A Spender Fragment

I agree with Anjona in that he intended for this collection to be perused by others or given as a gift because of the odd prose narrative that Professor Irmscher pointed out to me. I transcribed a "Fragment for a possible romance" from the photocopies found online, but when I went to see the actual manuscript I noticed a note next to the poem itself. It indicated that this fragment was meant to capture Spender's "oppressive" mood due to the stormy weather. These little notes appeared throughout the first half or so of the collection, connecting each poem to another in a loose narrative, and then I suppose he got bored with the idea. The tone of the poem itself is rather contradictory and doesn't seem very well developed. For example, he describes the silence as "morose and dumb," two adjectives that don't seem to compliment one another. He switches between a more epic, dramatic voice, referencing the "thousand furies" of silence, and then slips back into a more simplistic description of the trees as "sentinels in emerald green." He seems to play around with alliteration, but again, is rather inconsistent with its use. Here is the poem, though it's rather more a fragment of a story than a poem, according to Spender's titulation.

Fragment for a possible romance. A description 'Before the Storm.'

The sky has bent down like a cloth that sags
stretched out on four tent poles; and a great stone
that bulges in the middle, the near sun,
has robbed the intense blue of its pure tinge.
Now it is lurid ellow, and the land
an apopleptic calmness, quivering-still.
And there is silence, most morose and dumb
until its thousand furies break the earth.
The trees are sentinels in emerald green;
and blinding white the dust; and almost parched
to shiny brightness is the velvet grass.

*                                                                                                 *                                                                                             *

Only the swallows dart in puzzled* cubes

with sharp black wings; and an acute-edged cry

cuts in vague figures all the pales of sound.

*                                                                                                 *                                                                                             *

And all so still except my seething heart!

*                                                                                                 *                                                                                             *

But see now!

                     Solemnly the branches stir

In huge grey masses, moved by a slow wind.....

A slow and heavy wind that bodeth ill.

___________________________________

 

May 19, 1927.

 

*? "startled" instead of "puzzled" perhaps. But is it worth sacrificing

the pun on jigsaw?