THE WHITE SEAT

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21970, 19 December 1936, Page 17

THE WHITE SEAT

[By ROBIN HYDE.] . Orangi-Kaupapa; there high banks of Heavy aS wfth seed; in the darkness, castanets clicking fla ~ Where broom-pods burst; white flanks of the elderberries, Soon turned to wine, sapped througn by the bills of birds. Now, rumbling through the darkness, senses tricking ~ With jingle of bits like bells, the old horse passes; Drawls the blue cart by the quarry, the waggoner's words Melt into gloom, like the late, unhearted : cherries. . ' Whose petals were brides of the wind, nor came to ripe. | Now on the white seat half a mile from the top I can rest for a moment, lean over a cup of mist And the wrinkling harbour waters curdled in moonlight, Milky precipitate of the moon s alkaline stone; Know that a little higher are pineboughs; shake them, Pollen flies out, in green and dusty WithYhe will of the world. The pinegerms lie on the ground, Stitch their way under and up, thin stems self-sown, And the hedgehogs run in the grass, with no more sound Than will scare the sleeping skylarks, half awake them. Over the wanded bluegums the wild stsrs stoo Transfixed; wild honeysuckle torments the night. Peace at my feet sleeps, red-roofed hives in the gloom. The Southern Cross is nowhere else so large, So lar?e as silver keas flocked to a ' feast So large 'as a fiery babe in its mother's | womb. If one passes me here, though he be the least .. Of men, it is he shipped oars on the silver barge That bore me to Camelot once, on a tide run past. . . It is he who knows me, as grass knoweth the tomb. Burrs hang in the grass, and the red weed having no name. "Kiss-me-quick," say the maidens. The red runs fast ~ To their cheeks, for their youth s pride and their bosom's shame. If I move down, I strike the silvery pitch _ .. Of houses lapping at a molten drink . ~ „„„ Of moonbeams in their gutters run to loss. . . Old jostling houses, listening with long No fetish theirs of times that made them rich With crowns or dreaming: theirs the huddled lives— . Rough husbands, broken music, draggled wives, Children brief beanstalk flowers to twine a cross. Yet flames move through their shadows; gold flames chink And glitter, shining bees about the hive, „ , A worth for tattered loving, tattered tears. Life loves not man, the hills have never loved: Over them fruits the moon, aloft, unmoved — Yet, thief in beauty's orchard, man may taste The silver windfalls scattered down to waste. Meat and drink is the moon: but if I wait ,~, _ , . Till dawn unbares the hill, I feast my eyes On tossing gorse and broom, bread consummate , Out of the sun's grist and the windy skies. And still the grass by the white seat is warm, As if some milk or blood, from earth s old breast. Ran up to chafe the skylarks, and the swarm Of white cocoons that sway with breezes' rest. Since so much is familiar, runs to my side With quickening glance or sound, small scent unchanged, I know at last I had home there: lie estranged. Shaken from bedrock, like the gleaning bride Who wakening by her foreign kinsman named him Softly: "Boaz." she called—small name, as strange As burning bud, or uncalculated star. All time about her limbs flowed swift in change— Then with shut eyes she sought her fields afar, And wept in the dark, but quietly, lest she shamed him.