Pomes Penyeach

by James Joyce

　　He travels after a winter sun,

　　Urging the cattle along a cold red road,

　　Calling to them, a voice they know,

　　He drives his beasts above Cabra.

　　The voice tells them home is warm.

　　They moo and make brute music with their

　　hoofs.

　　He drives them with a flowering branch before

　　him,

　　Smoke pluming their foreheads.

　　Boor, bond of the herd,

　　Tonight stretch full by the fire!

　　I bleed by the black stream

　　For my torn bough!

　　Dublin 1904.

　　WATCHING THE NEEDLEBOATS AT SAN SABBA

　　I heard their young hearts crying

　　Loveward above the glancing oar

　　And heard the prairie grasses sighing:

　　No more, return no more!

　　O hearts, O sighing grasses,

　　Vainly your loveblown bannerets mourn!

　　No more will the wild wind that passes

　　Return, no more return.

　　Trieste 1912.

　　A FLOWER GIVEN TO MY DAUGHTER

　　Frail the white rose and frail are

　　Her hands that gave

　　Whose soul is sere and paler

　　Than time’s wan wave.

　　Rosefrail and fair–yet frailest

　　A wonder wild

　　In gentle eyes thou veilest,

　　My blueveined child.

　　Trieste 1913.

　　SHE WEEPS OVER RAHOON

　　Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling,

　　Where my dark lover lies.

　　Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling,

　　At grey moonrise.

　　Love, hear thou

　　How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling,

　　Ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling,

　　Then as now.

　　Dark too our hearts, O love, shall lie and cold

　　As his sad heart has lain

　　Under the moongrey nettles, the black mould

　　And muttering rain.

　　Trieste 1913.

　　TUTTO È SCIOLTO

　　A birdless heaven, seadusk, one lone star

　　Piercing the west,

　　As thou, fond heart, love’s time, so faint, so far,

　　Rememberest.

　　The clear young eyes’ soft look, the candid brow,

　　The fragrant hair,

　　Falling as through the silence falleth now

　　Dusk of the air.

　　Why then, remembering those shy

　　Sweet lures, repine

　　When the dear love she yielded with a sigh

　　Was all but thine?

　　Trieste 1914.

　　ON THE BEACH AT FONTANA

　　Wind whines and whines the shingle,

　　The crazy pierstakes groan;

　　A senile sea numbers each single

　　Slimesilvered stone.

　　From whining wind and colder

　　Grey sea I wrap him warm

　　And touch his trembling fineboned shoulder

　　And boyish arm.

　　Around us fear, descending

　　Darkness of fear above

　　And in my heart how deep unending

　　Ache of love!

　　Trieste 1914.

　　SIMPLES

　　O bella bionda,

　　Sei come l’onda!

　　Of cool sweet dew and radiance mild

　　The moon a web of silence weaves

　　In the still garden where a child

　　Gathers the simple salad leaves.

　　A moondew stars her hanging hair

　　And moonlight kisses her young brow

　　And, gathering, she sings an air:

　　Fair as the wave is, fair, art thou!

　　Be mine, I pray, a waxen ear

　　To shield me from her childish croon

　　And mine a shielded heart for her

　　Who gathers simples of the moon.

　　Trieste 1915.

　　FLOOD

　　Goldbrown upon the sated flood

　　The rockvine clusters lift and sway,

　　Vast wings above the lambent waters brood

　　Of sullen day.

　　A waste of waters ruthlessly

　　Sways and uplifts its weedy mane

　　Where brooding day stares down upon the sea

　　In dull disdain.

　　Uplift and sway, O golden vine,

　　Your clustered fruits to love’s full flood,

　　Lambent and vast and ruthless as in thine

　　Incertitude!

　　Trieste 1915.

　　NIGHTPIECE

　　Gaunt in gloom,

　　The pale stars their torches,

　　Enshrouded, wave.

　　Ghostfires from heaven’s far verges faint illume,

　　Arches on soaring arches,

　　Night’s sindark nave.

　　Seraphim,

　　The lost hosts awaken

　　To service till

　　In moonless gloom each lapses muted, dim,

　　Raised when she has and shaken

　　Her thurible.

　　And long and loud,

　　To night’s nave upsoaring,

　　A starknell tolls

　　As the bleak insense surges, cloud on cloud,

　　Voidward from the adoring

　　Waste of souls.

　　Trieste 1915.

　　And long and loud,

　　To night’s nave upsoaring,

　　A starknell tolls

　　As the bleak insense surges, cloud on cloud,

　　Voidward from the adoring

　　Waste of souls.

　　Trieste 1915.

　　A MEMORY OF THE PLAYERS IN A MIRROR AT

　　MIDNIGHT.

　　They mouth love’s language. Gnash

　　The thirteen teeth

　　Your lean jaws grin with. Lash

　　Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.

　　Love’s breath in you is stale, worded or sung,

　　As sour as cat’s breath,

　　Harsh of tongue.

　　This grey that stares

　　Lies not, stark skin and bone.

　　Leave greasy lips their kissing. None

　　Will choose her what you see to mouth upon.

　　Dire hunger holds his hour.

　　Pluck forth your heart, saltblood, a fruit of tears,

　　Pluck and devour!

　　Zurich 1917.

　　BAHNHOFSTRASSE

　　The eyes that mock me sign the way

　　Whereto I pass at eve of day,

　　Grey way whose violet signals are

　　The trysting and the twining star.

　　Ah star of evil! star of pain!

　　Highhearted youth comes not again

　　Nor old heart’s wisdom yet to know

　　The signs that mock me as I go.

　　Zurich 1918.

　　A PRAYER

　　Again!

　　Come, give, yield all your strength to me!

　　From far a low word breathes on the breaking

　　brain

　　Its cruel calm, submission’s misery,

　　Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined.

　　Cease, silent love! My doom!

　　Blind me with your dark nearness, O have mercy,

　　beloved enemy of my will!

　　I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread.

　　Draw from me still

　　My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening

　　head,

　　Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying

　　Him who is, him who was!

　　Again!

　　Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth.

　　I hear

　　From far her low wordbreathe on my breaking

　　brain.

　　Come! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am

　　here.

　　Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only

　　anguish,

　　Take me, save me, soothe me, O spare me

　　Paris 1924.