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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=358649" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The House Of Dust: Part 04: 03: Palimpsest: A Deceitful Portrait</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, as you say, we live for small horizons:<br>We move in crowds, we flow and talk together,<br>Seeing so many eyes and hands and faces,<br>So many mouths, and all with secret meanings,—<br>Yet know so little of them; only seeing<br>The small bright circle of our consciousness,<br>Beyond which lies the dark. Some few we know—<br>Or think we know. . . Once, on a sun-bright morning,<br>I walked in a certain hallway, trying to find<br>A certain door: I found one, tried it, opened,<br>And there in a spacious chamber, brightly lighted,<br>A hundred men played music, loudly, swiftly,<br>While one tall woman sent her voice above them<br>In powerful sweetness. . . .Closing then the door<br>I heard it die behind me, fade to whisper,—<br>And walked in a quiet hallway as before.<br>Just such a glimpse, as through that opened door,<br>Is all we know of those we call our friends. . . .<br>We hear a sudden music, see a playing<br>Of ordered thoughts—and all again is silence.<br>The music, we suppose, (as in ourselves)<br>Goes on forever there, behind shut doors,—<br>As it continues after our departure,<br>So, we divine, it played before we came . . .<br>What do you know of me, or I of you? . . .<br>Little enough. . . .We set these doors ajar<br>Only for chosen movements of the music:<br>This passage, (so I think—yet this is guesswork)<br>Will please him,—it is in a strain he fancies,—<br>More brilliant, though, than his; and while he likes it<br>He will be piqued . . . He looks at me bewildered<br>And thinks (to judge from self—this too is guesswork)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The music strangely subtle, deep in meaning,<br>Perplexed with implications; he suspects me<br>Of hidden riches, unexpected wisdom. . . .<br>Or else I let him hear a lyric passage,—<br>Simple and clear; and all the while he listens<br>I make pretence to think my doors are closed.<br>This too bewilders him. He eyes me sidelong<br>Wondering 'Is he such a fool as this?<br>Or only mocking?'—There I let it end. . . .<br>Sometimes, of course, and when we least suspect it—<br>When we pursue our thoughts with too much passion,<br>Talking with too great zeal—our doors fly open<br>Without intention; and the hungry watcher<br>Stares at the feast, carries away our secrets,<br>And laughs. . . .but this, for many counts, is seldom.<br>And for the most part we vouchsafe our friends,<br>Our lovers too, only such few clear notes<br>As we shall deem them likely to admire:<br>'Praise me for this' we say, or 'laugh at this,'<br>Or 'marvel at my candor'. . . .all the while<br>Withholding what's most precious to ourselves,—<br>Some sinister depth of lust or fear or hatred,<br>The sombre note that gives the chord its power;<br>Or a white loveliness—if such we know—<br>Too much like fire to speak of without shame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, this being so, and we who know it being<br>So curious about those well-locked houses,<br>The minds of those we know,—to enter softly,<br>And steal from floor to floor up shadowy stairways,<br>From room to quiet room, from wall to wall,<br>Breathing deliberately the very air,<br>Pressing our hands and nerves against warm darkness<br>To learn what ghosts are there,—<br>Suppose for once I set my doors wide open<br>And bid you in. . . .Suppose I try to tell you<br>The secrets of this house, and how I live here;<br>Suppose I tell you who I am, in fact. . . .<br>Deceiving you—as far as I may know it—<br>Only so much as I deceive myself.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If you are clever you already see me<br>As one who moves forever in a cloud<br>Of warm bright vanity: a luminous cloud<br>Which falls on all things with a quivering magic,<br>Changing such outlines as a light may change,<br>Brightening what lies dark to me, concealing<br>Those things that will not change . . . I walk sustained<br>In a world of things that flatter me: a sky<br>Just as I would have had it; trees and grass<br>Just as I would have shaped and colored them;<br>Pigeons and clouds and sun and whirling shadows,<br>And stars that brightening climb through mist at nightfall,—<br>In some deep way I am aware these praise me:<br>Where they are beautiful, or hint of beauty,<br>They point, somehow, to me. . . .This water says,—<br>Shimmering at the sky, or undulating<br>In broken gleaming parodies of clouds,<br>Rippled in blue, or sending from cool depths<br>To meet the falling leaf the leaf's clear image,—<br>This water says, there is some secret in you<br>Akin to my clear beauty, silently responsive<br>To all that circles you. This bare tree says,—<br>Austere and stark and leafless, split with frost,<br>Resonant in the wind, with rigid branches<br>Flung out against the sky,—this tall tree says,<br>There is some cold austerity in you,<br>A frozen strength, with long roots gnarled on rocks,<br>Fertile and deep; you bide your time, are patient,<br>Serene in silence, bare to outward seeming,<br>Concealing what reserves of power and beauty!<br>What teeming Aprils!—chorus of leaves on leaves!<br>These houses say, such walls in walls as ours,<br>Such streets of walls, solid and smooth of surface,<br>Such hills and cities of walls, walls upon walls;<br>Motionless in the sun, or dark with rain;<br>Walls pierced with windows, where the light may enter;<br>Walls windowless where darkness is desired;<br>Towers and labyrinths and domes and chambers,—<br>Amazing deep recesses, dark on dark,—<br>All these are like the walls which shape your spirit:<br>You move, are warm, within them, laugh within them,<br>Proud of their depth and strength; or sally from them,<br>When you are bold, to blow great horns at the world. .<br>This deep cool room, with shadowed walls and ceiling,<br>Tranquil and cloistral, fragrant of my mind,<br>This cool room says,—just such a room have you,<br>It waits you always at the tops of stairways,<br>Withdrawn, remote, familiar to your uses,<br>Where you may cease pretence and be yourself. . . .<br>And this embroidery, hanging on this wall,<br>Hung there forever,—these so soundless glidings<br>Of dragons golden-scaled, sheer birds of azure,<br>Coilings of leaves in pale vermilion, griffins<br>Drawing their rainbow wings through involutions<br>Of mauve chrysanthemums and lotus flowers,—<br>This goblin wood where someone cries enchantment,—<br>This says, just such an involuted beauty<br>Of thought and coiling thought, dream linked with dream,<br>Image to image gliding, wreathing fires,<br>Soundlessly cries enchantment in your mind:<br>You need but sit and close your eyes a moment<br>To see these deep designs unfold themselves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And so, all things discern me, name me, praise me—<br>I walk in a world of silent voices, praising;<br>And in this world you see me like a wraith<br>Blown softly here and there, on silent winds.<br>'Praise me'—I say; and look, not in a glass,<br>But in your eyes, to see my image there—<br>Or in your mind; you smile, I am contented;<br>You look at me, with interest unfeigned,<br>And listen—I am pleased; or else, alone,<br>I watch thin bubbles veering brightly upward<br>From unknown depths,—my silver thoughts ascending;<br>Saying now this, now that, hinting of all things,—<br>Dreams, and desires, velleities, regrets,<br>Faint ghosts of memory, strange recognitions,—<br>But all with one deep meaning: this is I,<br>This is the glistening secret holy I,<br>This silver-winged wonder, insubstantial,<br>This singing ghost. . . .And hearing, I am warmed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> * * * * *</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You see me moving, then, as one who moves<br>Forever at the centre of his circle:<br>A circle filled with light. And into it<br>Come bulging shapes from darkness, loom gigantic,<br>Or huddle in dark again. . . .A clock ticks clearly,<br>A gas-jet steadily whirs, light streams across me;<br>Two church bells, with alternate beat, strike nine;<br>And through these things my pencil pushes softly<br>To weave grey webs of lines on this clear page.<br>Snow falls and melts; the eaves make liquid music;<br>Black wheel-tracks line the snow-touched street; I turn<br>And look one instant at the half-dark gardens,<br>Where skeleton elm-trees reach with frozen gesture<br>Above unsteady lamps,—with black boughs flung<br>Against a luminous snow-filled grey-gold sky.<br>'Beauty!' I cry. . . .My feet move on, and take me<br>Between dark walls, with orange squares for windows.<br>Beauty; beheld like someone half-forgotten,<br>Remembered, with slow pang, as one neglected . . .<br>Well, I am frustrate; life has beaten me,<br>The thing I strongly seized has turned to darkness,<br>And darkness rides my heart. . . .These skeleton elm-trees—<br>Leaning against that grey-gold snow filled sky—<br>Beauty! they say, and at the edge of darkness<br>Extend vain arms in a frozen gesture of protest . . .<br>A clock ticks softly; a gas-jet steadily whirs:<br>The pencil meets its shadow upon clear paper,<br>Voices are raised, a door is slammed. The lovers,<br>Murmuring in an adjacent room, grow silent,<br>The eaves make liquid music. . . .Hours have passed,<br>And nothing changes, and everything is changed.<br>Exultation is dead, Beauty is harlot,—<br>And walks the streets. The thing I strongly seized<br>Has turned to darkness, and darkness rides my heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If you could solve this darkness you would have me.<br>This causeless melancholy that comes with rain,<br>Or on such days as this when large wet snowflakes<br>Drop heavily, with rain . . . whence rises this?<br>Well, so-and-so, this morning when I saw him,<br>Seemed much preoccupied, and would not smile;<br>And you, I saw too much; and you, too little;<br>And the word I chose for you, the golden word,<br>The word that should have struck so deep in purpose,<br>And set so many doors of wish wide open,<br>You let it fall, and would not stoop for it,<br>And smiled at me, and would not let me guess<br>Whether you saw it fall. . . These things, together,<br>With other things, still slighter, wove to music,<br>And this in time drew up dark memories;<br>And there I stand. This music breaks and bleeds me,<br>Turning all frustrate dreams to chords and discords,<br>Faces and griefs, and words, and sunlit evenings,<br>And chains self-forged that will not break nor lengthen,<br>And cries that none can answer, few will hear.<br>Have these things meaning? Or would you see more clearly<br>If I should say 'My second wife grows tedious,<br>Or, like gay tulip, keeps no perfumed secret'?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or 'one day dies eventless as another,<br>Leaving the seeker still unsatisfied,<br>And more convinced life yields no satisfaction'?<br>Or 'seek too hard, the sight at length grows callous,<br>And beauty shines in vain'?—</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> These things you ask for,<br>These you shall have. . . So, talking with my first wife,<br>At the dark end of evening, when she leaned<br>And smiled at me, with blue eyes weaving webs<br>Of finest fire, revolving me in scarlet,—<br>Calling to mind remote and small successions<br>Of countless other evenings ending so,—<br>I smiled, and met her kiss, and wished her dead;<br>Dead of a sudden sickness, or by my hands<br>Savagely killed; I saw her in her coffin,<br>I saw her coffin borne downstairs with trouble,<br>I saw myself alone there, palely watching,<br>Wearing a masque of grief so deeply acted<br>That grief itself possessed me. Time would pass,<br>And I should meet this girl,—my second wife—<br>And drop the masque of grief for one of passion.<br>Forward we move to meet, half hesitating,<br>We drown in each others' eyes, we laugh, we talk,<br>Looking now here, now there, faintly pretending<br>We do not hear the powerful pulsing prelude<br>Roaring beneath our words . . . The time approaches.<br>We lean unbalanced. The mute last glance between us,<br>Profoundly searching, opening, asking, yielding,<br>Is steadily met: our two lives draw together . . .<br>. . . .'What are you thinking of?'. . . .My first wife's voice<br>Scattered these ghosts. 'Oh nothing—nothing much—<br>Just wondering where we'd be two years from now,<br>And what we might be doing . . . ' And then remorse<br>Turned sharply in my mind to sudden pity,<br>And pity to echoed love. And one more evening<br>Drew to the usual end of sleep and silence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, as it is with this, so too with all things.<br>The pages of our lives are blurred palimpsest:<br>New lines are wreathed on old lines half-erased,<br>And those on older still; and so forever.<br>The old shines through the new, and colors it.<br>What's new? What's old? All things have double meanings,—<br>All things return. I write a line with passion<br>(Or touch a woman's hand, or plumb a doctrine)<br>Only to find the same thing, done before,—<br>Only to know the same thing comes to-morrow. . . .<br>This curious riddled dream I dreamed last night,—<br>Six years ago I dreamed it just as now;<br>The same man stooped to me; we rose from darkness,<br>And broke the accustomed order of our days,<br>And struck for the morning world, and warmth, and freedom. . . .<br>What does it mean? Why is this hint repeated?<br>What darkness does it spring from, seek to end?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You see me, then, pass up and down these stairways,<br>Now through a beam of light, and now through shadow,—<br>Pursuing silent ends. No rest there is,—<br>No more for me than you. I move here always,<br>From quiet room to room, from wall to wall,<br>Searching and plotting, weaving a web of days.<br>This is my house, and now, perhaps, you know me. . .<br>Yet I confess, for all my best intentions,<br>Once more I have deceived you. . . .I withhold<br>The one thing precious, the one dark thing that guides me;<br>And I have spread two snares for you, of lies.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Conrad+Potter+Aiken">Conrad Potter Aiken</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=358649" data-title="The House Of Dust: Part 04: 03: Palimpsest: A Deceitful Portrait de Conrad Potter Aiken" data-description="Well, as you say, we live for small horizons: We move in crowds, we flow and talk together, Seeing so many eyes and hands and faces, So many mouths, and all with secret meanings,— Yet know so little of them; only seeing The small bright circ..."></div> </div> </div>
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