The Tree of Idleness

The Tree of Idleness

by Lawrence Durrell

I shall die one day I suppose

In this old Turkish house I inhabit:

A ragged banana-leaf outside and here

On the sill in a jam-jar a rock-rose.

Perhaps a single pining mandolin

Throbs where cicadas have quarried

To the heart of all misgiving and there

Scratches on silence like a pet locked in.

Will I be more or less dead

Than the village in memory's dispersing

Springs, or in some cloud of witness see,

Looking back, the selfsame road ahead?

By the moist clay of a woman's wanting,

After the heart has stopped its fearful

Gnawing, will I descry between

This life and that another sort of haunting?

No: the card-players in tabs of shade

Will play on: the aerial springs

Hiss: in bed lying quiet under kisses

Without signature, with all my debts unpaid

I shall recall nights of squinting rain,

Like pig-iron on the hills: bruised

Landscapes of drumming cloud and everywhere

The lack of someone spreading like a stain.

Or where brown fingers in the darkness move,

Before the early shepherds have awoken,

Tap out on sleeping lips with these same

Worn typewriter keys a poem imploring

Silence of lips and minds which have not spoken.

1955/1955

Author's Note
The title of this poem is taken from the name of the tree which stands outside Bellapaix Abbey in Cyprus, and which confers the gift of pure idleness on all who sit under it.