SO many fruits come from
roses
From the rose
of all roses
From
the unfolded rose
Rose of all the world.
Admit that apples and strawberries
and peaches and pears
and
blackberries
Are all
Rosaceae,
Issue of
the explicit rose,
The open-countenanced, skyward-smiling
rose.
What then of the vine?
Oh, what of the tendrilled
vine?
Ours is the universe of the unfolded
rose,
The
explicit,
The candid
revelation.
But long ago, oh, long
ago
Before the rose
began to simper supreme,
Before the rose of all roses, rose of all the
world, was even
in bud,
Before the glaciers were gathered up in a bunch
out of the
unsettled seas and winds,
Or else before they had been
let down again, in Noah’s flood,
There was another world, a dusky, flowerless,
tendrilled
world
And creatures webbed and marshy,
And on the margin, men
soft-footed and pristine,
Still, and sensitive, and active,
Audile, tactile sensitiveness
as of a tendril which orientates
and reaches
out,
Reaching out
and grasping by an instinct more delicate than
the
moon’s as she feels for the tides.
Of which world, the vine was the
invisible rose,
Before petals spread, before colour made its
disturbance,
before eyes saw too
much.
In a green, muddy, web-foot,
unutterably songless world
The vine was rose of all
roses.
There were no poppies or
carnations,
Hardly a
greenish lily, watery faint.
Green, dim, invisible flourishing of
vines
Royally
gesticulate.
Look now even now, how it keeps its
power of invisibility!
Look how black, how blue-black, how globed in
Egyptian
darkness
Dropping among his leaves, hangs the dark
grape!
See him
there, the swart, so palpably invisible:
Whom shall we ask about
him?
The negro might know a
little.
When the
vine was rose, Gods were dark-skinned.
Bacchus is a dream’s dream.
Once God was all negroid, as
now he is fair.
But
it’s so long ago, the ancient Bushman has forgotten
more
utterly than we, who have never
known.
For we are on the brink of
re-remembrance.
Which, I suppose, is why America has gone dry.
Our pale day is sinking into
twilight,
And if we
sip the wine, we find dreams coming upon us
Out of the imminent
night.
Nay, we find
ourselves crossing the fern-scented frontiers
Of the world before the floods,
where man was dark and evasive
And the tiny vine-flower rose of all roses,
perfumed,
And all in
naked communion communicating as now our
clothed vision can never communicate.
Vistas, down dark avenues
As we sip the
wine.
The grape is swart, the avenues
dusky and tendrilled, subtly
prehensile.
But we,
as we start awake, clutch at our vistas democratic,
boulevards, tram-cars, policemen.
Give us our own back
Let us go to the soda-fountain,
to get sober.
Soberness, sobriety.
It is like the agonised
perverseness of a child heavy with
sleep, yet fighting,
fighting to keep awake;
Soberness, sobriety, with heavy eyes propped
open.
Dusky are the avenues of
wine,
And we must
cross the frontiers, though we will not,
Of the lost, fern-scented
world:
Take the
fern-seed on our lips,
Close the eyes, and go
Down the tendrilled avenues of
wine and the otherworld.
San Gervasio.