And even thus, and being no Rousseauist,
Nor artists-of-the-world-unite, or which,
Or what, never admitting, in effect,
Touch anything my touch does not adorn –
Now then I dung on my grandfather’s doorstep,
Which is a reasonable and loving due
To hold no taint of spite or vassalage
And understood only by him and me –
But you, you bog-rat-whiskered, you psalm-griddling,
Lame, rotten-livered, which and what canaille,
You, when twin lackeys, with armorial shovels,
Unbolt the bossy gates and bend to the task,
Be off, work out your heads from between the railings,
Lest we unkennel the mastiff and the Dane –
This house is jealous of its nastiness.’
ANAGRAMMAGIC
Anagrammatising
TRANSUBSTANTIATION,
Slyly deputising
For old Copopulation
SIN SAT ON A TIN TAR TUB
And did with joy his elbows rub.
Art introseduced him
To females dull and bad,
Flapper flappings, limb-slim,
From his blonde writing-pad,
The river-girlgling drained of blood –
Post-card flower of kodak mud.
By such anagrammagic
And mansturbantiation
They fathered then this tragic
Lustalgia on the nation,
And after that, and after that,
ON A TIN SIN TUB ART SAT.
VISION IN THE REPAIR-SHOP
Be sure the crash was worse than ever.
In, flying out, collapsed with music;
Out, flying in, roared up in flames.
The blast was non-continuous.
But what matter? The force generated
At every point of impact
Was, you remarked, dispersed for other uses.
In this you saw the well-geared mind
Of the garage-man-in-chief,
Prime corpse of each new speed-track,
Who by unequalled salesmanship
Engines a car for every son and daughter
In a city of twelve millions –
What prettier traffic-block imaginable
Lasting, day in, day out, for centuries,
While life flows easily down the gutters
Or swings in the air on ropes,
And you and I, stuffing this cotton-wool
Closer into our ears, from habit,
Lie in plaster of Paris on our backs
And drink the drip of many radiators?
NATURE’S LINEAMENTS
When mountain rocks and leafy trees
And clouds and things like these,
With edges,
Caricature the human face,
Such scribblings have no grace
Nor peace –
The bulbous nose, the sunken chin,
The ragged mouth in grin
Of cretin.
Nature is always so: you find
That all she has of mind
Is wind,
Retching among the empty spaces,
Ruffling the idiot grasses,
The sheep’s fleeces.
Whose pleasures are excreting, poking,
Havocking and sucking,
Sleepy licking.
Whose griefs are melancholy,
Whose flowers are oafish,
Whose waters, silly,
Whose birds, raffish,
Whose fish, fish.
SEA SIDE
Into a gentle wildness and confusion,
Of here and there, of one and everyone,
Of windy sandhills by an unkempt sea,
Came two and two in search of symmetry,
Found symmetry of two in sea and sand,
In left foot, right foot, left hand and right hand.
The beast with two backs is a single beast,
Yet by his love of singleness increased
To two and two and two and two again,
Until, instead of sandhills, see, a plain
Patterned in two and two, by two and two –
And the sea parts in horror at a view
Of rows of houses coupling, back to back,
While love smokes from their common chimney-stack
With two-four-eight-sixteenish single same
Re-registration of the duple name.
WM. BRAZIER
At the end of Tarriers’ Lane, which was the street
We children thought the pleasantest in Town
Because of the old elms growing from the pavement
And the crookedness, when the other streets were straight,
[They were always at the lamp-post round the corner,
Those pugs and papillons and in-betweens,
Nosing and snuffling for the latest news]
Lived Win. Brazier, with a gilded sign,
‘Practical Chimney Sweep’. He had black hands,
Black face, black clothes, black brushes and white teeth;
He jingled round the town in a pony-trap,
And the pony’s name was Soot, and Soot was black.
But the brass fittings on the trap, the shafts,
On Soot’s black harness, on the black whip-butt,
Twinkled and shone like any guardsman’s buttons.
Wasn’t that pretty? And when we children jeered:
‘Hello, Wm. Brazier! Dirty-face Wm. Brazier!’
He would crack his whip at us and smile and bellow,
‘Hello, my dears!’ [If he were drunk, but otherwise:
‘Scum off, you damned young milliners’ bastards, you!’]
Let them copy it out on a pink page of their albums,
Carefully leaving out the bracketed lines.
It’s an old story – f’s for s’s –
But good enough for them, the suckers.
A FORMER ATTACHMENT
And glad to find, on again looking at it,
It meant even less to me than I had thought –
You know the ship is moving when you see
The boxes on the quayside slide away
And become smaller – and feel a calm delight
When the port’s cleared and the coast out of sight,
And ships are few, each on its proper course,
With no occasion for approach or discourse.
RETURN FARE
And so to Ireland on an Easter Tuesday
To a particular place I could not find.
A sleeping man beside me in the boat-train
Sat whistling Liliburlero in his sleep;
Not, I had thought, a possible thing, yet so.
And through a port-hole of the Fishguard boat,
That was the hospital-boat of twelve years back,
Passengered as before with doubt and dying,
I saw the moon through glass, but a waning moon –
Bad luck, self-doubtful, so once more I slept.
And then the engines woke me up by stopping.
The piers of the quay loomed up. So I went up.
The sun shone rainily and jokingly,
And everyone joked at his own expense,
And the priest declared ‘nothing but fishing tackle,’
Laughing provokingly. I could not laugh.
And the hard cackling laughter of the men
And the false whinnying laughter of the girls
Grieved me. The telegraph-clerk said, grieving too,
‘St Peter, he’s two words in the Free State now,
So that’s a salmon due.’ I paid the fish.
And everyone I asked about the place
Knew the place well, but not its whereabouts,
And the black-shawled peasant woman asked me then,
Wasn’t I jaded? And she grieved to me
Of the apple and the expulsion from the garden.
Ireland went by, and went
by as I saw her
When last I saw her for the first time
Exactly how I had seen her all the time.
And I found the place near Sligo, not the place,
So back to England on the Easter Thursday.
SINGLE FARE
By way of Fishguard, all the lying devils
Are back to Holy Ireland whence they came.
Each took a single fare: which cost them less
And brought us comfort. The dumb devils too
Take single fares, return by rail to Scotland
Whence they came. So the air is cool and easy.
And if, in some quarter of some big city,
A little Eire or a little Scotland
Serves as a rallying-point for a few laggards,
No matter, we are free from taint of them.
And at the fire-side now (drinking our coffee),
If I ask, ‘But to what township did they book,
Those dumb devils of Scotland?’ you will answer:
‘There’s the Bass Rock, once more a separate kingdom,
Leagued with Ireland, the same cold grey crag
Screamed against by the gulls that are all devils.’
And of the Irish devils you will answer:
‘In Holy Ireland many a country seat
Still stands unburned – as Cooper’s Hill, Lisheen,
Cloghan Castle, or Killua in County Galway –
For the devils to enter, unlock the library doors
And write love-letters and long threatening letters
Even to us, if it so pleases them.’
IT WAS ALL VERY TIDY
When I reached his place,
The grass was smooth,
The wind was delicate,
The wit well timed,
The limbs well formed,
The pictures straight on the wall:
It was all very tidy.
He was cancelling out
The last row of figures,
He had his beard tied up in ribbons,
There was no dust on his shoe,
Everyone nodded:
It was all very tidy.
Music was not playing,
There were no sudden noises,
The sun shone blandly,
The clock ticked:
It was all very tidy.
‘Apart from and above all this,’
I reassured myself,
‘There is now myself.’
It was all very tidy.
Death did not address me,
He had nearly done:
It was all very tidy.
They asked, did I not think
It was all very tidy?
I could not bring myself
To laugh, or untie
His beard’s neat ribbons,
Or jog his elbow,
Or whistle, or sing,
Or make disturbance.
I consented, frozenly,
He was unexceptionable:
It was all very tidy.
A SHEET OF PAPER
Then was blank expectation,
Was happening without incident,
Was thinking without images,
Was speaking without words,
Was being without proof,
Happiness not signalized,
Sorrow without cause,
And place for nothing further.
Now is a sheet of paper,
A not blank expectation,
A happening, but with incident,
A thinking, but with images,
A speaking, but with words,
A being, over-proved,
A report of happiness,
A cause for sorrow,
Place for the signature
And for the long post-script.
Ten Poems More
(1930)
THE READER OVER MY SHOULDER
You, reading over my shoulder, peering beneath
My writing arm – I suddenly feel your breath
Hot on my hand or on my nape,
So interrupt my theme, scratching these few
Words on the margin for you, namely you,
Too-human shape fixed in that shape: –
All the saying of things against myself
And for myself I have well done myself.
What now, old enemy, shall you do
But quote and underline, thrusting yourself
Against me, as ambassador of myself,
In damned confusion of myself and you?
For you in strutting, you in sycophancy,
Have played too long this other self of me,
Doubling the part of judge and patron
With that of creaking grind-stone to my wit.
Know me, have done: I am a proud spirit
And you for ever clay. Have done!
HISTORY OF THE WORD
The Word that in the beginning was the Word
For two or three, but elsewhere spoke unheard,
Found Words to interpret it, which for a season
Prevailed until ruled out by Law and Reason
Which, by a lax interpretation cursed,
In Laws and Reasons logically dispersed;
These, in their turn, found they could do no better
Than fall to Letters and each claim a letter.
In the beginning then, the Word alone,
But now the various tongue-tied Lexicon
In perfect impotence the day nearing
When every ear shall lose its sense of hearing
And every mind by knowledge be close-shuttered –
But two or three, that hear the Word uttered
INTERRUPTION
If ever against this easy blue and silver
Hazed-over countryside of thoughtfulness,
Far behind in the mind and above,
Boots from before and below approach trampling,
Watch how their premonition will display
A forward countryside, low in the distance –
A picture-postcard square of June grass;
Will warm a summer season, trim the hedges,
Cast the river about on either flank,
Start the late cuckoo emptily calling,
Invent a rambling tale of moles and voles,
Furnish a path with stiles.
Watch how the field will broaden, the feet nearing,
Sprout with great dandelions and buttercups,
Widen and heighten. The blue and silver
Fogs at the border of this all-grass.
Interruption looms gigantified,
Lurches against, treads thundering through,
Blots the landscape, scatters all,
Roars and rumbles like a dark tunnel,
Is gone.
The picture-postcard grass and trees
Swim back to central: it is a large patch,
It is a modest, failing patch of green,
The postage-stamp of its departure,
Clouded with blue and silver, closing in now
To a plain countryside of less and less,
Unpeopled and unfeatured blue and silver,
Before, behind, above.
SURVIVAL OF LOVE
We love, and utterly,
Unnaturally:
From nature lately
By death you freed me,
Yourself free already.
Proof that we are unnatural:
This purposeful
And straining funeral,
Nature’s unnatural,
Now become unfunereal.
And indeed merriest when
The gasp and strain
Will twitch like pain,
Clouding the former brain
Of us, the man and woman.
NEW LEGENDS
Content in you,
Andromeda serene,
Mistress of air and ocean
And every fiery dragon,
Chained to no cliff,
Asking no rescue of me.
C
ontent in you,
Mad Atalanta,
Stooping unpausing,
Ever ahead,
Acquitting me of rivalry.
Content in you
Who made King Proteus marvel,
Showing him singleness
Past all variety.
Content in you,
Niobe of no children,
Of no calamity.
Content in you,
Helen, foiler of beauty.
SAINT
This Blatant Beast was finally overcome
And in no secret tourney: wit and fashion
Flocked out and for compassion
Wept as the Red Cross Knight pushed the blade home.
The people danced and sang the paeans due,
Roasting whole oxen on the public spit;
Twelve mountain peaks were lit
With bonfires; yet their hearts were doubt and rue.
Therefore no grave was deep enough to hold
The Beast, who after days came thrusting out,
Wormy from rump to snout,
His yellow cere-cloth patched with the grave’s mould.
Nor could sea hold him: anchored with huge rocks,
He swelled and buoyed them up, paddling ashore
As evident as before
With deep-sea ooze and salty creaking bones.
Lime could not burn him, nor the sulphur fire:
So often as the good Knight bound him there,
With stink of singeing hair
And scorching flesh the corpse rolled from the pyre.
In the city-gutter would the Beast lie
Praising the Knight for all his valorous deeds:
‘Ay, on those water-meads
He slew even me. These death-wounds testify.’
The Knight governed that city, a man shamed
And shrunken: for the Beast was over-dead,
With wounds no longer red
But gangrenous and loathsome and inflamed.
Not all the righteous judgements he could utter,
Nor mild laws frame, nor public works repair,
Nor wars wage, in despair,
Could bury that same Beast, crouched in the gutter.
A fresh remembrance-banquet to forestall,
The Knight turned hermit, went without farewell
To a far mountain-cell;
But the Beast followed as his seneschal,
And there drew water for him and hewed wood
With vacant howling laughter; else all day
Noisome with long decay
Sunning himself at the cave’s entry stood.
Would bawl to pilgrims for a dole of bread