I was haunted all that day by memories knocking
At a disused, deaf, dead door of my mind
Sealed up for forty years By myself and time.
They could not get to me nor I to them.
And yet they-knocked And since I could not answer,
Since time was past for that sole assignation,
I was oppressed by the unspoken thought
That they and I were not contemporary,
For I had gone away. Yet still in dreams
Where all is changed, time, place, identity,
Where fables turn to beasts and beasts to fables,
And anything can be in a natural wonder.
These meetings are renewed, dead dialogues
Utter their antique speech.
That night I dreamed
That towards the end of such another day
Spent in such thoughts, but in some other place,
I was returning from a long day’s work—
What work I have forgotten—and had to cross
A park lost somewhere in the world, yet now
Present and whole to me as I to it:
Utilitarian strip of grass and trees—
A short-cut for poor clerks to unhallowed rooms.
I stopped beside the gate—as how often before?—
When from the park poured out the resonant moaning
Of some great beast in anguish. Could it be
For us, I wondered dreaming, the strange beast mourned,
Or for some deed once done and done for ever
And done in vain?
And yet I pushed the gate—
As how often before?—passed through and went my way,
When on my right appeared what seemed a cliff
Newly arisen there beside the path.
Was this the park, I thought, or had I strayed
Into some place forgotten in old time?
The dream worked on; I looked again and saw
The huge hind-quarters of some giant thing:
A horse it seemed that first had been a chf.
As heavy as earth it stood and mourned alone,
Horse, or centaur, or wide-winged Pegasus,
But far too strange for any fabulous name.
I thought, here is no place for pity, I cannot share
That sorrow whose only speech is dread and awe.
And then in terror lest the thing should move
And come on me, I ran to the farther gate,
Stood there and listened. Darkness had fallen,
But still that wonder
Sent out its moan not meant for other ears,
A long breath drawn by pain, intolerable.
I thought, now it will move. And then it moved.
The moaning ceased, the hoofs rose up and fell
Gently, as treading out a meditation,
Then broke in thunder; the wild thing charged the gate,
Yet could not pass—oh pity!—that simple barrier
(Subservient to any common touch),
Turned back again in absolute overthrow,
And beat on the ground as if for entrance there.
The dream worked on. The clamour died; the hoofs
Beat on no common ground; silence; a drumming
As of wild swans taking their highway south
From the murdering ice; hoofs, wings far overhead
Climbing the sky; pain raised that wonder there;
Nothing but pain. The drumming died away.
Was it these hoofs, I thought, that knocked all day
With no articulate message, but this vision
That had no tongue to speak its mystery?
What wound in the world’s side and we unknowing
Lay open and bleeding now? What present anguish
Drew that long dirge from the earth-haunting marvel?
And why that earthly visit, unearthly pam?
I was not dreaming now, but, thinking the dream.
Then all was quiet, the park was its own again,
And I on my road to my familiar lodgings
A world away; and all its poor own again.
Yet I woke up saying, “The song—the song”.