D.H. Lawrence: Ballad of Another Ophelia & other poems
D.H. Lawrence
(1885-1930)
Ballad of Another Ophelia
Oh the green glimmer of apples in the orchard,
Lamps in a wash of rain!
Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard,
Oh tears on the window pane!
Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples,
Full of disappointment and of rain,
Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples
Of autumn tell the withered tale again.
All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen,
Cluck, and the rain-wet wings,
Cluck, my marigold bird, and again
Cluck for your yellow darlings.
For the grey rat found the gold thirteen
Huddled away in the dark,
Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and keen,
Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark.
Once I had a lover bright like running water,
Once his face was laughing like the sky;
Open like the sky looking down in all its laughter
On the buttercups, and the buttercups was I.
What, then, is there hidden in the skirts of all the blossom?
What is peeping from your wings, oh mother hen?
’Tis the sun who asks the question, in a lovely haste for wisdom;
What a lovely haste for wisdom is in men!
Yea, but it is cruel when undressed is all the blossom,
And her shift is lying white upon the floor,
That a grey one, like a shadow, like a rat, a thief, a rain-storm,
Creeps upon her then and gathers in his store.
Oh the grey garner that is full of half-grown apples,
Oh the golden sparkles laid extinct!
And oh, behind the cloud-sheaves, like yellow autumn dapples,
Did you see the wicked sun that winked!
On That Day
On that day
I shall put roses on roses, and cover your grave
With multitude of white roses: and since you were brave
One bright red ray.
So people, passing under
The ash-trees of the valley-road, will raise
Their eyes and look at the grave on the hill, in wonder,
Wondering mount, and put the flowers asunder
To see whose praise
Is blazoned here so white and so bloodily red.
Then they will say: “’Tis long since she is dead,
Who has remembered her after many days?”
And standing there
They will consider how you went your ways
Unnoticed among them, a still queen lost in the maze
Of this earthly affair.
A queen, they’ll say,
Has slept unnoticed on a forgotten hill.
Sleeps on unknown, unnoticed there, until
Dawns my insurgent day.
Jealousy
The jealousy of an ego-bound woman
is hideous and fearful,
it is so much stronger than her love could ever be.
The jealousy of an ego-bound woman
is a fearful thing to behold
The ego revealed in all its monstrous inhumanity.
All I ask
All I ask of a woman is that she shall feel gently towards
me
when my heart feels kindly towards her,
and there shall be the soft, soft tremor as of unheard bells
between us.
It is all I ask.
I am so tired of violent women lashing out and insisting
on being loved, when there is no love in them.
kemp=mag poetry magazine
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