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I. HIS DARK ORIGINS
- 1
- Senlin sits before us, and we see him.
- He smokes his pipe before us, and we hear him.
- Is he small, with reddish hair,
- Does he light his pipe with meditative stare,
- And a pointed flame reflected in both eyes?
- Is he sad and happy and foolish and wise?
- Did no one see him enter the doors of the city,
- Looking above him at the roofs and trees and skies?
- 'I stepped from a cloud', he says, 'as evening fell;
- I walked on the sound of a bell;
- I ran with winged heels along a gust;
- Or is it true that I laughed and sprang from dust? . . .
- Has no one, in a great autumnal forest,
- When the wind bares the trees,
- Heard the sad horn of Senlin slowly blown?
- Has no one, on a mountain in the spring,
- Heard Senlin sing?
- Perhaps I came alone on a snow-white horse,--
- Riding alone from the deep-starred night.
- Perhaps I came on a ship whose sails were music,--
- Sailing from moon or sun on a river of light.'
- He lights his pipe with a pointed flame.
- 'Yet, there were many autumns before I came,
- And many springs. And more will come, long after
- There is no horn for me, or song, or laughter.
- The city dissolves about us, and its walls
- Become an ancient forest. There is no sound
- Except where an old twig tires and falls;
- Or a lizard among the dead leaves crawls;
- Or a flutter is heard in darkness along the ground.
- Has Senlin become a forest? Do we walk in Senlin?
- Is Senlin the wood we walk in, --ourselves,--the world?
- Senlin! we cry . . . Senlin! again . . . No answer,
- Only soft broken echoes backward whirled . . .
- Yet we would say: this is no wood at all,
- But a small white room with a lamp upon the wall;
- And Senlin, before us, pale, with reddish hair,
- Lights his pipe with a meditative stare.
- 2
- Senlin, walking beside us, swings his arms
- And turns his head to look at walls and trees.
- The wind comes whistling from shrill stars of winter,
- The lights are jewels, black roots freeze.
- 'Did I, then, stretch from the bitter earth like these,
- Reaching upward with slow and rigid pain
- To seek, in another air, myself again?'
- (Immense and solitary in a desert of rocks
- Behold a bewildered oak
- With white clouds screaming through its leafy brain.)
- 'Or was I the single ant, or tinier thing,
- That crept from the rocks of buried time
- And dedicated its holy life to climb
- From atom to beetling atom, jagged grain to grain,
- Patiently out of the darkness we call sleep
- Into a hollow gigantic world of light
- Thinking the sky to be its destined shell,
- Hoping to fit it well!--'
- The city dissolves about us, and its walls
- Are mountains of rock cruelly carved by wind.
- Sand streams down their wasting sides, sand
- Mounts upward slowly about them: foot and hand
- We crawl and bleed among them! Is this Senlin?
- In the desert of Senlin must we live and die?
- We hear the decay of rocks, the crash of boulders,
- Snarling of sand on sand. 'Senlin!' we cry.
- 'Senlin!' again . . . Our shadows revolve in silence
- Under the soulless brilliance of blue sky.
- Yet we would say: there are no rocks at all,
- Nor desert of sand . . . here by a city wall
- White lights jewel the evening, black roots freeze,
- And Senlin turns his head to look at trees.
- 3
- It is evening, Senlin says, and in the evening,
- By a silent shore, by a far distant sea,
- White unicorns come gravely down to the water.
- In the lilac dusk they come, they are white and stately,
- Stars hang over the purple waveless sea;
- A sea on which no sail was ever lifted,
- Where a human voice was never heard.
- The shadows of vague hills are dark on the water,
- The silent stars seem silently to sing.
- And gravely come white unicorns down to the water,
- One by one they come and drink their fill;
- And daisies burn like stars on the darkened hill.
- It is evening Senlin says, and in the evening
- The leaves on the trees, abandoned by the light,
- Look to the earth, and whisper, and are still.
- The bat with horned wings, tumbling through the darkness,
- Breaks the web, and the spider falls to the ground.
- The starry dewdrop gathers upon the oakleaf,
- Clings to the edge, and falls without a sound.
- Do maidens spread their white palms to the starlight
- And walk three steps to the east and clearly sing?
- Do dewdrops fall like a shower of stars from willows?
- Has the small moon a ghostly ring? . . .
- White skeletons dance on the moonlit grass,
- Singing maidens are buried in deep graves,
- The stars hang over a sea like polished glass . . .
- And solemnly one by one in the darkness there
- Neighing far off on the haunted air
- White unicorns come gravely down to the water.
- No silver bells are heard. The westering moon
- Lights the pale floors of caverns by the sea.
- Wet weed hangs on the rock. In shimmering pools
- Left on the rocks by the receding sea
- Starfish slowly turn their white and brown
- Or writhe on the naked rocks and drown.
- Do sea-girls haunt these caves--do we hear faint singing?
- Do we hear from under the sea a faint bell ringing?
- Was that a white hand lifted among the bubbles
- And fallen softly back?
- No, these shores and caverns are all silent,
- Dead in the moonlight; only, far above,
- On the smooth contours of these headlands,
- White amid the eternal black,
- One by one in the moonlight there
- Neighing far off on the haunted air
- The unicorns come down to the sea.
- 4
- Senlin, walking before us in the sunlight,
- Bending his small legs in a peculiar way,
- Goes to his work with thoughts of the universe.
- His hands are in his pockets, he smokes his pipe,
- He is happily conscious of roofs and skies;
- And, without turning his head, he turns his eyes
- To regard white horses drawing a small white hearse.
- The sky is brilliant between the roofs,
- The windows flash in the yellow sun,
- On the hard pavement ring the hoofs,
- The light wheels softly run.
- Bright particles of sunlight fall,
- Quiver and flash, gyrate and burn,
- Honey-like heat flows down the wall,
- The white spokes dazzle and turn.
- Senlin, walking before us in the sunlight,
- Regards the hearse with an introspective eye.
- 'Is it my childhood there,' he asks,
- 'Sealed in a hearse and hurrying by?'
- He taps his trowel against a stone;
- The trowel sings with a silver tone.
- 'Nevertheless I know this well.
- Bury it deep and toll a bell,
- Bury it under land or sea,
- You cannot bury it save in me.'
- It is as if his soul had become a city,
- With noisily peopled streets, and through these streets
- Senlin himself comes driving a small white hearse . . .
- 'Senlin!' we cry. He does not turn his head.
- But is that Senlin?--Or is this city Senlin,--
- Quietly watching the burial of the dead?
- Dumbly observing the cortège of its dead?
- Yet we would say that all this is but madness:
- Around a distant corner trots the hearse.
- And Senlin walks before us in the sunlight
- Happily conscious of his universe.
- 5
- In the hot noon, in an old and savage garden,
- The peach-tree grows. Its cruel and ugly roots
- Rend and rifle the silent earth for moisture.
- Above, in the blue, hang warm and golden fruits.
- Look, how the cancerous roots crack mould and stone!
- Earth, if she had a voice, would wail her pain.
- Is she the victim, or is the tree the victim?
- Delicate blossoms opened in the rain,
- Black bees flew among them in the sunlight,
- And sacked them ruthlessly; and no a bird
- Hangs, sharp-eyed, in the leaves, and pecks the fruit;
- And the peach-tree dreams, and does not say a word.
- . . . Senlin, tapping his trowel against a stone,
- Observes this tree he planted: it is his own.
- 'You will think it strange,' says Senlin, 'but this tree
- Utters profound things in this garden;
- And in its silence speaks to me.
- I have sensations, when I stand beneath it,
- As if its leaves looked at me, and could see;
- And those thin leaves, even in windless air,
- Seem to be whispering me a choral music,
- Insubstantial but debonair.
- "Regard," they seem to say,
- "Our idiot root, which going its brutal way
- Has cracked your garden wall!
- Ugly, is it not?
- A desecration of this place . . .
- And yet, without it, could we exist at all?"
- Thus, rustling with importance, they seem to me
- To make their apology;
- Yet, while they apologize,
- Ask me a wary question with their eyes.
- Yes, it is true their origin is low--
- Brutish and dull and cruel . . . and it is true
- Their roots have cracked the wall. But do we know
- The leaves less cruel--the root less beautiful?
- Sometimes it seems as if there grew
- In the dull garden of my mind
- A tree like this, which, singing with delicate leaves,
- Yet cracks the wall with cruel roots and blind.
- Sometimes, indeed, it appears to me
- That I myself am such a tree . . .'
- . . . And as we hear from Senlin these strange words
- So, slowly, in the sunlight, he becomes this tree:
- And among the pleasant leaves hang sharp-eyed birds
- While cruel roots dig downward secretly.
- 6
- Rustling among his odds and ends of knowledge
- Suddenly, to his wonder, Senlin finds
- How Cleopatra and Senebtisi
- Were dug by many hands from ancient tombs.
- Cloth after scented cloth the sage unwinds:
- Delicious to see our futile modern sunlight
- Dance like a harlot among these Dogs and Dooms!
- First, the huge pyramid, with rock on rock
- Bloodily piled to heaven; and under this
- A gilded cavern, bat festooned;
- And here in rows on rows, with gods about them,
- Cloudily lustrous, dim, the sacred coffins,
- Silver starred and crimson mooned.
- What holy secret shall we now uncover?
- Inside the outer coffin is a second;
- Inside the second, smaller, lies a third.
- This one is carved, and like a human body;
- And painted over with fish and bull and bird.
- Here are men walking stiffly in procession,
- Blowing horns or lifting spears.
- Where do they march to? Where do they come from?
- Soft whine of horns is in our ears.
- Inside, the third, a fourth . . . and this the artist,--
- A priest, perhaps--did most to make resemble
- The flesh of her who lies within.
- The brown eyes widely stare at the bat-hung ceiling.
- The hair is black, The mouth is thin.
- Princess! Secret of life! We come to praise you!
- The torch is lowered, this coffin too we open,
- And the dark air is drunk with musk and myrrh.
- Here are the thousand white and scented wrappings,
- The gilded mask, and jeweled eyes, of her.
- And now the body itself, brown, gaunt, and ugly,
- And the hollow scull, in which the brains are withered,
- Lie bare before us. Princess, is this all?
- Something there was we asked that is not answered.
- Soft bats, in rows, hang on the lustered wall.
- And all we hear is a whisper sound of music,
- Of brass horns dustily raised and briefly blown,
- And a cry of grief; and men in a stiff procession
- Marching away and softly gone.
- 7
- 'And am I then a pyramid?' says Senlin,
- 'In which are caves and coffins, where lies hidden
- Some old and mocking hieroglyph of flesh?
- Or am I rather the moonlight, spreading subtly
- Above those stones and times?
- Or the green blade of grass that bravely grows
- Between to massive boulders of black basalt
- Year after year, and fades and blows?
- Senlin, sitting before us in the lamplight,
- Laughs, and lights his pipe. The yellow flame
- Minutely flares in his eyes, minutely dwindles.
- Does a blade of grass have Senlin for a name?
- Yet we would say that we have seen him somewhere,
- A tiny spear of green beneath the blue,
- Playing his destiny in a sun-warmed crevice
- With the gigantic fates of frost and dew.
- Does a spider come and spin his gossamer ladder
- Rung by silver rung,
- Chaining it fast to Senlin? Its faint shadow
- Flung, waveringly, where his is flung?
- Does a raindrop dazzle starlike down his length
- Trying his futile strength?
- A snowflake startle him? The stars defeat him?
- Through aeons of dusk have birds above him sung?
- Time is a wind, says Senlin; time, like music,
- Blows over us its mournful beauty, passes,
- And leaves behind a shadowy reflection,--
- A helpless gesture of mist above the grasses.
- 8
- In cold blue lucid dusk before the sunrise,
- One yellow star sings over a peak of snow,
- And melts and vanishes in a light like roses.
- Through slanting mist, black rocks appear and glow.
- The clouds flow downward, slowly as grey glaciers,
- Or up to a pale rose-azure pass.
- Blue streams tinkle down from snow to boulders,
- From boulders to white grass.
- Icicles on the pine tree melt
- And softly flash in the sun:
- In long straight lines the star-drops fall
- One by one.
- Is a voice heard while the shadows still are long,
- Borne slowly down on the sparkling air?
- Is a thin bell heard from the peak of silence?
- Is someone among the high snows there?
- Where the blue stream flows coldly among the meadows
- And mist still clings to rock and tree
- Senlin walks alone; and from that twilight
- Looks darkly up, to see
- The calm unmoving peak of snow-white silence,
- The rocks aflame with ice, the rose-blue sky . . .
- Ghost-like, a cloud descends from twinkling ledges,
- To nod before the dwindling sun and die.
- 'Something there is,' says Senlin, 'in that mountain,
- Something forgotten now, that once I knew . . .'
- We walk before a sun-tipped peak in silence,
- Our shadows descend before us, long and blue.
- Conrad Aiken
On to Part II. His Futile Preoccupations
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