Complete Poems by Muriel Spark

Author:Muriel Spark
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784101251
Publisher: Carcanet

Canaan

She is committed to earth, and the earth

Is plighted forever to her.

The wilderness is prone to her.

The hopeful race of all the earth is

Betrothed to her, pleasant ground of expectation,

Lambent country of Canaan.

Jordan heaved his banks away.

Jordan’s valley bubbled over

High between those opposites.

He rose by night; he dipped by day.

He dipped down for the hosts of the wilderness

And for the silver country of Canaan.

The men of the wilderness at Jordan’s ford

Lifted the Ark of the Covenant on their shoulders.

Jordan fled for all his worth.

Jordan-bed lay smitten to dry boulders.

The wilderness bore the Ark of the Lord

Of all the earth

Into the holy country of Canaan.

Canaan’s the land where the wilderness landed.

Therefore I am not altogether confounded

Still to discover a wilderness in her.

Jordan shed his ways, lifted up the river;

Canaan’s husbanded

Now with a ploughing sword, she is anointed

With burning torrents, bridal country,

Canaan of loss.

There goes the leviathan in his glory;

But here dissembles that wilderness. Fowl and beast

Have no more wonderful identity.

The tribes of the pomegranates and the tribes of the yeast,

The families of rubies and the families of grass

Are one to another as waste and waste

In the arms of Canaan of silver dross.

But I am not altogether confounded

That so immanent and green and promised a land

Confounds me with seeming not what she seemed;

Seeing the hopeful race is covenanted

Not less to Canaan

Than Canaan to her promised wilderness,

Seeing default of the double covenant, seeing

Treachery to the warm harvest, no gathering in

Of the pearly vines of Canaan.

The same thing over and over again.

In this I am not altogether bewildered.

No year is twice the same, nor has occurred

Before. We bandy by the name of grief,

Grief which is like no other. Not a leaf

Repeats itself, we only repeat the word.

January, as usual, frigid. As before,

A silent stir in February. More

Of a stir in March. Activity

In April, as previously.

May, as usual, abundant. As before,

A superfluity in June. Greenery galore

Thereafter as always. The season exults.

But never the same reason warily

Secretes the same petal from the same

Pod of a single bud. The circumstances are

Everywhere novel. The results

Only appear similar.

Time lacks experience. Therefore I am not quite

Confounded by history,

Being of the hopeful race of the earth,

Promised to promise, a mystery to mystery,

By which I am not altogether mystified,

Since she is plighted to me, a wilderness, and I to

The silver country of Canaan.

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