[BNP/E3, 49A4 – 27]

 

Trumpets afar, very far in the night…

Trumpets afar…

The horizon with a vague

 

From beyond the horizon, like a light

Not crept up yet into the sense of sight,

Trumpets afar, trumpets afar, are heard…

There creeps a meaning over the pale meads,

And the vague distant sound, like a king, leads

A host of meaning in the distance blurred…

 

Now is the Dragon risen in the sky…

Now do the Seven Lights that have no sense

Save some appalling darkness to our soul

Circle like torches that half-lit pretence

Of our worn spirit to know how or why

War bursts the dykes of our diffuse(d) control…

 

Now the Twelve Books lie opened and yet

With pages blank facing the eyes that see;

Now do our hearts look forward with regret

That what is to be should have still to be.

 

Pale are the paths in the fore-morning light.

Dim are the distant hills and the far plains.

Cold, very cold, the frail trees in the breeze

Do vaguely tremble, sounding like far[1] seas.

The murmur of a wakening affright 

Like a great secret king distantly reigns.

 

All is as if it were not there at all.

All wears a power to sicken and appal.

What is the morn that shall break forth from this?

Where will it break from? Is it from the East?

Is it the real day that now will break

Or does some New Reality belong

To that dim moment that soon has to wake

From the end of this waiting, cold and long?

 

Trumpets afar, trumpets afar, still far…

Is it our fear that makes them see more near 

What is it that in us cannot well hear

 

[27r]

 

2

 

Whether this distant thing is shaped like war.

Trumpets afar, are they not nearer now?

Or does our dreaming them more near make dark

Our wish to know whether they really know

Less space from us than Infinite Space… Ah! hark!

 

Is this different thing in their sound mean

That they are nearer or further. Is that sound

Clearer or vaguer. Our heart beats too loud

To know what sense does to that sound pertain…

No… There is nothing but the foredawn’s scene

Of paleness, and the murmur creeping round

Our fears, of danger like a distant crowd…

There’s a veiled idol with a {…} shroud

In the midst of the Temple of our Pain.

 

Trumpets suddenly very near… But where are they?

To the right? to the left? What left? What right?

Which way of our veiled hearing? How far away

From where our hearts beat chronic with the night?

Trumpets now suddenly too near… But where?

There is a terror in the nameless air,

And the whole space of dreams fades from our sight.

 

 

 
[1] far /(dim)\