Love Poems and Others/Transformations
TRANSFORMATIONS
I
The Town
Oh you stiff shapes, swift transformation seethesAbout you: only last night you wereA Sodom smouldering in the dense, soiled air;To-day a thicket of sunshine with blue smoke-wreaths.
To-morrow swimming in evening’s vague, dim vapourLike a weeded city in shadow under the sea,Beneath an ocean of shimmering light you will be:Then a group of toadstools waiting the moon’s white taper.
And when I awake in the morning, after rain,To find the new houses a cluster of lilies glitteringIn scarlet, alive with the birds’ bright twittering,I’ll say your bond of ugliness is vain.II
The Earth
Oh Earth, you spinning clod of earth,And then you lamp, you lemon-coloured beauty;Oh Earth, you rotten apple rolling downward,Then brilliant Earth, from the burr of night in beautyAs a jewel-brown horse-chestnut newly issued:—You are all these, and strange, it is my dutyTo take you all, sordid or radiant tissued.
III
Men
Oh labourers, oh shuttles across the blue frame of morning,You feet of the rainbow balancing the sky!Oh you who flash your arms like rockets to heaven,Who in lassitude lean as yachts on the sea-wind lie!You who in crowds are rhododendrons in blossom,Who stand alone in pride like lighted lamps;Who grappling down with work or hate or passion,Take strange lithe form of a beast that sweats and ramps:You who are twisted in grief like crumpled beech-leaves,Who curl in sleep like kittens, who kiss as a swarmOf clustered, vibrating bees; who fall to earthAt last like a bean-pod: what are you, oh multiform?