Songs of
Kenneth Leslie

List
Halifax Citadel
Prospect Road
Glooscap's Eye
Go, Lank Rover
John Angus
California
Cape Breton Lullaby

BY STUBBORN STARS   continued



There is no secret from the misty mother
mumbling old ballads to the stones that creep
down where Atlantis and many a lost other
slip from earth's memory to her sunless keep.
Tales that were stirring the bright air are stilled
forever in the black silt of her floor;
her caves are choked, her crevasses are filled
with tales of love and after-tales of war.
There is no mountain-top but must come home
to taste the salt against her heaving side,
no crag but is an exiled reef whose foam
flashes a far white longing for her tide.
And with our happy tears and tears of woe
we too shall swell her song with what we know.
 It would be heaven to happen by a room
 and see you both, my well beloved, there,
 whom I have loved against the face of doom,
 each finding in the other something fair,
 as once before, finding that lovely thing
 that I behold now shining from both of you,
 clear impulse of these wounded words that sing
 of tender gray eyes as of brooding blue.
 Just to walk by and see you resting there
 filling the casual time with quiet talk
 of intimate things; it is too much to dare
 to hope for, and I know the wind must mock
 my wish; but even so I wish some day
 you could be taking tea in the old way.
 
The silver herring throbbed thick in my seine,
silver of life, life's silver sheen of glory;
my hands, cut with the cold, hurt with the pain
of hauling the net, pulled the heavy dory,
heavy with life, low in the water, deep
plunged to the gunwale's lips in the stress of rowing,
the pulse of rowing that puts the world to sleep,
world within world endlessly ebbing, flowing.
At length you stood on the landing and you cried,
with quick low cries you timed me stroke on stroke
as I steadily won my way with the fulling tide
and crossed the threshold where the last wave broke
and coasted over the step of water and threw
straight through the air my mooring line to you.
 The cold resistance of your lips was here
 upon my lips, and on my hand your hand
 dropped down and trembled in a frost of fear;
 your eyes were wet and red with reprimand
 against the sharp decree of circumstance
 we had allowed to rob us of our right.
 You would not speak, but plainly in your glance
 I read the truth and knew my shameful plight.
 Green ebbs away, the garden is a dust
 gathering grayness on a coloured cape,
 the stars are futile perforations thrust
 into the night by one who would escape
 this crotched necessity of standing true
 to her while pledging life and love to you.
The day reeled downward from a heavy blow,
the golden day that raced upon the moor.
I saw her there; I missed seeing her go;
my face was bright with her, she seemed so sure,
when the black spruce dragged her beneath the skirt
of the low hill; I would hardly believe
she could be quite away; but there was the hurt
under the side of my heart, and my torn sleeve.
What must I do, now I see she is gone,
as the bit of blue sleeve is gone too?
Each hour of the dark my pain finds its dawn,
and nothing is deeper mine than the missing blue.
What must I do now, what curse can I say
against the coming treason of new day ?
 The waters of my life, lying so still,
 dreaming a stagnant dream of coming light
 that never came, now stir and suddenly spill
 between high narrowing banks that clasp them tight,
 closer and closer clasp them till they run,
 in anger first with froth and ferment blowing
 for freedom lost, then little by little won
 into the silent business of swift going.
 Strong, I am strong, and yet no more resist
 your spirit that is channeled deep to mine;
 For courage in your quiet lips has kissed
 my lips to courage as with solemn wine.
 Now, though I have no choice, I choose to go
 and find you where your salt tides ebb and flow.
 
The chart is doubtful for the course I take,
and even without the chart I sense green death
and choking weeds that bind a lost keepsake
with that poor thing, love-inside-out, whose breath
is love's last cry. Why then am I so dour
and dogged in my sailing, deaf to the din
of tongues that are quite sure, oh bitter sure
honour is lost and all else loss to win?
I only know the canvas of my soul
is crying out against these narrow places,
is fain for unwalled water and the roll
of smoky seas and fog-fermented spaces.
I sail by stubborn stars, let rocks take heed,
and should I sink . . . then sinking be my creed!
 Seldom are words as empty as that king's
 who taught his vassals how what was to be
 must come to be  in the deep tide of things,
 teaching with waves beside the northern sea.
 Words were the prize for ancient deeds of glory
 dared by heroes dreaming all the time
 how they would swell the ballad singer's story
 and live forever meshed in magic rhyme.
 Life has its flower in words, and only so
 blow down upon us from the olden days
 those far-borne fragrances by which we know
 there was a yesterday, whose potent ways
 crowd in our consciences till we forget
 that yesterday is in the making yet.
This soul was sick and found in my soul kin
of the same sickness, for my similar ill
spoke in the wordless language of that sin;
the flaws fit perfectly beyond our will.
As any broken limb, if set in vain
and wrongly set, though fresh and firmly grown,
must be re-broken and re-set in pain,
so does the broken spirit seek its own.
Through matched incompetence we can forgive
each in the other what you could not bide;
the fool that flinches death yet fears to live,
the brave that haunts the field yet runs to hide.
Your scorn has cleared my path; then take no heed;
strength to your strength be joined, need to my need.
 Twas finer stabbing this, stabbing to life,
 and sweeter vengeance, spinning out the death;
 'twas canny cruelty to stay the knife
 t hat would have snuffed out memory with breath.
 Not that I plead against the hissing thrust
 of white-hot anger tempered to a point
 of austere law that finds with savouring lust,
 knowing it well, my vulnerable joint.
 But who am I to speak of such a plight
 to her,  for did not I do ill to one
 I desperately loved,  for which a night
 of black unreason blotted out her sun
 and she did back to me a deeper ill,
 so that we hurt each other past our will ?
 
A steady breath has blown the veiling sedge
out of my vision. In that breath I see
the wide Atlantic and this monster ledge
of granite under granite clouds; these three,
the solid sky, the water ramming the shore,
thrusting its hills of green against the hills
of grim set pride, and their engendering war
from which life and my thought of life distils.
A strange distillage, while the sad airs wail
the witless actors on their drafty stage,
heedless of hearers, mouthing their foaming tale
of bitter feud no hammering can assuage,
that I, salt-spawned, should choke upon a tide
of iron pity, wearing down my pride.
Sometimes when turning a page I toss the book
aside and wonder what book you are reading,
and sometimes walking along a road I look
far off and wonder what way yours is leading.
I seem to see you in a crowd and race
all out of breath to catch you before you go
quite out of sight; then we are face to face,
and you are polite and listen to my "hello!"
You look straight into my eyes and shake your head
as if to recall a once familiar name;
you say, "But don't you know that you are dead?"
and I am confused and clasp my coat with shame
and go back to my book, but there the word
has lost its meaning and the print is blurred.
 
Your tears fell frozen; numbing the heart your tears
fell on that final night of our reprieve;
across the threshold idiot-visaged fears
crowded your mind and made your mind believe
my heart was sealed behind a stolid wall,
so twenty years of life took wings to fly
and beat their sad way through the empty hall,
and twenty years of love lay down to die.
Not you alone were stricken by the sword
flashed in our quick "good-bye," not you alone
were shaken when its sharp and quivering chord
shattered our world. And though the overtone
follows me where I walk and will not die,
that death my steps declare, I still deny.
 My love is sleeping; but her body seems
 awake within itself, secure from ills
 of consciousness; her veins are buried streams,
 her flanks are ghostly vales, her breasts are hills
 of some far planet finding its sure way
 beyond the orbit of this night of fears,
 beyond the burnished darkness of this day;
 my love is sleeping out of reach of tears.
 How can her limbs dance motionless,  what makes
 her lips curve smiling to a crescent moon,
 what does her hand reach out for, what dawn breaks
 beneath her eyelids, to her ears what tune?
 I shall not sleep, nor seek that yonder land
 where her hand yearns, but not to touch my hand.
 

Pages Crafted by Last Updated July 25, 1999