James Joyce

Pomes Penyeach

James Joyce

[1882–1941]

Pomes Penyeach

1927

Table of Contents

Tilly

Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba

A Flower Given to My Daughter

She Weeps over Rahoon

Tutto è Sciolto

On the Beach at Fontana

Simples

Flood

Nightpiece

Alone

A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight

Bahnhofstrasse

A Prayer

Tilly

He travels after a winter sun,

Urging the cattle along a cold red road,

Calling to them, a voice they know,

He drives his beasts above Cabra.

The voice tells them home is warm.

They moo and make brute music with their hoofs.

He drives them with a flowering branch before him,

Smoke pluming their foreheads.

Boor, bond of the herd,

Tonight stretch full by the fire!

I bleed by the black stream

For my torn bough!

Dublin, 1904.

Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba

I heard their young hearts crying

Loveward above the glancing oar

And heard the prairie grasses sighing:

No more, return no more!

O hearts, O sighing grasses,

Vainly your loveblown bannerets mourn!

No more will the wild wind that passes

Return, no more return.

Trieste, 1912.

A Flower Given to My Daughter

Frail the white rose and frail are

Her hands that gave

Whose soul is sere and paler

Than time’s wan wave.

Rosefrail and fair—yet frailest

A wonder wild

In gentle eyes thou veilest,

My blueveined child.

Trieste, 1913.

She Weeps over Rahoon

Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling,

Where my dark lover lies.

Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling,

At grey moonrise.

Love, hear thou

How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling,

Ever unanswered and the dark rain falling,

Then as now.

Dark too our hearts, O love, shall lie and cold

As his sad heart has lain

Under the moongrey nettles, the black mould

And muttering rain.

Trieste, 1913.

Tutto è Sciolto

A birdless heaven, seadusk, one lone star

Piercing the west,

As thou, fond heart, love’s time, so faint, so far,

Rememberest.

The clear young eyes’ soft look, the candid brow,

The fragrant hair,

Falling as through the silence falleth now

Dusk of the air.

Why then, remembering those shy

Sweet lures, repine

When the dear love she yielded with a sigh

Was all but thine?

Trieste, 1914.

On the Beach at Fontana

Wind whines and whines the shingle,

The crazy pierstakes groan;

A senile sea numbers each single

Slimesilvered stone.

From whining wind and colder

Grey sea I wrap him warm

And touch his trembling fineboned shoulder

And boyish arm.

Around us fear, descending

Darkness of fear above

And in my heart how deep unending

Ache of love!

Trieste, 1914.

Simples

O bella bionda,

Sei come l’onda!

Of cool sweet dew and radiance mild

The moon a web of silence weaves

In the still garden where a child

Gathers the simple salad leaves.

A moondew stars her hanging hair

And moonlight kisses her young brow

And, gathering, she sings an air:

Fair as the wave is, fair, art thou!

Be mine, I pray, a waxen ear

To shield me from her childish croon

And mine a shielded heart for her

Who gathers simples of the moon.

Trieste, 1914.

Flood

Goldbrown upon the sated flood

The rockvine clusters lift and sway.

Vast wings above the lambent waters brood

Of sullen day.

A waste of waters ruthlessly

Sways and uplifts its weedy mane

Where brooding day stares down upon the sea

In dull disdain.

Uplift and sway, O golden vine,

Your clustered fruits to love’s full flood,

Lambent and vast and ruthless as is thine

Incertitude!

Trieste, 1915.

Nightpiece

Gaunt in gloom

The pale stars their torches

Enshrouded wave.

Ghostfires from heaven’s far verges faint illume

Arches on soaring arches,

Night’s sindark nave.

Seraphim

The lost hosts awaken

To service till

In moonless gloom each lapses, muted, dim

Raised when she has and shaken

Her thurible.

And long and loud

To night’s nave upsoaring

A starknell tolls

As the bleak incense surges, cloud on cloud,

Voidward from the adoring

Waste of souls.

Trieste, 1915.

Alone

The noon’s greygolden meshes make

All night a veil,

The shorelamps in the sleeping lake

Laburnum tendrils trail.

The sly reeds whisper to the night

A name—her name—

And all my soul is a delight,

A swoon of shame.

Zurich, 1916.

A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight

They mouth love’s language. Gnash

The thirteen teeth

Your lean jaws grin with. Lash

Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.

Love’s breath in you is stale, worded or sung,

As sour as cat’s breath,

Harsh of tongue.

This grey that stares

Lies not, stark skin and bone.

Leave greasy lips their kissing. None

Will choose her what you see to mouth upon.

Dire hunger holds his hour.

Pluck forth your heart, saltblood, a fruit of tears.

Pluck and devour!

Zurich, 1917.

Bahnhofstrasse

The eyes that mock me sign the way

Whereto I pass at eve of day.

Grey way whose violet signals are

The trysting and the twining star.

Ah star of evil! star of pain!

Highhearted youth comes not again

Nor old heart’s wisdom yet to know

The signs that mock me as I go.

Zurich, 1918.

A Prayer

Again!

Come, give, yield all your strength to me!

From far a low word breathes on the breaking brain

Its cruel calm, submission’s misery,

Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined.

Cease, silent love! My doom!

Blind me with your dark nearness, O have mercy, beloved enemy of my will!

I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread.

Draw from me still

My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening head,

Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying

Him who is, him who was!

Again!

Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth. I hear

From far her low word breathe on my breaking brain.

Come! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am here.

Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only anguish,

Take me, save me, soothe me, O spare me!

Paris, 1924.