t lATIONS ON A THEME GRACE HAZARD CONKLING THE BLINDMAN PRIZE POEM 19 2 2. ivTKV h^OSMUTK or fiQOTH i JUL VARIATIONS ON A THEME Grace Hazard Conkling HUBLIIHED nS THE POBTRV 80CIATT OP SOUTH CAROLIHik THE CAROLINA PRESS CHARL,EBTON, SOUTH CAKOUNA MDCCCCXXII 6^^ THE BLINDMAN PRIZE POEM 1922 THE FIRST POEM TO RECEIVE THE AWARD ©ClAr>'77494 '"h.(B PREFACE. THIS BLINDMAN PRIZE poem has been published in a limited edition by the Poetry Society of South Carolina for distribution to poets, members of the Society, and others actively interested in the art of poetry. THE OBJECT OF THE PRIZE is to stimulate the writing of sustained poems of considerable length, and to provide some adequate recompense to the creative aitist for the time and labor involved. "VARIATIONS ON A THEME" was chosen for the prize by Miss Amy Lowell who acted as sole judge in the 1921-22 contest, which was international in its scope, several hundred poems having been submitted from all over the United States, England, and the English Dominions. THE BLINDMAN PRIZE of $250 is offered annually through the Poetry Society of South Carolina by W. Van R. Whitall, Esq., in commemoration of Hei-vey Allen's war poem the "Blindman" first published in the North American Review for December 1919. HONORABLE MENTION POEMS Blindman Prize Contest 1922 From the Journal of Crispin Wallace Stevens Avatar Babette Deutsch The Elders Come to Her Hildegarde Planner The Indians in the Woods Janet Loxely Lewis The Garden Harold Monro Behold America Robert J. Roe The Voice of an Unknown Soldier James W. Dean Oranges Louise Morey Bowman Mutations on the Phoenix Herbert Read The Stone Guest N. S. But imell The Pirates Beatrice Ravenel PART ONE Fresh Pomegranates and Green Linden-blooms Mode Title — a phrase from Wagner's "Meistemnger" 6 PRELUDE April hung a sky of soft indigo Above my head And suddenly while I counted stars Lost them again ... / had thoughts of you That stopped my thinking As though you had showered me With warm dark roses .... VARIATIONS I- So you would have me come to life, Breathe, burn, feel, I who had learned listlessness. Myself lost, rocks more aware. Bitter rocks Sun-repelling . . . I ask what it is you see in my look . . . Your own splendor? Fire of your spirit, fire Alert, exquisite, full of demand? You, like amber, you who know Bright darkness of amber, Dx> you see yourself in my eyes .... Do you stand there Golden ? When you turn Does your glance find me ? Now at last is there life . . . Is there warmth Hidden ? Presence . . . rush of petals . . breath Answering breath ? Do you kindle me to faint flame, oh relentless Spendthrift of fire? II. All day the hillside flickered with white birches Now they have gone away. I saw them hurrying on shy feet Into the silver blur Of evening. Now darkness opens Like a flower. Over the trees, over the breathless trees The hyacinth-blue of the air Dims to purple. I have seen such shadow In the hollow of a wave, But here is mystery Of woven leaves. Hold me, Hold me closer For the sake of this vanishing beauty You have locked into my heart! III. Tender, heavy with tenderness This midnight . . . Soft to the cheek . . . WaiTTi satin softness . . . Deep-breasted slow-breathing languor of lotus dark . . . Petals of fire-opal hid for an hour as though they were not in bloom . . . IV. Where were we ? Lilac-leaves or leaves of young bambo-o . . . It makes no difference in the dream I had When I saw the moon caught in a featheiy spray, Caught in a cowweb of her own light Among new-fledged trees. You disentangled the moon . . . laid it on my open palms , . . You said, "Now you need not cry for it any more." I was careful of the moon As though it had been a moth or an orchid . . . I dared not breathe For fear its light would die ... Dazzled, I closed my eyes. When I opened them, You had picked up the moon And gone away. V. It was along a river with an Indian name Past a crocus-colored mountain Under tumbled clouds That we ran . . . The light glinted from marsh-grass . . . willow-twigs . . . We saw pale water through lattice-work of willows . . . This was a day you forgot to love me 8 Because you had so many thing's to think about, And all the way through the Chopin Sonata You never suspected you were out-of-doors with me and away Running in the Spring wind . . . VI. Is there anything more for us than opening eyes to a rose- flush of clout! . . . opening eyes to a bouquet of pigeon- backs scattering down out of the wind . . . blue and gray-violet . . . buff and mx)ther-of-pearl . . . You with your head bowed on my shoulder . . . silent a long time ... is there anything more ? Is this all . . . morning like a bronze shell for the wind to blow through . . , moming tilted on an edge of purple horizon-rim ... an hour of rose-flush ... an hour of bronze-hazel . . . noon by and by . . . and you with your head on my shoulder wanting me with a thousand years of wanting? Why don't you tell me what you are thinking with your head on my shoulder? Is there no meaning in ache of empty beautiful air . . . biting go'd of sun . . . none in un- answered moon or sea-mist stars? Is it in vain the hills are wanting' something with a thousand years of wanting? You . . . silent a long time . . . can you see anything more for us anywhere ... or is this all ? VII. I have seen you quiet As an evening sky . . . Or driven like a flake of pear-blossom On the stream of the wind . . . I have seen your pallor And shadowiness . . . I have touched you And known denial . . . VIII. The three mountains in the sky Rest upon the pointed cedears of our mountain. They are steep in heaven, Sheer as the cliffs below us. . . . Impossible to say what color Flowers on those rocks! 9' It might be an April country Of almond trees, I could more easily let you go Under a harsher sunset. April floats into my eyes Out of coral valleys ... Leave me . . . leave me now Lest the granite ways remind your feet Of darkness . . . Dusk is a gauze of ruby shadows. Leave me . . . I shall be thinking of this moment Aftei'ward . . . Your kiss ... a drift of almond petals across my lips Almond flowers falling at Spring's end . . . 10 PART TWO. End of the World Mode PRELUDE This web of dusk and sunset Has caught thistledown hills And a moth of mist . . . Shall we disentangle them, Let them blow away? Or shall we keep them, to make real our dream After the Puritan moon Has parted us? 12 VARIATIONS I. Don't let yesterday go, The tawny pheasant-wing of it stretched over the west, Don't tell me the stairway of those hills Led nowhere? When we looked back from the dark to the lighted street Because of election drums and scrawled red fire Don't say it did not matter Our cheeks touched . . . and our lips! Yesterday poured itself away in stars . . . Down they spilled and dripped like silver water . . . If it was the same music to your heart it was to mine Don't let yesterday go! II. You say you understand . . . Talk as if you did ! Open the door of my mind And come in! Will you always be needing Tennyson To show you shaking light? Will you never unlearn melancholy, See November laughing? Laughing at you for a little boy lost, Rolling you gold pumpkins down the cornfields. Blindfolding you with meadow-mist Because you will not look at them! Is color nothing? Is it nothing to see a hill like a passion-flower? Can't you unravel the sky And wrap me in the blue silk of it Because I am cold with teaching you November And you haven't love enough left To warm me ? IIL Oh content with little When I would give all! You letting fall the ripe fruit of moments I press into your hands . . . 13 Melting ineffable ivory of the flesh of fruit Dripping honey and wonder ... Sharp high-flavored moments, Pomegranate seeds tasting of strangeness, Soft bewildered intervals deep-colored, Fruit from the south You do not know! Days we have not chosen. Days we shall never share ... Lost days fallen into the purple grasses Of our autumn! Oh incredibly perverse, With lips Locked against the pulp and dew Of bountiful hours, Will you never know the bloom and flavor Of sun-warmed moments ? Will you never taste late-ripened moments That have escaped frost ? Days we have not chosen, Days we shall never share, Lost days trodden into grasses Under snow .... IV. Why did you go before the Chinese lily Finished uncurling from its paper sheath? I had named every flower of the seven For a mood of yours: Now you will not see yourself In bloom. Always I knew you would go. But I had timed you by a winter lily, Mood by mood unfolding . . . "I shall learn them all at last," I said. One with a gold heart is your remembering, But your forgetting has a gold heart too. One is the name you called me in the dark . . . One, a clear silence cold as frost: The delicate irony of your tenderness Flowers on the same stem with your irresponsible cruelty 14 All these are star-pointed . . . definite . . . But the seventh is yet in bud. I am afraid to see it open Lest it betray you. V. Now I remember that you searched my face Lest any wronj? might threaten you From my heart . . . And the fear in your swift look Of one hurt by earth . . . Thrust back Out of heaven . . . What was it you saw ? Dark Against light What sharp wonder? I thought you w.ould be the last To leave me powerless. There is gold air Poured upon hills . . . Shining air slow-flowing . . . full . . . The wind in flood . . . I have no joy of this Because of you. I know where trees in flower Wait for me . . . I am lost. There is no beauty Can find me. ■*■>* 15 A LIMITED NUMBERED EDITION OF FIVE HDNDRED COPIES .OF WBICH TH.IS IS NUMBER _. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS The Poetry Sociefy of South Carolina An official publication of the Society