No, I Shall Not Say

No, I shall not say why it is that I love you--
Why do you ask me, save for vanity?
Surely you would not have me, like a mirror,
Say 'yes, -- your hair curls darkly back from the temples,
Your eyes are April grey . . . with jonquils in them'?
No, if I tell at all, I shall tell in silence.
I'll say--my childhood broke through chords of music
--Or were they chords of sun?--wherin fell shadows,
Or silences; I rose through the waves of sunlight;
Or sometimes found an angel stooped above me
With wings of death, and a brow of cold clear beauty.
I lay in the warm sweet grass on a blue May morning,
My chin in dandelion, my hands in clover,
And drowsed there like a bee. Blue days behind me
reached like a chain of deep blue pools of magic,
Enchanted, silent, timeless. Days before me
Murmured of blue-sea mornings, noons of gold,
Green evenings streaked with lilac, bee-starred nights.
Confused soft clouds of foresight fled above me.
Sharp shafts of insight dazzled my eyes and peirced me.
I ran and turned and spun and danced in the sunlight,
Shrank, sometimes, from the freezing silence of Number,
Or crept once more to the warm white cave of sleep.

No, I shall not say 'This is why I praise you--
Because you say such wise things, or such foolish!'
You would not have me plead what you know better?
Let me instead be silent, only thinking--:
My childhood lives in me--or half-lives, rather--
And, if I close my eys cool chords of logic
Flow up to me, long chords of wind and sunlight,
Shadows of intricate vines on the sunlit walls,
Deep bells beating, with aeons of blue between them,
Grass blades leagues apart with worlds between them,
Walls thrust up to heaven with stars upon them.
I lay in my bed, and through the tall night window
Saw green lightning lancing among the clouds,
And heard the harsh rain claw at the panes and roof.
How should I know--how should I now remember--
What half-dreamed God's wing curved up above me?
What wings like swords? What eyes with the dread night in
them?

This I shall say.--I lay by the hot white sand-dunes.
Small yellow flowers, sapless and squat and spiny,
Stared at the sky. And silently there above me,
Day after day, beyond all dreams or knowledge,
Presences swept, and over me streamed their shadows,
Swift and blue, or dark. What did they mean?
What sinister threat of power? What hint of weakness?
Prelude to what gigantic music, or subtle?
Only, I know, these shapes leaned over me,
Brooded upon me, paused, went flowing softly,
Glided and passed. I loved, I desired, I hated,
I struggled, I yielded and loved, was warmed to blossom.
You, when your eyes have evening sunlight in them,
Set these dunes before me, these salt bright flowers,
These presences. I drowse, they stream above me,
I struggle, I yeild and love, I become that child.
You are the window (if I could tell I'd tell you)
Through which I see a clear far world of sunlight.
You are the silence (if you could hear you'd hear me)
In which I remember a thin still whisper of singing.
It is not you I laugh for, you I touch!
My hands, that touch you, suddenly touch a cobweb,
Coldly silvered, heavily silvered with dewdrops,
And clover, heavy with rain, in cold green grass.

- Conrad Aiken

- posted by Jonathan@ 11:08 PM