Out of the house to the stable-yard where he called Pedro.
The Spaniard sprang like a prairie-dog out of his hole.
"Saddle Reno. A tight girth," he ordered, beating
His crop on his boot as he stood in the black shadow
Of the spur that towered over the house with edged tallness.
Pushing fear out of him then and the hands of restraint
That hovered at his heart, he let his passion
And want of Denise mount -- as he mounted soon
The pied mare who scented his mood and quivered sharply
When he reined her about and headed toward the house on the beach --
Dim now in the growing darkness surging seaward.
Yet had he heard Vesta come to the door and cry
Again, "Wade, don't go," perhaps his fate would have faltered.
But he only heard the flinty thrill of hooves under him,
And the high orchestrated stars beginning to send him
The first strain of the sweet blissful sin he intended;
And he only saw Denise, red-gold of hair and laughing,
With promise of children in a body too beautiful for them.
So down to the town and on through it to the sands beyond
He sped, trampling thick-leaved plants that lived on the brine;
Then on still, to a light, to a house, to the door of his mistress.
The foam-raveled black immensity of the Pacific,
With Venus sunk now, and that other vastity
Between himself and Vesta, made him shudder a moment
And almost turn back. But a breaker of music
Suddenly swelled with passion from within the house
And ran out over the sands and over the rhythmic sea
And over him like a counter-tide of sudden desire,
And swayed his brain and limbs with pulsing syncopation.
Denise had guests. Good.... There would be dance and drink ...
Then he would lie in her arms and tell her that he was hers --
That they would go away and leave the ranch to Vesta ...
Vesta? ... He looked back toward the house shadowed
By the sharp spur and had that chill vision again
Of the catafalque -- but not on the cloudy west now:
In her chamber she lay upon a white bed.
And, seeing it, a memory of the years he had loved her
Shook his heart. But the breaking music again billowed
Out to him and floated the image of Denise
Through him with a ravishment not to be resisted.
Hitching, he went to the door. Denise was in the arms
Of a partner with whom her body swayed in the music's tide
As a sea-weed on the sea-floor; but edging in
He soon felt the ecstasy of her in his arms.
And, merged in the tide with her, while her eyes lit
The deep-enveloping dance-waters, he touched her lips
And let himself be borne out beyond all caring.
They danced and drank -- and danced again and drank again
'Til the night drifted dawnward. Then: "Denise," he said,
In the shell of her ear with the sea-voice of his passion,
"I have thrown the world to the winds for you -- Vesta even.
When will you toss your falterings away for me?"
"Isn't this good enough?" she answered, leading him out
Under a palm that opened its fan against the sky
And waved beauty from off the stars with plumy fronds.
But he: "No ... I want children -- your children.
Vesta has not given me any -- and you have a body ..."
"Made for joy and freedom, Wade, not for the fetters
Of child-bearing. And too ... I am jealous of Vesta.
You only come to me because ..." The music seethed
Suddenly through the window again and flowed over them,
Floating Denise off her feet, "Come," she cried,
Plunging her arms into it as a swimmer might,
"I want to dance -- again, again!"
They went to the house,
He following after her like a leaf on the wind;
But at the door, cap in hand, was Pedro now,
Waiting, inquiring, looking for them. "Senor ..." he said.
And Wade, seeing the greasy apparition, was startled
By the gnarly white face and the jetty forelock of it.
"Why do you come here?" he asked, loathing
The smell of earth and stable-yard the Spaniard brought
With him into the purlieus of his paradise.
And then, as Denise's poised beauty stood scenting
The course of the scene with qualms of doubt, "Get out," he said;
"And never find me again -- unless I want finding."
"But, senor ..." the Spaniard cringed insistent, not obeying:
Which caused Wade's shaggy head to shake and Denise
To laugh mockingly, then deride with gibing jealousy:
"Friend wife wants him at home, doesn't she? Well, I'm going
In to dance, dance -- and let him take his orders!"
And so, with head high and lips proud and body
A luring curve of draped amorous loveliness,
She would have drawn Wade back with her into the music,
Had Pedro not uttered, "But, senor ... she is dying!"
Seven stark syllables that fell so heavily
Down Wade that he stood as if gutted by them.
Which Pedro did not fail to see and so, advantaged,
To add, with all the Latin in him tasting tragedy
Beyond tragedy, "Senor, she is with child; my wife
Have see it -- t'ree month. But something have go wrong."
And this he would have blazoned with more color and zest
Of intimate detail. But into the husk of Wade --
For husk he now was, with all strength purged from him --
There rushed such fear, ferment, and grief and guilt and agony,
Such memories of the girl he had wed, the wife he had loved,
Such understanding of all her beauty and long braveness,
That mind, heart and soul seemed to be fusing in him.

So without word or look at Denise, who stared at him
As at a man God-transformed and God-stricken
Beyond use or comprehension, he turned to his horse,
Stumbled up, blind and trembling, into the saddle,
Then with a sob that wrenched his throat stranglingly,
Like a noose thrown by a just fate about it,
He wheeled and spurred back through the gray of the dawn-pallor
That mantled the mute east, to what awaited him.

III

There is a destiny that cannot be made by hands,
There is a destiny that cannot be stayed by hands,
There is a destiny under, a destiny over us,
A darker destiny that we make within us.
All of these were to be Wade's before the sands
Of his life, sifting through the slow hour-glass of time,
Sank from the heaven, where they had been, to hopeless hell.
He spurred and sped, the sob still noosing his throat, his eyes
Straining toward the spur and the lone house under it.
The April air was still, silent with growings.
The earth smelt of night that had slept upon its breast
And now was rising in mists and slipping softly away.
But Wade saw only a form on a bed and heard the cry
Of agony in him: "She will die. You wanted her to.
You made her bier; you laid her upon it; you left her so."
And the noose tightened at his throat until it seemed
That each flinty hoof-beat pounding under him
Would burst brain and vein with torture and retribution.
At length he reached the ranch gate, that hung open
As Pedro in haste had left it and that swung
Sagging as heavy, it seemed to him, as a broken tomb's.
He fell weakly from his saddle, his legs pithy
And prickling with a chill dread and a tense anguish,
Then hurried into the house, and up the stair to her chamber.
"Vesta!" he cried, seeing her lie under the face
Of shrunken Pepita, Pedro's wife, who watched above her.
"Vesta, I'm here ... See; its Wade!" He sank beside her
And took her hand and looked upon her and waited
For answer to his cry, which he heard go wailing
Down the unfathomed dark ways of the unknown
In which her spirit wandered. "Vesta, I'm here; it's Wade!"
But no word came back, no echo, no recognition
Blowing out of the helpless void to which she had drifted.

IV

The end was the beginning, for Wade, of endlessness:
For life goes on, unrelentingly, unappeasably.
She lay so a day and a night -- only a thread
Of breath in her throat slowly stitching the shroud
Of eternity about her; then death broke the thread.
Blindly Wade saw her body laid in the grave
With a few willows about to sigh a thin requiem
Over her, and the sea to chant antiphonals,
Then blindly and wanly he went back to the numb house
That blind and wan received him. On his bed he lay
Days and nights, 'til as a third weary dawn
Was about to find footing to climb over the east,
An earth-shudder, one of the many that quake under
The coast from time to time, caused him to wake thinking
That Vesta was coming back to him out of the tomb.
But fully awake he knew he was only nursing illusion.
He rose then and went out. The world was still the world,
Though not a world for him. But far more void henceforth
Than all in it was the gray house there on the beach,
Which, in the empty years to come,
He, who came to shrink from men and little children,
Looked down on dully, until at last it became
No more indeed than a shell long ago cast up
On the beach-curve by a flood-tide spent and forgotten.





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