FLOOD BURIAL by SHERARD VINES

THE great arcs spluttered and shifted blue to orange,
The sky looked greyly, but the shop-lights glared,
And free men and women, their workaday over,
Strolled along the pavements, and loitered, and stared;
Down from the streets, and across the sobbing river
To the town-skirts aflood with February rain
I passed; and soon I met a man staring at the darkness,
The moon smote his face white, and it was white with pain --
White as the weather-gnawed bones, and the flood-foam,
Was the mask of this man, with his two ember eyes.
He laughed; and the fingers of the wind took his laughter
And twisted it sorry, and throttled it to sighs.
And he said, "I am madness; the blood in my bosom
Is the milk of the moon I have sucked since yesternight;
I took no fear of jealousy nor dark red anger,
But looked on an evil thing, and went mad for fright.
I saw her lying still there, very still and huddled,
I say it was a queer thing to see the life sped;
Never looked on dead folk, till she fell back limply
With the dust in her tresses, and the dirt for her bed.
* * * * *
In the rare times of summer she walked in her garden,
That praised God with flowers by the white road-side;
The smell of them wandered out at evening to meet you
Near great elms full of wind, hissing like the tide;
And there she would linger on her red brick pathway
And listen to the first owls, and see the last flame
Drop from west heaven; there surely I would come to her
Striding and singing, and would call her sweet name.
Moths flickered gleamingly from apple-tree to paddock,
Her light dress would shine, and her voice laugh clear;
I would take her in my two arms -- quiet, too, she lay in them,
And kiss her mouth as dumb as death, and say she was my dear.
She gave me her roses, her marigolds and lilies
Wet with the thunder-rain, clean with the wind;
And now I would pluck flowers to set at her grave-head --
Pluck the milky stars down, the palest I can find;
Or the great black lilies that grow along the river,
In the mud of that river that creeps out of Hell
(They would scream as you picked them, and struggle as you wreathed them,
And sully the night with their terrible smell).
Now it was a night ago I took her from her garden --
Took her to the town here (would God, had never been!)
I mind how I wrapped a grey woollen scarf about her,
For the stars were like lancets, and the night blowing keen.
She clung to my arm, and I felt the life within her
Leap up and throb with a measure-maze of joy;
We swung along the pavement with our heels budding pinions,
And I called her 'love-child,' and she called me 'boy.'
Here, where she touched me, the fire ran and tingled
On this right arm of mine, and life was very good,
For I felt like a god -- it was she that made me holy
With her shadowy eyes and shapen womanhood.
For two hot hours that night I lay back and watched her
Laughing and sobbing her heart out at the play,
And I said to my soul, 'Ah, soul, a little patience,
A little time of waiting; it is long before day.'
I laughed to my soul as the last chords of music
Fell from the strings and the yellow-mouthed brass,
And triumphing took her out nightward and streetward
Drunk with joy, but recking not this that came to pass.
There went a man by us with his fine bold swagger,
Right into her eyes he looked, and passed with great free strides;
And she, while she held my arm, leaned back toward him,
Parted her red lips and smiled; then he with fists to sides
Swung round for a moment and grinned her his answer;
(Verily made Satan a true master-move;
I think that I had seen him flaming through the sky-ways).
Straitly I was on the man; after him I drove
Fist, and smashed his wincing face; down he went a-sprawling,
I stood and stared at crimson suns that danced to and fro;
The filth was on his coat as he slunk away, the coward,
Vanished; then I caught on her, for it was time to go.
I took her from the lamps, and she trembled and kept silent,
I bit my teeth together, and heard my blood fly,
Till we came to the waste land here, where the flood was lapping;
Then we stood and said no word, but waited, she and I.
She looked up and whimpered, 'What will you do to me?'
'What will you do to me?' I mocked back again;
(A cloud hurried over to hide it from the Watchers
And dimmed their bright vision with a veiling of rain).
Well then I knew the fury and strength of my muscles,
Stretched arms toward her for a last caress,
To snatch the young life from her glorious bosom;
She could do no more than cower, and caught away her dress.
I must hold that white throat like the stalk of a blossom,
And stepped out to do the thing; but this was not to be.
She shuddered and swayed, and her great eyes glittered,
Sank to sleep for ever. It was pitiful to see
The fright cast the soul of her into wind and darkness;
Sure, I saw it whirl like a pennant of smoke,
And wreathe up swiftly, with joy in the moving,
And opal and amber seemed therein; and now it broke
Like a bubble at flood-tide on the shingle of the star-beach,
And the doors of my heart burst, and let dim strangers in,
Shadows of the moonbeams. I lifted her, and brought her,
Singing at my task now, or praying for her sin,
That it might not be remembered -- that the white books in heaven
No angels should mar with the red script of doom.
Then I found a man's spade, and revelled at digging,
To hollow four-square for her a little sleeping-room.
There I laid her quietly; and brown the oozing water
Stained her light silken clothes, and draggled all her hair.
So I sweated to dig it in; and you shall never find it,
This house of loam, save that one night you see me dancing there
The Dance of the Dead; I shall wear my white and purple,
And burn purple lanterns at the head and the feet;
And sing (if I can sing her wanton soul from heaven)
Rare songs they taught me, wandering and sweet.
But I shall never sing her back to her cold white body,
I shall never sing the Sojourners out of my breast
Till the Last Judgment leaps out of some morning,
And this world is stricken, and burns into the West.
My hair will grow long, and my nails like daggers,
And little children cry for fear as I come and go
Before she is with me in the long sweet meadows
Where herbs of cleanly healing plentiful grow.
There shall creep the sick souls, and mine shall creep with them,
And there she shall come to me, and give me holy meat,
And the kind God will laugh to us and bid us 'good welcome!'
And the cruel God we will tread under our feet."

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