Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921/Canopus
CANOPUS
Up from the smooth dust of the road they turned.The shivery spider cables spread a netAcross the climbing path that teased and burnedTheir faces, which the dew-sprayed leaves left wet;Defenseless cheeks were clawed by trespassing brambleAnd vagabonding sumach, Their fingers met,Anchors to steady each unsteady scramble.
Their nervous feet struck stones, that toppled overThe terraced outcrop, and, at last let loose,Clattered to rest against stray tufts of clover.Boughs broke off in their grasp, and were no use,And underneath the brittle twigs snapped shrill.At length the firmer sassafras and spruceGave hand-holds as they met the steeper hill.
"We'll rest." He wiped an arm across a browFouled with the twitching spider-web, and leantAgainst a low dead stump, steadying nowHer passage toward him, much as though he meantTo hold the pressure till her breathless faceEncountered his; then, suddenly continent,He loosed her hand. She poised in the dark place,
Her heart pounding, gasping as though distressed.She smoothed a dampened, restless strand of hair.A smile colored her echoing words: "We'll rest.It is steep." Then they sniffed the thinner air,Sharply brought closer, as the conquered riseMade clear that they at length had mounted whereThere were no more of censoring city eyes.
The isolation was a sudden thrustCleaving them, like a whispered word of warning.He brushed ahead; a startled smoke of dustTrailed like a widening curtain. Quickly scorningThe stiff precipitous way, she followed higherThrough crushing shadow and jutting branch, adorningThis path that pointed toward an unseen fire.
Partly to dull two fires—the one that charredHer cheeks, the one still deeper—she called out:"You think we'll see it?" He was climbing hard,So far ahead, his answer was a shout."I think we may." He waited, eyes uncertain,Until her sky-lit face came near, to routThe dark, as daybreak tears night's shadowy curtain.
He guided to the summit. Fingers tingledUneasily, driven thoughts clung and caressed;The sharp throbs of their breathing met and mingled.She sank in a grass cushion on the crest,Content to forget far fire and its far are.She settled into a tender bladed nest,His body lengthened upward in the dark,
Or so its seemed to her. "It's nearly ten;An hour, and it should clear the horizon haze,Squatting right above Sand Mountain, ThenIt's ours, if the cloudy August heaven playsNo tricks." He held a tree-trunk close, insteadOf something longed for; she leaned in a daze,Smoothing her knees as if it had been a head.
"A visitor," he thought aloud, "who takesOne burning, scornful look, and never more.He leaves to flutter over Andean lakes,To halve the sky of some lost, jungled shore,To flame with the Southern Cross and Sirius,Raining hot madness on lush midnight brakes,Gilding chill seas, frigid, unamorous."
She pondered. "You have seen him?" "Once," he said,"As I saw Mercury once, a golden bubblePoised just above the dawn's disheveled bed,For one pale glimpse." Her fingers clutched the stubbleLying beneath them, clawed it from its home;She held her voice level with much trouble."What are the stars but flecks of fiery foam—"
"What are the stars but sources of that flameThat burns and scorches in the stifling sun,That flares in us—"His gesturing fingers cameAcross hers suddenly, trembled, as if to runIn panic from a long suspected danger,Then calmed into a hot oblivion,Clasping her own, knowing her hand no stranger.
The night's mysterious wings pulsed through the dark,The night's mysterious noises cracked and shivered,And where their fingers met a visible sparkSeemed to leap forth at them, and pulsed and quivered Throughout them both. Their thickened tongues were dumb,The pretty words of star-lore undelivered,The pretty words that found no breath could come.
He sank into the stubble by her side,Leaving a blankness in the upper night;His lips leant in their urgency of prideTowards her eyes, that made the blackness bright.His lips spoke only to the reddened cheek,And settled to a long-denied delightUpon the goal they had not dared to seek.
There was a gasping silence on the crest,While the wind whined and the thin stars passed over;There was a gasping rapture in each breast,And her will bent as wind bends low the clover.And a flame rose to its magnificent noon,And a flame vanished. Each exalted loverFelt the mad ecstasy and the piercing tune
Of love higher than hills that brush the sky,Of love fiercer than suns that whiten space,Die in their high magnificence, yet dieTo a still radiance in the friendly placeThat seemed to promise higher ecstasyForever stamped on each beloved's face,Telling them: "This is immortality."
Unseen, while love's proud beacon flared and sweptAcross their hearts, a sudden sullen glowHad lifted over the hill beyond, and crept,Diminishing yet brightening, in slowAnd stately curving path so high, and thenBent back toward the dimness, slid belowThe unlit bulk of the huge hills again.
Without a word they knew it. His face burning,"We can return'"; but they knew, at his. word,That there are paths that do not know returning;And as their downward-stumbling footsteps stirredThe stony steep, the roadway dust, the grayAnd morning hush, each rustle made or heardSang to them they had found the starrier way.
The NationClement Wood