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Conrad Potter Aiken
1889-1973

All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.

Fine ladies soon are all forgotten,

And goldenrod is dust when dead,

The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten

And cobwebs tent the brightest head.

 

Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!--

But time goes on, and will, unheeding,

Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn,

And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.

 

Come back, true love! Sweet youth, remain!--

But goldenrod and daisies wither,

And over them blows autumn rain,

They pass, they pass, and know not whither.

Morning Song of Senlin

IT is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning

When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,

I arise, I face the sunrise,

And do the things my fathers learned to do.

Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops

Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,

And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet

Stand before a glass and tie my tie.

 

Vine leaves tap my window,

Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,

The robin chips in the chinaberry tree

Repeating three clear tones.

 

It is morning. I stand by the mirror

And tie my tie once more.

While waves far off in a pale rose twilight

Crash on a white sand shore.

I stand by a mirror and comb my hair:

How small and white my face!--

The green earth tilts through a sphere of air

And bathes in a flame of space.

There are houses hanging above the stars

And stars hung under a sea. . .

And a sun far off in a shell of silence

Dapples my walls for me. . .

 

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning

Should I not pause in the light to remember God?

Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable,

He is immense and lonely as a cloud.

I will dedicate this moment before my mirror

To him alone, and for him I will comb my hair.

Accept these humble offerings, cloud of silence!

I will think of you as I descend the stair.

 

Vine leaves tap my window,

The snail-track shines on the stones,

Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree

Repeating two clear tones.

 

It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence,

Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.

The walls are about me still as in the evening,

I am the same, and the same name still I keep.

The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion,

The stars pale silently in a coral sky.

In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,

Unconcerned, I tie my tie.

 

There are horses neighing on far-off hills

Tossing their long white manes,

And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,

Their shoulders black with rains. . .

 

It is morning. I stand by the mirror

And surprise my soul once more;

The blue air rushes above my ceiling,

There are suns beneath my floor. . .

 

. . . It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness

And depart on the winds of space for I know not where,

My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,

And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.

There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven,

And a god among the stars; and I will go

Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak

And humming a tune I know. . .

 

Vine-leaves tap at the window,

Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,

The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree

Repeating three clear tones.

Evening Song of Senlin

IT is moonlight. Alone in the silence

I ascend my stairs once more,

While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight,

Crash on a white sand shore.

It is moonlight. The garden is silent.

I stand in my room alone.

Across my wall, from the far-off moon,

A rain of fire is thrown . . .

 

There are houses hanging above the stars,

And stars hung under a sea:

And a wind from the long blue vault of time

Waves my curtain for me . . .

 

I wait in the dark once more,

Swung between space and space:

Before my mirror I lift my hands

And face my remembered face.

 

Is it I who stand in a question here,

Asking to know my name? . . .

It is I, yet I know not whither I go,

Nor why, nor whence I came.

 

It is I, who awoke at dawn

And arose and descended the stair,

Conceiving a god in the eye of the sun, --

In a woman's hands and hair.

It is I whose flesh is gray with the stones

I builded into a wall:

With a mournful melody in my brain

Of a tune I cannot recall . . .

 

There are roses to kiss: and mouths to kiss;

And the sharp-pained shadow of death.

I remember a rain-drop on my cheek, --

A wind like a fragrant breath . . .

And the star I laugh on tilts through heaven;

And the heavens are dark and steep . . .

I will forget these things once more

In the silence of sleep.

Discordants

I. (Bread and Music)

MUSIC I heard with you was more than music,

And bread I broke with you was more than bread;

Now that I am without you, all is desolate;

All that was once so beautiful is dead.

 

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,

And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.

These things do not remember you, belovиd,

And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

 

For it was in my heart you moved among them,

And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;

And in my heart they will remember always,--

They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

My heart has become as hard as a city street,
The horses trample upon it, it sings like iron,
All day long and all night long they beat,
They ring like the hooves of time.

My heart has become as drab as a city park,

The grass is worn with the feet of shameless lovers,

A match is struck, there is kissing in the dark,

The moon comes, pale with sleep.

 

My heart is torn with the sound of raucous voices,

They shout from the slums, from the streets, from the crowded places,

And tunes from the hurdy-gurdy that coldly rejoices

Shoot arrows into my heart.

Dead Cleopatra lies in a crystal casket,
Wrapped and spiced by the cunningest of hands.
Around her neck they have put a golden necklace,
Her tatbebs, it is said, are worn with sands.

Dead Cleopatra was once revered in Egypt,

Warm-eyed she was, this princess of the South.

Now she is old and dry and faded,

With black bitumen they have sealed up her mouth.

 

O sweet clean earth, from whom the green blade cometh!

When we are dead, my best beloved and I,

Close well above us, that we may rest forever,

Sending up grass and blossoms to the sky.

In the noisy street,
Where the sifted sunlight yellows the pallid faces,
Sudden I close my eyes, and on my eyelids
Feel from the far-off sea a cool faint spray,--

A breath on my cheek,

From the tumbling breakers and foam, the hard sand shattered,

Gulls in the high wind whistling, flashing waters,

Smoke from the flashing waters blown on rocks;

 

--And I know once more,

O dearly beloved! that all these seas are between us,

Tumult and madness, desolate save for the sea-gulls,

You on the farther shore, and I in this street.

Chiaroscuro: Rose

          He

FILL your bowl with roses: the bowl, too, have of crystal.

Sit at the western window. Take the sun

Between your hands like a ball of flaming crystal,

Poise it to let it fall, but hold it still,

And meditate on the beauty of your existence;

The beauty of this, that you exist at all.

 

          She

The sun goes down, -- but without lamentation.

I close my eyes, and the stream of my sensation

In this, at least, grows clear to me:

Beauty is a word that has no meaning.

Beauty is naught to me.

 

          He

The last blurred raindrops fall from the half-clear sky,

Eddying lightly, rose-tinged, in the windless wake of the sun.

The swallow ascending against cold waves of cloud

Seems winging upward over huge bleak stairs of stone.

The raindrop finds its way to the heart of the leaf-bud.

But no word finds its way to the heart of you.

 

          She

This also is clear in the stream of my sensation:

That I am content, for the moment, Let me be.

How light the new grass looks with the rain-dust on it!

But heart is a word that has no meaning,

Heart means nothing to me.

 

          He

To the end of the world I pass and back again

In flights of the mind; yet always find you here,

Remote, pale, unattached . . . O Circe-too-clear-eyed,

Watching amused your fawning tiger-thoughts,

Your wolves, your grotesque apes -- relent, relent!

Be less wary for once: it is the evening.

 

          She

But if I close my eyes what howlings greet me!

Do not persuade. Be tranquil. Here is flesh

With all its demons. Take it, sate yourself.

But leave my thoughts to me.

Aiken
Conrad Potter Aiken

© 2001 Elena and Yacov Feldman