Poems, 1957–1967

THE UNDERGROUND STREAM

THE UNDERGROUND STREAM I lay at the edge of a well, And thought how to bury my smile Under the thorn, where the leaf, At the sill of oblivion safe, Put forth its instant green In a flow from underground. I sought how the spirit could fall Down this moss-feathered well: The motion by which my face Could descend through structureless grass, Dreaming of love, and pass Through solid earth, to rest On the unseen water's breast, Tunelessly smiling, and free Of the world, of light, and of me. I made and imagined that smile To float there, mile on mile Of streaming, unknowable wonder, Overhearing a silence like thunder Possess every stone of the well Forever, where my face fell From the upper, springtime world, And my odd, living mouth unfurled An eternal grin, while I In the bright and stunned grass lay And turned to air without age. My first love fingered a page And sang with Campion. The heart in my breast turned green; I entered the words afresh, At one with her singing flesh. But all the time I felt The secret triumph melt Down through the rooted thorn, And the smile I filtered through stone Motionless lie, not murmuring But listening only, and hearing My image of joy flow down. Into the Stone 1 9 I turned from the girl I had found In a song once sung by my mother, And loved my one true brother, The tall cadaver, who Either grew or did not grow, But smiled, with the smile of singing, Or a smile of incredible longing To rise through a circle of stone, Gazing up at a sky, alone Visible, at the top of a well, And seeking for years to deliver His mouth from the endless river Of my oil-on-the-water smile, And claim his own grave face That mine might live in its place. I lay at the edge of a well; And then I smiled, and fell. 20 ...