Ode on the Death of Tolstoy

Great oak and oracle, and earthly miracle,
who spoke when shaken by wild winds of sea,
to-day in highland’s primeval heartland
the hand is parched that had planted thee.
Red rays of warning in bursts were streaming!
You blessed the tribes with the gift of bread;
and in the salt tears that Jeremiah shed
you heaped the coarse flour of your grain,
for since the first night of the noon-days
there’s no redeeming the sons of men.
 
        Immensity of sky and sea,
        grace of consoling lenity,
        to feed, to take our sins away -
           O Satan, Satan – and to slay.
                         
Joy like a corpse, comforter malignant,
raging saint, grime-flower of good and ill:  
death’s coin of mercy that offers beggars
the seeming gift of the blade of daggers!
The prophet’s cross, longer than a groaning,
ascended cloud-high to vex the storm,
down which descending the fiery dragon
devoured the fruit of the yet unborn.
(For man is one everlasting groaning,
the best for man, never to be born.)

        Desolation, desolation,
        Herod is reborn as Reason;
        at the altar-rail of pardon
        let man’s harvest be beheading.
 
With classic wisdom of old Silenus,
through icy plains the redeemer made his way.
His voice’s ox-cart rolled on like thunder,
his brow spoke promise, his eye a dreamer’s,
the face of Moses was this redeemer’s,
a stately tree-trunk all hung with hay.
Below his hair, livid silver drum-beat,
his beard like white-water-shock was raining,
with wings of lightning his feet were shining,
and when he turned loose his voice to preaching,
it seemed a sudden shouting of the sea.
 
        Desolation, desolation,
        accursed is all creation,
        a drawn-out convulsion
        the heart’s palpitation.  
 
The troop of peoples like sea-froth seething –
O surging waves – rounds on the redeemer;
the human vapour befogs the ether,
the earth is wet with its sweat and weeping.
(Across the steppe, vivid silver drum-beat,
white water foaming, rains down at evening.)
The fearsome mouth speaks the judging word,
the fearsome mouth wields the burning sword;
the Tree of Knowledge far off is tinder,
the rock has split Noah’s Ark asunder:     
“O brothers, brothers, unseal the tomb,
fall back, return to our mother’s womb,
for life is shame, life is false accord,                
men’s flesh is feed for the hosts of hell,
and Creation a stain on the raiment of the Lord.”
 
        Immensity of sky and sea,                   
        grace of consoling lenity,     
        to feed, to take our sins away –
           O Satan, Satan – and to slay.