Collected Poems (25 page)

He rose and paced the floor his pauseful way

When brooding, and smouldered as he dreamed aloud:

“For mankind in the mass, truth is what works —

A creed, a fair illusion, a reward; —

Some worthy lie by which they shuffle through

In something that approaches happiness.

Not their content nor their accomplishment

Are for the few whose greed is truth itself.

Our desolate and ice-cold consolation

Is that no matter what the vacancy

Unstarred and horrible we stumble on

In the scheme of things, it cannot be as bleak

And choking and insufferable as this

All-drowning ignorance we welter in.

For us there are no terrors and few joys,

But only courage and a blown bright hope …

To grip the tatterdemalion unsorted world

And make a plan of it — that’s our occupation:

Preëminently mine, who in the chaos

Am thrust as ruler, and recognize indeed

My own mind as a mountain among hills.

Were I an indolent dreamer I could weep

At all the tongues and all the arrogant creeds

Disharmonizing man, obscuring his

Essential unity and native likeness,

And wish in futile wrath to blot them out.

Instead, not futilely, I grapple facts;

And spite of races, tongues and creeds at odds

Impose the unity of my bold justice

Upon a turbulent world from Nazareth

To Ghent.… That is the ground-work of all

    peace.…

Peace. Peace. The great prerequisite,

The race’s single chance to reach its stature …

There’s not a lie too great, a crime too gross

I’ll not be guilty of, if so thereby

I may establish it and fix the lines

Of the quivering vision I intend the world.…

Am I the first that with sheer intellect

Has hated war, not weeping at its woe

So much as raging at its waste and folly?

Let me be first: and by the stablishment

Of peace I’ll show my elders’ errancy.…

And after peace I shall enchant the world

Into a universal Sicily

And prove life even can be livable.…

“Protect the masses in their breeding moil;

Feed them; and sweeten them by fear’s remove:

But do not build for them, for they are doomed

To everyday contents and grievances —

Unspeculative, level, themselves their study.

But, oh, the flashing-eyed minority,

The Enzios of the world, the sons of light —

These I would turn free-pinioned on an earth

That they would make august and radiant!

Think, think, O gods, what freedom could mean here,

Freedom to think and be and to pursue

The sovereign hope a stormy heart may spring!

Never have they been loosened from the toils

Of fear, and sin imagined, and old thoughts,

And ever at their elbows threatened priest

Or king or skeleton of fleshly want.

I’ll change all this: and for imperial boon

Grant freedom to the spirits of the free.

Watch them: already they are homing to me,

And there’s no man today not sworn my vassal

If Truth or High Endeavor be his liege.

So much to learn, forgot or never learned!

Such flight-room for the gold bird of the mind!

Such loveliness to build or paint or set

In colored words of leisure on a parchment!

Oh, I conceive a breathing-space, for men

Of vestured soul, grander than heaven; yea,

And possible, a point oft overlooked

In heavenly and terrestial dreams, I judge.

And what to hinder, save the allotted span

Some yokel with a home-made stave may skimp?

So far I’ve won: my laws establish justice,

Justice peace, and the young future teems

To Naples and Salerno where my schools

Are aids and urgers to the starrier way.

My present is a sunny sky: but clouds

Unquietly from two bad quarters stir

And grope to make one storm, a storm so vast

It will blind out the opulent, life-giving sun.…

The rabble Lombard cities; and the Pope …

Can these bring back the ancient dark despite me?

Never. Never. Yet they draw off my force,

Like unjust judges; traitors; rebel cities —

Details a friend could spare me by assuming —

And I must close with them in battle. First,

The cities — orgulous, pestilently brave,

The pack of them fanging and foaming each on each

Like rutting dogs, and with the minds, means,

Manners of dogs. At large they bait the world

To brawls and bickerings, costly and futile:

But chained are frenzied martyrs howling ‘Freedom,’

A word they fight for, but a fact, God knows,

They neither put to use nor grant to others.

The cities first: blood wasted and much gold,

But victory, the atrocious north restrained

And muzzled into manners and address.…

Then, Rome.… A struggle to the death, I fear.…

The war’ twixt emperors and popes will reach

In me its apogee, for good or ill.

Not that inherent differences appear

In Gregory’s gage flung down to Frederick

And Hildebrand’s to Barbarossa, but

The princes of the church divine in me

A serpent wiser and more venomous

Than in my crusty and impetuous grandsire.

He had perspective and fine taste for power

But was in fact a simple, loyal Christian.

While I — I see the thing that calls itself

Christ’s Church a noble detriment, a dream

Once valid, but in the dawning old and evil.

I will concede the masses to the Pope:

Their stultified obedience makes for peace.

But I’ll not give my eaglets to his cage:

For them there shall be freedom if it takes

The very toppling down of Peter’s throne.…

“How blistered is the earth with outpoured blood

Which on the ground has but a human look —

Not Christian, Jewish, or Mohammedan!

They slaughter each the other in the name

Of Allah, Christ, Jehovah, that one god

Who needs a name to be distinguishable.

And now in Albi they would further tear

Their Christian sect of Rome into another,

And later still another, and another,

Till down the centuries the jargon of

Their creeds will rile, I swear, sweet-tempered Heaven!

Three is enough! I join with Rome at Albi

To drown this heresy in good French blood.

Three is enough: yet not enough, I know.…

Jesus, Mahomet, Abraham — good men

Guessing! I read their words with reverence

And know that still the ultimate word’s not written.…

When I have made my tablet of the laws

To guide the flight of my young Enzios,

‘Thou shalt not’ shall be missing from its rubric.

Perhaps two words will make its decalogue:

‘Courage: Unselfishness.’ These two suffice.

Oh, all this cry of ‘sin,’ these acts forbidden,

Ruffle my gorge! The Christian sins if meat

Is eat on Friday; the Jew if any day

He eats of pork; the Prophet’s follower

If anything on any day he eats

With Jew or Christian at his friendly table.

Fools, fools, and serious fools who die

For imbecilities diverse but equal!

With hortatives and childish talk of sin

They so have staled the cleanly natural air

That life stinks like a sick-room. Bah! their ‘sin’ —

There is no taint save its own consequence

To any deed; and what is wise is good!

The centuries’ experience of a deed’s

Outcome and burthen aids our judgment of it

Before ’tis done, but is not sacrosanct

Or final. If men would but forget what not

To do, and fix their wills and uttermost minds

On what to do and do it — they’d breed the world

With loveliness and power beyond all guessing!

Virtue is energy directed wisely:

And sin is sloth.… How am I judged here, now,

By this religious and oppressive world?

All I have wrought for justice and for peace,

For beauty’s burgeoning and joy’s flower,

Are these emblazoned on a scroll of praise?

Hardly. But I am damned as heretic,

And worse — an irony for Kamel — lecher!

I am not chaste, and so I spoil for hell!

These priests that never do the deed, but dream of it

Till their minds are porous — foetid — maggot’s meat —

They grieve for me, who feed the monster I

Am caged in decently, I hope, and keep

My mind robust and cold as mountain wind.…

They do not even see the pity of it.…

How mockingly are our sweet bodies made

In that the very pang and leap of love

Is circumstanced in filth and sorry loathing!

And how wit-cursed the incarnating force

That fashions the idiot with no more pain

And no less air of nature justified

Than when a stripling god like Enzio’s born!

No empress was your mother, Enzio;

But you were not begot half-heartedly,

Betwixt a dream and a sleep, the sanctioned way.

“But these are incidentals of a life

I purpose to make frank and vigorous.…

‘Courage, Unselfishness,’ and the youth of the world

At my heels! One could not fail with these nor shrink.

Truth sleeps and has indeed its evil dreams,

But never dies.… The Lombard cities scotched

And Rome’s pretensions clipped, defined, made harmless,

I’ll set the world upon a singing path

And rank it king-star of the heavenly host!

Such wisdom waits to be uncovered, Enzio,

Such loveliness to be evoked! O gods,

The splendor, majesty, and joy of life

Have not been tapped, but only wait upon

The spirit’s franchise that I burn to grant.…

The chariot of the sun has issued forth,

The reins are in my hands — no turning back,

No stumbling, Enzio, nor halt, until

The azure circuit’s run and regally

We rest our steeds in that mysterions stall —

Death’s purple-raftered house.… Yet men stand back —

Men that should know and love me — baulk at some item,

Some Bari thrust between me and my purpose,

Which is today in the great staggering world

The only godlike, all-inclusive scheme.

Of hope and betterment.… Was Helios lonely?”

He ceased, as if a great bell’s toning ceased,

Leaving a chaos of grand sound and trembling.

Before the din had died, Pietro was speaking,

As tall and quiet-burning as a candle:

“Imperial master, grant me leave to go.”

“Whither?” my father answered out of dimness.

“To Bari, which shall fall before this moon

Has shed her horns.” Oh, it was good to hear

The wind of my father’s laughter lift the shadows:

“Petrus, wound me no more so bitterly!

When we have built the new Jerusalem

Your name shall indicate right well your rank.”

And from that day I was a boy no longer,

But saw his need of me and took my place.

That was the time life should have ceased, Berard,

Still fresh and glistening and mountain-aired,

Its only apprehension change or ending!

It is so grievous living past the prime

And looking back for all one’s glimpse of glamour.

Surely no god who ever had been young

Could have watched idly so much loveliness

Undone! A wise and passionate innocence

Spangled our lives and made each hour awake

Keep the cool filmy fragrance of first waking.…

That passed too quickly — quicklier being lovely.

Our south, the south he loved so, saw him in

Pale lightning glimpses only after that night.

The storm was sooner breaking that he’d thought,

And never ended. Rome and the Lombard cities

Loosened their hate your news alone could quell.

Berard, Berard, it seems we have been fighting

Since the beginning of things, and all the rest’s

A plaguing dream! And why it was — or when —

Or why it could not cease and let us be —

I cannot now remember.… Thanks, old friend.…

A faintness — yes — it’s gone — the memories came

Too thick.… No, no, you cannot leave me yet!

Sleep is more torturing than weariness!

Just then when my eyes closed I saw his eyes —

Smoky with pain and void of recognition!

They make sleep full of fear: I cannot meet them!

Forgive me … I am not often not a man …

I am quite well now.… Yes, the air … the damp.

My window’s small — but boasts Aldebaran,

A long hour, late. He’s quite the same, Berard,

As when you taught a little boy his name

And pointed to him hanging through the palm trees.

It’s very friendly of him to be here.…

I almost slipped from prison yesterday.

That was before I knew … My evil luck

Was Absalom’s: one strand of tell-tale hair

Showed from the wine-butt I was hiding in.…

For that attempt I’m being lessoned now

On bread and water — I who was once a king!

Do you remember my first day of battle —

Cased in my golden greaves and coat of mail,

Burnished and proud and brave as seventeen?

He called me then Aldebaran, the prince

Of stars, and was as proud as I, but not

As far, as very far, from doubting tears.…

I soldiered well for seventeen: that’s something:

And something more that three years afterward

I was commander of the imperial armies.

At first it had the zest of sportsmanship

And when we’d meet to plan some new campaign

My heart would swell to know myself his helper.

The best was when we thwarted Gregory.

That was my plan, Berard. To keep the Pope

From holding his great Conclave of the Church,

Or so much of it as was hostile to us,

Seemed of prime urgency, for, once assembled,

We had some glimmering of the onerous outcome.

My father had already sent his letter

To all the Christian kings of Christendom

Protesting ’gainst the Conclave’s convocation.

How he and Pietro crackled at its making —

Its scriptural, grandiose air of indignation,

With just enough of formal reverence

To make them swallow down the new wild yeast

Of his rebellious and irreverent scorn.

And when they nominated Gregory

“The Beast with Horns” — and sternly — how we laughed!

It smacked of that audacious mad crusade

He undertook in jest or scorn or malice

And rounded to a cynical success

With wheat and oil and Kamel’s tolerant friendship.

Yet in these scornful pranks one could detect

A calculated and subversive purpose:

To mock an idol without retribution

Will jar somewhat the best idolater.

Indeed, I thing his mockery’s work will last

When much far nobler will have been forgot.

But the letter, though it jarred the Christian kings,

Did not prevent the Conclave’s call to Rome.

So, as our armies domineered all roads

Converging on the imperial city north

And south, leaving their sole approach by sea,

I offered, half as humorous solution,

To catch the Conclave as it paddled past,

Reeking of lauds and incense, but convoyed

Stoutly enough by the whole fleet of Genoa;

Which done, we’d drop that freightage of old bones —

Three hundred cardinals, archbishops, what-nots —

Into some wholesome dungeon, while the Pope

Would rant and fall to scribbling bulls and banns

At the empty council table. Here was a jest

Fateful, adventurous, that took my father:

Da Vigna too was hopeful: you were absent.

So we devised how I should take the fleet

Of Pisa with what tonnage of our own

I could lay hands to, and strike the Genoese

While sailing down the mainland to the Tiber.

But I remember as our parley ended

My father’s ardor wavered and went out,

And he was moody till we were alone.

Then as I turned to leave him he inquired,

“Have you no fear, no secret fear, my son,

Of Rome’s much-feared and hard anathema

That falls on you now as it fell on me?”

But all that I could think to answer was,

“I am your son.” He gripped me hard at that.

There is some balm in lingering on such moments

When he was proud my bastard blood was his.…

Another one was when I dashed from Pisa,

Riding in lathered haste, my tidings’ own

Glad messenger. Ah, then time’s brutal hand

Had not yet brushed the moth-gold from my youth!

Dusty and hollow-eyed and streaked with sweat

I burst upon him with the victory:

Our sally in the dark; the shock at dawn;

How such and such a ship was sunk or boarded;

Where sprang their main resistance, and its toll;

And who their worships were we clapped in prison.

I saved the humor of it for the last.

Archbishop though you are, you too had laughed

At those two prelates pigeon-paunched, red-gilled,

Who started excommunicating me

Right in the face of my own gaping troops.

My father ruffled when I told him of it.

But when I added with what unconcern

I cut in on their curse and whisked them off,

Blowsy with rage, to learn civility

And Christian meekness in a lousy cell —

He laughed till tears were shaking in his beard.

Then a great banquet, jousts and glees and tourneys —

And I the target of his toasts and praises.