Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.

Conrad Aiken

Conversation: Undertones

WHAT shall we talk of—Li Po? Hokusai?—

You narrow your long dark eyes to fascinate me;

You smile a little…. Outside, the night goes by.

I walk alone in a forest of ghostly trees….

Your pale hands rest palm downwards on your knees.

These lines—converging—they suggest such distance!

The soul is drawn away, beyond horizons,—

Lured out to what? One dares not think.

Sometimes—I glimpse these infinite perspectives

In intimate talk (—with such as you) and shrink….

‘One feels so petty!—One feels such—emptiness!—’

You mimic horror, let fall your lifted hand,

And smile at me; with brooding tenderness….

Alone in darkened waters I fall and rise;

Slow waves above me break, faint waves of cries.

‘And then, these colors … but who would dare describe them?

This faint rose-coral pink … this green—pistachio?—

So insubstantial! Like the dim ghostly things

Two lovers find in love’s still twilight chambers…

Old peacock-fans, and fragrant silks and rings….

‘Rings, let us say, drawn from the hapless fingers

Of some great lady many centuries nameless,—

Or is that too sepulchral?—dulled with dust;

And necklaces that crumble if you touch them;

And gold brocades that breathed on, fall to rust,—

‘No—I am wrong … it is not these I sought for—

Why did they come to mind?—You understand me—

You know these strange vagaries of the brain!’—

—I walk alone in a forest of ghostly trees;

Your pale hands rest palm downwards on your knees;

These strange vagaries of yours are all too plain.

‘But why perplex ourselves with tedious problems

Of art or … such things?… While we sit here, living

With all that’s in our secret hearts to say!’—

Hearts?—Your pale hand softly strokes the satin.

You play deep music—know well what you play.

You stroke the satin with thrilling of fingertips,

You smile, with faintly perfumed lips,

You loose your thoughts like birds,

Brushing our dreams with soft and shadowy words….

We know your words are foolish, yet here we stay,

I to be played on, you to play;

We know our words are foolish, yet sit here bound

In tremulous webs of sound.

‘How beautiful is intimate talk like this!—

It is as if we dissolved grey walls between us,

Stepped through the solid portals become but shadows,

To hear a sudden music…. Our own vast shadows

Lean to a giant size on the windy walls,

Or dwindle away; we hear our soft footfalls

Echo forever behind us, ghostly clear.

Music sings far off, flows suddenly near,

And dies away like rain….

We walk through subterranean caves again,—

Vaguely above us feeling

A shadowy weight of frescoes on the ceiling,

Strange half-lit things,

Soundless grotesques with writhing claws and wings….

And here a beautiful face looks down upon us;

And someone hurries before, unseen, and sings….

Have we seen all, I wonder, in these chambers—

Or is there yet some gorgeous vault arched low,

Where sleeps an amazing beauty we do not know?…’

The question falls: we walk in silence together

Thinking of that deep vault, and of its secret….

This lamp, these books, this fire

Are suddenly blown away in a whistling darkness.

Deep walls crash down in the whirlwind of desire.