Malade - Бесплатная аудиокнига

THE WILD COMMON

THE quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
     Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
     Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping:
     They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness
         their screamings proclaim.

     Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
     Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten
         down to the quick.
     Are they asleep?—Are they alive?—Now see,
         when I
     Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their
         spurting kick.

     The common flaunts bravely; but below, from the
         rushes
     Crowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge the
         blossoming bushes;
     There the lazy streamlet pushes
     Its curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps,
         laughs, and gushes.

     Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip,
     Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the brook
         ebbing through so slow,
     Naked on the steep, soft lip
     Of the bank I stand watching my own white shadow
         quivering to and fro.

     What if the gorse flowers shrivelled and kissing were
         lost?
     Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigolds
         and the songs of the brook?
     If my veins and my breasts with love embossed
     Withered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowers
         that the hot wind took.

     So my soul like a passionate woman turns,
     Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned,
         and her love
     For myself in my own eyes' laughter burns,
     Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to
         my belly from the breast-lights above.

     Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air,
     Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once,
         goes kissing me glad.
     And the soul of the wind and my blood compare
     Their wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in
         liberty, drifts on and is sad.

     Oh but the water loves me and folds me,
     Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as
         though it were living blood,
     Blood of a heaving woman who holds me,
     Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely
         good.