Burial

BY STRUTHERS BURT

As when we wake from some enchanted sleep,
Dear sleep deep-folded sombrous layer on layer,
As when we wake from some enchanted deep
Forgetfulness and taste the fragrant air,
Finding it fresh again and sharp with bloom,
And color heightened, and new sound begot,
So was the sense of water in that room
In some high-hilled September long forgot:
And Faring listened and he laughed aloud,
Making no slightest movement in his shroud.

In the gray dawn, silence perturbing him, he lay

Dreaming before the moment of the sun,

The lengthening moment when the leaves are stirred, and day Breaks with its touch the webs that night has spun.

The damp sweet mouths of field and forest clung,

The house was still, save for a creaking stair,

The cheeping of the sparrows clicked and hung

Upon the muted rhythm of the air;

And far off with a choked and angry cry
A cock assailed the flaming of the sky.

Faring, his fever ebbing, knew again
On slender trails the bending firs immersed,
Rivers that ran from misty rain to rain

And cooled his lips when they were young with thirst
Drowsily water fell in soundless sound,

Wetting the moss and nodding columbine;

The sunlight shot its arrows to the ground,

And stooped to pick them up beneath the pine.
Faring grew happier and raised his head;

The waiting nurse stepped forward-he was dead.

Not wholly . . . in the going, and the going,
Between the apparent end and ultimate breath,
Lingers a little time we know, unknowing,
Before the new dead feel aright with death;
That dusk his wife saw Faring's face so clear,
Outside the window where the garden ran,
She knew not if she felt a joy or fear
At this so perfect symbol of a man.
Faring was listening, rigid in surmise,
But there was smiling wonder in his eyes.

Down in the garden where the heady rose
Turns black and humble with the coming eve,
And those fine August blossoms, spiked and close,
The marigold and yellow zinnia weave

Their thick brocade, where now the herbal hour
Was pungent with their scent, and dew, and grass,
Faring had walked and touched each lovèd flower,
Musing on this amazement come to pass.

A small mist hid the moon above the trees,
The privet did not bend for Faring's knees.

Would he come back? This rose, this marigold, this hedge!
Ah, it was good to be unleashed of pain,

And those fantastic shapes who'd held the ledge

Narrow and perilous where he had lain!

Would he come back? He paused again and peered;

She sat, his wife, so pale and still and staring,

He sighed, for this was all that he had feared;

She thought the sheeted thing up-stairs was Faring.
Faring the great, the gay, the debonair,

Yearned even for that bewildered friendship, there.

"Much as she knows of me," he thought, "she still would lie,

And for the memory of love would hide,

Rather than strip me naked to the sky,

The just and naked anger of her pride.

Rather than strip me naked?" Faring took
Between his hands a twisted lily stalk,
The day was spent and he had still to look
For some defence should bright archangels talk.
"I shall be blind and all confused with wonder;
I must make haste-and ponder-ponder."

Above the trees the night-jar's crying whirred,
Wounding the silence with a shaft of noise,
There fell no shadow, but his wife had stirred
And raised her head as if she heard a voice.
"Poorheart!" said Faring, "let your pulses dance,
This is a day, and soon a day is over,

Think on your freedom and of new romance,

I know the heart, and the heart is ever a rover.
Poorheart!".. He must make haste. Remember,
How clear the water ran in that September?

Faring had had no empty minute; time
Was short between the human and sublime.

First and foremost, neat and amorous,
Twinkling ankles, starchily glamorous,
Painted cheeks and prettily thin,
Beside his bed the nurse had been,

Felt of his pulse and said: "That's that";
Thinking of her wedding-hat.

"Lord, it's been a tiresome case.

Must have been a handsome face."

Faring smiled, but no one knew:

How sweet, how cool the smell of dew!

How full of summer hot and crisp,

The curtains with their sliding lisp.

Nieces, nephews, undertakers,

Handkerchiefs . . . the sobbing fakers! "That's a mighty fine man, Jim.

We'll make a wonderful corpse of him."

"Poorheart-lean down, lean down beside me.

You see me smile? You cannot chide me.
Pretty lips cannot command

This curious mystery, large and bland.
Now I have really run away.

Poorheart... laugh, laugh, you'll soon recover,
I know the heart, and it's ever a rover.
Would I could stroke your shining hair.
I weep, I weep to make you sorrow,
But dry your tears, there'll be to-morrow.
Sweetheart, isn't water odd?

Like some confused and murmuring god."
Damn these nephews, nieces, aunts,
Damn their slow macabre dance!
Yes, he'd left them all his money.
Lots for bread, and even honey.
Couldn't they let him lie and dream
Of sunlight on a coppiced stream?
Couldn't they let him watch a pool
Turn his face young again and cool?

.. what?

...

"What did you say, you great archangel
Must I explain each folly wild and hot;
Must I recall each cruelty in taking
From other men the stolen gold they'd got?
Dreams did not start that way, but lest I die
I rode the wild colt world and did the breaking.
Yes, I have loved kind arms and radiant flesh,
And lips that cut the night and healed it, too;
Was I then born a man to never know
The ecstasy the strange unknown makes fresh?
If I have had my fill, so have my lovers,

But I have judged them not. . . . And you?"

Faring drew breath-a night-jar called-he raised his head;
"You fool," said Faring to himself, "you're dead.
You fool to waste your time; you wasteful fool!"
Soundless the water fell, and cool.

"Why I have been a brother to the wind, Brother of hills I have forsworn, forsaken;

Why I have found the sunlight tall and kind,

And all night long the planets overtaken.

Why, I have known that death rose from the earth,

And went back again, and came out again, as birth."

Soundless the water fell in lost September:

"If you would hold me guilty," Faring said, "you must remember."

Somewhere are rivers lonely and forgot,

Save by the clouds and early rush of wings,

That year by year each hour by hour are shot
With changing beauty and amazing springs;

And autumn flecked with leaves, and deep, and brown;
And winter wrapped in iridescent white;
And in the summer August tumbling down
Makes a great sound of fulness in the night.
And these are never old, and never new,
And never begin, nor ending, ever through.

Soundless the water fell in a September,
High-hilled and lost, but now recalled again,
And drowsily, drowsily Faring could remember
Rivers that ran from misty rain to rain.
Soundless the water fell . . . he raised his head;
Who was this man who muttered of the dead?

It had turned cold; it was no longer night but noon;
And Faring wished they would be ended soon.

"Hear then my prayers, O Lord,

Man walketh in vain shadow and in vain. . .

What was that dropping . . . earth? It fell like rain. "Forasmuch in his wise providence. . . ." Sod?

Was this then God?

Yes, it was God,

And so the tall straight tree,

And all the upper dainty merciful green;

This darkness, too. "At whose second coming in glorious majesty to

judge the world,

The earth and the sea shall give up their dead;

And the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him

Shall be changed, and made like his own

Glorious body."

Glorious body? These were prayers!
His body was glorious with all subtle airs,
And all the subtle changing hues of light,
And all the subtle mystery of night;
The subtle largeness of the stars outlined
Within the subtle smallness of the mind.
His glorious body-Faring's was the same,
And so the deathless spirit's tiny flame.
"Almighty and everliving God. . . .'
Faring could remember

Only the sound of water in September,

But smiled to hear the spades strike sharp and rough,
Knowing the sound of water was enough.

Leah Turns Lowbrow

BY HILDA MAUCK

ILLUSTRATIONS BY GENE MCNERNEY