Poems (Tree)/Streets

by Iris Tree

STREETS

I AM going
Up and down the roads and alleys
Through the forests of the city,
Hunting thoughts, hunting dreams.
My mind shall wander through the streets
Whistling to a vague adventure,
Plucking strange fancies where they lurk and peer
And casting them away.
Dusk is creeping through the town
Lighting the lamps and loitering,
Leaving smoky clouds of shadow,
Hovering clouds of peace;
And behind her race the winds
Whining to the scent of darkness,
Scattering the dust
With their swift hounds' feet. . . .
I am a hunter in the city's jungle,
Exploring all her secret mysteries.
I know her well,
The moaning highways,
And whispering alleys,
The chimney-dishevelled roofs
Where the moon walks delicately
As a stray spectral cat;
The little forlorn squares
Where one tree stands
Drooping bedraggled hair and fingers
Over the benches where the people sit
And stir not from their sullen postures,
Staring out where evening passes
With such a sauntering dreamy step.
I know her parks that spring had decked with garlands,
Fluttered with flags and child imaginings,
Powdered with blossoms exquisite and shy,
Haunted with lovers and their last year's ghosts.
Now stripped with autumn, as the ragpicker
Wrapped in his tattered coat emaciate
Picks up the littered wreck of holiday
To mount the dust heap where our memories lie
Sprawled in a mess of ruins. . . .
I know her monotone of gloomy mansions,
Repeating each in each a dull despair,
Indifferent and dignified;
Those tarnished prisons lined with white and gold,
With dismal silences of velvet carpets,
Where starving souls are kept
Feeding upon each other's isolations,
Not daring to escape. . . .
Some roads seem steep as mountains, weary me
With their crude temples built in praise of lust,
Squatting and smiling at some hideous dream
Of fat bejewelled goddesses, or gods
Frock-coated, undismayed by prayers and tears,
Their hats atilt like halos on their heads. . . .

I love the ribald multi-coloured crowd,
Its radiant loves, and laughters, all the faces
That are as songs, as flowers, as hovering stardust. . . .
I love the memory-crusted taverns
In which my heart has leapt to a fiddler's tune
Until the dawn,
Like a white minstrel stopped to sing
Fantastic serenades, and called me forth
Where through the crystal chandeliers of morning
Dew-prismed shone the sun. . . .
I love the narrow streets whose crippled houses
Are bathed in vitriol twilights,
Spitting smoke,
Or making oaths and mouths at one another. . . .
While between
The flaring tinsel lights of shop and window
Are gaps of goblin darkness passaging
Into Cimmerian depths of mystery and sin. . . .
Wan children stare at me, and in their eyes
I see the flickering pallor of the lamps,
Reflective of the solitude of stars. . . .
And I am thrilled
With horror and the hope for tragedies. . . .

But, they surround my heart these weary streets,
Yea, in my soul they cut their mournful paths,
And through them pass forever
Those shadow figures trudging through the grey
Like penitent souls through haunted corridors. . . .
Ah, Grief, thou wanderer,
Thou maker of music, lingering and sweet!
Here dost thou pause to play thy shrill faint tunes,
Thy fingers touch the stops to loose our tears,
And shake our hearts, and fold our hands in prayer.
Through all the winding mazes of the city
Thy stooping shoulders and thy pitiful face are seen,
And thou dost stand before the gate of brass,
And by the iron door,
Under the windows where we sit and wait
For some sweet promise to unfold itself
From the shut scrolls of sleep,
And at the dusty curtain that divides
Glory from Death,
And lover from the lover. . . .

Now in my room I sit
And round me falls the darkness
In rustling folds of peace.
But round my heart I know
No scarves of sleep and silence can be bound
To shut the city out.
For I shall feel the rush of streets
Shooting inquisitive fingers into chaos,
Piercing the night's remote divinity.
And I shall never rid me of these scars
That time and man have cut into my thought,
Never shake off my shoulders
The burden of the city's pain.
Oh, never shall we escape thee,
Mother of mutiny and want,
Thou beautiful mistress of Grief . . .
Oh, never shall we escape thy insomnial nights
Beating with ineloquent hands
The tambourines of time,
The drums of war;
Fevering our minds
With the swollen traffic of thoughts,
The wheels and rattle of an endless search. . . .

Tired I am with wandering,
Pricked with the lights and jostled by the worlds,
More jaded than the Moon, more hopeless, grey,
Than that sad pilgrim lost amid the stars! . . .

1918