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Conrad Potter Aiken - Seven Twilights
Work rating: Low

I

  The ragged pilgrim, on the road to nowhere,
  Waits at the granite milestone. It grows dark.
  Willows lean by the water. Pleas of water
  Cry through the trees. And on the boles and boughs
  Green water-lights make rings, already paling.
  Leaves speak everywhere. The willow leaves
  Silverly stir on the breath of moving water,
  Birch-leaves, beyond them, twinkle, and there on the hill,
  And the hills beyond again, and the highest hill,
  Serrated pines, in the dusk, grow almost black.
  By the eighth milestone on the road to nowhere
  He drops his sack, and lights once more the pipe
  There often lighted. In the dusk-sharpened sky
  A pair of night-hawks windily sweep, or fall,
  Booming, toward the trees. Thus had it been
  Last year, and the year before, and many years:
  Ever the same. "Thus turns the human track
  Backward upon itself, I stand once more
  By this small stream..." Now the rich sound of leaves,
  Turning in air to sway their heavy boughs,
  Burns in his heart, sings in his veins, as spring
  Flowers in veins of trees; bringing such peace
  As comes to seamen when they dream of seas.
  "O trees! exquisite dancers in gray twilight!
  Witches! fairies! elves! who wait for the moon
  To thrust her golden horn, like a golden snail,
  Above that mountain--arch your green benediction
  Once more over my heart. Muffle the sound of bells,
  Mournfully human, that cries from the darkening valley;
  Close, with your leaves, about the sound of water:
  Take me among your hearts as you take the mist
  Among your boughs!" ... Now by the granite milestone,
  On the ancient human road that winds to nowhere,
  The pilgrim listens, as the night air brings
  The murmured echo, perpetual, from the gorge
  Of barren rock far down the valley. Now,
  Though twilight here, it may be starlight there;
  Mist makes elfin lakes in the hollow fields;
  The dark wood stands in the mist like a somber island
  With one red star above it.... "This I should see,
  Should I go on, follow the falling road,--
  This I have often seen.... But I shall stay
  Here, where the ancient milestone, like a watchman,
  Lifts up its figure eight, its one gray knowledge,
  Into the twilight; as a watchman lifts
  A lantern, which he does not know is out."


        II

  Now by the wall of the ancient town I lean
  Myself, like ancient wall and dust and sky,
  And the purple dusk, grown old, grown old in heart.
  Shadows of clouds flow inward from the sea.
  The mottled fields grow dark. The golden wall
  Grows gray again, turns stone again, the tower,
  No longer kindled, darkens against a cloud.
  Old is the world, old as the world am I;
  The cries of sheep rise upward from the fields,
  Forlorn and strange; and wake an ancient echo
  In fields my heart has known, but has not seen.
  "These fields"--an unknown voice beyond the wall
  Murmurs--"were once the province of the sea.
  Where now the sheep graze, mermaids were at play,
  Sea-horses galloped, and the great jeweled tortoise
  Walked slowly, looking upward at the waves,
  Bearing upon his back a thousand barnacles,
  A white acropolis ..." The ancient tower
  Sends out, above the houses and the trees,
  And the wide fields below the ancient walls,
  A measured phrase of bells. And in the silence
  I hear a woman`s voice make answer then:
  "Well, they are green, although no ship can sail them....
  Sky-larks rest in the grass, and start up singing
  Before the girl who stoops to pick sea-poppies.
  Spiny, the poppies are, and oh how yellow!
  And the brown clay is runneled by the rain...."
  A moment since, the sheep that crop the grass
  Had long blue shadows, and the grass-tips sparkled:
  Now all grows old.... O voices strangely speaking,
  Voices of man and woman, voices of bells,
  Diversely making comment on our time
  Which flows and bears us with it into dusk,
  Repeat the things you say! Repeat them slowly
  Upon this air, make them an incantation
  For ancient tower, old wall, the purple twilight,
  This dust, and me. But all I hear is silence,
  And something that may be leaves or may be sea.


        III

  When the tree bares, the music of it changes:
  Hard and keen is the sound, long and mournful;
  Pale are the poplar boughs in the evening light
  Above my house, against a slate-cold cloud.
  When the house ages and the tenants leave it,
  Cricket sings in the tall grass by the threshold;
  Spider, by the cold mantel, hangs his web.
  Here, in a hundred years from that clear season
  When first I came here, bearing lights and music,
  To this old ghostly house my ghost will come,--
  Pause in the half-light, turn by the poplar, glide
  Above tall grasses through the broken door.
  Who will say that he saw--or the dusk deceived him--
  A mist with hands of mist blow down from the tree
  And open the door and enter and close it after?
  Who will say that he saw, as midnight struck
  Its tremulous golden twelve, a light in the window,
  And first heard music, as of an old piano,
  Music remote, as if it came from the earth,
  Far down; and then, in the quiet, eager voices?
  "... Houses grow old and die, houses have ghosts--
  Once in a hundred years we return, old house,
  And live once more." ... And then the ancient answer,
  In a voice not human, but more like creak of boards
  Or rattle of panes in the wind--"Not as the owner,
  But as a guest you come, to fires not lit
  By hands of yours.... Through these long-silent chambers
  Move slowly, turn, return, and bring once more
  Your lights and music. It will be good to talk."


        IV

  "This is the hour," she said, "of transmutation:
  It is the eucharist of the evening, changing
  All things to beauty. Now the ancient river,
  That all day under the arch was polished jade,
  Becomes the ghost of a river, thinly gleaming
  Under a silver cloud.... It is not water:
  It is that azure stream in which the stars
  Bathe at the daybreak, and become immortal...."
  "And the moon," said I--not thus to be outdone--
  "What of the moon? Over the dusty plane-trees
  Which crouch in the dusk above their feeble lanterns,
  Each coldly lighted by his tiny faith;
  The moon, the waxen moon, now almost full,
  Creeps whitely up.... Westward the waves of cloud,
  Vermilion, crimson, violet, stream on the air,
  Shatter to golden flakes in the icy green
  Translucency of twilight.... And the moon
  Drinks up their light, and as they fade or darken,
  Brightens.... O monstrous miracle of the twilight,
  That one should live because the others die!"
  "Strange too," she answered, "that upon this azure
  Pale-gleaming ghostly stream, impalpable--
  So faint, so fine that scarcely it bears up
  The petals that the lantern strews upon it,--
  These great black barges float like apparitions,
  Loom in the silver of it, beat upon it,
  Moving upon it as dragons move on air."
  "Thus always," then I answered,--looking never
  Toward her face, so beautiful and strange
  It grew, with feeding on the evening light,--
  "The gross is given, by inscrutable God,
  Power to beat wide wings upon the subtle.
  Thus we ourselves, so fleshly, fallible, mortal,
  Stand here, for all our foolishness, transfigured:
  Hung over nothing in an arch of light
  While one more evening like a wave of silence
  Gathers the stars together and goes out."


        V

  Now the great wheel of darkness and low clouds
  Whirs and whirls in the heavens with dipping rim;
  Against the ice-white wall of light in the west
  Skeleton trees bow down in a stream of air.
  Leaves, black leaves and smoke, are blown on the wind;
  Mount upward past my window; swoop again;
  In a sharp silence, loudly, loudly falls
  The first cold drop, striking a shriveled leaf....
  Doom and dusk for the earth! Upward I reach
  To draw chill curtains and shut out the dark,
  Pausing an instant, with uplifted hand,
  To watch, between black ruined portals of cloud,
  One star,--the tottering portals fall and crush it.
  Here are a thousand books! here is the wisdom
  Alembicked out of dust, or out of nothing;
  Choose now the weightiest word, most golden page,
  Most somberly musicked line; hold up these lanterns,--
  These paltry lanterns, wisdoms, philosophies,--
  Above your eyes, against this wall of darkness;
  And you`ll see--what? One hanging strand of cobweb,
  A window-sill a half-inch deep in dust ...
  Speak out, old wise-men! Now, if ever, we need you.
  Cry loudly, lift shrill voices like magicians
  Against this baleful dusk, this wail of rain....
  But you are nothing! Your pages turn to water
  Under my fingers: cold, cold and gleaming,
  Arrowy in the darkness, rippling, dripping--
  All things are rain.... Myself, this lighted room,
  What are we but a murmurous pool of rain?...
  The slow arpeggios of it, liquid, sibilant,
  Thrill and thrill in the dark. World-deep I lie
  Under a sky of rain. Thus lies the sea-shell
  Under the rustling twilight of the sea;
  No gods remember it, no understanding
  Cleaves the long darkness with a sword of light.


        VI

  Heaven, you say, will be a field in April,
  A friendly field, a long green wave of earth,
  With one domed cloud above it. There you`ll lie
  In noon`s delight, with bees to flash above you,
  Drown amid buttercups that blaze in the wind,
  Forgetting all save beauty. There you`ll see
  With sun-filled eyes your one great dome of cloud
  Adding fantastic towers and spires of light,
  Ascending, like a ghost, to melt in the blue.
  Heaven enough, in truth, if you were there!
  Could I be with you I would choose your noon,
  Drown amid buttercups, laugh with the intimate grass,
  Dream there forever.... But, being older, sadder,
  Having not you, nor aught save thought of you,
  It is not spring I`ll choose, but fading summer;
  Not noon I`ll choose, but the charmed hour of dusk.
  Poppies? A few! And a moon almost as red....
  But most I`ll choose that subtler dusk that comes
  Into the mind--into the heart, you say--
  When, as we look bewildered at lovely things,
  Striving to give their loveliness a name,
  They are forgotten; and other things, remembered,
  Flower in the heart with the fragrance we call grief.


        VII

  In the long silence of the sea, the seaman
  Strikes twice his bell of bronze. The short note wavers
  And loses itself in the blue realm of water.
  One sea-gull, paired with a shadow, wheels, wheels;
  Circles the lonely ship by wave and trough;
  Lets down his feet, strikes at the breaking water,
  Draws up his golden feet, beats wings, and rises
  Over the mast.... Light from a crimson cloud
  Crimsons the sluggishly creeping foams of waves;
  The seaman, poised in the bow, rises and falls
  As the deep forefoot finds a way through waves;
  And there below him, steadily gazing westward,
  Facing the wind, the sunset, the long cloud,
  The goddess of the ship, proud figurehead,
  Smiles inscrutably, plunges to crying waters,
  Emerges streaming, gleaming, with jewels falling
  Fierily from carved wings and golden breasts;
  Steadily glides a moment, then swoops again.
  Carved by the hand of man, grieved by the wind;
  Worn by the tumult of all the tragic seas,
  Yet smiling still, unchanging, smiling still
  Inscrutably, with calm eyes and golden brow--
  What is it that she sees and follows always,
  Beyond the molten and ruined west, beyond
  The light-rimmed sea, the sky itself? What secret
  Gives wisdom to her purpose? Now the cloud
  In final conflagration pales and crumbles
  Into the darkening waters. Now the stars
  Burn softly through the dusk. The seaman strikes
  His small lost bell again, watching the west
  As she below him watches.... O pale goddess
  Whom not the darkness, even, or rain or storm,
  Changes; whose great wings are bright with foam,
  Whose breasts are cold as the sea, whose eyes forever
  Inscrutably take that light whereon they look--
  Speak to us! Make us certain, as you are,
  That somewhere, beyond wave and wave and wave,
  That dreamed-of harbor lies which we would find.
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