Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CANOPUS, by CLEMENT WOOD


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CANOPUS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Up from the smooth dust of the road they turned
Last Line: Sang to them they had found the starrier way.


Up from the smooth dust of the road they turned.
The shivery spider cables spread a net
Across the climbing path that teased and burned
Their faces, which the dew-sprayed leaves left wet;
Defenseless cheeks were clawed by trespassing bramble
And vagabonding sumach. Their fingers met,
Anchors to steady each unsteady scramble.

Their nervous feet struck stones, that toppled over
The terraced outcrop, and, at last let loose,
Clattered to rest against stray tufts of clover.
Boughs broke off in their grasp, and were no use,
And underneath the brittle twigs snapped shrill.
At length the firmer sassafras and spruce
Gave hand-holds as they met the steeper hill.
"We'll rest." He wiped an arm across a brow
Fouled with the twitching spider-web, and leant
Against a low dead stump, steadying now
Her passage toward him, much as though he meant
To hold the pressure till her breathless face
Encountered his; then, suddenly continent,
He loosed her hand. She poised in the dark place,

Her heart pounding, gasping as though distressed.
She smoothed a dampened, restless strand of hair.
A smile colored her echoing words: "We'll rest.
It is steep." Then they sniffed the thinner air,
Sharply brought closer, as the conquered rise
Made clear that they at length had mounted where
There were no more of censoring city eyes.

The isolation was a sudden thrust
Cleaving them, like a whispered word of warning.
He brushed ahead; a startled smoke of dust
Trailed like a widening curtain. Quickly scorning
The stiff precipitous way, she followed higher
Through crushing shadow and jutting branch, adorning
This path that pointed toward an unseen fire.

Partly to dull two fires -- the one that charred
Her cheeks, the one still deeper -- she called out:
"You think we'll see it?" He was climbing hard,
So far ahead, his answer was a shout.
"I think we may." He waited, eyes uncertain,
Until her sky-lit face came near, to rout
The dark, as daybreak tears night's shadowy curtain.

He guided to the summit. Fingers tingled
Uneasily, driven thoughts clung and caressed;
The sharp throbs of their breathing met and mingled.
She sank in a grass cushion on the crest,
Content to forget far fire and its far arc.
She settled into a tender bladed nest,
His body lengthened upward in the dark,

Or so its seemed to her. "It's nearly ten;
An hour, and it should clear the horizon haze,
Squatting right above Sand Mountain. Then
It's ours, if the cloudy August heaven plays
No tricks." He held a tree-trunk close, instead
Of something longed for; she leaned in a daze,
Smoothing her knees as if it had been a head.

"A visitor," he thought aloud, "who takes
One burning, scornful look, and never more.
He leaves to flutter over Andean lakes,
To halve the sky of some lost, jungled shore,
To flame with the Southern Cross and Sirius,
Raining hot madness on lush midnight brakes,
Gilding chill seas, frigid, unamorous."

She pondered. "You have seen him?" "Once," he said,
"As I saw Mercury once, a golden bubble
Poised just above the dawn's disheveled bed,
For one pale glimpse." Her fingers clutched the stubble
Lying beneath them, clawed it from its home;
She held her voice level with much trouble.
"What are the stars but flecks of fiery foam --"

"What are the stars but sources of that flame
That burns and scorches in the stifling sun,
That flares in us --" His gesturing fingers came
Across hers suddenly, trembled, as if to run
In panic from a long suspected danger,
Then calmed into a hot oblivion,
Clasping her own, knowing her hand no stranger.

The night's mysterious wings pulsed through the dark,
The night's mysterious noises cracked and shivered,
And where their fingers met a visible spark
Seemed to leap forth at them, and pulsed and quivered
Throughout them both. Their thickened tongues were dumb,
The pretty words of star-lore undelivered,
The pretty words that found no breath could come.

He sank into the stubble by her side,
Leaving a blankness in the upper night;
His lips leant in their urgency of pride
Towards her eyes, that made the blackness bright.
His lips spoke only to the reddened cheek,
And settled to a long-denied delight
Upon the goal they had not dared to seek.

There was a gasping silence on the crest,
While the wind whined and the thin stars passed over;
There was a gasping rapture in each breast,
And her will bent as wind bends low the clover.
And a flame rose to its magnificent noon,
And a flame vanished. Each exalted lover
Felt the mad ecstasy and the piercing tune

Of love higher than hills that brush the sky,
Of love fiercer than suns that whiten space,
Die in their high magnificence, yet die
To a still radiance in the friendly place
That seemed to promise higher ecstasy
Forever stamped on each beloved's face,
Telling them: "This is immortality."

Unseen, while love's proud beacon flared and swept
Across their hearts, a sudden sullen glow
Had lifted over the hill beyond, and crept,
Diminishing yet brightening, in slow
And stately curving path so high, and then
Bent back toward the dimness, slid below
The unlit bulk of the huge hills again.

Without a word they knew it. His face burning,
"We can return"; but they knew, at his word,
That there are paths that do not know returning;
And as their downward-stumbling footsteps stirred
The stony steep, the roadway dust, the gray
And morning hush, each rustle made or heard
Sang to them they had found the starrier way.





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