Šrift:Väiksem АаSuurem Aa
PORTRAIT OF MME. HYSSAIN
To
John Darby
THEÂTRE DU NORD
Tashkend
She was tired to tears, and yet there were no tears,
Only the dead seas of indifference
Meeting the languors of a nerveless sense,
For she had played the rôles for twenty years.
The queen called for her satins, while the drab
Demanded love, and the wild hunger tore;
The woman raged to touch the flame once more,
But the worn-out emotions could not stab.
There were the thousand parts she had essayed,
And the three thousand gowns that she had worn.
Into the ragbag each frock found its flight,
Crumpled and ravished of a film-proud shade,
And every script is wandering forlorn,
Gnawed by the mirage of an opening night.
PORTRAIT: IN MEMORIAM
To
Hugh Campbell
FAILURE AT FORTY
He saw there was no choice to left or right —
Time that had marked him for the least of sages
Pointed the hour, and several blotted pages
Stood witness to the struggle in the night.
Behind him lay a happiness that might
Have made him shine a figure through the ages;
Before him loomed a toiling at mean wages,
Alternative to sinking out of sight.
This much was sure – he never need retrace;
The leagues that he had travelled were an ending.
There wound no footpath to a sunlit place,
Where he might nurse his dreams, with peace attending.
No promised joy would quicken the day's pace,
Nor write the past a blunder still worth mending.
PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN AND
A LADY
To
Enid Welsh
ASPENS AT CRESHEIM
She had become a stranger suddenly,
Just as all men were strangers; then he knew
Why she must be an alien – even she!
Since there was nought her human love could do
To give him the last access to her soul.
Returning came his years as wholly vain —
Repeated payment of inutile toll
To reach a shrine he would not seek again.
It scarcely left him sad to find how wrong
Had been his vision of won womanhood —
This yearning ache that he had held so long
For a full mingling of their separate blood.
Freed, solitary now, with unscared eyes
He gazed anew at life safe from surprise!
PORTRAIT OF MICHAEL PETER
To
Fania Marinoff
BIRTHDAY PIECE NO. 2
There is what is and what there is is fair,
But most is yet to come to what is here;
Here is the most to come from out a year,
For from the year there comes all there is there.
Song for the minnow and a crystal pool,
And all is said of all there was to say,
Yet all must say the all, since every day
A nuptial kiss the wise man gives a fool.
An ear of corn from the blind red sunburnt earth
Blandly lies in the sun divinely green,
Disowning what the earth and sun have done.
Kisses and corn and a pool to crown the birth,
With once to come what never before has been,
And here is there what there is here begun.