And indeed it is as regular as clockwork
Demonstrating the variability of the weather
Or denying the existence of manu altogether
For after all why should love resemble a cushion
Why should the stumbling-block float up towards the ceiling
And in our attic it is always said
That this is a sombre country the wettest place on earth
And then there is the problem of living to be considered
With its vast pink parachutes full of underdone mutton
Its tableaux of the archbishops dressed in their underwear
Have you ever paused to consider why grass is green
Yes greener at least it is said than the man in the moon
Which is why
The linen of flat countries basks in the tropical sun
And the light of the stars is attracted by transparent flowers
And at last is forgotten by both man and beast
By helmet and capstan and mesmerised nun
For the bounds of my kingdom are truly unknown
And its factories work all night long
Producing the strongest canonical wastepaper-baskets
And ant-eaters’ skiing-shoes
Which follow the glistening murders as far as the pond
And then light a magnificent bonfire of old rusty nails
And indeed they are paid by the state for their crimes
There is room for them all in the conjuror’s musical-box
There is still enough room for even the hardest of faces
For faces are needed to stick on the emperor’s walls
To roll down the stairs like a party of seafaring christians
Whose hearts are on fire in the snow.
p. 1936
THE SYMPTOMATIC WORLD
I
At the age of nine months I entered the world
As an automatic apprentice
My wages were divided
By the comparison between fire and water
My muscles were contracted
By the song and the wedding-ring
By the man in the front room smoking a cigar
And my eyes were especially opalescent
In that I gave them tears to drink each morning
Tears of warm milk in which flies were seen to float
Tears of cold amber in which miracles appeared
So that I seemed to see through them a world of metal
A world of intrinsic gestures and straight lines
I might even say a world in which there was no absence
And no unknown degrees
In which the pale green torture of the mountains
Appeared to consist of feathers sprouting from maps
And where the only women
Were negresses with breasts like collar-bones
And heads like violins played on by lightning
A world at last as empty as my mirror
Yet full of coach-horses and sails of ships
And vocal clocks all calling:
This way home.
II
Following an arrow
To the boundaries of sense-confusion
Like the crooked flight of a bird
The glass-lidded coffins are full of light
They displace the earth like the weight of stones
Eating and ravaging the earth like moths
Which follow the arrow
In a shower of freshly variegated sparkles
Confusing the issue of the arrow’s flight
Till its feathers are all worn out
And the trees are all on fire
The pillow-case is bursting
The feathers are blown across the roofs
The room is falling from the window
And O where did that woman come from
Who chases the muleteer across the pampas
And covers her flaming face with the huge shadows of her hands?
III
The pinecone falls from the sailor’s sleeve
The latchkey turns in the lock
And the light is broken
By the angry shadow of the knave of spades
Kneeling to dig in the sand with his coal-black hands
His hair is a kite to fly in the dangerous winds
That come from the central sea
He is searching for buried anvils
For the lost lamps of Syracuse
And behind him stands
The spectre whose lips are frozen
Unwinding the threads of her heart
From their luminous spool
She is stone and mortar
And tar and feather
Her errand is often obscure
But she comes to sit down in the glow of the rocks
She comes with a star in her mouth
And her words
Are rock-crystal molten by thunder
Meteors crushed by the birds.
IV
Intelligence resides in the sparrow’s beak
And the seat of the will is the wing of the wasp
I am here I am there and my mind is in the middle
I hold in my hands the knob of the door of sleep
I stand on my feet on the rock of the principle
And my eyes are on top of my head
They see all that happens in the sky
The horse that bears his master in his mouth
And is ridden by the girl with red plush breasts
My ears grow out of my feet
And they hear all the sounds underground
The ringing of bells in the caves
And the whisper of wandering roots
The intellect resides in the mineral’s neck
And the seat of the soul is the mouth of the stone
Which is why the earth’s veins are so stopped up with sand
And the sea is so full of green flame
For the earth is a kiss on the mouth of the sky
And the sky is a fan in the hand of the sun
V
This is my world this is your realm of clay
Our dreams have all come true
The ash of sleep is deeper than dust on the stairs
Of this mine-shaft brimmed with gold
The sunken garden of a fugitive
Cold with black rain that stains the soil like ink
Enigma like a skull with petrol eyes
A sprouting head of plumes of silver grass
That haunts the sanded paths
The booming caves are full of birds
With silken wings and beaks of solid stone
Who pass the time away
With burning feathers from their tails
In the flaming waterfall
This is my world this is your garden gate
Our vistas stretch a thousand leagues from here
As far as forests full of moving trees
As far as fingers holding tigers’ skins
As far as bushes on the window-sill
As far as castles with unlicensed towers
As far as caskets full of human hair
As far as clouds on fire and dying swans
On lakes that swallow beds as fast as tigers swallow hands.
VI
On the sidewalks of New York
There are women who pass to and fro with napkins wrapped round their heads
So that no one can see their eyes
And machines lean out of the windows to record the number of their footsteps
A record is made of the sound of falling coins
That cover the streets with silver and cause fruit to ripen in bowls
And the lift-boys chant:
The sea comes once too often up the street
And the wind goes once too seldom down the sky,
And their song goes on till morning
When the inhabitants put logs outside their doors
For the children to make fires in all the g
utters
Which awakens the town to the sound of derailed trains
While baskets of boot-buttons light up the distant hills.
VII
Undoubtedly the sun has burnt his hands
Undoubtedly the corn has grown too high
And when this is done
The first-class trains will stop running every afternoon at five o’clock
And the passengers next morning will alight
In a ditch of frozen milk
Their thoughts will return with regret to their twice-locked trunks
Full of borrowed dresses and discarded wedding-rings
They will groan with dismay at the thought of the coming day
Full of empty bags and crumbs of stalest bread
From house to house the frost will spread its warnings
And weathercocks fall from the roofs.
VIII
The needle glitters inch by inch
And the sound of its stitches reaches the sea
Where bombs explode in every other wave
And the beaches are paler than curd
I return there every other night
Wearing the same clothes, breathing the same air
And the weasels only laugh at me but it is not my fault
I can hardly help it if the lines of the meridian resemble fish
That fly away
To where the heat softens the equator
With hair growing out of its ears
And birds’ nests in its hair to keep the rain off
The rain that whispers in decrepit castles
Great clots of clay and the effigies falling to dust
Preserve us from the singing towers
And the chapter which turns the page of its own accord
For fear of reading its own history there.
p. 1936
THE SUPPOSED BEING
Supposing the mouth
The hard lips crowned with bright flowers
A bursting foam of petals
And each gold stamen an anxious arrow
As each firm finger a signal
Pointing to fire and water’s junction
Whose furious fumes would stifle the passers-by
With their startled eyes
With their nervous hands and faces
Whose language is black whose language has
Never been ours.
Supposing the eyes
Luscious in lashes and deep stained with sleep
The eyes in the forehead like pools in the rocks
And the turbulent sea approaching
Shivering ravenous venomous scarred
By the sharp-taloned claws of its waves
As eyes by their ravaging lids
As their lids by the richly veined hands
That are burnt by the light of the sun
And the stones are on fire
And the pupils of eyes are glazed by the
Heat of their flames.
Supposing the hands
With their nails and their delicate bones
Like the frail limbs of birds
And their tips like the pink tips of buds
That probe the cold curious air
And discover the blood neath the skin
And the surface of stones.
Supposing the breasts
Like shells on the oceanless shore
At the end of the world
Like furious thrusts of a single knife
Like bread to be broken by hands
Supposing the breasts still untouched by desires
Still unsuckled by thirsts
And motionless still
Breasts violently still and enisled in the
Night and afraid both of love and of death.
Supposing the sex
A cruelty and dead in the thighs
A gaping and blackness – a charred
Trace of feverish flames
The sex like an X
As the sign and the imprint of all that has gone before
As a torch
To enlighten the forest of gloom and the
Mountains of unattained night.
And supposing the being entire
The tangible body standing
The visible limbs existing
And moving across the daylight
Or motionless in the darkness
A stone on the torrent’s bed
Or a torrent above the stones –
And at last
Such a being escapes from the sight of my visible eyes
From the touch of my tangible hand
For she only exists
Where all contradictions exist
Where darkness is light and the real is unreal and the
World is a dream in a dream.
p. 1936
EAU SIFFLÉE
La tête d’épines vertes
Cache de son ombre
Un sac – de quoi ?
Pourquoi ? Mais dites :
Les vieillards tombent de haut en bas
Comme des clous – mousse – lard
(Le mur est fendu)
N’est-ce pas ?
Nids de pâté
Dont les oiseaux s’en sont volés
Se cacher sous les ponts.
Et tout le temps
Immobiles et le plancher et le plafond,
Immobiles et rouges.
w. 1936
GOÛT DU JOUR
Today there is fur on the tongue of the wakening light
There is dust in the darkening streets
Whose tongue is brick dissolved in lime
The sound of sight
Reduced to ashes by the height of the bloom’s decay
In the caverns of the smell
Where moth-balls leap like mole-hills in the pocket of grey fowls
Thin grey fowls with leather gullets
And with claws of too much rain
Too much anthracite in pain
In the cities of the plain
Although anthrax is the secret of the way to find your way
From the paling of the pillars to the breaking of the bars
Where the breezy bellows stand in bright array
In order to allow their sound to breathe.
w. 1936, p. 1996
CAFARD
Sickness and charity like death’s heads tied to the mast
Return to the bottomless sea from whence they came
Where islands of snow sink like holes into the heart
And the revenge of death is remembered no more
By those whom the firmament betrayed
Life’s nebulous champagne is forgotten before it is drunk
For each of its bubbles is a brief lapse of its blood
Of the somnolent clay whose arms embrace the sleeper
And whose veins are of lead – life’s bouquet
Has lost all its scent for those who plucked it
Their senses are tied to the battlecry’s torn floating web
And the landscape’s oblivious light is
Where islands of snow sink like holes into the heart.
w. 1936, p. 1996
RÉCUPÉRATION
The gradual emergence of the
Instincts the hard sharp
Laughter of the sudden daylight
And out of the sleepy funnel
Of the waking mouth
Breath
Merges again with the waiting
Whiteness of what is to be.
w. 1936, p. 1996
FOOL’S PARADISE
The man dressed in armour
joins his hands and feet
and his body forms a ring
which spins round the chain that hangs from the torso of a racehorse
unseen by the crowd
who are busily building a tent
in the glare of a Bengal light
a tent that will soo
n be a ship
if it could but float
though that consideration is of no importance
what is important is that beans are getting sleepy
and will soon fall right off the plate
onto a fork made of soap
which will then sing the national anthem
through its nose
which is always a danger-signal to the ants
who will immediately cease work
form fives
and march through the streets to the house of the mayor of the town
who will stand on a chair
to deliver this speech to the world.
w. 1936, p. 1996
SYMPTOMATIC WORLD
The resinous globes of your sweat the moist hair
Of your savage tongue tying your head
To the branches that grow from your bed
Invite me to wrap you in sheets
Of precaution and cover your feet
Will beware of the wolves’ padded howl
The thin ghostly love of the planets the wool
And the rock of the tetanous scream
Of the half-melting needles
Your eyes
Your eyes like burnt leaves are beginning to fade
And the last rain will wash them away
Like the colour of sleet and the odour of putrified hay.
w. 1936, p. 1996
ELEGIAC STANZAS IN MEMORY OF ALBAN BERG
First draft
I
When a rich (sick) rose falls in flakes from its thorn-spiked stem
Its petals stain the dark eroded soil;
So tears fall heavily to stain the heart’s stone floor
A grief akin to madness sets its sudden springs
To leap without a cause from out our sleep
Our (jarring) nervous dreams
Until we shake with sorrow that we cannot name.
The rain with turbid drops adorns the leaves
Of rose-bushes that grow among the rocks
And stifle with their scent the chilly air.
It is the hour when disembodied heads,
The faces of the lost, glide, pensively
Across (Along/Among) the misty twilight (shadows) of this distant place, –
Cimmeria, the refuge of the shades.
On high
Striations of white light amaze the sky;
While round the staring lead-eyed pool below
A dull wind stirs the agony of reeds
Concentric ripples strike the water’s rim
Like echoes of a desperate final cry,
And (While) arrow-headed birds fly fast away.
II
The snake-like roads that writhe across the plains
The agonized cities and towns