Possession (48 page)

      “And if we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.”

And what was she, the Fairy Melusine?

Men say, at night, around the castle-keep

The black air ruffles neath the outstretched vans

Of a long flying worm, whose sinewy tail

And leather pinions beat the parted sky

Scudding with puddered clouds and black as soot,

And ever and again a shuddering cry

Mounts on the wind, a cry of pain and loss,

And whirls in the wind’s screaming and is gone.

Men say, that to the Lords of Lusignan

On their death’s day appointed comes a Thing,

Half sable serpent, half a mourning Queen

Crowned and thick-veiled. Then they cross themselves

And make their peace with Heaven’s blessed King

And with a cry of pain she vanishes,

Unable, so they say, to hear that Name,

Forever banished from the hope of Heaven.

The old nurse says, within the castle-keep

The innocent boys slept in each other’s arms

To keep away the chill from hearts and limbs.

And in the dead of night a slender hand

Would part the hangings, and lift sleepy forms

To curl and suck the mother’s milky breasts

As they had dreamed they did, and all the while

Warm tears in silence mingled with the milk

In dreaming mouths combining sweet and salt,

So that they smile for warmth, and weep for loss,

And waking, hope and fear to dream again.

So says the old nurse, and the boys grow strong.

Outside our small safe place flies Mystery.

We hear it howl adown the winds; we see

Its forces set great whirlpools on the spin

In the dark deeps, as a child sets a top

Idly in motion, whips it for a while

Then tires and lets it stagger. On grey walls

We see the indents of its viewless teeth.

We hear it snake beneath the forest floor

Weaving the lives and deaths of roots, the weft

And warp of pillar-boles and tracery

Of twigs and sighing sunkist canopies

Which sway and change, glow and decay and fall.

Inhuman Powers cross our little lives.

The whale’s warm milk runs beneath icy seas.

Electric currents run from eye to eye

And pole to pole, magnetic messages

From out our Beings, through them, and beyond.

The whelk’s foot grips; the waves pile fragments up

Smooth sands compacted, skull on shell on scrap

Of horny carapace on silex sparks

Sandstone and chalk and grit, and out of these

Sculpts dunes like dinosaurs and mammoth banks

And breaks them back to flying specks of stuff.

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I read, writ in the ancient chronicle

By John of Arras (who wrote for his Lord

To please and to instruct), “King David said

The judgments of the Lord are like vast deeps

With neither wall nor bottom, where the soul

Spins in a place without foundation

Which comprehensively engulfs the mind

That cannot comprehend it.” The monk, John,

Humbly concludes the human soul should not

Use reason where it cannot stretch to work.

A reasonable man, says the good monk,

Must see that Aristotle told the truth

Who stated firmly that the world contained

Creatures invisible and visible

Both in their kind. He cited next St Paul

Who claimed the first Invisibles of the world

As witnesses to their Creator’s Power,

Beyond the scope of men’s inquiring mind

Save as revealed from time to time in Books

Writ by wise men, as guides to wandering wits.

And in the air, says the brave Monk, there fly

Things, Beings, Creatures, never seen by us

But very potent in their wandering world,

Crossing our heavy paths from time to time,

And such, he says, are faeries or Fates

Who Paracelsus said were Angels once

Now neither damn’d nor blessèd, simply tossed

Eternally between the solid earth

And Heav’n’s closed golden gate.…

Not good enough to save, spirits of air

Not evil neither, with no steadfast harm

In their intents, but simply volatile.

The Laws of Heaven run through the earth as poles

That twist and turn this Globe at His command

Or net (to change the metaphor) the skies

And seas and all the swaying, moving mass

In fine constraining meshes, beyond which

Matter slips not, and mind may never step

Save into vacant Horror and Despair

Forms of illusion only

                              What are they

Who haunt our dreams and weaken our desires

And turn us from the solid face of things?

Sisters of Horror, or Heav’n’s exiled queens

Reduced from spirit-power to fantasy?

The Angels of the Lord, from Heaven’s Gate

March helmeted in gold and silver ranks

Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,

As quick as thought between desire and deed.

They are the instruments of Law and Grace.

Then who are those who wander indirect

Those whose desires mount precipice of Air

As easy as say wink, or plunge again

For pleasure of the terror in the cleft

Between the dark brow of a mounting cloud

And plain sky’s opal ocean? Who are they

Whose soft hands cannot shift the fixèd chains

Of cause and law that bind the earth and sea

And ice and fire and flesh and blood and time?

When heavenly Eros lay at Psyche’s side,

Her envious sisters said, the light of day

Would show a monstrous serpent was her Lord.

When she transgressed and held the trembling flame

Over the bed, the drops of wax fell fast

On love in perfect human form, who rose

In burning anger from his place and fled.

But let the Power take a female form

And ’tis the Power is punished. All men shrink

From dire Medusa and her writhing locks.

Who weeps for Scylla in her cave of bones,

Thrashing her tail and howling for her fate

With yelping hound-mouths, though she once was fair,

Loved by the sea-god for her mystery

Daughter of Hecate, beautiful as Night?

Who weeps the fall of Hydra’s many heads?

The siren sings and sings, and virtuous men

Bind ears and eyes and sail resolved away

From all her pain that what she loves must die,

That her desire, though lovely in her song

Is mortal in her kiss to mortal men.

The feline Sphinx roamed free as air and smiled

In the dry desert at those foolish men

Who saw not that her crafted Riddle’s clue

Was merely Man, bare man, no Mystery,

But when they found it out they spilt her blood

For her presumption and her Monstrous shape.

Man named Himself and thus assumed the Power

Over his Questioner, till then his Fate—

After, his Slave and victim.

And what was she, the Fairy Melusine?

Were these her kin, Echidna’s gruesome brood,

Scaly devourers, or were those her kind

More kind, those rapid wanderers of the dark

Who in dreamlight, or twilight, or no light

Are lovely Mysteries and promise gifts—

Whiteladies, teasing dryads, shape-changers—

Like smiling clouds, or sparkling threads of streams

Bright monsters of the sea and of the sky

Who answer longing and who threaten not

But vanish in the light of rational day

Doomed by their own desire for human souls,

For settled hearths and fixèd human homes.

Shall I presume to tell the Fairy’s tale?

Meddle with doom and magic in my song

Or venture out into the shadowland

Beyond the safe and solid? Shall I dare?

Help me Mnemosyne, thou Titaness,

Thou ancient one, daughter of Heaven and Earth,

Mother of Muses, who inhabit not

In flowery mount or crystal spring, but in

The dark and confin’d cavern of the skull—

O Memory, who holds the thread that links

My modern mind to those of ancient days

To the dark dreaming Origins of our race,

When visible and invisible alike

Lay quietly, O thou, the source of speech

Give me wise utterance and safe conduct

From hearthside storytelling into dark

Of outer air, and back again to sleep,

In Christian comfort, in a decent bed.

A draggled knight came riding o’er the moor.

Behind him fear, before him empty space.

His horse, besprent with blood, dispirited,

Came slowly on, and stumbled as he came,

Feeling the rider’s slackness, and the reins

Slack too, against his sweat-streaked neck. The day

Drew in, and on the moor small shadows stirred

And ate the heather-roots, and flowed in tongues

Of seal-skin soft and sly insidious shape

Between the hill’s clefts and the dark gill’s mouth

Whither, for lack of will, they two were drawn.

For all the moor, immense, characterless

Shrubby and shapeless, stretched about their feet

Off ring no point of hold, nor track to guide

Save witless wanderings of nibbling sheep.

Between the wild moor and the mother Sun

Is reciprocity of flash and frown.

When she is hid, the heather’s knotted mat

Of purple bell-heather and pinker ling

Lies in an unreflective sullen gloom,

A rough black coat, indifferently cast o’er

The peat and grit and flints, extending on

As far as eye can see, to the high riggs.

But when she smiles, a thousand thousand lights

Gleam out from sprig and floret or from where

The white sand on the crow-stones in the peat

Glitters in tracery ’neath amber pools

Of shining rain, and all the moor is live

Basking and smiling up, as She smiles down.

And after rain, live vapours rise and play

Curvet and eddy over the live ling,

Current and counter-current, like a sea

Or, as the shepherds say, like summer colts

At play above a meadow, or like geese

Who skim the air and water in their flight.

So uniform, so various, is the Moor.

But he rode on, nor looked to right nor left

All lustreless, his first fine fury gone

With which he fled the boar-hunt and the death—

Death at his hand, and death at random dealt

To Aymeri, his kinsman and his Lord.

Defensive stroke working an unkind Fate

On him most kind, most genial and most brave

Whom most he loved and most he wished to spare.

Before his weary eyes a veil of blood

Beat, and his brain beat with its motion

Despair and die, for what is left to do?

Between two boulders bald the horse stepped down

Into a narrow track within a cleft

Whose flanks were wind-blown, clothed with juniper,

Bilberry and stunted thorn-trees. Water oozed

Out of the clammy rock-face, water brown

With juice of peat, and black with powdered soot

From ancient swidden. Neath the heavy hoofs

Broke little trains of stones which jounced a while

And clattered down into the brook beneath.

The stone struck chill. The cleft wound in and down.

How long he was descending, he knew not.

But in his blood-grief and extreme fatigue

He slowly knew that he had heard the sound

Of falling water for some small time past,

A wayward, windblown, rushing, chuckling sound,

An intermittent music, bubbling up.

And then he heard, within the water’s voice

A melody more fluent and more strange,

A silver chant that wove its liquid length

Along the hurrying channel of the stream

And wound with that to twist one rope of sound,

Silver and stony. They went on and down

Steady and hearkening, and on either hand

The wet walls narrowed. Then, around a bend

There came an opening, and both horse and man

Stockstill, with humming ear and dazzled eye

Stared at a mystery.

A kind of hollowed chamber in the hill

Sheltered a still and secret pool, beneath

A frowning crag, whose rim was cleft to form

A lip for falling water, white with air

Like streaming needles of a shattered glass

Tossed as it turned, then smoothly combing down

Like one unending tress of silver-white

Holding its form beneath the basin’s rim

By virtue of its force and of the air

Caught in its hurtling substance, spreading out

Like pale and solid livid ice beneath

The black and moss-green dappling of the pool.

A rounded rock stood low among the curl

Of dim-discernèd weeds, whose fronds were stirred

By many little springs that bubbled up

And seeped through coiling strands and stirred the plane

Of the dark water into dimpling life.

This rock was covered with a vivid pelt

Of emerald mosses, maidenhairs and mints

Dabbling dark crowns and sharply-scented stems

Amongst the water’s peaks and freshenings.

The pensile foliage tumbled down the crag

To join the pennywort and tormentil

That wound below and wove a living mat

Dark green, but sparked with gold and amethyst.

And on the rock a lady sat and sang.

Sang to herself most clear and quietly

A small clear golden voice that seemed to run

Without the need to breathe or pause for thought,

Simple and endless as the moving fall,

Surprising as the springs that bubbled up

Now here, now there, among the coiling weeds.

As milky roses at the end of day

In some deserted bower seem still alight

With their own luminous pallor, so she cast

A softened brightness and a pearly light

On that wild place, in which she sate and sang.

She wore a shift of whitest silk, that stirred

With her song’s breathing, and a girdle green

As emerald or wettest meadow-grass.

Her blue-veined feet played in the watery space

Slant in its prism-vision like white fish

Darting together. When she stretched them out

The water made her silver anklet-chains

Glancing with diamond-drops and lucid pearls

Which shone as bright as those about her neck

Carelessly cast, a priceless brilliant rope

Of sapphire, emerald, and opaline.

Her living hair was brighter than chill gold

With shoots of brightness running down its mass

And straying out to lighten the dun air

Like phosphorescent sparks off a pale sea,

And while she sang, she combed it with a comb

Wrought curiously of gold and ebony,

Seeming to plait each celandine-bright tress

With the spring’s sound, the song’s sound and the sound

Of its own living whisper, warm and light

So that he longed to touch it, longed to stretch

If but a finger out across the space

That stood between his blood-stained, stiffened self

And all this swaying supple brilliance,

Save that her face forbade.

                                         It was a face

Queenly and calm, a carved face and strong

Nor curious, nor kindly, nor aloof,

But self-contained and singing to itself.

And as he met her eyes, she ceased her song

And made a silence, and it seemed to him

That in this silence all the murmuring ceased

Of leaves and water, and they two were there,

And all they did was look, no question,

No answer, neither frown nor smile, no move

Of lip or eye or brow or eyelid pale

But all one long look which consumed his soul

Into desire beyond the reach of hope

Beyond the touch of doubt or of despair,

So that he was one thing, and all he was,

The fears, the contradictions and the pains,

The reveller’s pleasures and the sick man’s whims,

All gone, forever gone, all burned away

Under the steady and essential gaze

Of this pale Creature in this quiet space.

A movement in the shadows made him ware

Of a gaunt hound that stood like a dark cloud

Rough-curled and smoky grey, with golden eyes

And patient noble face that snuffed the air

And heard and felt air’s movements motionless,

Alert and motionless behind his dame.

Then Raimondin bethought him of his hunt

And of his crime, and of his later flight,

And bowed low in the saddle where he stood

And begged her, of her grace, to let him drink

The water of the fountain; he was faint

And sore with travelling, and needs must drink.

“My name is Raimondin of Lusignan

And where I go, and what I shall become

I know not, but I crave a place of rest,

A draught of water, for I choke on dust.”

Then said she, “Raimondin of Lusignan

Both who you are, and what you may become—

What you have done, how you may save yourself

And prosper greatly, all these things, I know.

Therefore dismount, and take this cup from me,

This cup of clear spring water from the fount

Whose name is called La Fontaine de la Soif,

The Thirsty Fountain. Therefore, come and drink.”

And she held out the cup, and he came down

And took it from her and drank deep therein.

All dazed with glamour was he, in her gaze.

She ministered unto his extreme need

And his face took the brightness of her glance

As dusty heather takes the tumbling rays

Of the sun’s countenance and shines them back.

Now was he hers, if she should ask of him

Body or soul, he would have offered all.

And seeing this, at last, the Fairy smiled.