Love Poems and Others/Red Moon-Rise
RED MOON-RISE
The train in running across the weald has fallen into a steadier strokeSo even, it beats like silence, and sky and earth in one unbrokeEmbrace of darkness lie around, and crushed between them all the looseAnd littered lettering of leaves and hills and houses closed, and we can useThe open book of landscape no more, for the covers of darkness have shut uponIts written pages, and sky and earth and all between are closed in one.
And we are smothered between the darkness, we close our eyes and say “Hush!” we tryTo escape in sleep the terror of this immense deep darkness, and we lieWrapped up for sleep. And then, dear God, from out of the twofold darkness, redAs if from the womb the moon arises, as if the twin-walled darkness had bledIn one great spasm of birth and given us this new, red moon-riseWhich lies on the knees of the darkness bloody, and makes us hide our eyes.
The train beats frantic in haste, and struggles awayFrom this ruddy terror of birth that has slid downFrom out of the loins of night to flame our wayWith fear; but God, I am glad, so glad that I drown My terror with joy of confirmation, for nowLies God all red before me, and I am glad,As the Magi were when they saw the rosy browOf the Infant bless their constant folly which hadBrought them thither to God: for now I knowThat the Womb is a great red passion whence rises allThe shapeliness that decks us here-below:Yea like the fire that boils within this ballOf earth, and quickens all herself with flowers,God burns within the stiffened clay of us;And every flash of thought that we and oursSend up to heaven, and every movement, doesFly like a spark from this God-fire of passion;And pain of birth, and joy of the begetting,And sweat of labour, and the meanest fashionOf fretting or of gladness, but the jettingOf a trail of the great fire against the skyWhere we can see it, a jet from the innermost fire:And even in the watery shells that lieAlive within the oozy under-mire,A grain of this same fire I can descry.
And then within the screaming birds that flyAcross the lightning when the storm leaps higher;And then the swirling, flaming folk that tryTo come like fire-flames at their fierce desire,They are as earth’s dread, spurting flames that plyAwhile and gush forth death and then expire.And though it be love’s wet blue eyes that cryTo hot love to relinquish its desire,Still in their depths I see the same red sparkAs rose to-night upon us from the dark.