To Charles Brasch
Preface
Part One
Sleep Will Come Singly • A Ballad of Bad Omens • The Tempest • Sea Legend • Fire Without Phoenix • The Time of the Eagle • And I, In Arcady • The Beachcomber • For One Flying • A Handful of Sea Shells • A Figure at the Window • Island
Part Two
Ceremony of Pain • Dream • Soldier's Pay • Monastic Ruins • A Performance of Death & The Maiden • At a Holy Well • From a Train in the Midlands • In Radcliffe Square, Oxford • The Streets of My City • In the Fields of My Father's Youth • Colophon—The Poet to his Book
Source: Oliver, W. H., Fire Without Phoenix: Poems 1946-1954. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1957
Electronic source: Fire Without Phoenix: a TEI-conformant transcription
All poems © W. H. Oliver
A Performance of Death & The Maiden
On a sultry evening, in the college hall,
Young men and women gather to hear the music
Our deathwards Schubert wrote about a girl,
Her battle with death, his and her subtle tricks.
She was, of women, silly, splendid and blind;
She thought to break the chain original sin
Forged of men mating — as if forging the risk
Were not the strongest link within that chain
And love the tenderest loosener she'd find.
Sable-cloaked youths, hot from the road and the river,
Lead in their maidens, sunbaked and brownarmed,
Hinting at dispositions too delicate to be harmed,
Teetering strollers on the high taut wire
Poised between novice and deliberate performer,
Hesitant, flaunting, cold in their colours of fire.
From flaming chestnut walks and buttercup fields,
From the Thames carefully carrying fastidious cargoes
Stretched on her boats, slack beneath masculine clouds,
They enter the oppressive shadows of wall and window.
The players call to battle, and follow the wavering fight.
The men in black grow tall with the power of him
Who tricked the subtle maiden with his grin.
The sunny river girls see night erect
And stark as graveyards stilt across the room.
The music ends, too frantic. Whom do they acclaim?
That cloaked deceiver or that stringent girl?
They walk away to their separate narrow cots
Shaken with prodigal feats they'll need to learn:
For all round flesh must die if left unslain.