MALADE
D. H. Lawrence
THE sick grapes on the chair by the bed lie prone;
at the window
The tassel of the blind swings gently, tapping the
pane,
As a little wind comes in.
The room is the hollow rind of a fruit, a gourd
Scooped out and dry, where a spider,
Folded in its legs as in a bed,
Lies on the dust, watching where is nothing to see
but twilight and walls.
And if the day outside were mine! What is the day
But a grey cave, with great grey spider-cloths
hanging
Low from the roof, and the wet dust falling softly
from them
Over the wet dark rocks, the houses, and over
The spiders with white faces, that scuttle on the
floor of the cave!
I am choking with creeping, grey confinedness.
But somewhere birds, beside a lake of light, spread
wings
Larger than the largest fans, and rise in a stream
upwards
And upwards on the sunlight that rains invisible,
So that the birds are like one wafted feather,
Small and ecstatic suspended over a vast spread
country.