Poems by Sir John Collings Squire Volume II Part 6

You take those notes of his: you seize and fling His music as a dancer flings her veil, Toss it and twist it, mould it, make it sing, Whisper, shout savagely, lament and wail,

Rush like a hurricane, pause and faint and fail: And as I watch, my body and soul are bound Helpless, immovable, in thongs of sound.

Lonely and strange musician, standing there, Your bent ear listening to your own soul speaking, I hear vibrating on the smitten air The crying of your suffering and your seeking.

Agonised! raptured! frustrate! you are haunted, Pursued, beset, beleaguered, filled, possessed By all you are, all things you have lost and wanted, Things clear, too clear, things only to be guessed.

I do not know what earlier scenes you knew, What sweet reproachful memories you hold Of broken dreams you had before you grew So conscious and so lonely and so old.

I do not know what women's words have taught Your heart, and only dimly know by name, The many wandering cities where you have sought Splendour, and found the hollowness of fame,

Or where your sad and gentle reveries pa.s.s To family and home--who have for signs Of all your childhood, only the imagined gra.s.s Of a bright steppe, the wind running in lines,

And only some old fairy-tale of sleighing, Dark snow-deep forests, endless turning pines, Bells tinkling, and wolves howling, and hounds baying.

Vague is your past, yet as your violin sings, Its wildness held in desperate control, I know them all, that world of bygone things That have left their wounds and wonders in your soul.

Out in all weathers you have been, my friend, Climbed into dawn, stood solitary and stark Against the ashen quiet of twilight's end, Brooded beneath the night's unanswering dark;

Through battering tempests you have blindly won, And lived, and found a medicine for your scars In resolution taken from the sun And consolation from the unsleeping stars.

And here, in this crowded place an hour staying, Your dim orchestra measuring off your bars, So pale and proud, you stand your secrets flaying,

Resolving the tangle, pouring through your song All your deep ache for Beauty, calm above Your bitter silent anger and the strong Ferocity and tenderness of your love,

Loud challenges and sweet and cynic laughter, Movements of joy spontaneous and pure, Remorse, and the dull grief that glimmers after The obstinate sins you know you will not cure.

I see you subtly lying, soberly weighing Gross questions, jesting at the things you hate, In apathy, and wild despair, and praying Bowed down before the shadowy knees of Fate,

And fearfully behind the visible groping And standing by the heart's bottomless pit, and shrinking, Who have known the lure and mockery of hoping, The comic terrible uselessness of thinking.

O gay and pa.s.sionate, gloomy and serene, Your quivering fingers laugh and weep and curse For all the phantoms you have ever been.

Yet would you wish another universe?

Let peace come if it will: your last long note Dies on the quiet breast of s.p.a.ce; and now They clap: I see again your square frock coat, Dark, foreign fiddler, you have stopped: you bow.

THE RUGGER MATCH

(OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE--QUEEN'S--DECEMBER)

(_To Hugh Brooks_)

I

The walls make a funnel, packed full; the distant gate Bars us from inaccessible light and peace.

Far over necks and ears and hats, I see Policemen's helmets and cards hung on the ironwork: "One s.h.i.+lling," "No change given," "Ticket-holders only";

Oh Lord! What an awful crus.h.!.+ There are faces pale And strained, and faces with animal grins advancing, Stuck fast around mine. We move, we pause again For an age, then a forward wave and another stop.

The pressure might squeeze one flat. Dig heels into ground For this white and terrified woman whose male insists Upon room to get back. Why didn't I come here at one?

Why come here at all? What strange little creatures we are, Wedged and shoving under the contemptuous sky!

All things have stopped; the time will never go by; We shall never get in! ... Yet through the standing gla.s.s The sand imperceptible drops, the inexorable laws Of number work also here. They are pa.s.sing and pa.s.sing, I can hear the tick of the turnstiles, tick, tick, tick, A man, a woman, a man, shreds of the crowd, A man, a man, till the vortex sucks me in And, squeezed between strangers hurting the flat of my arms, I am jetted forth, and pay my s.h.i.+lling, and pa.s.s To freedom and s.p.a.ce, and a cool for the matted brows.

But we cannot rest yet. Fast from the gates we issue, Spread conelike out, a crowd of loosening tissue, All jigging on, and making as we travel "Pod, pod" of feet on earth, "chix, chix" on gravel.

Heads forward, striding eagerly, we keep Round to the left in semi-circular sweep By the back of a stand, excluded, noting the row Of heads that speck the top, and, caverned below, The raw, rough, timber back of the new-made mound.

Quicker! The place is swarming! Around, around Till the edge is reached, and we see a patch of green, Two masts with a crossbar, tapering, white and clean, And confluent rows of people that merge and die In a flutter of faces where the grand-stand blocks the sky.

We hurry along, past ragged files of faces, Flus.h.i.+ng and quick, peering for empty places.

I see one above me, I step and prise and climb, And stand and turn and breathe and look at the time, Survey the field, and note with superior glance, The anxious bobbing fools who still advance.

II

Ah! They are coming still. It is filling up.

It is full. They come. There is almost an hour to go, Yet all find room, the dribbles of black disappear In the solid piles around that empty green, We are packed and ready now. They might as well start, But two-forty-five was their time, and it's only ten past, And it's got to be lived through. I haven't a newspaper, I wish I could steal that little parson's book.

I count three minutes slowly: they seem like an hour; And then I change feet and loosen the brim of my hat, And curse the crawling of time. Oh body, body!

Why did I order you here, to stand and feel tired, To ache and ache when the time will never pa.s.s, In this buzzing crowd, before all those laden housetops, Around this turf, under the lid of the sky?

I fumble my watch again: it is two-twenty: Twenty-five minutes to wait. One, two, three, four, Five, six, seven, eight: what is the good of counting?

It won't be here any quicker, aching hips, Bored brain, unquiet heart, you are doomed to wait.

Why did I make you come? We have been before, Struggling with time, fatigued and dull and alone In all this tumultuous, chattering, happy crowd That never knew pain and never questions its acts...

Never questions? Do not deceive yourself.

Look at the faces around you, active and gay, They are lined, there are brains behind them, b.r.e.a.s.t.s beneath them, They have only escaped for an hour, and even now Many, like you, have not escaped; and away Across the field those faces ascending in tiers, Each face is a story, a tragedy and a doubt; And the teams where they wait, in the sacred place to the right, Are bewildered souls, who have heard of and brooded on death, And thought about G.o.d. But this is a football match; And anyhow I don't feel equal to thinking, And I'm certain the teams don't; they've something better to do.

It is half-past two, and, thank Heaven, a minute over.

We are all here now. The laggards have all booked seats And stroll in lordly leisure along the front.

What a man! Six foot, silk hat, brown face, moustache!

What a fat complacent parson, snuggling down In the chair there, among all his cackling ladies!

I have seen that youth before. My neighbour now On my left shouts out to a college friend below us, "Tommy! Hallo! Do you think we are going to beat 'em?"

My watch. Twenty-to-three. That lot went quickly; Five minutes more is nothing; I'm lively now And fit for a five-mile run. One, two, three, four...

It isn't worth bothering now, it's all but here, Here, here; a rustle, a murmur, a ready silence, A billowing cheer--why, here they come, running and pa.s.sing, The challenging team! By G.o.d, what magnificent fellows!

They have dropped the ball, they pause, they sweep onward again, And so to the end. Here are the rest of them, Swingingly up the field and back as they came, With the cheers swelling and swelling. They disappear, And out, like wind upon water, come their rivals, With cheers swelling and swelling, to run and turn And vanish; and now they are all come out together, Two teams walking, touch-judges and referee.

And they all line up, dotted about like chessmen, And the mult.i.tude holds its breath, and awaits the start.

III

Whistle! A kick! A rush, a scramble, a scrum, The forwards are busy already, the halves hover round, The three-quarters stand in backwards diverging lines, Eagerly bent, atoe, with elbows back, And hands that would grasp at a ball, trembling to start, While the solid backs vigilant stray about And the crowd gives out a steady resolute roar, Like the roar of a sea; a scrum, a whistle, a scrum; A burst, a whistle, a scrum, a kick into touch; All in the middle of the field. He is tossing it in, They have got it and downed it, and whurry, oh, here they come, Streaming like a waterfall, oh, he has knocked it on, Right at our feet, and the scrum is formed again, And everything seems to stop while they pack and go crooked.

The scrum-half beats them straight with a rough smack While he holds the ball, debonair.... How it all comes back, As the steam goes up of their breath and their sweating trunks!

The head low down, the eyes that swim to the ground, The mesh of ownerless knees, the patch of dark earth, The ball that comes in, and wedges and jerks, and is caught, And sticks, the dense intoxicant smell of sweat, The grip on the moisture of jerseys, the sickening urge That seems powerless to help; the desperate final shove That somehow is timed with a general effort, the sweep Onward, while enemies reel, and the whole scrum turns And we torrent away with the ball. Oh, I know it all....

I know it.... Where are they? ... Far on the opposite line, Aimlessly kicking while the forwards stand gaping about, Deprived of their work. Convergence. They are coming again, They are scrumming again below, red hair, black cap, And a horde of dark colourless heads and straining backs; A voice rasps up through the howl of the crowd around (Triumphant now in possession over all the rest Of crowds who have lost the moving treasure to us)-- "Push, you devils!" They push, and push, and push; The opponents yield, the fortress wall goes down, The ram goes through, an irresistible rush Crosses the last white line, and tumbles down, And the ball is there. A try! A try! A try!

The shout from the host we are a.s.saults the sky.

Deep silence. Line up by the goal-posts. A man lying down, Poising the pointed ball, slanted away, And another who stands, and hesitates, and runs And lunges out with his foot, and the ball soars up, While the opposite forwards rush below it in vain, And curves to the posts, and pa.s.ses them just outside.

The touch-judge's flag hangs still. It was only a try!

Three points to us. The roar is continuous now, The game swings to and fro like a pendulum Struck by a violent hand. But the impetus wanes, The forwards are getting tired, and all the outsides Run weakly, pa.s.s loosely; there are one or two penalty kicks, And a feeble attempt from a mark. The ball goes out Over the heads of the crowd, comes wearily back; And, lingering about in mid-field, the tedious game Seems for a while a thing interminable.

And nothing happens, till all of a sudden a shrill Blast from the whistle flies out and arrests the game.

Half-time ... Unlocking ... The players are all erect, Easy and friendly, standing about in groups, Figures in sculpture, better for mud-stained clothes; Couples from either side chatting and laughing, And chewing lemons, and throwing the rinds away.