..
And one shivered and whined like a gull as the waves pawed us over...
But one struck with his hate in his hand...
After that I remember
Only the dead men's oars that flapped in the sea...
The dead men's oars that rattled and clicked like idiots' tongues.
It is still... so still, with the jargon of engines quiet.
We three awaiting the crunch of the sea
Reach our hands in the dark and touch each other's faces...
We three sheathing hate in our hearts...
But when hate shall have made its circuit,
Our bones will be loving company
Here in the sea's den...
And one whimpers and cries on his God
And one sits sullenly
But both draw away from me...
For I am the pyre their memories burn on...
Like black flames leaping
Our fiery gestures light the walled-in darkness of the sea...
The sea that kneels above us...
And makes no sign.
PALESTINE
Old plant of Asia--
Mutilated vine
Holding earth's leaping sap
In every stem and shoot
That lopped off, sprouts again--
Why should you seek a plateau walled about,
Whose garden is the world?
THE SONG
That day, in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks
on the bloodied ooze of fields plowed by the iron,
And the smoke bluish near earth and bronze in the sunshine
floating like cotton-down,
And the harsh and terrible screaming,
And that strange vibration at the roots of us...
Desire, fierce, like a song.
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