Margot, sad child of many dreams
Awoke to find it was no sleep—
Drowned in one fair-eyed form
After another, smothered by pale winds
That held no storm to her bright candle,
Yet she persevered in love—an only child,
Forsaken, yes; given to its decay, no.
At least no one knew, or could know
Those childish fantasies that were to shake the apple tree.
One more, one patient moment more, she said.
—There is a struggle could be told
Or a question: Will the seed of her years
Culminate in carnations within her
Ripe eyes? A perilous road: yet, many times
Those who caused her young life to split
Brought one split to too many
And sang her glass to penny pieces.
No matter; she would put herself together once again.
********
When the sky draws sighs around it
And all small birds drive gusts beneath their wings
And leaves scatter to the dust which makes
Next autumn's compost, then she, folly-ridden,
Walks around the river's edge in moonlight,
Sees a dim connection between the stars and her blood
Between the sea and her tousled hair
Where her fate lies on a peculiar chopping-block
And the ax-man is her furies.
She hears a bell toll mournful midnight
In her brain? between her tear-brimmed eyes?
Or was it of the world? She must go back
Away from this patient grass, filled with wind,
Swaying like a hip in her imagination
That beckons to her with an alluring green—
Back to violent wonder at her daylight life
A worrying connection with societal faces
That really see no focus in their sphere of gaze.
Far away from this place, she thinks,
May be a lovely island-mind on a shore
Of its random devising—a shore of coarse pebbles
Whose feel to slippery feet yet stays the touch
Of love, with him, her companion, trodding
Like a white statue beside her
Into the perilous sea of white and night.
All this happens in her soul only
And yet I wonder if my ink is more real
Than that foam. When nearly full-grown,
In hothouse bloom, Margot dived a dive
Once more into her angel land of green,
Then nearly gave it up forever, many times:
She strapped up her acted dreams,
Would send them to one who, she thought,
Cared; suddenly would feel free
While something beckoned from beyond
Her world, calling like the roar of the sea.
The universe, in tidal roll, would sing to her
As she stood, in strong winds, like a queen
On a cliff; one leap outward, upward—
Would strong hands support her,
Pull her up through a warm mist
To some other green? She thought not.
She had obligations; she had curiosity still
For her present dream: and would turn her back
To the gale; back to grief, and perhaps, a friend.
********
There is no love, there is no light,
There is no veil to clothe the pain of day;
There is no way to cause a single delay
In the underground currents of time
Try though she, or we, may. Her brave gait throbs
To catch up—yet the tide is too swift
And left behind, with the relics
Of her mortality, she scoops the sea
And hides away in the sea-shells on the shore.
—jim sloman, november 17, 1964
|
