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Robinson Jeffers - Tamar
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the smoke from the hills and tethered
His horse in the hiding of a clump of pines, and climbed the
line-fence.
                 Turning a cypress thicket
He saw a figure sway in the starlight, and stood still, breathless.
A woman: Tamar? Not Tamar:
No one he knew: it faced the east gables of the house and seemed
twisting its hands and suddenly
Flung up both arms to its face and passed out of the patch of
starlight. The boy, troubled and cautious,
Turned the other way and circling to the south face of the
house peered from behind the buttressed
Base of a seventy-year-old trunk that yellow light on the other
side clothed, and he saw
A lamp on the table and three people sitting by it; the old man,
stiff-jointed as a corpse,
Grotesquely erect, and old Aunt Stella her lips continually in
motion, and old Jinny
Cross-legg`d having drawn up her ankles into her chair, nodding
asleep. At length Aunt Stella
Ceased talking, none of the three stirred. Young Andrews backed
into the wood and warily finishing
His circuit stood in the darkness under Tamar`s window. The
strong young tree to help him to it
Still wore on its boughs her lamplight, then he climbed and set
his hands on the sill, his feet on the ledge
Under it, and Tamar came to the window and took up the lamp
to let him enter. Her face
White in the yellow lamp`s glow, with sharp shadows under the
eyes and a high look of joy
He had never seen there frightened him, and she said, "I have
been sick, you know." "I heard," he answered,
"O Tamar, I have been lonely. We must let them know, we
can`t go on, my place is with you
When you most need me." "We will tell them to-night," she
said, and kissed his mouth and called, "Lee, Lee,
Come. He has come." "What? Now," he said. "I have told Lee.
I was sick, he was sorry for me, he is going
To camp to-morrow, he wants to see you and say good-by."
Lee entered while she spoke and quietly
Held out his hand and Andrews took it. "Talk to each other,"
Tamar said, "I am very tired
And must lie down." Lee muttered "She`s been awfully sick, it
scared us, you were lucky, Bill Andrews,
Not to be here." "I didn`t think so," he answered, "what was it,
Lee?" "Well, it`s all over," Lee said,
Shifting his feet, "I`m off to-morrow. I`m glad we`re friends to
say good-by. Be good to her, won`t you."
And the other, "O God knows I will. All I can do. But of course
. . . Lee ... if they need me
She knows I won`t beg off because I`m . . . married . . .
maybe I`ll see you over there." "O," said Tamar
Laughing, "you too?" and she sat up on the bed saying, "Lee:
go and call father if he`s able.
We ought to tell him, he ought to meet my-husband." "I`ll see
if he can," Lee answered, "he was unwell
To-day, and if he`s in bed . . ." He left the room, then Tamar:
"Look. Bring the lamp. What Lee did to me."
She opened the blue robe and bared her flank and thigh showing
the long whip-mark. "I have a story.
You must sec this to believe it." He turned giddy, the sweet
slenderness
Dazzling him, and the lamp shook in his hand, for the sharp spasm
of physical pain one feels
At sight of a wound shot up his entrails. That long welt of red on
the tender flesh, the blood-flecks
And tortured broken little channels of blood crossing it. "Tamar,
Tamar!" "Put down the lamp,
And when they come I`ll tell you the story." "What shall I do?"
"Why, nothing, nothing. Poor boy," she said,
Pityingly, "I think you are too glad of your life to have come
Into this house, you are not hard enough, you are like my mother,
only stone or fire
Should marry into this house." Then he bewildered looking at
the blackened door-frame, "Why, yes,"
Laughed Tamar, "it is here, it has been here, the bridegroom`s
here already. O Will I have suffered . . .
Things I daren`t tell." "What do you mean, Tamar?" "Nothing,
I mustn`t tell you, you are too high-tempered,
You would do something. Dear, there are things so wicked that
nothing you can do can make them better,
So horrible now they are done that even to touch or try to mend
or punish them is only to widen
Horror: like poking at a corpse in a pool. And father`s old and
helpless." "Your father, Tamar?"
"And not to blame. I think he hardly even knew what Lee"
"Lee?" "This much I`ll tell you,
You have to know it ... our love, your love and mine, had . . .
fruit, would have been fruitful, we were going to have
A child, and I was happy and frightened, and it is dead. O God,
O God, O God, I wish
I too had been born too soon and died with the eyes unopened,
not a cry, darkness, darkness,
And to be hidden away. They did it to me; with other abuse,
worse violence." Meanwhile Lee Cauldwell
Finding his father with the two old women in the room downstairs,
"Father," he said,
"Tamar was asking for you . . ." and Helen`s voice through old
Aunt Stella answered, "She has enough,
Tell her she has enough." "Aunt Stella," he said, "how long will
you keep it up? Our trouble`s clearing,
Let your ghosts be." "She has you and the other," she answered,
"let me have this one. Are we buzzards to quarrel
Over you dead, we ghosts?" Then Lee turning his shoulder at her,
"You must come up, father.
Do you remember the Andrews place that`s up the valley? Young
Andrews is upstairs with Tamar,
He wants to marry her. You know I have to go away to-morrow,
remember? and I`ll go happier
To leave her . . . taken care of. So you`ll see him, father?"
"Who is it?" asked the old man. "The bridegroom,"
Said Helen`s voice, "a bridegroom for your Tamar, and the priest
will be fire and blood the witness,
And they will live together in a house where the mice are moles."
"Why do you plague me," he answered
Plaintively, and Lee: "Come, father," and he lifting his face,
"I have prayed to the hills to come and cover me,
We are on the drop-off cliff of the world and dare not meet Him,
I with two days to live, even I
Shall watch the ocean boiling and the sea curl up like paper in a
fire and the dry bed
Crack to the bottom: I have good news for her, I will see her."
"And I to tell her she may take
Two but not three," said Helen. "Stay here, stay here, be quiet,"
Lee answered angrily, "can I take up
The whole menagerie, raving?" He turned in the door and heard
his father move behind him and said,
"If you come up, be quiet," and at the door upstairs, "Father is
tired and sick, he`ll only
Speak to you, Andrews, and must go to bed; he`s worried about
my going away to-morrow.
This is Bill Andrews, father." And Tamar coming to the door,
"Let him come in, it`s dark here,
No, bring him in. Father come in. What, shall the men that made
your war suck up their millions,
Not I my three?" Then Andrews: "If Tamar is well enough to
go to-night I will take her to-night.
You will be well when you are out of this house." "You hate it
still," said Tamar. "He hates the house,"
She said to Lee, leading his eyes with the significance in hers to
the blackened door-frame,
"Well, I will go with you to-morrow." And Lee, "Listen, Will
Andrews, I heard from somebody
You know who set the fire here." "No, not that," he answered,
"but I know other worse things
That have been done here." "Fire, fire," moaned the old man,
"the fire of the Lord coming in judgment. Tamar,
It is well with us, be happy, He won`t torture the wicked, He will
rub them out and suddenly
With instant fire. We shall be nothing." "Come, Tamar," Andrews
cried, "to-night. I daren`t leave you."
"For fear I ask her," said Lee. "You did it, then. You set the fire."
"No, that`s too idiot
A lie to answer," he said, "what do I know about your fires?
I know something
Worse than arson. And saw the horrible new scar of a whip
Not to be paid this way!" He felt the jerk of his arm striking
And his fist hitting the sharp edge of the jawbone, but yet
When Lee staggered and closed in with a groan,
Clutching him, fumbling for his throat, Will thought "What a fool
To make a nasty show of us before Tamar
And the others, why does he want to fight?" and indignantly
Pushed him off and struck twice, both fists, Lee dropped
And scrambled on hands and knees by the little table.
Then the old man cried, "We shall be nothing, nothing.
O but that`s frightful."
And Will turning to Tamar saw such hatred
Wrinkle her face he felt a horrible surge
Of nausea in him, then with bare teeth she smiled at him
And he believed the hate was for her brother
And said, "Ah Tamar, come." Meanwhile the Helen
That spoke out of the lungs and ran in the nerves
Of old Aunt Stella caught the old man David Cauldwell
By the loose flapping sleeve and the lean arm,
Saying in a clotted amorous voice, "Come, David,
My brother, my lover, O honey come, she has no eyes for you,
She feasts on young men. But you to me, to me,
Are as beautiful as when we dared
Desperate pleasure, naked, ages ago,
In the room and by the sea." "Father," said Tamar,
"It is only an hour to the end, whom do you want
To-night? Stay here by me." "I was hunting for something," said
Lee Cauldwell,
"Here it is, here it is," and had the sheath-knife bared
And struck up from the floor, rising, the blade
Ripped cloth and skin along his enemy`s belly
And the leather belt catching it deflected the point
Into the bowels, Andrews coughed and fell backward
And Lee falling across him stabbed at his throat
But struck too high and opened the right cheek,
The knife scraping on bone and teeth, then Tamar
In a sea-gull voice, "I dreamed it in his face,
I dreamed a T cut in his face
" "You and your dreams
Have done for us," Lee groaned answer. "Akh, all blood, blood.
What did you say to make him hit me?"

                                                            Though it is not thought
That the dead intervene between the minds
And deeds of the living, that they are witnesses,
If anything of their spirits with any memory
Survive and not in prison, would seem as likely
As that an exile should look longingly home:
And the mist-face of that mother at the window
Wavering was but a witness, could but watch,
Neither prevent nor cause: no doubt there are many
Such watchers in the world: the same whom Andrews,
Stepping like a thief among the cypress clumps an hour before
Saw twist her hands and suddenly fling up both vaporous arms
and sway out of the starlight,
She now was watching at the downstairs window
Old Jinny alone in the room, and saw, as the dead see, the
thoughts
More clearly than the cloth and skin; the child mind
In that old flesh gathered home on itself
In coils, laboring to warm a memory,
And worked on by an effluence, petulantly pushing away
The easier memories of its open time
Forty years back, power flowing from someone in that house
Belting it in, pressing it to its labor,
Making it shape in itself the memory of to-day`s
Vision, the watcher saw it, how could she know it
Or know from whence? a girl naked, no, wrapped in fire,
Filmed in white sheets of fire. "Why, I`m like God,"
Old Jinny had said, "I see through walls," a girl
Naked though clothed in fire, and under the arms
Naked, no hair,- "Ah to be like her, to be like her, probably
Cloth, hair, burned off"; displaying herself before a wild old man
Who appeared pan of the joy: "Ah, to be like her,
Fire is so sweet, they never let me play with it,
No one loves Jinny, wouldn`t fire be a father
And hold her in his arms? Fire is so sweet,"
She hovered the hot lamp, "sweet fire, sweet light,"
She held a rag of paper above it, "O dear, dear fire,
Come and kiss Jinny, no one`s looking,
Jinny`s alone. Dear star, dear light, O lovely fire
Won`t you come out, why is it turning black,
Ah come, Ah come, hug Jinny." The hungry beautiful bird
Hopped from its bird-cage to her. "I`ve got my star
Ah love, Ah love, and here`s more paper
And a little of Jinny`s dress, love, lovely light,
Jinny so loves you, Jinny`s baby, Jinny`s baby,
O," she screamed, "Oo, Oo, Oo," and ran to the window, folded
In a terrible wreath, and at her side the curtains
Danced into flame, and over her head; the gasp
That followed on a cry drew down a sword
Of flame to her lungs, pain ceased, and thinking "Father"
She dropped herself into the arms of the fire,
Huddling under the sill, and her spirit unprisoned
Filled all the room and felt a nuptial joy
In mixing with the bright and eager flame.
While from that blackened morsel on the floor
Fire spread to the wall and gnawed it through, and the window-glass
Crackling and tinkling a rush of south wind fed
The eagerness in the house. They heard upstairs
That brutal arch of crying, the quick crescendo,
The long drop and the following moan, Will Andrews
Struggled to rise and like a gopher-snake that a child
Has mashed the head of with a stone, he waggled
The blood-clot of his head over the floor
Gulping "You devils, you devils." Lee would have run down
But Tamar clung to him, the old man on his knees
Muttered to God, and old Aunt Stella
In no voice but her own screamed, screamed. Then fire
Was heard roaring, the door leaked threads of smoke,
Lee caught up Tamar in his arms and turned
To the window, the cypress-ladder, but his first step,
Blind, with the burden in his arms, the smoke in his eyes,
Trampled his murdered man on the floor who turning
Caught the other ankle and Lee went down and Tamar
So lovingly wound him that he could not rise
Till the house was full of its bright death; then Tamar:
"I will not let you take me. Go if you want."
He answered, "You devil, shall I go?" "You wouldn`t stay!
Think of your black-eyed French girls." "We are on the edge
of it," he answered,
"Tamar, be decent for a minute." "I have my three lovers
Here in one room, none of them will go out,
How can I help being happy? This old man
Has prayed the end of the world onto us all,
And which of you leaves me?" Then the old man: "O what
mountain,
What mountain, what mountain?" And Lee, "Father. The
window
We`ll follow you." But he kneeling would not rise,
While the house moved and the floor sagged to the south
And old Aunt Stella through the opening door
Ran into the red and black, and did not scream
Any more; then Tamar, "Did you think you would go
Laughing through France?" And the old man, "Fierce, fierce
light,
Have pity, Christ have pity, Christ have pity, Christ have pity,
Christ have pity,
Christ have pity . . ."
And Tamar with her back to the window embraced
Her brother, who struggled toward it, but the floor
Turned like a wheel.

                                Grass grows where the flame flowered;
A hollowed lawn strewn with a few black stones
And the brick of broken chimneys; all about there
The old trees, some of them scarred with fire, endure the sea
wind.
Source
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