The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers by Robinson Jeffers

Author:Robinson Jeffers [Jeffers, Robinson]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Classics, Poetry
ISBN: 9780804741088
Publisher: Read Books
Published: 1938-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XIII

It is certain that too violent Self-control is unlucky, it attracts hard events

As height does lightning; so Thurso rode up the canyon with a little death in himself,

Seeing in his mind Helen’s naked body like a red bird-cage

Welted with whip-stripes; and having refused the precious relief of brutality, and being by chance or trick

Cheated of revenge on her desert lover, he endured small deaths in his mind, atrophied spots, like mouse-holes

For the casual malice of things to creep in uncountered: so shortened by refusal of a fair act, Thurso

Rode up from the shore in the frown of fortune. The cress-paved pools of the stream, the fortifying beauty on the north

Of the rock rampart, and toward the south of the forested slope, and the brave clouds with flashing bellies

Crossing the gorge like a fleet of salmon, were as nothing to him. Once he jerked back the colt’s

Bit-spread jaws to its breast and half turned back

To the shore again, but sat bewildered a moment

And snapped his teeth together and rode on, imagining

Some work to do.

He tied the colt by the house-door

And went through the house to a closet where hunting-gear,

Guns, traps and vermin-poisons were kept, he fetched some pounds of bitter barley in the butt of a sack

To abate the pest of ground-squirrels. Returning through the still rooms

He met his mother and said, “I’ve been to the beach, where they were bathing. I’m going to the upper field

With squirrel-poison.” She said, “In October?” “Nobody else

Seems to have kept them down, in my absences.

Without some killing they’ll breed armies in spring.”

“Mark isn’t able to kill, Luna’s too lazy:

I ought to have driven him: I didn’t think of it, Reave,

Not being often in the fields.” He sighed and said,

“I wish it would rain. Mother, you have been right

To dislike that woman. I guess you’re right.” She turned

Her reddish flint eyes from his face to the window,

Thinking “What now has she done?” and saying, “Nobody

Can praise your choices. Soft pliable men have the luck in love.

Maybe you can get rid of her without much trouble.”

He answered fiercely, “Why did you let Luna

Bridle the brown colt while I was away?

He broke it with a whip: it was gentle-natured.

Don’t speak, mother, of Helen.

I never will let her go until she is dead.”

The old woman, sharply eyeing him again: “If you could stand her

Under the iron skip when you cut the cable

To-morrow morning.” He looked down at the flat

White hair on the gray forehead and laughed doubtfully

Without knowing why. “Our ship sails when I cut the cable.

He ought to be whipped himself: Johnny a horse-breaker!

The colt is spoilt. . . . I must ask you, mother,

Not to interfere between mine and me.

Whatever you say about the stock or the fields

I’ll see to very patiently: my wife is my own concern,

You must not meddle.” “I have no desire to: as you know clearly, Reave,

In your mind’s quiet time.” “What does that mean, that I seem excited: drunk, hm? Wrong, mother, quite wrong.

I’ve noticed in other autumns, when the earth bakes brittle and the rains lag, I become gloomy and quarrelsome,

But not this year.

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