The Fire among the Ruins

Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus

Bernard of Norval

COME with me, sharing my walk in the ruins,
the unloved walk I have made so many times,
must make again and must make for how long
for how long—
in a ruined world in an unending sunset
where underfoot the ground is treacherous, slipping
into the unseen bog, the scree or the silent river.

In the infolded centre of night is hope
halfway to dawn: the merciful blackness
shows us nothing, but now we walk in the twilight
seeing too much and yet not seeing enough.

Tread carefully, for that rotted fungus
is a human heart: the sticks you break in walking
are bones of arms that now will never embrace.

I should not greet

the cloaked stranger met on the causeway—
his reply may be a madman's whimpering
and his face as you glimpse it may be your own.

It is not safe

to proclaim identity, to reveal the inward
self that is all the treasure we hope to carry
safely out of the ruins out of the twilight

could we find the way.

Who can we ask the urgent question
who can we trust with our small secret?

Not those who around us with swift assurance
make their way in these black woodlands
with the silent competence of thieves
over rusted leaves and between stricken tree-trunks
finding achievement among the ruins,
friends of the cold dusk but our dark enemies.

But sometimes there is a far-seen light in the darkness
which approached is a wayfarer's fire,
in a sheltered place in the angle of old walls
where one has halted and built a little blaze;
crouched cherishing, and eyeing the passer-by
with hope half-stifled by fear and old mistrust:
hope for the challenge to which he knows the password.

Here we may share a common quest
here we may seek the needful answer.

Challenge and countersign, the avowal
of membership of the secret society
and other wanderers may come, give a sign, be accepted;

while the brave fire

burns brighter, and we discover more fuel to heap it,
share out the scraps of food we have hoarded and carried,

talk less guardedly

bonded against the foe held back in the shadows
by the flames that in wavering chiaroscuro
light up the ruins we huddle in, so that we see

brightly and newly

the delicate tracery the subtle moulding and the carvings
hidden till now in the dusk, and even the mildew
stains in romantic patterns the cracking plaster
while we can stay.

While we can stay, before the distant whistle
and one moves away to the dark without a reason—

none given, none asked—

the faint imperious calling out of the sunset
signals now our own going, while the fire

dies down, burns out,

and in the twilight we once again go on
towards a destination we do not know

yet helped, yet heartened—

perhaps a little more confident in our questing,
perhaps a little more able to find our pathway.

12 January 1945

NOTES

• This poem was chosen as the title for SP's collected poems published in 1948 (OUP)