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 wrecks -- 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 creeep 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 eath 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

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.