Plains

I CAN imagine quite easily ending up
In a decaying port on a desolate coast,
Cadging drinks from the unwary, a quarrelsome,
Disreputable old man; I can picture
A second childhood in a valley, scribbling
Reams of edifying and unreadable verse;
But I cannot see a plain without a shudder; —
“O God, please, please, don’t ever make me live there! ”

It’s horrible to think what peaks come down to,
That pecking rain and squelching glacier defeat
Tall pomps of stone where goddesses lay sleeping,
Dreaming of being woken by some chisel’s kiss,
That what those blind brutes leave when they are through is nothing
But a mere substance, a clay that meekly takes
The potter’s cuff, a gravel that as concrete
Will unsex any space which it encloses.

And think of growing where all elsewheres are equal!
So long as there’s a hill-ridge somewhere the dreamer
Can place his land of marvels; in poor valleys
Orphans can head downstream to seek a million:
Here nothing points; to choose between Art and Science
An embryo genius would have to spin a stick.
What could these farms do if set loose but drift like clouds,
What goal of unrest is there but the Navy?

Romance? Not in this weather. Ovid’s charmer
Who leads the quadrilles in Arcady, boy-lord
Of hearts who can call their Yes and No their own,
Would, madcap that he is, soon die of cold or sunstroke:
These lives are in firmer hands; that old grim She
Who makes the blind dates for the hatless genera
Creates their country matters. (Woe to the child-bed,
Woe to the strawberries if she’s in Her moods!)

And on these attend, greedy as fowl and harsher
Than any climate, Caesar with all his They.
If a tax-collector disappear in the hills,
If, now and then, a keeper is shot in the forest,
No thunder follows, but where roads run level,
How swift to the point of protest strides the Crown.
It hangs, it flogs, it lines, it goes. There is drink.
There are wives to beat. But Zeus is with the strong.

Born as a rule in some small place (an island,
Quite often, where a smart lad can spot the bluff
Whence cannon would put the harbor at his mercy),
But it’s here they chamber with Clio. At this ditch
The Christian cross-bow stopped the Heathen scimitar;
Here is a windmill whence an emperor saw
His right wing crumple; across these cabbage fields
A pretender’s Light Horse made their final charge.

If I were a plainsman I should hate us all,
From the mechanic rioting for a cheap loaf
To the fastidious palate, halt’ the painter
Who steals my wrinkles for his Twelve Apostles,
Hate the priest who cannot even make it shower.
What could I smile at as I trudged behind my harrow
But bloodshot images of rivers screaming,
Marbles in panic, and Don’t-Care made to care?

As it is, though, I know them personally
Only as a landscape common to two nightmares:
Across them, spotted by spiders from afar,
I have tried to run, knowing there was no hiding and no hope
On them, in brilliant moonlight, I have lost my way
And stood without a shadow at the dead center
Of an abominable desolation.
Like Tarquin ravished by his post-coital sadness.

Which goes to show I’ve reason to be frightened
Not of plains, of course, but of me. I should like
Who wouldn’t ? — to shoot beautifully and be obeyed
(I should also like to own a cave with two exits);
I wish I weren’t so silly. Though I can’t pretend
To think these flats poetic, it’s as well at times
To be reminded that nothing is lovely,
Not even in poetry, which is not the case.