Ten
Early Poems by Laura Riding
There was never a work published by Laura Riding entitled ‘Ten Early Poems’. I selected these poems
from First Awakenings: The Early Poems,
a book edited by Elizabeth Friedmann, Alan J. Clark
and Robert Nye (1992, Manchester: Carcanet).
Dimensions
Measure
me for a burial
That
my low stone may neatly say
In
a precise, Euclidean way
How
I am three-dimensional.
Yet
can life be so thin and small?
Measure
me in time. But time is strange
And
still and knows no rule or change
But
death and death is nothing at all.
Measure
me by beauty.
But
beauty is death’s earliest name
For
life, and life’s first dying, a flame
That
glimmers, an amaranth that will fade
And
fade again in death’s dim shade.
Measure
me not by beauty, that fears strife.
For
beauty makes peace with death, buying
Dishonor and eternal dying
That
she may keep outliving life.
Measure
me then by love – yet, no,
For
I remember times when she
Sought
her own measurements in me,
But
fled, afraid I might foreshow
How
broad I was myself and tall
And
deep and many-measured, moving
My
scale upon her and thus proving
That both of us were nothing at all.
Measure
me by myself
And
not by time or love or space
Or beauty.
Give me this last grace:
That
I may be on my low stone
A gage unto myself alone.
I
would not have these old faiths fall
To prove that I was nothing at all.
But Wickedness…
It
is not for itself
That
I love wickedness
But
wickedness has such sweet ways!
Thieves
walk at night
And
make the night more silent.
Murderers
love madness
And a moment’s high courage for killing.
It
is not that I love killing,
But
good men soften in their sanity
And
smile too frequently.
Cruelty
has a thousand charms.
Pain
is a beauty lashed upon my back.
Oh,
why is mercy kind?
Oh,
why is justice blind,
Too
blind for punishment?
Evil
has as many enchantments as the night.
Lies
are as mysterious as the stars.
The
moon is a new truth each night
And
shadows gamble for the moon dishonestly,
While
goodness stays at home behind drawn blinds,
Hiding
her beauty in a prayer,
Correctly
wived to a monk’s hood.
And
will not lie or love or dream.
If
goodness loosed her hair
And
danced at night with danger,
If
goodness were as lovely half as sin,
I’d
husband goodness then for her own sake
And
find a thousand charms in virtue.
But
wickedness has such sweet ways!
A
City Seems
A
city seems between us. It is only love,
Love
like a sorrow still
After
a labor, after light.
The
crowds are one.
Sleep
is a single heart
Filling
the old avenues we used to know
With
miracles of dark and dread
We
dare not go to meet
Save
as our own dead stalking
Or
as two dreams walking
One
tread and terrible,
One
cloak of longing in the cold,
Though
we stand separate and wakeful
Measuring
death in miles between us
Where
a city seems and memories
Sleep
like a populace.
If
a Woman Should Be Messiah
If
a woman should be Messiah
It
might not be an impressive drama,
It
would be but a slight event and unsignaled,
It
could not but be beautiful.
Such
a woman would surely say very little
Of
morals and religion.
Such
a woman would surely never travel
Or
inspire a gospel.
She
would live at peace shyly
With
a local lake and on certain days
Intrude
some nearly divine distress
Upon
it, with a most feminine caress
As
of weeping spotlessly over it
In
tears no more wonderful
Than
any other woman’s.
She’d
have no unnatural hungers,
No fewer lovers,
Do no evangelical tricks
With
stones and sticks,
Even
employ the innate art
To
win the ordinary heart
Of
an ordinary man,
As
any wilful woman can.
And,
as with any other woman,
Her
self-confession would be kept
Close
to her kerchief, under the pillow where she slept.
She
might be adored of her household.
She
could never deny them her faults.
She
would pamper her private follies,
Talk
too much of her dreams,
Pray
to a personal God,
Deal
unhistorically with facts,
Be
sweet in marriage and motherhood.
Who’d
be aware of her quiet work?
Who’d
call her a saviour or even a saint?
Who’d
trouble her with a cross or a church?
No
one would.
Truth
We
keep looking for Truth.
Truth
is afraid of being caught.
Books
are bird-cages.
Truth
is no canary
To
nibble patiently at words
And
die when they’re all eaten up.
Truth
would not like
To
live in people’s heads or hearts or throats.
Don’t
try to find her there.
Truth
is no dryad to be punished in a tree.
Truth
is no naiad.
Truth
would be surely drowned in a spring.
Don’t
worry the earth.
Truth
leaves no footprints.
Don’t
listen
Before
silence has set with the moon.
Truth
makes no noise.
Don’t
follow the light
That
follows the sun
That
follows the night.
Truth
dances beyond the light
And
the sun
And
the night.
Truth
can’t be seen.
Let
curiosity stay at home.
It
may get lost.
(Truth
has strange haunts.)
If
stealth wears shoes
It
grows up to imprudence.
Leave
truth alone.
Truth
can’t be caught.
I
think Truth doesn’t live at all because
She’d
have to be afraid of dying, then.
An
Ancient Revisits
They
told me, when I lived, because my art
To
them seemed wide and spacious as the air,
That
time would be pervaded everywhere
With
it, until no work would have a part
That
had not once awakened in my heart,
That
everything would crooked be or fair
As
it inherited its proper share
From
me and could that share again impart.
But
this strange present world is not of me.
If
I could find somewhere a secret sign,
That
one might say: In this an Ancient sings,
I
should acknowledge then my legacy
And
love to call this modern fabric mine.
Perhaps,
once, in my sleep, I dreamed such things?
The
Sweet Ascetic
Find
me the thing to make me less
Delivered
to my earthliness,
Some
rarer love to live upon,
A
berry grown in Avalon,
Something
that will, in this emprise,
Suffice
me to etherealize
The
coarser strain and purify
The
flesh that had preferred to die.
Find
me this thing and plant it near
My
garden gate so that some day,
When
I am going out of it,
I’ll
stoop and pick the ripest bit
And,
humming as I walk away,
Smile
just a little and disappear.
In
Reverence
Her
faith was a pope
Who
went riding in a golden coach.
And
she was bold enough
To
ride beside him
As
if she were his young and bonny bride.
Trot, trot, trot.
She
sped the horses,
Forgetting
quite
It
was a staid old pope who rode beside her.
He
held his sides and gasped:
Remember,
dear, my age and dignity.
Trot, trot, trot.
Ho, you there trudging at the hill! she cried.
Come
in and ride,
There’s
room inside upon his lap.
He
said they’d wreck the coach
And
crush his pride
Beneath them.
But
she was elfin-spirited
And
piled them in hilariously until
The
horses slipped and all
Went rolling blithely down the hill.
She
found him sitting in the grass
Where
he had been dismounted all agape
With
convulsive austerity
Sweating from his brow.
Well,
well, she said,
And patted him maternally.
You’re
getting old, I’m afraid
I’ll
have to leave you home hereafter
When I go riding out.
Trot, trot, trot.
She
gallops now more jauntily than ever
In
a dilapidated coach
That
brims with giddy, supercilious company.
Why
do you keep that seat beside you
Always
empty? they demand.
Oh
that, she says, is to
The
outraged memory of
A fallen pope.
Free
Thinking
is the poorest way of traveling –
Paths in the head,
Dreams in bed.
Living
in a body is the drearest kind of life,
Locked up all alone
In flesh and bone.
Turn me out of head,
Turn me out of body,
Wake me out of bed.
Rather
than respectable,
Vagabond and dead.
To
Another
Whom
I have understood even less than any,
Who
did not love me but was only loyal
But
loyal so little it seemed only love.
He
made too much of me, denied himself
Too
utterly, offered the comfort of
A
lovable excess of adoration,
Forgot
he came to me upon a sorrow
Like
the repentance of a storm in sun,
But no new day. Was
it without a thought
He
stopped the act of worship and stood up,
Choked
off the heaven he had seen in me
Because
it fell too close about his earth?
Or
did he, frightened with so much success,
Flee
from my gratitude and the disgrace
Of having without love consoled a woman?