Edwardian and Georgian Canadian Poets
1900-1930

 

 


THE FLUTE

AND OTHER POEMS

by

KATHERINE HALE

 

THE FLUTE		  
 


LONELY, the curious voice
With its shy quiver
That beats like a gold bird
On a dark river.

From the banks come voices
5
 

Crying all day long:
Homage waits your flute note
Salvoes greet your song.

Come to meet your triumph
Far from lands forlorn,
10
 

Leave your secret piping
Leave your chilly thorn.

I’m no band, sighs gold bird,
I’m no brazen band,
All my songs are memory

15
 

Of a distant land.

I’m no band, sings gold bird,
Hand it to the horn!
Noise is not my country
Let me live forlorn.
20
 


I am plagued with music
Roaring down the street—
Let me back to silence,
Stay not my retreat.

And he might be famous!
25
 

They say of slender flute,
Whose lonely voice through fading worlds
Will call when they are mute. [page 1]

 

 


THE ISLAND


DISCOVERY
 


THIS is where it shimmered
In the morning air,
Looking like a legend
Wrought in colour there:
Fortressed by a rock wall
5
 

And its airy street,
Poised as light as pine trees
Wind-bent towards retreat.

We had turned a corner
Caught a sudden sheen,
10
 

Found a glowing island
We had never seen:
Heard a sound like music
Perfume all the lake—
Singing as a woman sings
15
 

Lovely, half-awake.

And we paddled nearer,
Struck the rocky shore,
Called in strange excitement:
“We are at your door!”
20
 

“Are you fact of fancy?”
“Have you been here long?”
And the island answered:
“I am an old song,
An old, old song
25
 

Old song.”

AIR
 


THE air was warm with an exotic charm,
Not Canada at all
And a small northern lake;
A land of soft desire,

30
 

A depth of turquoise fire,
A height of foreign stars. [page 2]
Only the water glittered
In a cool northern way
Sparkling against the rocks,
35
 

Then the full moon arose.
“We shall awake, my dear,
We shall awake,
And find all this some fabulous mistake!
I hear a song from far away

40
 

I hear a song that never rests,
I feel the island trembling,
Or is it your small breasts?”
“Let us be still and go to sleep,
For the song will vanish in the morning.”
45


WATER
 


BUT the song surged up in the morning,
Turned into crystal cadence as we swam
Beating against blue fire;
The far sea in our blood
Raced through the cold, fresh bath
50
 

Singing eternal life.

Electrons in the sun,
Or stars in space,
Or little shining fish were we—
Anything fully alive
55
 

Anything coldly free.

Then the hot rock
Was hard and firm;
The island gathered shape again
Beneath our pulsing limbs.
60
  We lay upon the centuries,
Regaining warmth. [page 3]

NOON
 
AN Indian guide
From up at Lake Travers
(Strawberry shirt and grey canoe and all)
65
  Came circling in and out,
Expecting us to beckon him or call.
Then—near enough to shout—
‘Where was you all last week?
Thought maybe you was lost!
70
  Don’t you two want no trout?
That is damn island!
Very much too low—too near the water:
Today I take you down to Hurdman’s Creek
Good fish there, if you like!’
75
 
We shouted back:
‘Ah, no!. . . We’ve leased this island now—
Forever—do you hear?
And absolutely there’s no poaching here,
But we may go with you to Hurdman’s Creek
80
 

One day next year—next year!’

He paddled slowly off,
Then very clear the island echoed gaily:
‘You may go with him, perhaps,
This day next year—next year.’
85

EVENING
 


AN August evening,
Pale-blue and silver and the moon ahead,
And the canoe, if you should turn it westward,
Glazed to a lacquer red.

We had set up our house:
90
 

A fireplace of the island stone,
And a mat of moss,
A tent, and a balsam bed,
And a table made of a pine. [page 4]

And through the twilight’s fading line
95
  We paddled far down the bay
To look at the place so far away
Where the inns and the tourists belong,
The place we had left so hurriedly
When we heard the sound of a song.
100
 


Being established in magic,
Householders you might say,
It was safe enough to glance at the past
From our supernatural bay.

And then we went fishing instead!
105
  And something reached out of the twilight,
Something so old and magnetic
Something so sure and prevailing
It seemed we might better obey—
For a song has a certain conviction
110
  Heard at the end of the day.

NIGHT
 
WE finally built a fire
To warm our shivering tent.
It looked like a ghost, as the flame rose higher
And showed the open rent of the flap
115
 

Knocking about in the wind.

“Where was you all last week?” Pierre had asked,
“Thought maybe you was lost!”

We wondered a moment later,
If that was the sound of frost,
120
 

Or a bent twig, snapped in the forest.
We wondered when winter, with bitter cost,
Would stop the song of the island.

Lighting my cigarette from yours,
Close in the lovely blaze,
125
 

We talked of miraculous nights
And endless drowsy days. [page 5]

“But is it a night, or a hundred nights
Since we stopped at the rocky door?”
“It is too long for you, my dear?
130
  “Is your bed warm no more?”…
“Yes, witchingly, yes—
But time runs on:
Sometimes I know, as in a dream,
That we have often been here before.
135
  The song that is part of everything
Beats like a bell in my brain.
Is the tent, in fact, but a ghost?
And we—are we lost in this magical pain,
In the cold blue depths,
140
  In the heat of the rocks,
In passionate sorcery,
In death that is endless sweet?
And shall I save you, while there is time,
From unreal cold and heat!”
145
 
But we died again that night,
Sank deep and far away,
Seeing the star through the canvas roof,
Hearing the pine trees sway,
And the island’s murmurous song,
150
 

And the deep sea in our blood
Beating for long and long.

(But that pistol frost in the woods!)

“We’ve a lease of this island forever,
Forever, do you hear?
155
  And absolutely no poaching:
But we may go with you to Hurdman’s Creek
This day next year—next year.” [page 6]

DETENTION
 
WELL, we thought it over and over
For another night or two,
160
  Then creeping about like trespassers,
When the sun had almost risen
In the moment before day,
We took our fate in both our hands
And packed the tent,
165
  And were well on our way
When suddenly the paddles slipped,
The boat went all astray
Caught in the sedge,
And a wind arose, drifting us back to land.
170
 
Then we made ourselves a sail,
And took a last adieu.
But we said to our smiling island
“We shall return to you
After the cold is over
175
  We shall return”…
Her smile was as new as waking earth
On a morning after rain.
And the waves, as in October,
Were choppy and swift and clear,
180
  We had almost turned the corner
When the whole thing happened again—
For the lake was suddenly still
As a lonely and forgotten pool
At the foot of a broken mill,
185
  And our sail was a rag of canvas
That sorcery could not fill.
We were merged again in a mystery
That defied our fluttering will,
So we came like abject children
190
  Back to our cold doorsill—
Suddenly cold and gray,
Ashy and cold and gray, [page 7]
And we heard the song of the island
From far and far away,
195
  In a chant that was slow and still:
If you would ask me I should say:
Not if you fell on your knees to pray,
Not for a year and not for a day,
And my days are long and long. . .
200
  For you have found what you came to see
And I am you and you are me
And you are part of a song—
An old, old song
Old song.
205
 

 

FOURTH DIMENSIONAL

 


THIS flimsy tent
On the dark forest’s edge
Faces such cold blue water,
And length of russet sedge.

Open to night
5
 

A tree holds out the rain,
Or melts in wavering shadow
Upon our roof again.

Within the tent,
All heaven for you and me:
10
 

From violent root to blossoming flower
The whole ecstatic tree.

Oh, as we lay
Deep in the stillness there
Knowing that we should sink
15
  Out of all mortal air
Down into that sweet death,
I quite believed, you know,
That a fourth door might open
Or a torn fold would show
20
  Trace of the long-lost passage—
And yet, it was not so! [page 8]
 

 

NEARING QUEBEC

 
GREY line of ocean that our sharp bow severs,
Do remember those tiny dipping sails
Venturing the unknown!
Then the free wind was an uncertain guide,
Criss-crossing the grey line,
5
  Breaking the problematic course,
Enlarging, moving, changing
Opening the vast abyss.
Remember the huddled women
In question of this mystery,
10
 

The climbing, peering men,
The strain of tense expectancy,
And the doubt of arrival.

But the trembling line is controlled,
And the wayward guide dismissed.
15
  What is the wind to us,
A beaten and frustrate force!
Did it once intimidate men,
Who used to measure and peer
At navies of storm in the sky?
20
  First-rate machinery casts out fear,
And now we know what we know!
London, New York, it is all the same,
The ocean track is clear and tame,
We shall without doubt arrive.
25
 
Yet I return to you,
As though to a new land,
A woman on a sailing ship
Still huddled in a mystery.
Shall I touch your shores,
30
  Past all these shimmering capes,
Prefacing cliffs and legends,
Witch-music, song of sirens,
Hymns of safety and the rest?
I mean your actual shores;
35
  Earth of your very being, [page 9]
The innermost of you:
The straight cliffs of your mind,
The mountains of your will,
The secret passes,
40
  The deep and lovely fountains of your joy.
Are you to be my country,
My fathomless resource,
And my enduring song?
I, too, sail trembling
45
  Into the unknown.
 

 

BEFORE BIRTH

 
SOMBRE, relaxed, supine,
I saw the prairie lie,
Heavy with unborn April
Under the wintry sky;
Her tent, her mirror, her husband,
5
 

Her lord and master, the sky.

He is a barbarous lord,
Who kills her overnight,
But draws her back to him again
With magic old and bright,
10
 

Stirring her heart with new desire
Piercing it with delight.

I saw him bending down
In the curve of an arching bow,
And her shimmering response,
15
 

Beautiful, grave and slow,
A thousand raptures in her breast
So lately cold as snow.

The two, alone in space,
Like death must pause and wait,
20
 

Canopied by a myriad stars,
And mattressed with fate,
In the long Olympian love of man
And his eternal mate. [page 10]

It is immortal love,
25
  Passion of air and earth,
Melting of sky and land,
Blossoming giant birth;
Silently bearing the seed of Spring
Back to the waiting North.
30
 

 

  

SOUTHERN LIVE OAK

 
 
CIRCLES of green, ringed in a plushy darkness,
Thatching of leaves and raftered branching of boughs,
A fabulous tent,
A dewy, dark bouquet,
Thick with a hundred years,
5
 

And silent in the echoing youth
Of this bright, clamorous May.

Leaves that have watched
White-pillared houses rise
And glow and blossom and fade,
10
  Eaves that have overheard
Chatter of Spain and France
And music of English words—
See, I return to you
As to one long beloved.
15
  For in this southern town
That is so strange to me
My vanished ancestors walked up and down.
My grandmother they say,
Was used to driving out Magnolia Way,
20
 

And you have called to her, how many a time,
All your bells ringing in a fairy chime,
Just as you do with poignancy today
This younger blood of mine. [page 11]

What of the whispering past
25
  Caught in the agèd circle of a tree?
If I should stay
Under these branches patiently,
Under these old leaves silently,
For one deep night, one day,
30
  Oh, long-loved petals of this vast bouquet,
What would you say to me—
What would you say!
 

 

ARIZONA DESERT ROAD

 
TO the sound of wave-like years
The desert palms march on,
Trudging the grey-green wilderness
Under the glittering sun.
Like pigmy footmen pressing,
5
  Through the sombre dusty trails,
Where a cactus shadow is like a cross,
With spikes for the cross’s nails:
And around their feet the sand,
Sparkling and pale and old,
10
 

Waits for the laggard sea
That was fierce and young and cold.

Something happens at night;
The sand becomes a wave,
And every form is marching
15
  Back to a secret cave.
Rocks that were red in the sun
Have a voice in the night, and cry,
And the whole thing turns back sea-ward:
The land leans to the sky,
20
  The crooked palms grow crazy,
They whisper and fret and sigh,
And when the moon arises
They taste the tide of the sky, [page 12]
And it sends them out of their senses,
25
  So they gather in whimpering clusters
With their peaked horns rising high,
A dwarf and his circling friends,
And they argue in whispering voices
Till the moon has passed them by.
30
 
For the mist at the foot of the rocks
Is sea-mist, old and sad,
And the sand is a glittering wave,
That drives half-creatures mad.
In that terrible sigh for the sea
35
  I feel all earth complain,
I find old forces rising,
I hear a strange refrain,
And I see footmen thronging
Down to an old sea-lane . . .
40
 
God knows this ancient desert road
Is more than sun-baked plain!
 

 

MEXICAN ROAD MENDERS

 
THESE Mexicans are like the land,
Like images of sand;
Dry as the sage brush, infinitely old,
Brown as the landscape fading into gold,
Colored with foothills,
5
  Smudged with dusty red.
As the car passed them
One held up his weathered head,
Stared at us gently,
Looked across the land
10
  Where his wild mountains darkly cut the sky,
Swore softly at these strangers passing by
And went on shoveling sand. [page 13]
 

 

  

QUARTET
 


FOUR men with a velvet curtain behind them;
Green stage-light turning its folds into trees;
Sound beginning from somewhere invisible,
As though it came from caverns underground;
As thin as crystal air comes that far sound.
5
 

A slender forest wakes before the mind.

Some frail notes blow through the forest,
Deep into silence move the strings,
The leaves are listening, and the hunt is on;
Faint, icy bugles penetrate the air,
10
 

Mysterious calls from every here and there
Summon far, muted notes to make reply.

These paths are deep and narrow through the ferns,
The old-scale music hurries to and fro—
Lost footsteps come again to feel the earth,
15
 

Primitive steps, that slide between the leaves,
Small sound, that like some ancient shuttle weaves
A silver theme to lead us through the wood.

Slowly this magic fades into the velvet curtain
And four men have returned us to the world.
20
 

In the silence Ravel and his secret remain—
Dim fairyland, warm earth, or unguessed heaven.
“Enter these enchanted woods who dare!”
Immortal challenge given to mortal air.
 

 

  

LIKE FIGURES BY DU MAURIER

 


LIKE figures by Du Maurier
They sat in the Chelsea drawing-room
Over whose red garden walls
One can barely see the heads of passers by;
John, who played so beautifully,
5
 

Making the piano sing whole operas,
Recalling Nordica and Calvè
And news of Jean de Reské. [page 14]

Theodore, who remembers every tone of Duse’s voice
And adores Edith Evans.
10
 

Cynthia who used to act—but only gardens now.
Julien, so elegant and so composed.

They were content to sit on summer evenings
Through the long English gloaming,
Perfumed by bowls of spicy pink carnations,
15
 

Sipping black coffee, smoking cigarettes,
Watching the river-breeze blow through the curtains,
Listening to John, and listening to the past
So musical with memories;
Straightening sometimes a crooked silhouette,
20
 

Interpolating news of the last play,
The Court Gazette, or little family jokes.
All so content.  As if dear Chelsea
Lay like a moat between the world and them.

Now they will close the Beckstein,
25
 

And go away, and return, hoping,
And yet it will not come—their feeling of security.
The room has been entered by change,
The thing they dreaded.  Even the breeze
Knocks on the window, colder now and strange,
30
 

Air without music.

Why must he come, this forager,
Displacing with determined fingers
The notes of an old harmony—
A sequence to such lovely music wed!
35
 

Nor you nor I can ever answer that,
I only know that Julien has written to say
That John is dead. [page 15]
 

 

THIS OBLIVION

 
 


ONE dear to him is moving towards the river;
Her broad-brimmed hat and dress of faded blue,
Her sketch book under a protecting arm.
Slowly she disappears, hid by the grasses,
Fading in light of the dim, blue-grey day.
5
 

Ah, so he faded as his tie with earth
Was loosed, and he slipped down
Hidden as she is now.  But the dim green
That floats and weaves above his secret place
Will not return him, not for any grace
10
 

Of wildest supplication.  Yet she comes,
Risen from the grasses, back along the road,
Her little disappearance traced in form,
Her morning told in colour and in line.
Self-tranced she walks into the world again
15
 

Renewed by this oblivion.
But, oh, for him, bound in a blinding sleep,
What recompense?
I see no recompense that such negation brings
Or—is there song that endless silence sings
20
 

Faintly, below these grasses strong and deep?
 

 

  

’CELLIST
 


AGAINST curved ’cello
Almost breast to breast,
Curve linked to curve
Her ardent body pressed

In a strange marriage,
5
 

Through whose deep embrace
Moments of rapture
Seemed to interlace.

As in joy’s arrowed swiftness
So creation there
10
  Final, immaculate,
In tragic brevity arose in air. [page 16]