Toward the Gulf

     There's the dragon banner, says Old King Cole,
     And the tiger banner, he cries.
     Pantagruel breaks into a laugh
     As the monarch dries his eyes.—The Search
     "The tiger banyer, that is what you call much
     Bad men in China, Amelica. The dragon banyer.
     That is storm, leprosy, no rice, what you call
     Nature. See! Nature!"—King Joy

     Said Old King Cole I know the banner
     Of dragon and tiger too,
     But I would know the vagrant fellows
     Who came to my castle with you.

     And I would know why they rise in the morning
     And never take bread or scrip;
     And why they hasten over the mountain
     In a sorrowed fellowship.

     Then said Pantagruel: Heard you not?
     One said he goes to Spain.
     One said he goes to Elsinore,
     And one to the Trojan plain.

     Faith, if it be, said Old King Cole,
     There is a word that's more:
     Who is it goes to Spain and Troy?
     And who to Elsinore?

     One may be Quixote, said Pantagruel,
     Out for the final joust.
     One may be Hamlet, said Pantagruel
     And one I think is Faust.

     Whoever they be, said Pantagruel,
     Why stand at the window and drool?
     Let's out and catch the runaways
     While the morning hour is cool.

     Pantagruel runs to the castle court,
     And King Cole follows soon.
     The cobblestones of the court yard ring
     To the beat of their flying shoon.

     Pantagruel clutches the holy bottle,
     And King Cole clutches his crown.
     They throw the bolt of the castle gate
     And race them through the town.

     They cross the river and follow the road,
     They run by the willow trees,
     And the tiger banner and dragon banner
     Wait for the morning breeze.

     They clamber the wall and part the brambles,
     And tear through thicket and thorn.
     And a wild dove in an olive tree
     Does mourn and mourn and mourn.

     A green snake starts in the tangled grass,
     And springs his length at their feet.
     And a condor circles the purple sky
     Looking for carrion meat.

     And mad black flies are over their heads,
     And a wolf looks out of his hole.
     Great drops of sweat break out and run
     From the brow of Old King Cole.

     Said Old King Cole: A drink, my friend,
     From the holy bottle, I pray.
     My breath is short, my feet run blood,
     My throat is baked as clay.

     Anon they reach a mountain top,
     And a mile below in the plain
     Are the glitter of guns and a million men
     Led by an idiot brain.

     They come to a field of slush and flaw
     Red with a blood red dye.
     And a million faces fungus pale
     Stare horribly at the sky.

     They come to a cross where a rotting thing
     Is slipping down from the nails.
     And a raven perched on the eyeless skull
     Opens his beak and rails:

     "If thou be the Son of man come down,
     Save us and thyself save."
     Pantagruel flings a rock at the raven:
     "How now blaspheming knave!"

     "Come down and of my bottle drink,
     And cease this scurvy rune."
     But the raven flapped its wings and laughed
     Loud as the water loon.

     Said Old King Cole: A drink, my friend,
     I faint, a drink in haste.
     But when he drinks he pales and mutters:
     "The wine has lost its taste."

     "You have gone mad," said Pantagruel,
     "In faith 'tis the same old wine."
     Pantagruel drinks at the holy bottle
     But the flavor is like sea brine.

     And there on a rock is a cypress tree,
     And a form with a muffled face.
     "I know you, Death," said Pantagruel,
     "But I ask of you no grace."

     "Empty my bottle, sour my wine,
     Bend me, you shall not break."
     "Oh well," said Death, "one woe at a time
     Before I come and take."

     "You have lost everything in life but the bottle,
     Youth and woman and friend.
     Pass on and laugh for a little space yet
     The laugh that has an end."

     Pantagruel passes and looks around him
     Brave and merry of soul.
     But there on the ground lies a dead body,
     The body of Old King Cole.

     And a Voice said: Take the body up
     And carry the body for me
     Until you come to a silent water,
     By the sands of a silent sea.

     Pantagruel takes the body up
     And the dead fat bends him down.
     He climbs the mountains, runs the valleys
     With body, bottle and crown.

     And the wastes are strewn with skulls,
     And the desert is hot and cursed.
     And a phantom shape of the holy bottle
     Mocks his burning thirst.

     Pantagruel wanders seven days,
     And seven nights wanders he.
     And on the seventh night he rests him
     By the sands of the silent sea.

     And sees a new made fire on the shore,
     And on the fire is a dish.
     And by the fire two travelers sleep,
     And two are broiling fish.

     Don Quixote and Hamlet are sleeping,
     And Faust is stirring the fire.
     But the fourth is a stranger with a face
     Starred with a great desire.

     Pantagruel hungers, Pantagruel thirsts,
     Pantagruel falls to his knees.
     He flings down the body of Old King Cole
     As a man throws off disease.

     And rolls his burden away and cries:
     "Take and watch, if you will.
     But as for me I go to France
     My bottle to refill."

     "And as for me I go to France
     To fill this bottle up."
     He felt at his side for the holy bottle,
     And found it turned a cup.

     And the stranger said: Behold our friend
     Has brought my cup to me.
     That is the cup whereof I drank
     In the garden Gethsemane.

     Pantagruel hands the cup to Jesus
     Who dips it in sea brine.
     This is the water, says Jesus of Nazareth,
     Whereof I make your wine.

     And Faust takes the cup from Jesus of Nazareth,
     And his lips wear a purple stain.
     And Faust hands the cup to Pantagruel
     With the dregs for him to drain.

     Pantagruel drinks and falls into slumber,
     And Jesus strokes his hair.
     And Faust sings a song of Euphorion
     To hide his heart's despair.

     And Faust takes the hand of Jesus of Nazareth,
     And they walk by the purple deep.
     Says Jesus of Nazareth: "Some are watchers,
     And some grow tired and sleep."

     He follows me no more, I said, nor stands
     Beside me. And I wake these later days
     In an April mood, a wonder light and free.
     The vision is gone, but gone the constant pain
     Of constant thought. I see dawn from my hill,
     And watch the lights which fingers from the waters
     Twine from the sun or moon. Or look across
     The waste of bays and marshes to the woods,
     Under the prism colors of the air,
     Held in a vacuum silence, where the clouds,
     Like cyclop hoods are tossed against the sky
     In terrible glory.

                        And earth charmed I lie
     Before the staring sphinx whose musing face
     Is this Egyptian heaven, and whose eyes
     Are separate clouds of gold, whose pedestal
     Is earth, whose silken sheathed claws
     No longer toy with me, even while I stroke them:
     Since I have ceased to tease her.

                                       Then behold
     A breeze is blown out of a world becalmed,
     And as I see the multitudinous leaves
     Fluttered against the water and the light,
     And see this light unveil itself, reveal
     An inner light, a Presence, Secret splendor,
     I clap hands over eyes, for the earth reels;
     And I have fears of dieties shown or spun
     From nothingness. But when I look again
     The earth has stayed itself, I see the lake,
     The leaves, the light of the sun, the cyclop hoods
     Of thunder heads, yet feel upon my arm
     A hand I know, and hear a voice I know—
     He has returned and brought with him the thought
     And the old pain.

                       The voice says: "Leave the sphinx.
     The garden waits your study fully grown."
     And I arise and follow down a slope
     To a lawn by the lake and an ancient seat of stone,
     And near it a fountain's shattered rim enclosing
     An Eros of light mood, whose sculptured smile
     Consciously dimples for the unveiled pistil of love,
     As he strokes with baby hand the slender arching
     Neck of a swan. And here is a peristyle
     Whose carven columns are pink as the long updrawn
     Stalks of tulips bedded in April snow.
     And sunk amid tiger lillies is the face
     Of an Asian Aphrodite close to the seat
     With feet of a Babylonian lion amid
     This ruined garden of yellow daisies, poppies
     And ruddy asphodel from Crete, it seems,
     Though here is our western moon as white and thin
     As an abalone shell hung under the boughs
     Of an oak, that is mocked by the vastness of sky between
     His boughs and the moon in this sky of afternoon. ...
     We walk to the water's edge and here he shows me
     Green scum, or stalks, or sedges, grasses, shrubs,
     That yield to trees beyond the levels, where
     The beech and oak have triumph; for along
     This gradual growth from algae, reeds and grasses,
     That builds the soil against the water's hands,
     All things are fierce for place and garner life
     From weaker things.

                         And then he shows me root stocks,
     And Alpine willow, growths that sneak and crawl
     Beneath the soil. Or as we leave the lake
     And walk the forest I behold lianas,
     Smilax or woodbine climbing round the trunks
     Of giant trees that live and out of earth,
     And out of air make strength and food and ask
     No other help. And in this place I see
     Spiral bryony, python of the vines
     That coils and crushes; and that banyan tree
     Whose spreading branches drop new roots to earth,
     And lives afar from where the parent trunk
     Has sunk its roots, so that the healthful sun
     Is darkened: as a people might be darkened
     By ignorance or want or tyranny,
     Or dogma of a jungle hidden faith.
     Why is it, think I, though I dare not speak,
     That this should be to forests or to men;
     That water fails, and light decreases, heat
     Of God's air lessens, and the soil goes spent,
     Till plants change leaves and stalks and seeds as well,
     Or migrate from the olden places, go
     In search of life, or if they cannot move
     Die in the ruthless marches.

                                  That is life, he said.
     For even these, the giants scatter life
     Into the maws of death. That towering tree
     That for these hundred years has leafed itself,
     And through its leaves out of the magic air
     Drawn nutriment for annual girths, took root
     Out of an acorn which good chance preserved,
     While all its brother acorns cast to earth,
     To make trees, by a parent tree now gone,
     Were crushed, devoured, or strangled as they sprouted
     Amid thick jealous growth wherein they fell.
     All acorns but this one were lost.

                                        Then he reads
     My questioning thought and shows me yuccas, cactus
     Whose thick leaves in the rainless places thrive.
     And shows me leaves that must have rain, and roots
     That must have water where the river flows.
     And how the spirit of life, though turned or driven
     This way or that beyond a course begun,
     Cannot be stayed or quenched, but moves, conforms
     To soil and sun, makes roots, or thickens leaves,
     Or thins or re-adjusts them on the stem
     To fashion forth itself, produce its kind.
     Nor dies not, rests not, nor surrenders not,
     Is only changed or buried, re-appears
     As other forms of life.

                             We had walked through
     A forest of sequoias, beeches, pines,
     And ancient oaks where I could see the trace
     Of willows, alders, ruined or devoured
     By the great Titans.

                          At last
     We reached my hill and sat and overlooked
     The garden at our feet, even to the place
     Of tiger lilies and of asphodel,
     By now beneath the self-same moon, grown denser:
     As where the wounded surface of the shell
     Thickens its shimmering stuff in spiral coigns
     Of the shell, so was the moon above the seat
     Beside the Eros and the Aphrodite
     Sunk amid yellow daisies and deep grass.
     And here we sat and looked. And here my vision
     Was over all we saw, but not a part
     Of what we saw, for all we saw stood forth
     As foreign to myself as something touched
     To learn the thing it is.

                               I might have asked
     Who owns this garden, for the thought arose
     With my surprise, who owns this garden, who
     Planted this garden, why and to what end,
     And why this fight for place, for soil and sun
     Water and air, and why this enmity
     Between the things here planted, and between
     Flying or crawling life and plants, and whence
     The power that falls in one place but arises
     Some other place; and why the unceasing growth
     Of all these forms that only come to seed,
     Then disappear to enrich the insatiate soil
     Where the new seed falls? But silence kept me there
     For wonder of the beauty which I saw,
     Even while the faculty of external vision
     Kept clear the garden separate from me,
     Envisioned, seen as grasses, sedges, alders,
     As forestry, as fields of wheat and corn,
     As the vast theatre of unceasing life,
     Moving to life and blind to all but life;
     As places used, tried out, as if the gardener,
     For his delight or use, or for an end
     Of good or beauty made experiments
     With seed or soils or crossings of the seed.
     Even as peoples, epochs, did the garden
     Lie to my vision, or as races crowding,
     Absorbing, dispossessing, killing races,
     Not only for a place to grow, but under
     A stimulus of doctrine: as Mahomet,
     Or Jesus, like a vital change of air,
     Or artifice of culture, made the garden,
     Which mortals call the world, grow in a way,
     And overgrow the world as neither dreamed.
     Who is the Gardener then? Or is there one
     Beside the life within the plant, within
     The python climbers, wandering sedges, root stalks,
     Thorn bushes, night-shade, deadly saprophytes,
     Goths, Vandals, Tartars, striving for more life,
     And praying to the urge within as God,
     The Gardener who lays out the garden, sprays
     For insects which devour, keeps rich the soil
     For those who pray and know the Gardener
     As One who is without and over-sees? ...

     But while in contemplation of the garden,
     Whether from failing day or from departure
     Of my own vision in the things it saw,
     Bereft of penetrating thought I sank,
     Became a part of what I saw and lost
     The great solution.

                         As we sat in silence,
     And coming night, what seemed the sinking moon,
     Amid the yellow sedges by the lake
     Began to twinkle, as a fire were blown—
     And it was fire, the garden was afire,
     As it were all the world had flamed with war.
     And a wind came out of the bright heaven
     And blew the flames, first through the ruined garden,
     Then through the wood, the fields of wheat, at last
     Nothing was left but waste and wreaths of smoke
     Twisting toward the stars. And there he sat
     Nor uttered aught, save when I sighed he said
     "If it be comforting I promise you
     Another spring shall come."

                                 "And after that?"
     "Another spring—that's all I know myself,
     There shall be springs and springs!"