Ken

The town is old and very steep,A place of bells and cloisters and grey towers,And black clad people walking in their sleep--A nun, a priest, a woman taking flowersTo her new grave; and watched from end to endBy the great Church above, through the still hours:But in the morning and the early darkThe children wake to dart from doors and callDown the wide, crooked street, where, at the bend,Before it climbs up to the park,Ken’s is the gabled house facing the Castle wall.

When first I came upon him thereSuddenly, on the half-lit stair,I think I hardly found a traceOf likeness to a human faceIn his. And I said thenIf in His image God made men,Some other must have made poor Ken--But for his eyes which looked at youAs two red, wounded stars might do.

He scarcely spoke, you scarcely heard,His voice broke off in little jarsTo tears sometimes. An uncouth birdHe seemed as he ploughed up the street,Groping, with knarred, high-lifted feetAnd arms thrust out as if to beatAlways against a threat of bars.

And oftener than not there’d beA child just higher than his kneeTrotting beside him. Through his dimLong twilight this, at least, shone clear,That all the children and the deer,Whom every day he went to seeOut in the park, belonged to him.

“God help the folk that next him sitsHe fidgets so, with his poor wits.”The neighbours said on Sunday nightsWhen he would go to Church to “see the lights!”Although for these he used to fixHis eyes upon a crucifixIn a dark corner, staring onTill everybody else had gone.And sometimes, in his evil fits,You could not move him from his chair--You did not look at him as he sat there,Biting his rosary to bits.While pointing to the Christ he tried to say“Take it away.”

Nothing was dead:He said “a bird” if he picked up a broken wing,A perished leaf or any such thingWas just “a rose”; and once when I had saidHe must not stand and knock there any more,He left a twig on the mat outside my door.

Not long agoThe last thrush stiffened in the snow,While black against a sullen skyThe sighing pines stood by.But now the wind has left our rattled paneTo flutter the hedge-sparrow’s wing,The birches in the wood are red againAnd only yesterdayThe larks went up a little way to singWhat lovers sayWho loiter in the lanes to-day;The buds begin to talk of MayWith learned rooks on city trees,And if God pleaseWith all of theseWe too, shall see another Spring.

But in that red brick barn upon the hillI wonder--can one own the deer,And does one walk with children stillAs one did here--Do roses growBeneath those twenty windows in a row--And if some nightWhen you have not seen any lightThey cannot move you from your chairWhat happens there?I do not know.

So, when they tookKen to that place, I did not lookAfter he called and turned on meHis eyes. These I shall see--