John Gould Fletcher
The Blue Symphony
I
The darkness rolls upward.
The thick darkness carries with it
Rain and a ravel of cloud.
The sun comes forth upon earth.
Palely the dawn
Leaves me facing timidly
Old gardens sunken:
And in the gardens is water.
Sombre wreck—autumnal leaves;
Shadowy roofs
In the blue mist,
And a willow-branch that is broken.
O old pagodas of my soul, how you glittered across green trees!
Blue and cool:
Blue, tremulously,
Blow faint puffs of smoke
Across sombre pools.
The damp green smell of rotted wood;
And a heron that cries from out the water.
II
Through the upland meadows
I go alone.
For I dreamed of someone last night
Who is waiting for me.
Flower and blossom, tell me do you know of her?
Have the rocks hidden her voice?
They are very blue and still.
Long upward road that is leading me,
Light hearted I quit you,
For the long loose ripples of the meadow-grass
Invite me to dance upon them.
Quivering grass
Daintily poised
For her foot’s tripping.
O blown clouds, could I only race up like you,
Oh, the last slopes that are sun-drenched and steep!
Look, the sky!
Across black valleys
Rise blue-white aloft
Jagged, unwrinkled mountains, ranges of death.
Solitude. Silence.
III
One chuckles by the brook for me:
One rages under the stone.
One makes a spout of his mouth,
One whispers—one is gone.
One over there on the water
Spreads cold ripples
For me
Enticingly.
The vast dark trees
Flow like blue veils
Of tears
Into the water.
Sour sprites,
Moaning and chuckling,
What have you hidden from me?
“In the palace of the blue stone she lies forever
Bound hand and foot.”
Was it the wind
That rattled the reeds together?
Dry reeds,
A faint shiver in the grasses.
IV
On the left hand there is a temple:
And a palace on the right-hand side.
Foot-passengers in scarlet
Pass over the glittering tide.
Under the bridge
The old river flows
Low and monotonous
Day after day.
I have heard and have seen
All the news that has been:
Autumn’s gold and Spring’s green!
Now in my palace
I see foot-passengers
Crossing the river:
Pilgrims of Autumn
In the afternoons.
Lotus pools:
Petals in the water.
Such are my dreams.
For me silks are outspread.
I take my ease, unthinking.
V
And now the lowest pine-branch
Is drawn across the disk of the sun.
Old friends who will forget me soon
I must go on,
Towards those blue death-mountains
I have forgot so long.
In the marsh grasses
There lies forever
My last treasure,
With the hope of my heart.
The ice is glazing over,
Torn lanterns flutter,
On the leaves is snow.
In the frosty evening
Toll the old bell for me
Once, in the sleepy temple.
Perhaps my soul will hear.
Afterglow:
Before the stars peep
I shall creep out into darkness.
London Excursion
‘Bus
Great walls of green,
City that is afar.
We gallop along
Alert and penetrating,
Roads open about us,
Housetops keep at a distance.
Soft-curling tendrils,
Swim backwards from our image:
We are a red bulk,
Projecting the angular city, in shadows, at our feet.
Black coarse-squared shapes,
Hump and growl and assemble.
It is the city that takes us to itself,
Vast thunder riding down strange skies.
An arch under which we slide
Divides our lives for us:
After we have passed it
We know we have left something behind
We shall not see again.
Passivity,
Gravity,
Are changed into hesitating, clanking pistons and wheels.
The trams come whooping up one by one,
Yellow pulse-beats spreading through darkness.
Music-hall posters squall out:
The passengers shrink together,
I enter indelicately into all their souls.
It is a glossy skating rink,
On which winged spirals clasp and bend each other:
And suddenly slide backwards towards the centre,
After a too-brief release.
A second arch is a wall
To separate our souls from rotted cables
Of stale greenness.
A shadow cutting off the country from us,
Out of it rise red walls.
Yet I revolt: I bend, I twist myself
I curl into a million convolutions:
Pink shapes without angle,
Anything to be soft and woolly,
Anything to escape.
Sudden lurch of clamours,
Two more viaducts
Stretch out red yokes of steel,
Crushing my rebellion.
My soul
Shrieking
Is jolted forwards by a long hot bar—
Into direct distances.
It pierces the small of my back.
Approach
Only this morning I sang of roses;
Now I see with a swift stare,
The city forcing up through the air
Black cubes close piled and some half-crumbling over.
My roses are battered into pulp:
And there swells up in me
Sudden desire for something changeless,
Thrusts of sunless rock
Unmelted by hissing wheels.
Arrival
Here is too swift a movement,
The rest is too still.
It is a red sea
Licking
The housefronts.
They quiver gently
From base to summit.
Ripples of impulse run through them,
Flattering resistance.
Soon they will fall;
Already smoke yearns upward.
Clouds of dust,
Crash of collapsing cubes.
I prefer deeper patience,
Monotony of stalled beasts.
O angle-builders,
Vainly have you prolonged your effort,
For I descend amid you,
Past rungs and slopes of curving slippery steel.
Walk
Sudden struggle for foothold on the pavement,
Familiar ascension.
I do not heed the city any more,
It has given me a duty to perform.
I pass along nonchalantly,
Insinuating myself into self-baffling movements.
Impalpable charm of back streets
In which I find myself:
Cool spaces filled with shadow.
Passers-by, white hammocks in the sunlight.
Bulging outcrush into old tumult;
Attainment, as of a narrow harbour,
Of some shop forgotten by traffic
With cool-corridored walls.
‘Bus-Top
Black shapes bending,
Taxicabs crush in the crowd.
The tops are each a shining square
Shuttles that steadily press through woolly fabric.
Drooping blossom,
Gas-standards over
Spray out jingling tumult
Of white-hot rays.
Monotonous domes of bowler-hats
Vibrate in the heat.
Silently, easily we sway through braying traffic,
Down the crowded street.
The tumult crouches over us,
Or suddenly drifts to one side.
Transposition
I am blown like a leaf
Hither and thither.
The city about me
Resolves itself into sound of many voices,
Rustling and fluttering,
Leaves shaken by the breeze.
A million forces ignore me, I know not why,
I am drunken with it all.
Suddenly I feel an immense will
Stored up hitherto and unconscious till this instant.
Projecting my body
Across a street, in the face of all its traffic.
I dart and dash:
I do not know why I go.
These people watch me,
I yield them my adventure.
Lazily I lounge through labyrinthine corridors,
And with eyes suddenly altered,
I peer into an office I do not know,
And wonder at a startled face that penetrates my own.
Roses—pavement—
I will take all this city away with me—
People—uproar—the pavement jostling and flickering—
Women with incredible eyelids:
Dandies in spats:
Hard-faced throng discussing me—I know them all.
I will take them away with me,
I insistently rob them of their essence,
I must have it all before night,
To sing amid my green.
I glide out unobservant
In the midst of the traffic
Blown like a leaf
Hither and thither,
Till the city resolves itself into a clamour of voices,
Crying hollowly, like the wind rustling through the forest,
Against the frozen housefronts:
Lost in the glitter of a million movements.
Peripeteia
I can no longer find a place for myself:
I go.
There are too many things to detain me,
But the force behind is reckless.
Noise, uproar, movement
Slide me outwards,
Black sleet shivering
Down red walls.
In thick jungles of green, this gyration,
My centrifugal folly,
Through roaring dust and futility spattered,
Will find its own repose.
Golden lights will gleam out sullenly into silence,
Before I return.
Mid-Flight
We rush, a black throng,
Straight upon darkness:
Motes scattered
By the arc’s rays.
Over the bridge fluttering,
It is theatre-time,
No one heeds.
Lost amid greenness
We will sleep all night;
And in the morning
Coming forth, we will shake wet wings
Over the settled dust of to-day.
The city hurls its cobbled streets after us,
To drive us faster.
We must attain the night
Before endless processions
Of lamps
Push us back.
A clock with quivering hands
Leaps to the trajectory-angle of our departure.
We leave behind pale traces of achievement:
Fires that we kindled but were too tired to put out,
Broad gold fans brushing softly over dark walls,
Stifled uproar of night.
We are already cast forth:
The signal of our departure
Jerks down before we have learned we are to go.
Station
We descend
Into a wall of green.
Straggling shapes:
Afterwards none are seen.
I find myself
Alone.
I look back:
The city has grown.
One grey wall
Windowed, unlit.
Heavily, night
Crushes the face of it.
I go on.
My memories freeze
Like birds’ cry
In hollow trees.
I go on.
Up and outright
To the hostility
Of night.