Стихи и эссе

Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.

Upon what man it fall

In spring, day-wishing flowers appearing,

Avalanche sliding, white snow from rock-face,

That he should leave his house,

No cloud-soft hand can hold him, restraint by women;

But ever that man goes

Through place-keepers, through forest trees,

A stranger to strangers over undried sea,

Houses for fishes, suffocating water,

Or lonely on fell as chat,

By pot-holed becks

A bird stone-haunting, an unquiet bird.

There head falls forward, fatigued at evening,

And dreams of home,

Waving from window, spread of welcome,

Kissing of wife under single sheet;

But waking sees

Bird-flocks nameless to him, through doorway voices

Of new men making another love.

Save him from hostile capture,

From sudden tiger's leap at corner;

Protect his house,

His anxious house where days are counted

From thunderbolt protect,

From gradual ruin spreading like a stain;

Converting number from vague to certain,

Bring joy, bring day of his returning,

Lucky with day approaching, with leaning dawn.

"O where are you going?" said reader to rider,

"That valley is fatal where furnaces burn,

Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,

That gap is the grave where the tall return."

"O do you imagine," said fearer to farer,

"That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,

Your diligent looking discover the lacking,

Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?"

"O what was that bird," said horror to hearer,

"Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?

Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,

The spot on your skin is a shocking disease."

"Out of this house"-said rider to reader,

"Yours never will"-said farer to fearer

"They're looking for you"-said hearer to horror,

As he left them there, as he left them there.

Our hunting fathers told the story

Of the sadness of the creatures,

Pitied the limits and the lack

Set in their finished features;

Saw in the lion's intolerant look,

Behind the quarry's dying glare,

Love raging for, the personal glory

That reason's gift would add,

The liberal appetite and power,

The rightness of a god.

Who, nurtured in that fine tradition,

Predicted the result,

Guessed Love by nature suited to

The intricate ways of guilt,

That human ligaments could so

His southern gestures modify

And make it his mature ambition

To think no thought but ours,

To hunger, work illegally,

And be anonymous?

Look, stranger, on this island now

The leaping light for your delight discovers,

Stand stable here

And silent be,

That through the channels of the ear

May wander like a river

The swaying sound of the sea.

Here at a small field's ending pause

Where the chalk wall falls to the foam and its tall ledges

Oppose the pluck

And knock of the tide,

And the shingle scrambles after the suck —

— ing surf, and a gull lodges

A moment on its sheer side.

Far off like floating seeds the ships

Diverge on urgent voluntary errands,

And this full view

Indeed may enter

And move in memory as now these clouds do,

That pass the harbour mirror

And all the summer through the water saunter.

As I walked out one evening,

Walking down Bristol Street,

The crowds upon the pavement

Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river

I heard a lover sing

Under an arch of the railway:

"Love has no ending.

"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you

Till China and Africa meet,

And the river jumps over the mountain

And the salmon sing in the street,

"I'll love you till the ocean

Is folded and hung up to dry

And the seven stars go squawking

Like geese about the sky.

"The years shall run like rabbits,

For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

And the first love of the world."

But all the clocks in the city

Began to whirr and chime:

"O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare

Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry

Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

To-morrow or to-day.

"Into many a green valley

Drifts the appalling snow;

Time breaks the threaded dances

And the diver's brilliant bow.

"O plunge your hands in water,

Plunge them in up to the wrist;

Stare, stare in the basin

And wonder what you've missed.

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

The desert sighs in the bed,

And the crack in the tea-cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.

"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes

And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,

And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,

And Jill goes down on her back.

"O look, look in the mirror,

O look in your distress;

Life remains a blessing

Although you cannot bless.

"O stand, stand at the window

As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked nelghbour

With your crooked heart."

It was late, late in the evening,

The lovers they were gone;

The clocks had ceased their chiming,

And the deep river ran on.

Fish in the unruffled lakes

Their swarming colours wear,

Swans in the winter air

A white perfection have,

And the great lion walks

Through his innocent grove;

Lion, fish and swan

Act, and are gone

Upon Time's toppling wave.

We, till shadowed days are done,

We must weep and sing

Duty's conscious wrong,

The Devil in the clock,

The goodness carefully worn

For atonement or for luck;

We must lose our loves,

On each beast and bird that moves

Turn an envious look.

Sighs for folly done and said

Twist our narrow days,

But I must bless, I must praise

That you, my swan, who have

All gifts that to the swan

Impulsive Nature gave,

The majesty and pride,

Last night should add

Your voluntary love.

Now the leaves are falling fast,

Nurse's flowers will not last;

Nurses to the graves are gone,

And the prams go rolling on.

Whispering neighbours, left and right,

Pluck us from the real delight;

And the active hands must freeze

Lonely on the separate knees.

Dead in hundreds at the back

Follow wooden in our track,

Arms raised stiffly to reprove

In false attitudes of love.

Starving through the leafless wood

Trolls run scolding for their food;

And the nightingale is dumb,

And the angel will not come.

Cold, impossible, ahead

Lifts the mountain's lovely head

Whose white waterfall could bless

Travellers in their last distress.

"O who can ever gaze his fill,"

Farmer and fisherman say,

"On native shore and local hill,

Grudge aching limb or callus on the hand?

Father, grandfather stood upon this land,

And here the pilgrims from our loins will stand."

So farmer and fisherman say

In their fortunate hey-day:

But Death's low answer drifts across

Empty catch or harvest loss

Or an unlucky May.

The earth is an oyster with nothing inside it,

Not to be born is the best for man;

The end of toil is a bailiff's order,

Throw down the mattock and dance while you can.

"O life's too short for friends who share,"

Travellers think in their hearts,

"The city's common bed, the air,

The mountain bivouac and the bathing beach,

Where incidents draw every day from each

Memorable gesture and witty speech."

So travellers think in their hearts,

Till malice or circumstance parts

Them from their constant humour:

And slyly Death's coercive rumour

In that moment starts.

A friend is the old old tale of Narcissus,

Not to be born is the best for man;

An active partner in something disgraceful,

Change your partner, dance while you can.

"O stretch your hands across the sea,"

The impassioned lover cries,

"Stretch them towards your harm and me.

Our grass is green, and sensual our brief bed,

The stream sings at its foot, and at its head

The mild and vegetarian beasts are fed."

So the impassioned lover cries

Till the storm of pleasure dies:

From the bedpost and the rocks

Death's enticing echo mocks,

And his voice replies.

The greater the love, the more false to its object,

Not to be born is the best for man;

After the kiss comes the impulse to throttle,

Break the embraces, dance while you can.

"I see the guilty world forgiven,"

Dreamer and drunkard sing,

"The ladders let down out of heaven,

The laurel springing from the martyr's blood,

The children skipping where the weeper stood,

The lovers natural and the beasts all good."

So dreamer and drunkard sing

Till day their sobriety bring:

Parrotwise with Death's reply

From whelping fear and nesting lie,

Woods and their echoes ring.

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews,

Not to be born is the best for man;

The second-best is a formal order,

The dance's pattern; dance while you can.

Dance, dancefor the figure is easy,

The tune is catching and will not stop;

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters;

Dance, dance, dance till you drop.

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully

along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

I

So from the years the gifts were showered; each

Ran off with his at once into his life:

Bee took the politics that make a hive,

Fish swam as fish, peach settled into peach.

And were successful at the first endeavour;

The hour of birth their only time at college,

They were content with their precocious knowledge,

And knew their station and were good for ever.

Till finally there came a childish creature

On whom the years could model any feature,

And fake with ease a leopard or a dove;

Who by the lightest wind was changed and shaken,

And looked for truth and was continually mistaken,

Ana envied his few friends and chose his love.

VIII

He turned his field into a meeting-place,

And grew the tolerant ironic eye,

And formed the mobile money-changer's face,

And found the notion of equality.

And strangers were as brothers to his clocks,

And with his spires he made a human sky;

Museums stored his learning like a box,

And paper watched his money like a spy.

It grew so fast his life was overgrown,

And he forgot what once it had been made for,

And gathered into crowds and was alone,

And lived expensively and did without,

And could not find the earth which he had paid for,

Nor feel the love that he knew all about.

XXI

The life of man is never quite completed;

The daring and the chatter will go on:

But, as an artist feels his power gone,

These walk the earth and know themselves defeated.

Some could not bear nor break the young and mourn for

The wounded myths that once made nations good,

Some lost a world they never understood,

Some saw too clearly all that man was born for.

Loss is their shadow-wife, Anxiety

Receives them like a grand hotel; but where

They may regret they must; their life, to hear

The call of the forbidden cities, see

The stranger watch them with a happy stare,

And Freedom hostile in each home and tree.

XXV

Nothing is given: we must find our law.

Great buildings jostle in the sun for domination;

Behind them stretch like sorry vegetation

The low recessive houses of the poor.

We have no destiny assigned us:

Nothing is certain but the body; we plan

To better ourselves; the hospitals alone remind us

Of the equality of man.

Children are really loved here, even by police:

They speak of years before the big were lonely,

And will be lost.

And only

The brass bands throbbing in the parks foretell

Some future reign of happiness and peace.

We learn to pity and rebel.

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:

The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,

And snow disfigured the public statues;

The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness

The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,

The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;

By mourning tongues

The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,

An afternoon of nurses and rumours;

The provinces of his body revolted,

The squares of his mind were empty,

Silence invaded the suburbs,

The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities

And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,

To find his happiness in another kind of wood

And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.

The words of a dead man

Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow

When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,

And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,

And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,

A few thousand will think of this day

As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:

The parish of rich women, physical decay,

Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to tamper, flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

A way of happening, a mouth.

III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:

William Yeats is laid to rest.

Let the Irish vessel lie

Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark,

And the living nations wait,

Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace

Stares from every human face,

And the seas of pity lie

Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right

To the bottom of the night,

With your unconstraining voice

Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the firming of a verse

Make a vineyard of the curse,

Sing of human unsuccess

In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,

Law is the one

All gardeners obey

To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.

Law is the wisdom of the old,

The impotent grandfathers feebly scold;

The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,

Law is the senses of the young.

Law, says the priest with a priestly look,

Expounding to an unpriestly people,

Law is the words in my priestly book,

Law is my pulpit and my steeple.

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,

Speaking clearly and most severely,

Law is as I've told you before,

Law is as you know I suppose,

Law is but let me explain it once more,

Law is The Law.

Yet law-abiding scholars write:

Law is neither wrong nor right,

Law is only crimes

Punished by places and by times,

Law is the clothes men wear

Anytime, anywhere,

Law is Good-morning and Good-night.

Others say, Law is our Fate;

Others say, Law is our State;

Others say, others say

Law is no more,

Law has gone away.

And always the loud angry crowd,

Very angry and very loud,

Law is We,

And always the soft idiot softly Me.

If we, dear, know we know no more

Than they about the Law,

If I no more than you

Know what we should and should not do

Except that all agree

Gladly or miserably

That the Law is

And that all know this,

If therefore thinking it absurd

To identify Law with some other word,

Unlike so many men

I cannot say Law is again,

No more than they can we suppress

The universal wish to guess

Or slip out of our own position

Into an unconcerned condition.

Although I can at least confine

Your vanity and mine

To stating tirmidly

A timid similarity,

We shall boast anyway:

Like love I say.

Like love we don't know where or why,

Like love we can't compel or fly,

Like love we often weep,

Like love we seldom keep.

Ares at last has quit the field,

The bloodstains on the bushes yield

To seeping showers,

And in their convalescent state

The fractured towns associate

With summer flowers.

Encamped upon the college plain

Raw veterans already train

As freshman forces;

Instructors with sarcastic tongue

Shepherd the battle-weary young

Through basic courses.

Among bewildering appliances

For mastering the arts and sciences

They stroll or run,

And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter

Are shot to pieces by the shorter

Poems of Donne.

Professors back from secret missions

Resume their proper eruditions,

Though some regret it;

They liked their dictaphones a lot,

They met some big wheels, and do not

Let you forget it.

But Zeus' inscrutable decree

Permits the will-to-disagree

To be pandemic,

Ordains that vaudeville shall preach

And every commencement speech

Be a polemic.

Let Ares doze, that other war

Is instantly declared once more

'Twixt those who follow

Precocious Hermes all the way

And those who without qualms obey

Pompous Apollo.

Brutal like all Olympic games,

Though fought with similes and Christian names

And less dramatic,

This dialectic strife between

The civil gods is just as mean,

And more fanatic.

What high immortals do in mirth

Is life and death on Middle Earth;

Their a-historic

Antipathy forever gripes

All ages and somatic types,

The sophomoric

Who face the future's darkest hints

With giggles or with prairie squints

As stout as Cortez,

And those who like myself turn pale

As we approach with ragged sail

The fattening forties.

The sons of Hermes love to play,

And only do their best when they

Are told they oughtn't;

Apollo's children never shrink

From boring jobs but have to think

Their work important.

Related by antithesis,

A compromise between us is

Impossible;

Respect perhaps but friendship never:

Falstaff the fool confronts forever

The prig Prince Hal.

If he would leave the self alone,

Apollo's welcome to the throne,

Fasces and falcons;

He loves to rule, has always done it;

The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,

Be like the Balkans.

But jealous of our god of dreams,

His common-sense in secret schemes

To rule the heart;

Unable to invent the lyre,

Creates with simulated fire

Official art.

And when he occupies a college,

Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;

He pays particular

Attention to Commercial Thought,

Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,

In his curricula.

Athletic, extrovert and crude,

For him, to work in solitude

Is the offence,

The goal a populous Nirvana:

His shield bears this device: Mens sana

Qui mal y pense.

To-day his arms, we must confess,

From Right to Left have met success,

His banners wave

From Yale to Princeton, and the news

From Broadway to the Book Reviews

Is very grave.

His radio Homers all day long

In over-Whitmanated song

That does not scan,

With adjectives laid end to end,

Extol the doughnut and commend

The Common Man.

His, too, each homely lyric thing

On sport or spousal love or spring

Or dogs or dusters,

Invented by some court-house bard

For recitation by the yard

In filibusters.

To him ascend the prize orations

And sets of fugal variations

On some folk-ballad,

While dietitians sacrifice

A glass of prune-juice or a nice

Marsh-mallow salad.

Charged with his compound of sensational

Sex plus some undenominational

Religious matter,

Enormous novels by co-eds

Rain down on our defenceless heads

Till our teeth chatter.

In fake Hermetic uniforms

Behind our battle-line, in swarms

That keep alighting,

His existentialists declare

That they are in complete despair,

Yet go on writing.

No matter; He shall be defied;

White Aphrodite is on our side:

What though his threat

To organize us grow more critical?

Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical,

Shall beat him yet.

Lone scholars, sniping from the walls

Of learned periodicals,

Our facts defend,

Our intellectual marines,

Landing in little magazines,

Capture a trend.

By night our student Underground

At cocktail parties whisper round

From ear to ear;

Fat figures in the public eye

Collapse next morning, ambushed by

Some witty sneer.

In our morale must lie our strength:

So, that we may behold at length

Routed Apollo's

Battalions melt away like fog,

Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,

Which runs as follows:-

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,

Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis

On education,

Thou shalt not worship projects nor

Shalt thou or thine bow down before

Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires

Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,

Nor with compliance

Take any test. Thou shalt not sit

With statisticians nor commit

A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms

With guys in advertising firms,

Nor speak with such

As read the Bible for its prose,

Nor, above all, make love to those

Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means

Nor on plain water and raw greens.

If thou must choose

Between the chances, choose the odd;

Read The New Yorker, trust in God;

And take short views.

A cloudless night like this

Can set the spirit soaring:

After a tiring day

The clockwork spectacle is

Impressive in a slightly boring

Eighteenth-century way.

It soothed adolescence a lot

To meet so shameless a stare;

The things I did could not

Be so shocking as they said

If that would still be there

After the shocked were dead.

Now, unready to die

But already at the stage

When one starts to resent the young,

I am glad those points in the sky

May also be counted among

The creatures of Middle-age.

It's cosier thinking of night

As more an Old People's Home

Than a shed for a faultless machine,

That the red pre-Cambrian light

Is gone like Imperial Rome

Or myself at seventeen.

Yet however much we may like

The stoic manner in which

The classical authors wrote,

Only the young and the rich

Have the nerve or the figure to strike

The lacrimae rerum note.

For the present stalks abroad

Like the past and its wronged again

Whimper and are ignored,

And the truth cannot be hid;

Somebody chose their pain,

What needn't have happened did.

Occurring this very night

By no established rule,

Some event may already have hurled

Its first little No at the right

Of the laws we accept to school

Our post-diluvian world:

But the stars burn on overhead,

Unconscious of final ends,

As I walk home to bed,

Asking what judgement waits

My person, all my friends,

And these United States.

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

She looked over his shoulder

For vines and olive trees,

Marble well-governed cities

And ships upon untamed seas,

But there on the shining metal

His hands had put instead

An artificial wilderness

And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,

No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,

Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,

Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood

An unintelligible multitude,

A million eyes, a million boots in line,

Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face

Proved by statistics that some cause was just

In tones as dry and level as the place:

No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;

Column by column in a cloud of dust

They marched away enduring a belief

Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder

For ritual pieties,

White flower-garlanded heifers,

Libation and sacrifice,

But there on the shining metal

Where the altar should have been,

She saw by his flickering forge-light

Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot

Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)

And sentries sweated for the day was hot:

A crowd of ordinary decent folk

Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke

As three pale figures were led forth and bound

To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all

That carries weight and always weighs, the same

Lay in the hands of others; they were small

And could not hope for help and no help came:

What their foes liked to do was done, their shame

Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride

And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder

For athletes at their games,

Men and women in a dance

Moving their sweet limbs

Quick, quick, to music,

But there on the shining shield

His hands had set no dancing-floor

But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,

Loitered about that vacancy; a bird

Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:

That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,

Were axioms to him, who'd never heard

Of any world where promises were kept,

Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armorer,

Hephaestos, hobbled away,

Thetis of the shining breasts

Cried out in dismay

At what the god had wrought

To please her son, the strong

Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles

Who would not live long.

He told us we were free to choose

But, children as we were, we thought-

"Paternal Love will only use

Force in the last resort

On those too bumptious to repent."

Accustomed to religious dread,

It never crossed our minds He meant

Exactly what He said.

Perhaps He frowns, perhaps He grieves,

But it seems idle to discuss

If anger or compassion leaves

The bigger bangs to us.

What reverence is rightly paid

To a Divinity so odd

He lets the Adam whom He made

Perform the Acts of God?

It might be jolly if we felt

Awe at this Universal Man

(When kings were local, people knelt);

Some try to, but who can?

The self-observed observing Mind

We meet when we observe at all

Is not alariming or unkind

But utterly banal.

Though instruments at Its command

Make wish and counterwish come true,

It clearly cannot understand

What It can clearly do.

Since the analogies are rot

Our senses based belief upon,

We have no means of learning what

Is really going on,

And must put up with having learned

All proofs or disproofs that we tender

Of His existence are returned

Unopened to the sender.

Now, did He really break the seal

And rise again? We dare not say;

But conscious unbelievers feel

Quite sure of Judgement Day.

Meanwhile, a silence on the cross,

As dead as we shall ever be,

Speaks of some total gain or loss,

And you and I are free

To guess from the insulted face

Just what Appearances He saves

By suffering in a public place

A death reserved for slaves.

Nobody I know would like to be buried

with a silver cocktail-shaker,

a transistor radio and a strangled

daily help, or keep his word because

of a great-great-grandmother who got laid

by a sacred beast. Only a press lord

could have built San Simeon: no unearned income

can buy us back the gait and gestures

to manage a baroque staircase, or the art

of believing footmen don't hear

human speech. (In adulterine castles

our half-strong might hang their jackets

while mending their lethal bicycle-chains:

luckily, there are not enough

crags to go round.) Still, Hetty Pegler's Tump

is worth a visit, so is Schönbrunn,

to look at someone's idea of the body

that should have been his, as the flesh

Mum formulated shouldn't: that whatever

he does or feels in the mood for,

stock-taking, horse-play, worship, making love,

he stays the same shape, disgraces

a Royal I. To be over-admired is not

good enough: although a fine figure

is rare in either sex, others like it

have existed before. One may

be a Proustian snob or a sound Jacksonian

democrat, but which of us wants

to be touched inadvertently, even

by his beloved? We know all about graphs

and Darwin, enormous rooms no longer

superhumanise, but earnest

city-planners are mistaken: a pen

for a rational animal

is no fitting habitat for Adam's

sovereign clone. I, a transplant

from overseas, at last am dominant

over three acres and a blooming

conurbation of country lives, few of whom

I shall ever meet, and with fewer

converse. Linnaeus recoiled from the Amphibia

as a naked gruesome rabble,

Arachnids give me the shudders, but fools

who deface their emblem of guilt

are germane to Hitler: the race of spiders

shall be allowed their webs. I should like

to be to my water-brethren as a spell

of fine weather: Many are stupid,

and some, maybe, are heartless, but who is not

vulnerable, easy to scare,

and jealous of his privacy? (I am glad

the blackbird, for instance, cannot

tell if I'm talking English, German or

just typewriting: that what he utters

I may enjoy as an alien rigmarole.) I ought

to outlast the limber dragonflies

as the muscle-bound firs are certainly

going to outlast me: I shall not end

down any oesophagus, though I may succumb

to a filter-passing predator,

shall, anyhow, stop eating, surrender my smidge

of nitrogen to the World Fund

with a drawn-out Oh (unless at the nod

of some jittery commander

I be translated in a nano-second

to a c.c. of poisonous nothing

in a giga-death). Should conventional

blunderbuss war and its routiers

invest my bailiwick, I shall of course

assume the submissive posture:

but men are not wolves and it probably

won't help. Territory, status,

and love, sing all the birds, are what matter:

what I dared not hope or fight for

is, in my fifties, mine, a toft-and-croft

where I needn't, ever, be at home to

those I am not at home with, not a cradle,

a magic Eden without clocks,

and not a windowless grave, but a place

I may go both in and out of.

A living-room, the catholic area you

(Thou, rather) and I may enter

without knocking, leave without a bow, confronts

each visitor with a style,

a secular faith: he compares its dogmas

with his, and decides whether

he would like to see more of us. (Spotless rooms

where nothing's left lying about

chill me, so do cups used for ash-trays or smeared

with lip-stick: the homes I warm to,

though seldom wealthy, always convey a feeling

of bills being promptly settled

with cheques that don't bounce.) There's no We at an instant,

only Thou and I, two regions

of protestant being which nowhere overlap:

a room is too small, therefore,

if its occupants cannot forget at will

that they are not alone, too big

if it gives them any excuse in a quarrel

for raising their voices. What,

quizzing ours, would Sherlock Holmes infer? Plainly,

ours is a sitting culture

in a generation which prefers comfort

(or is forced to prefer it)

to command, would rather incline its buttocks

on a well-upholstered chair

than the burly back of a slave: a quick glance

at book-titles would tell him

that we belong to the clerisy and spend much

on our food. But could he read

what our prayers and jokes are about, what creatures

frighten us most, or what names

head our roll-call of persons we would least like

to go to bed with? What draws

singular lives together in the first place,

loneliness, lust, ambition,

or mere convenience, is obvious, why they drop

or murder one another

clear enough: how they create, though, a common world

between them, like Bombelli's

impossible yet useful numbers, no one

has yet explained. Still, they do

manage to forgive impossible behavior,

to endure by some miracle

conversational tics and larval habits

without wincing (were you to die,

I should miss yours). It's a wonder that neither

has been butchered by accident,

or, as lots have, silently vanished into

History's criminal noise

unmourned for, but that, after twenty-four years,

we should sit here in Austria

as cater-cousins, under the glassy look

of a Naples Bambino,

the portrayed regards of Strauss and Stravinsky,

doing British cross-word puzzles,

is very odd indeed. I'm glad the builder gave

our common-room small windows

through which no observed outsider can observe us:

every home should be a fortress,

equipped with all the very latest engines

for keeping Nature at bay,

versed in all ancient magic, the arts of quelling

the Dark Lord and his hungry

animivorous chimaeras. (Any brute

can buy a machine in a shop,

but the sacred spells are secret to the kind,

and if power is what we wish

they won't work.) The ogre will come in any case:

so Joyce has warned us. Howbeit,

fasting or feasting, we both know this: without

the Spirit we die, but life

without the Letter is in the worst of taste,

and always, though truth and love

can never really differ, when they seem to,

the subaltern should be truth.

The Ogre does what ogres can,

Deeds quite impossible for Man,

But one prize is beyond his reach,

The Ogre cannot master Speech.

About a subjugated plain,

Among its desperate and slain,

The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,

While drivel gushes from his lips.

It's natural the Boys should whoop it up for

so huge a phallic triumph, an adventure

it would not have occurred to women

to think worth while, made possible only

because we like huddling in gangs and knowing

the exact time: yes, our sex may in fairness

hurrah the deed, although the motives

that primed it were somewhat less than menschlich.

A grand gesture. But what does it period?

What does it osse? We were always adroiter

with objects than lives, and more facile

at courage than kindness: from the moment

the first flint was flaked this landing was merely

a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam's,

still don't fit us exactly, modern

only in this-our lack of decorum.

Homer's heroes were certainly no braver

than our Trio, but more fortunate: Hector

was excused the insult of having

his valor covered by television.

Worth going to see? I can well believe it.

Worth seeing? Mneh! I once rode through a desert

and was not charmed: give me a watered

lively garden, remote from blatherers

about the New, the von Brauns and their ilk, where

on August mornings I can count the morning

glories where to die has a meaning,

and no engine can shift my perspective.

Unsmudged, thank God, my Moon still queens the Heavens

as She ebbs and fulls, a Presence to glop at,

Her Old Man, made of grit not protein,

still visits my Austrian several

with His old detachment, and the old warnings

still have power to scare me: Hybris comes to

an ugly finish, Irreverence

is a greater oaf than Superstition.

Our apparatniks will continue making

the usual squalid mess called History:

all we can pray for is that artists,

chefs and saints may still appear to blithe it.

Out of a bellicose fore-time, thundering

head-on collisions of cloud and rock in an

up-thrust, crevasse-and-avalanche, troll country,

deadly to breathers,

it whelms into our picture below the melt-line,

where tarns lie frore under frowning cirques, goat-bell,

wind-breaker, fishing-rod, miner's-lamp country,

already at ease with

the mien and gestures that become its kindness,

in streams, still anonymous, still jumpable,

flows as it should through any declining country

in probing spirals.

Soon of a size to be named and the cause of

dirty in-fighting among rival agencies,

down a steep stair, penstock-and-turbine country,

it plunges ram-stam,

to foam through a wriggling gorge incised in softer

strata, hemmed between crags that nauntle heaven,

robber-baron, tow-rope, portage-way country,

nightmare of merchants.

Disemboguing from foothills, now in hushed meanders,

now in riffling braids, it vaunts across a senile

plain, well-entered, chateau-and-cider-press country,

its regal progress

gallanted for a while by quibbling poplars,

then by chimneys: led off to cool and launder

retort, steam-hammer, gasometer country,

it changes color.

Polluted, bridged by girders, banked by concrete,

now it bisects a polyglot metropolis,

ticker-tape, taxi, brothel, foot-lights country,

à-la-mode always.

Broadening or burrowing to the moon's phases,

turbid with pulverised wastemantle, on through

flatter, duller, hotter, cotton-gin country

it scours, approaching

the tidal mark where it puts off majesty,

disintegrates, and through swamps of a delta,

punting-pole, fowling-piece, oyster-tongs country,

wearies to its final

act of surrender, effacement, atonement

in a huge amorphous aggregate no cuddled

attractive child ever dreams of, non-country,

image of death as

a spherical dew-drop of life. Unlovely

monsters, our tales believe, can be translated

too, even as water, the selfless mother

of all especials.

On this day tradition allots

to taking stock of our lives,

my greetings to all of you, Yeasts,

Bacteria, Viruses,

Aerobics and Anaerobics:

A Very Happy New Year

to all for whom my ectoderm

is as Middle-Earth to me.

For creatures your size I offer

a free choice of habitat,

so settle yourselves in the zone

that suits you best, in the pools

of my pores or the tropical

forests of arm-pit and crotch,

in the deserts of my fore-arms,

or the cool woods of my scalp.

Build colonies: I will supply

adequate warmth and moisture,

the sebum and lipids you need,

on condition you never

do me annoy with your presence,

but behave as good guests should,

not rioting into acne

or athlete's-foot or a boil.

Does my inner weather affect

the surfaces where you live?

Do unpredictable changes

record my rocketing plunge

from fairs when the mind is in tift

and relevant thoughts occur

to fouls when nothing will happen

and no one calls and it rains.

I should like to think that I make

a not impossible world,

but an Eden it cannot be:

my games, my purposive acts,

may turn to catastrophes there.

If you were religious folk,

how would your dramas justify

unmerited suffering?

By what myths would your priests account

for the hurricanes that come

twice every twenty-four hours,

each time I dress or undress,

when, clinging to keratin rafts,

whole cities are swept away

to perish in space, or the Flood

that scalds to death when I bathe?

Then, sooner or later, will dawn

a Day of Apocalypse,

when my mantle suddenly turns

too cold, too rancid, for you,

appetising to predators

of a fiercer sort, and I

am stripped of excuse and nimbus,

a Past, subject to Judgement.

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters; how well, they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just

walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the

torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how

everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman

may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the

sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into

the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must

have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

The archaeologist's spade

delves into dwellings

vacancied long ago,

unearthing evidence

of life-ways no one

would dream of leading now,

concerning which he has not much

to say that he can prove:

the lucky man!

Knowledge may have its purposes,

but guessing is always

more fun than knowing.

We do know that Man,

from fear or affection,

has always graved His dead.

What disastered a city,

volcanic effusion,

fluvial outrage,

or a human horde,

agog for slaves and glory,

is visually patent,

and we're pretty sure that,

as soon as palaces were built,

their rulers

though gluttoned on sex

and blanded by flattery,

must often have yawned.

But do grain-pits signify

a year of famine?

Where a coin-series

peters out, should we infer

some major catastrophe?

Maybe. Maybe.

From murals and statues

we get a glimpse of what

the Old Ones bowed down to,

but cannot conceit

in what situations they blushed

or shrugged their shoulders.

Poets have learned us their myths,

but just how did They take them?

That's a stumper.

When Norsemen heard thunder,

did they seriously believe

Thor was hammering?

No, I'd say: I'd swear

that men have always lounged in myths

as Tall Stories,

that their real earnest

has been to grant excuses

for ritual actions.

Only in rites

can we renounce our oddities

and be truly entired.

Not that all rites

should be equally fonded:

some are abominable.

There's nothing the Crucified

would like less

than butchery to appease Him.

Over the heather the wet wind blows,

I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,

I'm a Wall soldier, I don't know why.

The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,

My girl's in Tungria; I sleep alone.

Aulus goes hanging around her place,

I don't like his manners, I don't like his face.

Piso's a Christian, he worships a fish;

There'd be no kissing if he had his wish.

She gave me a ring but I diced it away;

I want my girl and I want my pay.

When I'm a veteran with only one eye

I shall do nothing but look at the sky.

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.[137]

Say this city has ten million souls,

Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:

Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,

Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:

We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,

Every spring it blossoms anew:

Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The consul banged the table and said,

"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":

But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;

Asked me politely to return next year:

But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;

"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":

He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;

It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":

O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,

Saw a door opened and a cat let in:

But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,

Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:

Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;

They had no politicians and sang at their ease:

They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,

A thousand windows and a thousand doors:

Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;

Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:

Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

Perfectly happy now, he looked at his estate.

An exile making watches glanced up as he passed

And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast,

A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell

Some of the trees he'd planted were progressing well.

The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was very great.

Far off in Paris where his enemies

Whispered that he was wicked, in an upright chair

A blind old woman longed for death and letters. He would write,

"Nothing is better than life". But was it? Yes, the fight

Against the false and the unfair

Was always worth it. So was gardening. Civilize.

Cajoling, scolding, scheming, cleverest of them all,

He'd had the other children in a holy war

Against the unfamous grown-ups; and like a child, been sly

And humble, when there was occasion for

The two-faced answer or the plain protective lie,

But, patient like a peasant, waited for their fall.

And never doubted, like D'Alembert, he would win:

Only Pascal was a great enemy, the rest

Were rats already poisoned; there was much, though, to be done,

And only himself to count upon.

Dear Diderot was dull but did his best;

Rousseau, he'd always known, would blubber and give in.

Night fell and made him think of women: Lust

Was one of the great teachers; Pascal was a fool,

How Emilie had loved astronomy and bed;

Pimpette had loved him too, like scandal; he was glad.

He'd done his share of weeping for Jerusalem: As a rule,

It was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.

Yet, like a sentinel, he could not sleep. The night was full of wrong,

Earthquakes and executions: Soon he would be dead,

And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses

Itching to boil their children. Only his verses

Perhaps could stop them: He must go on working: Overhead,

The uncomplaining stars composed their lucid song.

Time will say nothing but I told you so,

Time only knows the price we have to pay

If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put their show,

If we should stumble when musicians play?

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,

Because I love you more then I can say,

If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,

There must be reason why the leaves decay;

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,

The vision seriously intends to stay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,

And all the brooks and soldiers run away;

Will time say nothing but I told you so?

If I could tell you I would let you know.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Mechanic, merchant, king,

Are warmed by the cold clown

Whose head is in the clouds

And never can get down.

Into a solitude

Undreamed of by their fat

Quick dreams have lifted me;

The north wind steals my hat.

On clear days I can see

Green acres far below,

And the red roof where I

Was Little Trinculo.

There lies that solid world

These hands can never reach;

My history, my love,

Is but a choice of speech.

A terror shakes my tree,

A flock of words fly out,

Whereat a laughter shakes

The busy and devout.

Wild images, come down

Out of your freezing sky,

That I, like shorter men,

May get my joke and die.

In our morale must lie our strength:

So, that we may behold at length

Routed Apollo's

Battalions melt away like fog,

Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,

Which runs as follows: —

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,

Thou shalt not write thy doctor' thesis

On education,

Thou shalt not worship projects nor

Shalt thou or thine bow down before

Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires

Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,

Nor with compliance

Take any test. Thou shalt not sit

With statisticians nor commit

A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms

With guys in advertising firms,

Nor speak with such

As read the Bible for its prose,

Nor, above all, make love to those

Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means

Nor on plain water and raw greens.

If thou must choose

Between the chances, choose the odd;

Read The New Yorker, trust in God;

Out of a gothic North, the pallid children

Of a potato, beer-or-whisky

Guilt culture, we behave like our fathers and come

Southward into a sunburnt otherwhere

Of vineyards, baroque, la bella figura,

To these feminine townships where men

Are males, and siblings untrained in a ruthless

Verbal in-fighting as it is taught

In Protestant rectories upon drizzling

Sunday afternoons-no more as unwashed

Barbarians out for gold, nor as profiteers

Hot for Old Masters, but for plunder

Nevertheless-some believing amore

Is better down South and much cheaper

(Which is doubtful), some persuaded exposure

To strong sunlight is lethal to germs

(Which is patently false) and others, like me,

In middle-age hoping to twig from

What we are not what we might be next, a question

The South seems never to raise. Perhaps

A tongue in which Nestor and Apemantus,

Don Ottavio and Don Giovanni make

Equally beautiful sounds is unequipped

To frame it, or perhaps in this heat

It is nonsense: the Myth of an Open Road

Which runs past the orchard gate and beckons

Three brothers in turn to set out over the hills

And far away, is an invention

Of a climate where it is a pleasure to walk

And a landscape less populated

Than this one. Even so, to us it looks very odd

Never to see an only child engrossed

In a game it has made up, a pair of friends

Making fun in a private lingo,

Or a body sauntering by himself who is not

Wanting, even as it perplexes

Our ears when cats are called Cat and dogs either

Lupo, Nero or Bobby. Their dining

Puts us to shame: we can only envy a people

So frugal by nature it costs them

No effort not to guzzle and swill. Yet (if I

Read their faces rightly after ten years)

They are without hope. The Greeks used to call the Sun

He-who-smites-from-afar, and from here, where

Shadows are dagger-edged, the daily ocean blue,

I can see what they meant: his unwinking

Outrageous eye laughs to scorn any notion

Of change or escape, and a silent

Ex-volcano, without a stream or a bird,

Echoes that laugh. This could be a reason

Why they take the silencers off their Vespas,

Turn their radios up to full volume,

And a minim saint can expect rockets-noise

As a counter-magic, a way of saying

Boo to the Three Sisters: "Mortal we may be,

But we are still here!" might cause them to hanker

After proximities-in streets packed solid

With human flesh, their souls feel immune

To all metaphysical threats. We are rather shocked,

But we need shocking: to accept space, to own

That surfaces need not be superficial

Nor gestures vulgar, cannot really

Be taught within earshot of running water

Or in sight of a cloud. As pupils

We are not bad, but hopeless as tutors:

Goethe, Tapping homeric hexameters

On the shoulder-blade of a Roman girl, is

(I wish it were someone else) the figure

Of all our stamp: no doubt he treated her well,

But one would draw the line at calling

The Helena begotten on that occasion,

Queen of his Second Walpurgisnacht,

Her baby: between those who mean by a life a

Bildungsroman and those to whom living

Means to-be-visible-now, there yawns a gulf

Embraces cannot bridge. If we try

To "go southern", we spoil in no time, we grow

Flabby, dingily lecherous, and

Forget to pay bills: that no one has heard of them

Taking the Pledge or turning to Yoga

Is a comforting thought-in that case, for all

The spiritual loot we tuck away,

We do them no harm-and entitles us, I think

To one little scream at A piacere,

Not two. Go I must, but I go grateful (even

To a certain Monte) and invoking

My sacred meridian names, Vito, Verga,

Pirandello, Bernini, Bellini,

To bless this region, its vendages, and those

Who call it home: though one cannot always

Remember exactly why one has been happy,

There is no forgetting that one was.

It's no use raising a shout.

No, Honey, you can cut that right out.

I don't want any more hugs;

Make me some fresh tea, fetch me some rugs.

Here am I, here are you:

But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

A long time ago I told my mother

I was leaving home to find another:

I never answered her letter

But I never found a better.

Here am I, here are you:

But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

It wasn't always like this?

Perhaps it wasn't, but it is.

Put the car away; when life fails,

What the good of going to Wales?

Here am I, here are you:

But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

In my spine there was a base,

And I knew the general's face:

But they've severed all the wires,

And I can't tell what the general desires.

Here am I, here are you:

But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

In my veins there is a wish,

And a memory of fish:

When I lie crying on the floor,

It says, "You've often done this before."

Here am I, here are you:

But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

A bird used to visit this shore:

It isn't going to come any more.

I've come a very long way to prove

No land, no water, and no love.

Here am I, here are you.

But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

Carry her over the water,

And set her down under the tree,

Where the culvers white all day and all night,

And the winds from every quarter,

Sing agreeably, agreeably, agreeably of love.

Put a gold ring on her finger,

And press her close to your heart,

While the fish in the lake snapshots take,

And the frog, that sanguine singer,

Sing agreeably, agreeably, agreeably of love.

The streets shal flock to your marriage,

The houses turn round to look,

The tables and chairs say suitable prayers,

And the horses drawing your carriage

Sing agreeably, agreeably, agreeably of love.

No window in his suburb lights that bedroom where

A little fever heard large afternoons at play:

His meadows multiply: that mill, though is not there

Which went on grinding at the back of love all day.

Nor all his weeping ways through weary wastes have found

The Castle where his Greater Hallows are interned:

For broken bridges halt him, and dark thickets round

Some ruin where an evil heritage was burned.

Could he forget a child's ambition to be old

And institutions where he learned to wash and lie'

He'd tell the truth for which he thinks himself too young,

That everywhere on the horizon of his sigh

Is now, as always, only waiting to be told

To be his father's house and speak his mother's tongue.

Out of it steps the future of the poor,

Enigmas, executioners and rules,

Her Majesty in a bad temper or

The red-nosed Fool who makes a fool of fools.

Great persons eye it in the twilight for

A past it might so carelessly let in,

A widow with a missionary grin,

The foaming inundation at a roar.

We pile our all against it when afraid,

And beat upon its panels when we die:

By happening to be open once, it made

Enormous Alice see a wonderland

That waited for her in the sunshine, and,

Simply by being tiny made her cry.

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephermeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:

To lovers as they lie upon

Her tolerant enchanted slope

In their ordinary swoon,

Grave the vision Venus sends

Of supernatural sympathy,

Universal love and hope;

While an abstract insight wakes

Among the glaciers and the rocks

The hermit's sensual ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity

On the stroke of midnight pass

Like vibrations of a bell,

And fashionable madmen raise

Their pedantic boring cry:

Every farthing of the cost,

All the dreadful cards foretell,

Shall be paid, but not from this night

Not a whisper, not a thought,

Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:

Let the winds of dawn that blow

Softly round your dreaming head

Such a day of sweetness show

Eye and knocking heart may bless.

Find the mortal world enough;

Noons of dryness see you fed

By the involuntary powers,

Nights of insult let you pass

Watched by every human love.

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear

Down inthe valley drumming, drumming?

Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,

The soldiers coming.

O what is that light I see flashing so clear

Over the distance brightly, brightly?

Only the sun on their weapons, dear,

As they step lightly.

O what are they doing with all that gear

What are they doing this morning, this morning?

Only the usual manoeuvres, dear,

Or perhaps a warning.

O why have they left the road down there

Why are they suddenly wheeling, wheeling?

Perhaps a change in the orders, dear,

Why are you kneeling?

O haven't they stopped for the doctor's care

Haven't they reined their horses, their horses?

Why, they are none of them wounded, dear,

None of these forces.

O is it the parson they want with white hair;

Is it the parson, is it, is it?

No, they are passing his gateway, dear,

Without a visit.

O it must be the farmer who lives so near

It must be the farmer so cunning, so cunning?

They have passed the farm already, dear,

And now they are running.

O where are you going? stay with me here!

Were the vows you swore me deceiving, deceiving?

No, I promised to love you, dear,

But I must be leaving.

O it's broken the lock and splintered the door,

O it's the gate where they're turning, turning

Their feet are heavy on the floor

And their eyes are burning.

The piers are pummelled by the waves;

In a lonely field the rain

Lashes an abandoned train;

Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;

Agents of the Fisc pursue

Absconding tax-defaulters through

The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send

The temple prostitutes to sleep;

All the literati keep

An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may

Extol the Ancient Disciplines,

But the muscle-bound Marines

Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm

As an unimportant clerk

Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK

On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,

Little birds with scarlet legs,

Sitting on their speckled eggs,

Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast

Herds of reindeer move across

Miles and miles of golden moss,

Silently and very fast.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put cr?pe bows round the white necks of the public

doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

O the valley in the summer where I and my John

Beside the deep river would walk on and on

While the flowers at our feet and the birds up above

Argued so sweetly on reciprocal love,

And I leaned on his shoulder; 'O Johnny, let's play':

But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O that Friday near Christmas as I well recall

When we went to the Charity Matinee Ball,

The floor was so smooth and the band was so loud

And Johnny so handsome I felt so proud;

'Squeeze me tighter, dear Johnny, let's dance till it's day':

But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

Shall I ever forget at the Grand Opera

When music poured out of each wonderful star?

Diamonds and pearls they hung dazzling down

Over each silver and golden silk gown;

'O John I'm in heaven,' I whispered to say:

But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O but he was fair as a garden in flower,

As slender and tall as the great Eiffel Tower,

When the waltz throbbed out on the long promenade

O his eyes and his smile they went straight to my heart;

'O marry me, Johnny, I'll love and obey':

But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

O last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my lover,

You'd the sun on one arm and the moon on the other,

The sea it was blue and the grass it was green,

Every star rattled a round tambourine;

Ten thousand miles deep in a pit there I lay:

But you frowned like thunder and you went away.

Give me a doctor partridge-plump,

Short in the leg and broad in the rump,

An endomorph with gentle hands

Who'll never make absurd demands

That I abandon all my vices

Nor pull a long face in a crisis,

But with a twinkle in his eye

Will tell me that I have to die.

Small tyrants, threatened by big,

Sincerely believe

They love Liberty.

Tyrants may get slain,

But their hangmen usually

Die in their beds.

The tyrant's device:

Whatever is Possible

Is Necessary.

When Chiefs of State

Prefer to work at night,

Let the citizen beware.

Unwashed, unshat,

He was whisked from the plane

To a lunch in his honour.

He hears a 1oud-speaker

Call him wen known,

But knows himself no better.

The desolate fjord

Denied the possibility

Of many gods.

Twenty-eight years ago

Three slept well here.

Now one is married, one dead,

Where the harmonium stood

A radio:¬

Have the Fittest survived?

Unable to speak Icelandic,

He helped instead

To do the dishes.

The bondi's sheep-dog

and the visitor from New York

Conversed freely.

Snow had camouflaged

The pool of liquid manure:

The town-mouse fell in.

A blizzard. A bare room.

Thoughts of the past.

He forgot to wind his watch.

The gale howled over lava. Suddenly,

In the storm's eye,

A dark speck,

Perseus in an air-taxi,

Come to snatch

Shivering Andromeda

Out of the wilderness

And bring her back

To hot baths, cocktails, habits.

Once more

A child's dream verified

The magical light beyond Hekla.

Fortunate island,

Where all men are equal

But not vulgar-not yet.

They noticed that virginity was needed

To trap the unicorn in every case,

But not that, of those virgins who succeeded,

A high percentage had an ugly face.

The hero was a daring as they thought him,

But these peculiar boyhood missed them all;

The angel with the broken leg had taught him

The right precautions to avoid a fall.

So in presumption they set forth alone

On what, for them, was not compulsory:

And stuck hallway to settle in some cave

With desert lions in domesticity

Or turned aside to be absurdly brave

And met the ogre and were turned on stone.

Pick a quarrel, go to war,

Leave the hero in the bar;

Hunt the lion, climb the peak:

No one guesses you are weak.

The friends of the born nurse

Are always getting worse.

When he is well

She gives him hell;

But she's a brick

When he is sick.

You’re a long way off becoming a saint

So long as you suffer from any complaint;

But, if you don’t, there’s no denying

The chances are that you’re not trying.

I am afraid there is many a spectacled sod

Prefers the British Museum to God.

I'm beginning to lose patience

With my personal relations:

They are not deep,

And they are not cheap.

Those who will not reason

Perish in the act;

Those who will not act

Perish for that reason.

Let us honor if we can

The vertical man,

Though we value none

But the horizontal one.

'These had stopped seeking

But went on speaking,

Have not contributed

But have diluted.

These ordered light

But had no right,

These handed on

War and a son.

Wishing no harm

But to be warm,

These fell asleep.

On the burning heap.

Private faces

In public places

Are wiser and nicer

Than public faces

In private places.

I'm beginning to lose patience

With my personal relations:

They are not deep,

And they are not cheap.

Thoughts of his own death,

like the distant roll

of thunder at a picnic.

Bound to ourselves for life,

we must learn how to

put up with each other.

Fate succumbs

many species: one alone

jeopardises itself.

The palm extended in welcome:

Look! for you

I have unclenched my fist.

Animal femurs,

ascribed to saints who never

existed, are still

more holy than portraits

of conquerors who,

unfortunately, did.

Pulling on his socks,

he recall that his gran-pa

went pop in the act.

Man must either fall in love

with Someone or Something,

or else fall ill.

Nothing can be loved too much,

but all things can be loved

in the wrong way.

I'm for freedom because I mistrust the Censor in office,

But if I held the job, my! how severe I should be!

When he is well

She gives him hell;

But she's a brick

When he is sick.

They wondered why the fruit had been forbidden:

It taught them nothing new. They hid their pride,

But did not listen much when they were chidden:

They knew exactly what to do outside.

They left. Immediately the memory faded

Of all they known: they could not understand

The dogs now who before had always aided;

The stream was dumb with whom they'd always planned.

They wept and quarrelled: freedom was so wild.

In front maturity as he ascended

Retired like a horizon from the child,

The dangers and the punishments grew greater,

And the way back by angels was defended

Against the poet and the legislator.

At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end,

The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;

Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire;

Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links,

Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks,

Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh

There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.

For the clear voice suddenly singing, high up on the cement wall,

The scent of the elder bushes, the sporting prints in the hall,

The croquet matches in summer, the handshake, the cough, the kiss,

There is always a wicked secret, a private reason for this.

The chimney sweepers

Wash their faces and forget to wash the neck;

The lighthouse keepers

Let the lamps go out and leave the ships to wreck;

The prosperous baker

Leaves the rolls in hundreds in the oven to burn;

The undertaker

Puts a small note on the coffin saying: "Wait till I return,

I've got a date with Love!"

And deep-sea divers

Cut their boots off and come bubbling to the top;

And engine drivers

Bring expresses in the tunnel to a stop;

The village rector

Dashes down the side-aisle half-way through a psalm;

The sanitary inspector

Runs off with the cover of the cesspool on his arm —

To keep his date with Love!

What's in your mind, my dove, my coney;

Do thoughts grow like feathers, the dead end of life;

Is it making of love or counting of money,

Or raid on the jewels, the plans of a thief?

Open your eyes, my dearest dallier;

Let hunt with your hands for escaping me;

Go through the motions of exploring the familiar

Stand on the brink of the warm white day.

Rise with the wind, my great big serpent;

Silence the birds and darken the air;

Change me with terror, alive in a moment;

Strike for the heart and have me there.

The silly fool, the silly fool

Was sillier in school

But beat the bully as a rule

The youngest son, the youngest son

Was certainly no wise one

Yet could surprise one.

Or rather, or rather,

To be posh, we gather

One should have no father.

Simple to prove

That deeds indeed

In life succeed,

But love in love,

And tales in tales

Where no one fails.

The soldier loves his rifle,

The scholar loves his books,

The farmer loves his horses,

The film star loves her looks.

There's love the whole world over

Wherever you may be;

Some lose their rest for gay Mae West,

But you're my cup of tea.

Some talk of Alexander

And some of Fred Astaire,

Some like their heroes hairy

Some like them debonair,

Some prefer a curate

And some an A.D.C.,

Some like a tough to treat'em rough,

But you're my cup of tea.

Some are mad on Airedales

And some on Pekinese,

On tabby cats or parrots

Or guinea pigs or geese.

There are patients in asylums

Who think that they're a tree;

I had an ant who loved a plant,

But you're my cup of tea.

Some have sagging waistlines

And some a bulbous nose

And some a floating kidney

And some have hammer toes,

Some have tennis elbow

And some have housemaid's knee,

And some I know have got B.O.,

But you're my cup of tea.

The blackbird loves the earthworm,

The adder loves the sun,

The polar bear an iceberg,

The elephant a bun,

The trout enjoys the river,

The whale enjoys the sea,

And dogs love most an old lamp-post,

But you're my cup of tea.

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eatting or opening a window

or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On the pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martydrom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind in a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

A shilling life will give you all the facts:

How Father beat him, how he ran away,

What were the struggles of his youth, what acts

Made him the greatest figure of his day

Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,

Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea:

Some of the last researchers even write

Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

With all his honours on, he sighed for one,

Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;

Did little jobs about the house with skill

And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still

Or potter round the garden; answered some

Of his long marvelous letters but kept none

All streets are brightly lit; our city is kept clean;

Her Third-Class deal from greasy packs, her First bid high;

Her beggars banished to the bows have never seen

What can be done in state-rooms: no one asks why.

Lovers are writing latters, athletes playing ball,

One doubts the virtue, one the beauty of his wife,

A boy's ambitious: perhaps the Captain hates us all;

Someone perhaps is leading a civilised life.

Slowly our Western culture in full pomp progresses

Over the barren plains of the sea; somewhere ahead

A septic East, odd fowl and flowers, odder dresses:

Somewhere a strange and shrewd To-morrow goes to bed,

Planning a test for men from Europe; no one guesses

Who will be most ashamed, who richer, and who dead.

Some say that love 's a little boy,

And some say it's a bird,

Some say it makes the world go round,

And some say that's absurd,

And when I asked the man next-door,

Who looked as if he knew,

His wife got very cross indeed,

And said it wouldn't do.

Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,

Or the ham in a temperance hotel?

Does its odour remind one of llamas,

Or has it a comforting smell?

Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,

Or soft as eiderdown fluff?

Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?

O tell me the truth about love.

Our history books refer to it

In cryptic little notes.

It's quite a common topic on

The Transatlantic boats;

I've found the subject mentioned in

Account of suicides,

And even seen it scribbled on

The back of railway-guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,

Or boom like a military band?

Could one give a first-rate imitation

On a saw or a Steinway Grand?

Is it's singing at parties a riot?

Does it only like classical stuff?

Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?

O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house;

It wasn't ever there:

I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,

And Brighton's bracing air.

I don't know what the blackbird sang,

Or what the tulip said;

But it wasn't in the chicken-run,

Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extraordinary faces?

Is it usually sick on a swing?

Does it spend all its time at the races,

Or fiddling with pieces of string?

Has it views of its own about money?

Does it think Patriotism enough?

Are its stories vulgar but funny?

O tell me the truth about love.

When it comes, will it come without warning

Just as I'm picking my nose?

Will it knock on my door in the morning,

Or tread in the bus on my toes?

Will it come like a change in the weather?

Will its greeting be courteous or rough?

Will it alter my life altogether?

O tell me the truth about love.

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade

To all the noises that my garden made,

It seemed to me only proper that words

Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.

A robin with no Christian name ran through

The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,

And rustling flowers for some third party waited

To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,

There was not one which knew that it was dying

Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme

Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters

Who count some days and long for certain letters;

We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:

Words are for those with promises to keep.

Pick a quarrel, go to war,

Leave the hero in the bar;

Hunt the lion, climb the peak:

No one guesses you are weak.

The friends of the born nurse

Are always getting worse.

I'm beginning to lose patience

With my personal relations:

They are not deep,

And they are not cheap.

I'm for freedom because I mistrust the Censor in office,

But if I held the job, my! how severe I should be!

When he is well

She gives him hell;

But she's a brick

When he is sick.

Those who will not reason

Perish in the act;

Those who will not act

Perish for that reason.

Let us honor if we can

The vertical man,

Though we value none

But the horizontal one.

Private faces

In public places

Are wiser and nicer

Than public faces

In private places.

The conversation of birds

Say very little,

But mean a great deal.

Among the mammals

Only Man has ears

That can display no emotion.

In moments of joy

All of us wish we possessed

A tail we could wag.

The shame in ageing

is not that Desire should fail

(Who mourns for something

he no longer needs?): it is

That someone else must be told.

The tyrant's device:

Whatever is Posiible

Is Necessary.

Passing Beauty

still delights him,

but he no longer

has to turn round.

Does God ever judge us

by appearances?

I suspect that He does.

Today two poems begged to be written: I had to refuse them.

Sorry, no longer, my dear! Sorry, my precious, not yet!

Only look in the mirror to detect a removable blamish,

As of the permanent ones already you know quite enough.

God never makes knots,

But is expert, if asked to,

At untying them.

A poet's hope: to be,

Like some valley cheese,

Local, but prized elsewhere.

A sentence uttered makes a world appear

Where all things happen as it says they do;

We doubt the speaker, not the tongue we hear:

Words have no word for words that are not true.

Syntactically, though, it must be clear;

One cannot change the subject half-way through,

Nor alter tenses to appease the ear:

Arcadian tales are hard-luck stories too.

But should we want to gossip all the time,

Were fact not fiction for us at its best,

Or find a charm in syllables that rhyme,

Were not our fate by verbal chance expressed,

As rustics in a ring-dance pantomime

The Knight at some lone cross-roads of his quest?

When the Flyin’ Scot [138]

fills for shootin’, I go southward,

wisin’ after coffee, leavin’

Lady Starkie.

Weady for some fun,

visit yearly Wome, Damascus,

in Mowocco look for fwesh a —

— musin’ places.

Where I’ll find a fwend,

don’t you know, a charmin’ creature,

like a Gweek God and devoted:

how delicious!

All they have they bwing,

Abdul, Nino, Manfwed, Kosta:

here’s to women for they bear such

lovely kiddies!

By landscape reminded once of his mother's figure

The mountain heights he remembers get bigger and bigger

With the finest of mapping pens he fondly traces

All the family names on the familiar places.

In a green pasture straying, he walks by still waters;

Surely a swan he seems to earth's unwise daughters,

Bending a beautiful head, worshipping not lying,

'Dear' the dear beak in the dear concha crying.

Under the trees the summer bands were playing;

'Dear boy, be brave as these roots', he heard them saying:

Carries the good news gladly to a world in danger,

Is ready to argue, he smiles, with any stranger.

And yet this prophet, homing the day is ended,

Receives odd welcome from the country he so defended:

The band roars 'Coward, Coward', in his human fever,

The giantess shuffles near, cries 'Deceiver'.

Each lover has some theory of his own

About the difference between the ache

Of being with his love, and being alone:

Why what, when dreaming, is dear flesh and bone

That really stirs the senses, when awake,

Appears a simulacrum of his own.

Narcissus disbelieves in the unknown;

He cannot join his image in the lake

So long as he assumes he is alone.

The child, the waterfall, the fire, the stone,

Are always up to mischief, though, and take

The universe for granted as their own.

The elderly, like Proust, are always prone

To think of love as a subjective fake;

The more they love, the more they feel alone.

Whatever view we hold, it must be shown

Why every lover has a wish to make

Some kind of otherness his own:

Perhaps, in fact, we never are alone.

Ladies and gentlemen, sitting here,

Eating and drinking and warming a chair,

Feeling and thinking and drawing your breath,

Who’s sitting next to you? It may be Death.

As a high-stepping blondie with eyes of blue

In the subway, on beaches, Death looks at you;

And married or single or young or old,

You’ll become a sugar daddy and do as you’re told.

Death is a G-man. You may think yourself smart,

But he’ll send you to the hot-seat or plug you through the heart;

He may be a slow worker, but in the end

He’ll get you for the crime of being born, my friend.

Death as a doctor has first-class degrees;

The world is on his panel; he charges no fees;

He listens to your chest, says — "You’re breathing. That’s bad.

But don’t worry; we’ll soon see to that, my lad."

Death knocks at your door selling real estate,

The value of which will not depreciate;

It’s easy, it’s convenient, it’s old world. You’ll sign,

Whatever your income, on the dotted line.

Death as a teacher is simply grand;

The dumbest pupil can understand.

He has only one subject and that is the Tomb;

But no one ever yawns or asks to leave the room.

So whether you’re standing broke in the rain,

Or playing poker or drinking champagne,

Death’s looking for you, he’s already on the way,

So look out for him tomorrow or perhaps today.

For who is ever quite without his landscape,

The straggling village street, the house in trees,

All near the church, or else the gloomy town house,

The one with the Corinthian pillars, or

The tiny workmanlike flat: in any case

A home, the centre where the three or four things

That happen to a man do happen? Yes,

Who cannot draw the map of his life, shade in

The little station where he meets his loves

And says good-bye continually, and mark the spot

Where the body of his happiness was first discovered?

An unknown tramp? A rich man? An enigma always

And with a buried past but when the truth,

The truth about our happiness comes out

How much it owed to blackmail and philandering.

The rest's traditional. All goes to plan:

The feud between the local common sense

And that exasperating brilliant intuition

That's always on the spot by chance before us;

All goes to plan, both lying and confession,

Down to the thrilling final chase, the kill.

Yet on the last page just a lingering doubt:

That verdict, was it just? The judge's nerves,

That clue, that protestation from the gallows,

And our own smile… why yes…

But time is always killed. Someone must pay for

Our loss of happiness, our happiness itself.

So an age ended, and its last deliverer died

In bed, grown idle and unhappy; they were safe:

The sudden shadow of a giant's enormous calf

Would fall no more at dusk across their lawns outside.

They slept in peace: in marshes here and there no doubt

A sterile dragon lingered to a natural death,

But in a year the slot had vanished from the heath;

A kobold's knocking in the mountain petered out.

Only the sculptors and the poets were half-sad,

And the pert retinue from the magician's house

Grumbled and went elsewhere. The vanquished powers were glad

To be invisible and free; without remorse

Struck down the silly sons who strayed into their course,

And ravished the daughters, and drove the fathers mad.

To save your world you asked this man to die:

Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

Base words are uttered only by the base

And can for such at once be understood,

But noble platitudes:-ah, there's a case

Where the most careful scrutiny is needed

To tell a voice that's genuinely good

From one that's base but merely has succeeded.

Clocks cannot tell our time of day

For what event to pray

Because we have no time, because

We have no time until

We know what time we fill,

Why time is other than time was.

Nor can our question satisfy

The answer in the statue's eye:

Only the living ask whose brow

May wear the Roman laurel now;

The dead say only how.

What happens to the living when we die?

Death is not understood by Death; nor You, nor I.

Out of steps the future of the poor,

Enigmas, execuOut of steps tioners and rules,

Her Majesty in a bad temper or

The red-nosed Fool who makes a fool of fools.

Great person eye it in the twilight for

A past it might so carelessly let in,

A widow with a missionary grin,

The foaming inundation at a roar.

We pile our all against it when afraid,

And beat upon its panel when we die:

By happening to be open ones, it made

Enormous Alice see in wonderland

That waited for her in the sunshine, and,

Simply by being tiny, made her cry.

Clocks cannot tell our time of day

For what event to pray,

Because we have no time, because

We have no time until

We know what time we fill,

Why time is other than time was.

Nor can our question satisfy

The answer in the statue’s eye.

Only the living ask whose brow

May wear the roman laurel now:

The dead say only how.

What happens to the living when they die?

Death is not understood by death: nor you, nor I.