Across the Winter

1.
Quiet. It is winter and the frost
Stretches away into the mist;
A circle of dark closes in
Under the predicated stars.
How, under them, can you be content
With the light, the fire and the Christmas tree?
Or the gesticulating screen
There by the bottles in the corner?
What spirits move? What memory
Stirs in the human race today?
What in me, for I cannot find
In my drunk and incapable mind
Any entrance. There must be one.
Exit you mean? No, a way in
From this disorderly side of a hill
Which does not matter to me at all.
To what' To what? We must first get in
In order to know. But whether we go
Into the hill or into the blue,
Opening it like a money-box,
Is not a matter I can determine.
Sleep, perhaps, on a cold hill-side,
A dream is an entrance. It would be better,
Perhaps, to spell out every letter
Of the rational alphabet,
Tekel, Upharsin, on the wall.
Or not. But with enough reason
We may go in and turn about
The chambers of the past. It is this
Monstrous alternative to living
I now attempt. On the underside,
There also, where the inverted life
Has its beginning and its end.
Useless to talk of freedom in
The corridors of an old castle;
Gaolers lurk at every corner,
Clanking their keys. Grill after grill
Goes down, a chiaroscuro of
What may, possibly, be love.
But first, it is a memory.
Stapleton Church, which is not fine,
Or only so because it is mine
To skirt and go down to Black Rocks
-Better to go there over Snowdon,
Dangerous because well-known,
With roar of waters from a barrel
Of drains, a gap from one to the other;
A stony track, a shallow river,
A cave for crawling and for terror.
Eastville Park! Down through you
I came to this Elysium
-Which I call it in irony,
In old man's language, because no freedom
Was without terror or was mine.
I walked, yes, and climbed the daring
Slippery places under the alders.
A dog would frighten me, a fall
Threaten me, an eye-my own-
Fear to look. Where the brown
Eddies smoothed themselves was calmer,
Yet there was no safety, nor I either
For if I was alone
Trees might descend on me, the whole bank fall;
If there were enemies they would know all.

There was also, below Stapleton Church,
That entrance to a superior world
-I mean, just, higher up, but hills are green,
Distant and open. To get there between
High walls of pennant grit, with bridges over,
A lane for a dog to shit in, or a lover
To press a squealing girl against a wall.
This kindness also was terror, like the demented
Ill-spoken louts, with faces screwed or gaping,
Roaring, if they said anything, rather than speaking,
Who looked down from the walls and seemed to jeer
As I passed by, also a pilgrim there.

What of the further path, the falling tower,
The lake, Stoke Park and all defences down?
When will you ever be where you want to be,
My treason-top? There is a long track,
Passing the dangerous gates, of white chalk
-It seems in this moment's memory,
But is not-winding away-it does not-
Under a sky extravagantly hot,
For here the journey is long.

2.
In this holy season there is remembrance
Here also for me; my enemies rise up
-But not here, for all is in the past-
Only the dark season of Christ brings them
Here to my door, with the snow.
But it is a summer's morning when I go
Along by the fishing stream, through the meadow
Which brings me to the edge of the plunging pool
In the quarry, from whose appalling ledges
The green water looks like a kingdom.
Is that a newt there, dragon-like?
Or, further, where the reliable stepping-stones
Cross the river-shallow but
Alive with brown bubbles, and the froth
Of unknown causes, interlaced with twigs,
A leaf fallen, or a stray blossom-
Minnows, perhaps, may wink.
I, far in mid-stream, the bank
Holding, like watchers over me, great trees.
No enemies there: but on the way back,
The boy with the stone, the big girl
Looking curiously at me: "What is it?"

But this deep season, in which remembrance
Is not mine, takes me rather,
All that is gone. The mind that hovers
Over me like a hawk, is mine:
Its prey, and yet itself distinct,
Finite in looking, infinite being looked at.

Against the pavement where my feet had chattered
Thousands of miles, here am I, here is she,
Two distances, distance beyond distance.
Yet Shoe Lane is sharper where I stooped
On the hill-side, surely my purgatory,
To buckle my mistress's shoe, eight years old,
And that dark look of love so pitiful,
Or so it seemed. All love is infinite,
And now that there is only memory,
Axbridge and Bleadon Hill and bleak Shute Shelve
Where I encountered her beside a well,
Ate my burnt porridge, slept under the wind
And flapping canvas, hold that love for me.
I am, she sang, the inescapable siren
Who sings to mariners on the high seas
Until they fail, and the green sea goes over them.

3.
But Uncle George and Auntie. Ju
Find a place in my memory too
-The Lodge, The Conifers and all
There is beyond the garden wall.
How dusty was the road I came,
How silent the precincts of Ham Lane:
And how extraordinary, when I was there,
The apple-trees in the always vernal air.
How strange the summer-house, with rotten sticks
Holding it uncertainly, with the planks
Sloping to make a dangerous floor,
And the grass tousled round about and deep,
An occasion for looking, rather than sleep.
How far the Lodge, where Uncle George
Leaned on his spade, looking over the garden
Which edged upon mysterious territory,
The Big House, with its lawns and walks and swing:
That is where the nightingales sing
In retrospect, that did not do at the time
-Uncle George watchful, saying little, a smile
Was his language, gleaming more than his shirt-sleeves
Always rolled up. He limped when he moved.
It was he that my Aunt Julia loved,
Her face hollowed a little, but always sweet,
Full lips, eyes in hesitation
There in the stone kitchen, neat and small,
Aunt Julia dominant over all,
Sweet in each corner, with her lumpish daughters.

There should be a ballad for Auntie Kate
Who lived at Hambrook, the address, Myrtle Cottage,
Stumpier friend and confidante of Miss Good.
The two kept a shop, there it is,
With small panel windows, it was called the store;
The grain in the bins ran in the hands like money.
Beside it, under the archway, was the yard
And, opening out of that, the coffin-maker's:
Carpenter, joiner, priest of the great saw-pit,
With wooden ladder that ran out of it,
Up to the loft, where there was work to do
But what exactly it was, nobody knew.

There should be choral for Aunt Anne
Who had been a beauty and whose face glowed still
With the pleasure she had given and could give.
Neat as a Prayer Book, no aunt could be smarter,
And she was trenchant even in her chatter.

Aunt Bessie queened it in an old farmhouse
She was not queen of; none of them was queen
And yet not one of them but might have been
And all of them had had untidy loves,
Perhaps.

4.
The dark season runs into sunshine
In which nothing more is illuminated,
The paradise of snow that the cold holds.
Do not turn that into imagination
For, if you do that, the grave Matilda
Walks by the stream-grave though her smile says, Welcome.
It is better to see the peace the New Year brings,
The sky blue as it need be, sunlit branches
Motionless on the beech, waiting for green.
Spring will come, and after it the summer
Extending across the moors like a bow drawn,
Waiting to shoot its arrows into autumn,
The line of the hills which always promise winter
And beyond that.