The Uncertain Land and Other Poems. Patrick O’Brian

‘The sea and the sky are silent’

      The sea and the sky are silent:

      they wait.

      The sea and the sky are silent:

      the girl is late.

      The sea and the sky are silent:

      the girl is late.

      The sea and the sky are waiting:

      let her come to her fate.

       Mrs Koren

      Couplets in favour of Mrs W. Koren, who sent (per JBC)^fn1 jam to the O’Brians [at Collioure] in time of dearth

      All Attic virtues, beauty, wisdom, wit,

      Take which you will, she doth excel in it

      All these and yet one more th’Atlantic dame

      Hath to illumine her noble spouse’s name,

      Mark there the Greek with Chian wine and oil

      Comes bearing gifts, and see how vain his toil.

      Yet here Transpontine Ceres freely sends

      Imprison’d comfits, Polemarchus’ blends, …

      And dreams not fear nor anger (see above)

      But grateful intercessions and our love

      The pallid bread glows purple, and the dew

      Of anxious gleed bespreads each wizen’d brow

      Encrimson’d mouths gape sated at the last

      Such admirable tins of jam as these

      Are apt to promote international pese

      May Heaven reward Mrs Koren

      Who is undoubtedly a pearl among women.

      The recipient of jam were [sic] undoubtedly a moron

       ‘The harsh dry polished rattle’

      The harsh dry polished rattle of the palm fronds

      stirring in the breeze. I had supposed

      But not our London sparrow, magpie, crow

      Still less the stars by night, our Plough, old Bear

      the same Orion, Rigal, Altair there

      and through the trees the shining Procyon.

       ‘You will come to it’

      You will come to it

      Do not suppose their motions pantomime

      because the thing they dig is dark, unseen

      the mattock and the shovel swing in time

      a near approach will show you what they mean.

       The Olive Harvest

      Cold from the silent leaden sky, unmoving, full of snow.

      Cold, and the sounds far on the smoky air –

      the rackle, hoe in stones, the stoney vineyard high

      and the working man much farther than the sound

      All through the terraced valley, sounds.

      The vines are bare, the spare leaves redden:

      they prune: and everywhere they grub with shining tools

      And in the silence sounds – on silence beads, the sounds.

      Now there are women.

      gabbling

      Where are the women? There

      gabbling

      above the road, the vines, the olives

      the prim the graceful olive trees

      the women picking there the olives

      a tilted plane, the trees, the women

      and then the sky, one-coloured, leaden.

      Neat, clear, unworldly, Pieter Brueghel.

      I do not like to see the women.

      Black. Not shining. Black entirely.

      head to foot, and cheesey faces.

      Eager, hard and clacking voices: and the hands

      are deadly white for ever groping,

      They stand as high, and monstrously

      they stand as high, as does the tree.

      Their hands

      are deadly white, for ever groping.

      Emasculating

      in the trees.

       The Inine

      The winter hillside

      brown

      sharp, clear, distinct

      and figures running

      tiny, shortened, struggling with space.

      A plouff of smoke

      is drifting on the field

      larger: larger, vague: and now the bang

      the echoes clapping in the hills, hard hills,

      and now the rain

      reversed: the rattle

      cruel ripping tearing hail

      of stones that fell

      in time disturbed, before.

       tibi donum offero

      I am poor about loving, so

       tibi donum offero

      It is a present as you see

      extractum ex operi

      quod ex libro domini

      extractum est, alas by me

      theft it was, but theft or no

      tibi donum offero.

       A present

      A present is chiefly a fragment, a token

      of affection and love.

      And then there is the strong pleasure of giving

      a visible proof of unbroken

      kindness and more

      But, the interchanging pleasure apart

      and discounted

      A ring is a token of marriage; a book

      of the spirit that made it.

      and a present of love.

      But