From the tower of a quietly blazing mansion whirled a flock of doves, and the smell of their half-scorched feathers became confused with the scent of the countless damp and trampled plants that lay a-rotting on the terraces. And the sky flung a column of wind like a wide-flung scarf into the distance, where the earth was turning on its never-ending hinge.
p. 1937
TRANSPARENCY OF THE VEGETABLE WORLD SEEN FROM THREE PACES AWAY BY THE THREE FACES OF A FACTORY
then fawn is in the litigation of its repeatable tower
which is as clear as malt the spider of the glass dance
the dangerous glass dance of domes surmounted by smiles
and branching out towards the suns of oval fame
in tubes of nacre and of lipsalved iron
importunate as doves
but even the colossal egresses could not contend
with the stone bed of the marriage settlement
the stone bed in which the fiery boa lowered its hood in
order to see through the rent in the ceiling
through which poured the Thames
bastard is the thin imagery of the rickshaw’s cotton-wool
eyebath
it goes backwards and forwards like a dog
trying to unwind the binding of its malefic tail
and only succeeding in awakening the chorus of the buckets
in the yard of the hotel
where the flies which wear stays have burnt holes in
all the mangled heaps of spontaneous
combustion which so magnificently attains the summit of
the green yawning-mixture
the grey hoops of method and mild liturgy
the little soiled eggs which inhabit the hairdresser’s mouth
in the jug’s pierced heart the beehive is burning like a sceptre
and the vine-covered wall is enjoying the Princess’s foot
while the intermission regains the frequent equilibrium between
spraying the thorny surface of the vision with the
wild trace of a thousand confusions and a thousand
interplanetary speedboats’ echoes
and the gloved shock of a woven light-wave’s path
through the thicket of a swan’s coiled neck
before the day breaks upon China and removes the other swans
from their vapour-baths and holds them upside down above
the mountains
meanwhile the antipodes of the crystal break down into their
respective elements
which are
the night of the log palace
the calm of the medusa’s hair-net
the beetle of the western plains which breaks the lock of
rockplants’ wings
the flame-coloured fruit surmounting the debris of the necrophological ruin of Christ
the sap in the sex of the brain
and the beast with two toes whose music is like that
of the slow turning of eyes from side to side in the
great wind which blows out of the empty mansions on
the tops of the hills
the great wind which will blow down the last of the gallows of pride.
w. 1937–38, p. 1996
PHANTASMAGORIA
For Margaret W.
The wind has stopped at last
in that little black town on the edge of a violet sea
where a man in an upstairs-room of the empty house
which stands overlooking the yard of the Sodium Works
is sitting blindfold on the draughty floor
trying to hear the feeble groans of the North Pole inside his skull
and thinking of the iron teeth of Death
thinking of the rusty police-whistle chained to so many necks
of the last Act of Faust
of the cherry-coloured gown his mistress wore on that fatal night when she lost her head so irretrievably while sailing in a gondola
and of the incomparably curvilinear and seductive effect to be obtained
by writing one’s name in water
with the white of one’s own glass eye …
In this poor blackened town on the edge of a violet sea
the wind has left stray locks of hair behind
in almost every street –
locks which appear like loosely-knotted strands of twilight sleep
or fragments of Opal-tree bark
preserved in wine
and left all night to dry upon the steps of a Russian church …
These scattered tresses make the passers-by turn pale
then hurry home to disinfect their wells
They glitter faintly like the dust of poisoned stars
and hypnotize the gaze of the last birds still to remain
in that seaside town as black as a burnt cake
where the dead are sitting propped-up in the windows robed in flags
of all the nations – where the homeless night
is kept awake by Autumn’s chill aurora in the sky
and silence lolls like smoke along the disused harbour-quays …
And in this little town like a charred bun beside a sea
which stains its shores with blackberry-juice ink
the crowds continue playing their quaint melancholy games
in street and market-place although dense clouds of smoke
are pouring from the windows of the Luxury Hotel
in which the foreign guest in Room 13
swathed in red bandages from head to foot
lies thinking of the monkey’s-paw of Death
thinking of the frozen music in the eyes of statues
of the brutal naked beauty of a surgical machine
of his father’s raincoat gleaming in the twilight long ago
and of the fungus growing on the tree-trunk of Desire …
In that charcoal-black town on the edge of a vein-coloured sea
where shadow smoulders in the cave-like shops
and copper bells toll slowly all day long
the wheels of a great lacquered Rolls-Royce car
left lying in the middle of the main street upside-down
are to be seen months later still continuing to spin
in the tensely sensational glare of the naphtha torch
left burning there by the authorities to mark the fatal spot –
continuing still to spin like a soul in pain
like a tin-plate sent whirling out without a word through the window-bars of a condemned man’s cell
or like the breasts of Destiny revolving night and day …
And now that the day’s white wind has stopped at last
the hoofs of dusk go trampling through the hollow clouds on high
from beneath their rocks the scorpions of the darkness soon creep out
and faintly in the distance on all sides is to be heard
the dread hyena-laughter of the prehistoric Night …
Meanwhile through narrow twilit streets flock jostling throngs of masks –
red oblong leather faces stuck with clusters of tiny shells
faces of cheese with green protruding fangs
faces like pillows wet with tears and moulting feathers through the torn holes of their eyes
and snarling hairy faces like the hindquarters of apes
and sickly faces weak as greasy smudges left by flies
and hungry faces gaping like raw muddy graves in Spring …
The thoroughfares of Evening swarm with rapid shifting scenes
and everywhere the lamps of lust and terror thrust their beams
to scour the countless cage-like haunts of men with scorching light
while waves of sound roll out across the rooftops overhead –
waves swollen with dreamy cries and rumbling words
with the last thick sobs of harlots stabbed to death
and with that unbearably heart-rending melody which the blind old men who
live alone in freezing garrets are forever playing to themselves upon their broken violins …
See! here is a ring of dancers round a blazing marriage-bed
and here is a bunch of bearded dwarfs dangling chained by their heels from the top of a convent-wall
and here are the bones of a Saint which calmly float
upon the silken surface of a swimming-pool hewn from the heart of an amethyst-rock
in a glass-panelled coffin of cork lit-up inside on the stroke of midnight by a magnesium-flare …
Here is the Theatre standing open to the sky
in which dead flowers and moonlight perform ballets once an hour
and there the Children’s Home stands on the hill behind the town
where hidden in steep gardens among shadows and blue shrubs
an orphan whose huge head lolls like a glass-eyed hirsute globe
squats weeping in the dew-chilled herb of dreams
and thrusting the blade of his pen-knife ever deeper into his thigh
And here is the swift silhouette of a sphinx on a screen in the sky
Here is the abandoned saw-mill with its broken windows’ haggard gaze
and see! here the pair of superb nocturnal swans
each of which has been saddled with a mirror and firmly trussed to the back of a mule
and the mules stationed as sentries on either side the harbour’s mouth where every now and then they are washed gently from side to side by the changing tide …
And here among the dunes are strewn the battered hulks of wrecks
which ere the hour is far advanced abruptly rise into the air
and like a furtive school of whales go lunging inland through the night
to make their clumsy nests on the most lofty towers and domes;
while here upon the beach is the vast ballroom with invisible glass walls
across the luminous floor of which a hundred pairs of invisible slippers are picking their way among numberless pools of invisible blood …
And O how pungent is the firedamp’s musty fragrance in the hollow of each wave
that falls on the shore by that small black-eyed town on the edge of a heliotrope sea
where a man in a brilliantly illumined subterranean padded-cell
concealed at a depth of about 69 feet below the level of the ground –
(a man wearing a mask designed to resemble the head of a Paradise-bird
with a diamond-encrusted beak of solid gold
and clad in a sky-blue satin tunic across the front of which are embroidered in silver thread
the words SPITTOON – OSMOSIS – SINGAPORE) –
sits swinging regularly to and fro upon a platinum trapeze
and thinking of the iridescent and immobile nipples of Death
thinking of the vivid short-lived blossoms which are seen to sprout occasionally from the mouths of pregnant women
of how the midnight-sun drapes the landscapes of Arabia with invertebrate question-marks like plumes snatched from an ailing eagle’s tail
of the colourless abyss of idle days
of Mary calling home the cattle across the sands of Dee
and of the end of Summer with its interminable showers of salt and of soot …
But now that the great water-spouts of midnight have subsided out at sea
and that those barbaric cortèges of clouds swaying dangerously from side to side across the steeps of heaven
like sodden hayricks in a sudden storm
have finally all vanished one by one into the fuming workhouse-chimneys of the East –
now that the cavernous yawn of the lonely female Titan lying sleeping on the softly gleaming sands
has at last swallowed-up every starfish in sight –
the livid wind once more begins to lift,
stealthily weaving its fine-spun shawls in writhing swathes around
the radius of that small black seaside town
through which by now down each long soundless street
swarms of somnambulistic barefoot children creep
by slow degrees, still sealed by spell of dream,
towards where soon the spume-besilvered waves shall shine and seethe
as a new Sun soars like song out of the silence of the sea.
w. 1938, p. 1941
From HÖLDERLIN’S MADNESS
(1938)
HÖLDERLIN’S MADNESS
FIGURE IN A LANDSCAPE
The verdant valleys full of rivers
Sang a fresh song to the thirsty hills.
The rivers sang:
‘Our mother is the Night, into the Day we flow. The mills
Which toil our waters have no thirst. We flow
Like light.’
And the great birds
Which dwell among the rocks, flew down
Into the dales to drink, and their dark wings
Threw flying shades across the pastures green.
At dawn the rivers flowed into the sea.
The mountain birds
Rose out of sleep like a winged cloud, a single fleet
And flew into a newly-risen sun.
– Anger of the sun: the deadly blood-red rays which strike oblique
Through olive branches on the slopes and kill the kine.
– Tears of the sun: the summer evening rains which hang grey veils
Between the earth and sky, and soak the corn, and brim the lakes.
– Dream of the sun: the mists which swim down from the icy heights
And hide the gods who wander on the mountainsides at noon.
The sun was anguished, and the sea
Threw up its crested arms and cried aloud out of the depths;
And the white horses of the waves raced the black horses of the clouds;
The rocky peaks clawed at the sky like gnarled imploring hands;
And the black cypresses strained upwards like the sex of a hanged man.
*
Across the agonizing land there fled
Among the landscape’s limbs (the limbs
Of a vast denuded body torn and vanquished from within)
The chaste white road,
Prolonged into the distance like a plaint.
Between the opposition of the night and day
Between the opposition of the earth and sky
Between the opposition of the sea and land
Between the opposition of the landscape and the road
A traveller came
Whose only nudity his armour was
Against the whirlwind and the weapon, the undoing wound,
And met himself half-way.
Spectre as white as salt in the crude light of the sky
Spectre confronted by flesh, the present and past
Merge timelessly in time and pass away,
Dreamed face away from stricken face into the bourn
Of the unborn, and the real face of age into the fastnesses of death.
Infinitely small among the infinitely huge,
Drunk with the rising fluids of his breast, his boiling heart,
Exposed and naked as the skeleton – upon the knees
Like some tormented desert saint – he flung
The last curse of regret against Omnipotence.
And the lightning struck his face.
*
After the blow, the bruised earth blooms again,
The storm-wrack, wrack of the cloudy sea
Dissolve, the rocks relax,
As the pallid phallus sinks in the clear dawn
Of a new day, and the wild eyes melt and close,
And the eye of the sun is no more blind –
Clear milk of love, O lave the devastated vale,
And peace of high-noon, soothe the traveller’s pain
Whose hands still grope and clutch, whose head
Thrown back entreats the guerison
And music of your light!
&nbs
p; The valley rivers irrigate the land, the mills
Revolve, the hills are fecund with the cypress and the vine,
And the great eagles guard the mountain heights.
Above the peaks in mystery there sit
The Presences, the Unseen in the sky,
Inscrutable, whose influences like rays
Descend upon him, pass through and again
Like golden bees the hive of his lost head.
p. 1938
ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD
Curtains of rock
And tears of stone,
Wet leaves in a high crevice of the sky:
From side to side the draperies
Drawn back by rigid hands.
And he came carrying the shattered lyre,
And wearing the blue robes of a king,
And looking through eyes like holes torn in a screen;
And the distant sea was faintly heard,
From time to time, in the suddenly rising wind,
Like broken song.
Out of his sleep, from time to time,
From between half-open lips,
Escaped the bewildered words which try to tell
The tale of his bright night
And his wing-shadowed day
The soaring flights of thought beneath the sun
Above the islands of the seas
And all the deserts, all the pastures, all the plains
Of the distracting foreign land.
He sleeps with the broken lyre between his hands,
And round his slumber are drawn back
The rigid draperies, the tears and wet leaves,
Cold curtains of rock concealing the bottomless sky.
p. 1938
TENEBRAE
Brown darkness on the gazing face
In the cavern of candlelight reflects
The passing of the immaterial world in the deep eyes.
The granite organ in the crypt
Resounds with rising thunder through the blood,
With daylight song, unearthly song that floods
The brain with bursting suns:
Yet it is night.
It is the endless night, whose every star
Is in the spirit like the snow of dawn,
Whose meteors are the brilliance of summer,
And whose wind and rain
Are all the halcyon freshness of the valley rivers,
Where the swans,