The Uncertain Land and Other Poems. Patrick O’Brian
‘The sea and the sky are silent’
The sea and the sky are silent:
they wait.
The sea and the sky are silent:
the girl is late.
The sea and the sky are silent:
the girl is late.
The sea and the sky are waiting:
let her come to her fate.
Couplets in favour of Mrs W. Koren, who sent (per JBC)fn1 jam to the O’Brians [at Collioure] in time of dearth
All Attic virtues, beauty, wisdom, wit,
Take which you will, she doth excel in it
All these and yet one more th’Atlantic dame
Hath to illumine her noble spouse’s name,
Mark there the Greek with Chian wine and oil
Comes bearing gifts, and see how vain his toil.
Yet here Transpontine Ceres freely sends
Imprison’d comfits, Polemarchus’ blends, …
And dreams not fear nor anger (see above)
But grateful intercessions and our love
The pallid bread glows purple, and the dew
Of anxious gleed bespreads each wizen’d brow
Encrimson’d mouths gape sated at the last
Such admirable tins of jam as these
Are apt to promote international pese
May Heaven reward Mrs Koren
Who is undoubtedly a pearl among women.
The recipient of jam were [sic] undoubtedly a moron
‘The harsh dry polished rattle’
The harsh dry polished rattle of the palm fronds
stirring in the breeze. I had supposed
But not our London sparrow, magpie, crow
Still less the stars by night, our Plough, old Bear
the same Orion, Rigal, Altair there
and through the trees the shining Procyon.
You will come to it
Do not suppose their motions pantomime
because the thing they dig is dark, unseen
the mattock and the shovel swing in time
a near approach will show you what they mean.
Cold from the silent leaden sky, unmoving, full of snow.
Cold, and the sounds far on the smoky air –
the rackle, hoe in stones, the stoney vineyard high
and the working man much farther than the sound
All through the terraced valley, sounds.
The vines are bare, the spare leaves redden:
they prune: and everywhere they grub with shining tools
And in the silence sounds – on silence beads, the sounds.
Now there are women.
gabbling
Where are the women? There
gabbling
above the road, the vines, the olives
the prim the graceful olive trees
the women picking there the olives
a tilted plane, the trees, the women
and then the sky, one-coloured, leaden.
Neat, clear, unworldly, Pieter Brueghel.
I do not like to see the women.
Black. Not shining. Black entirely.
head to foot, and cheesey faces.
Eager, hard and clacking voices: and the hands
are deadly white for ever groping,
They stand as high, and monstrously
they stand as high, as does the tree.
Their hands
are deadly white, for ever groping.
Emasculating
in the trees.
The winter hillside
brown
sharp, clear, distinct
and figures running
tiny, shortened, struggling with space.
A plouff of smoke
is drifting on the field
larger: larger, vague: and now the bang
the echoes clapping in the hills, hard hills,
and now the rain
reversed: the rattle
cruel ripping tearing hail
of stones that fell
in time disturbed, before.
I am poor about loving, so
tibi donum offero
It is a present as you see
extractum ex operi
quod ex libro domini
extractum est, alas by me
theft it was, but theft or no
tibi donum offero.
A present is chiefly a fragment, a token
of affection and love.
And then there is the strong pleasure of giving
a visible proof of unbroken
kindness and more
But, the interchanging pleasure apart
and discounted
A ring is a token of marriage; a book
of the spirit that made it.
and a present of love.
But