Object to negligée. I was far too hot.
It’s such a pleasure to find now and then
Friends who do not just look like gentlemen.
LE DUC DE PROFIL:
Dear Dame, we are most flattered by the candour
It pleases you to show towards us and our
Best feelings, I assure you, are excited
By this display of favour. I’m delighted
To find it was not a mistaken hunch
I had about you. Now let’s have our lunch.
LE COMTE D’À CÔTÉ:
Let’s hope no herd of any kind will pass.
Not only cows, you know, lunch upon grass.
LA DEMOISELLE AU FOND DE LA TOILE:
I should imagine that huge meal they’ve had’ll
Make them too sleepy much to want to paddle.
c. 1950
THE DECAY OF DECENCY
When Man becomes what he calls ‘adult’ and stops taking himself too seriously
He is apt to get oddly pedantic about the proprieties while even more loose-mouthed than ever
Should anyone foolishly tarnish their honour by calling his into dispute.
A jealous prude, this much (though, alas! unavailingly) chipped blockhead
Is always able to preserve his dignity and our decorum in even the most embarrassing situations
Provided the common law still allow him a remnant of the old apron-cloth with which to camouflage his flyblown shame.
Proud resident of no mean or indecent city, he can be trusted always to think of shielding his neighbour
Who may although bald be still nevertheless immature,
From the horror of being debauched by an unwonted glimpse
Of the unavoidably material source of the carnal life whose too often notorious facts
Are not, when unvarnished, the kind one can mention in public, in verse or to even, of course, one’s own wife,
So deep-rooted, apparently, is our innate sense of reverence for whatever must never be spoken of
Till all representatives of the gallant little Sex the Serpent seduced have withdrawn to another room,
Or as resoundingly and full-bloodedly as you like so long as it’s only in good clean working-class fun!
Should some contradiction begin to appear in the bourgeois conventions, it can be explained
As due to the obstinate whims of our animal nature, but nowadays not, if you please,
By referring to what we no longer regard as a dogma, our dreadfully common first parents’ Fall.
Take away a man’s responsibility to our self-respect, and you may rob him of half his charm.
c. 1950
WITH A CORNET OF WINKLES
(VERS DE CIRCONSTANCE)*
O bravo! For a maladif, mandarin-miened, mauve melody-man
With a glittering, lissom, pat-prattling lute –
Que c’est beau! as he lo! hums and haws,
And soon again haws, then heigh-ho! how he hums
And whilom most becomingly strums
On his poignantly Quince-flavoured lute!
Ah! what is it, the sensitive rattling of lute-players? What
Is it that makes them persist undeterred by the glees
Of the slums’ glum goloshes-clad mummers
Who in average summers become far more raucous than we
Ever dared (my shy mandolin!) be: for much cow-heel and hot
Cake – nothing rare, just plain fare – ever wait
For glee-singers to guzzle as soon as they’re through
With their dreary commercial drum-dub rub-a-dub (there’s the rub!)
But in Hartford all’s mum for a mo
I mean moment: as finicking wryly with curedent that one
Still remaining Romanticist who’s fully weaned of such pap
(If from involute vocables glibly redundant mayhap
Not so drastically weaned as he might be!), the Great
Gabbo, sole plum among lute-players left
To preserve some bravura or any finesse and who yet
Would never have dreamed of abandoning strumming unless
He’d been vexed (as he has) by the pip of some fruit
Among molars illicitly lingering, – ceases
Perforce to oblige with the teetering tittery-tum
Ti-tumtum titivating of his lacquered lute:
Willy-nilly sit silent. Is not the hush rum?
Yet withal scarcely more rum, – and rum quite a lot
Will agree it does seem, – than that one should these rum rumin-
Ations style (aptly? or do you think otherwise? Ah!) philosophical:
Though that’s what this old-master lute-master opines
That his airy (Hurray! Tipperary for ever!), his endlessly
Varied echt-lyrical lute-dittiesare!’Tra-la-la!’
One might here interject, without being inept. I had not,
I confess, ever fully imagined how rum they might be
(Ruminations), if once but a maladif, canny, a hey-de-ho whole-
Heartedly cogitatorial maître-de-luth
Were to get un vrai goût for Philosophy. What as we but
A brief moment ago were about to enquire: What the Hell, O but What
Are the, or rather, what is (put it plainly) the point
Of this perfectly awful attempt at a parody, piffling without
Doubt to the point of provoking a petulant pout
Of disdainful demur (a mere moue, that will do)?
Tootle-loo, Tilly-loo, for no earthly Poetic What’s-What & Who’s-Who will now ever again deign so much as to look at these too
Caca-caca-cacophonous doodlings of mine
And not think them impudent snook-cocking. Candidly, look you, what do
People put up so patiently with them for? Answer: Nein, nein,
Far from it, they don’t, don’t deceive yourself; and what is more
‘The Corn’s Blue!’
p. 1950
* This tribute to Wallace Stevens was written before he won the Bollingen Prize in 1950.
THREE CABARET SONGS
1 A BRIEF BALLAD OF THE PARALYSED UPPER LIP
Oh, the Bland Maid of Kensington,
She Lived there in Sin
With a Bluff Ex-Young Ladies’ Man
With a Permanent Grin.
Oh, the Life that he Led her there
Was Well-dressed, but so Slow
That she Longed to Abandon him
Yet could never quite Let go.
Oh, he Grinned at her Frailty,
She smiled at his Pride!
And Long though this lasted
They neither of them Died
But Continued in Kensington
To Adorn every Day
The Saloons of Three Locals
Well-known to be Gay,
Where her Blandness, his Bluffness
Continued to the End
To Convince all Acquaintances
That She was his Friend!
Oh, what really is Dreary
About all such Brave Pairs
Is that Being Godforsaken
Is the Least of their Cares.
2 WHAT A WAY TO WALK INTO MY PARLOUR, LITTLE MAN!
Ere the hour for aperitif’s over
Take care your tongue doesn’t work too loose,
Though if you want wit, you’re in clover!
This young woman, you see, is no blue goose
Nor green-stocking, by Jove!
If you’re looking for someone to lie to
About all the fictitious feelings
You feel you should feel, my reply to
Your ogling is, I have no dealings
With people unreal.
Keep your labels for people who need them;
I cannot be pigeonholed neatly.
As for your ideals, I exceed them
So far, I surpass them completely
Please beat a retreat.
Let me tell you that all this persi
stence
Is worse than absurd, and I must say
What I see of your mode of existence
Inspires in me only disgust. Lay
Off, Less-than-the-dust!
3 SIZZLING SECLUSION: RUMBA
Don’t murmur or mut-
Ter: No, no! or: Tut-tut!
I’m deep in the rut
Your scent rouses.
It’s too hot for a hut
Or a bungalow but
I’ve had such a glut
of pent-houses.
I could just make do
With a wigwam for two
Though I’m not going to stew
In a leather one:
One of muslin instead,
Draped around a deep bed,
A soft feather one …
c. 1950
ENCOUNTER WITH SILENCE POEMS 1950
(1998)
GIVE UP DEAD WORDS
Salt sea can swallow all who thirst
while our vocabulary
On losing its once saline virtue’s not become
more fresh.
With froth-flecked lips we mouth
our pithy apothegms and try
Not to put on thereby too great a weight
for our frail flesh.
w. 1950
STELE
The most enduring final statement
Is the silence we don’t hear.
It digests everything.
Silence that’s never known this side of death.
Try for a moment to experience it.
For Nothing just makes its own unquiet noise,
A sort of famished gasping in the eardrums,
An ever-ending syllable of suppressed anguish.
w. 1950
TERMINAL
Poetry? I too dislike it …’ (M. Moore)
The most enduring massive statement
Is the silence no-one hears.
It sums up everything.
There is no silence on this side of death.
Listen to any muted moment
When all is quiet. You will not hear it.
Yet it is under all and overhead
Not less indubitable than the firmament.
It is itself the Word.
It affords vast relief
To recollect that it is being spoken
Making inept all tongues that would compete.
w. 1950
FRAGMENT FROM AN UNFINISHED/UNPUBLISHED POEM
Among the citizens inhabiting this City,
One hungers, labours, seeks for food and shelter;
One climbs the escalators, waits in queues, one seeks for faces
That are alive (here all wear masks); one fights
Amongst these citizens for life and breath and bread,
One fights with a set face, one fights and falls
Asleep, alone, in a hired room, upon a bed
Uncounted strangers have already slept in – Halt!
There is no way to overthrow this City;
There is no tunnel dug in sleep beneath
This City through which you might find a way
To creep to any Paradise that would not fade
Like rainbow mists transformed to soiled bedcoverings
At stroke of automatic dawn. Yet halt!
Turn, and consider, see yourself a moment, stare
Into the glass I bring you. It reflects
You. See how fair
The centre of this City lies in summer in the sun
That –
w. 1950
UNTITLED
Mist and damp
Roll down lanes up roads
Dark is day
Sounds all wrapped up [are muffled]
The heart’s pain
Knows no remittance
Horizon’s bare
Time immobile
I who know no-one
Am turning a stranger
Have long been too silent
Shall stay [keep] silent longer
Whatsoever I say
I remain unexpressed
I believed in meaning
Who am I?
w. 1950
SATURNALIA
(fragment)
Beneath broad sunlight bent and sweating, chilled
In spite of all our garments by the zero underneath
Upon perdition pondering, rehearsing inwardly
Long rigmaroles of self-defence and calumny, we go
The tortuous hard way towards uncertainty out of
The pit of ages. Harsh is our music. Masks
Like snail-shells are become the smooth and whorled
Concealment we excrete to hide our softness from ourselves.
We shake if silence falls like withered leaves, we fall
A-shaking in mid-winter’s silent blast: therefore great noise
We used always to quieten us, crescendo of uproar
To trample down all elegiac echoes, cog-wheels, clogs,
Bad bells and beating blades and drums, drums, bleating tongues
To blend in undertone behind/beneath the screech distorting speech
With falsehood’s rising passion for dominion over all
And reaffirming thus by yearly festival in play
That the whole building of Man’s earthly City
Is under rule of powers underneath him
Controlled and armed by the martial law of Pluto.
[Briefed copywriters meanwhile make brisk sales-talk of the tale
Of terror or contempt that each day spills.
With eyes averted from the holy stars, and hands
Clenched tightly round the weapon one must bear
If one would make one’s way about this world
We trudge unwillingly the deepworn tracks]
Site of what once were annually waged [played] games
Uniting Earth and Hell in common daylight
(And seldom guess what heavy chains we bear)
A different version of the bracketed lines […] appears below:
Meanwhile briefed copywriters make brisk sales-talk of the tale
Of terror and contempt that each day tells
And with our eyes averted from the stars,
And hands tight clenched about the weapon one must bear
If one would make one’s way about this world
We trudge weary to judgement each on his own winding track
Another draft (undated) of the opening 13–14 lines is in the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa:
Beneath the sun’s rays bent and sweating, cold
Despite thick garments because zero reigns within;
Upon perdition pondering, unwinding without end
The rigmaroles of calumny and self-defence, they go
The tortuous hard way towards uncertainty out of
The pit of ages past, making harsh music. Masks
Are on their faces grown like snailshells, brittle, smooth
Concealment they excrete to hide their softness from themselves.
Should silence fall, they shake like withered leaves,
They fall as tho’ blown down by winter’s blasts;
therefore great noise
Is needed then to quieten them, outbursting uproar
Crescendoing to smother every elegiac echo,
crescendoing uproar
Alone restores their calm; they crave the crash
Of guns, the whirr of wheels
Of cannonfire, the whirr of wheels, the blare of brass and bells …
w. 1950
THE BOMB-SITE ANCHORITE
Fragment of an abandoned poem
In Homage to Alan Clodd,
Faithful Friend and Publisher
If now to memory’s retina his face
Returns to tremble into brief relief
More frequently than most do, that might be
&nb
sp; Because of the abnormal evening glare
By which his features were so keenly lit
When first I focused eyes on him, a light
That forced, as though in search of dirt and guilt,
Its way into the least pothole or crack
Of every surface that it fell upon,
Making all that I saw seem as though scoured
By the flushed sky’s abrasive radiance
And then on my attentive notice thrust with an
Especially didactic purpose; so that when
He first lurched into view on that canal-bank
Out of the indigo beneath an iron bridge
And then stood looking up to where I sat
Some feet above him on a pile of paving-stones,
It may have seemed to him my eyes beheld him
With an unusual famished zest. He met my gaze
With blank, unyielding imperturbability
Which at once made him an enigma to me …
w. 1948–9, p. 1990
A POST-CARD FROM VENICE TO T.S.E.
The pigeons and the floating population fraternize,
Or seem to; though birds get too deep in grain to notice class.
To pose among them Baedeker in hand, with a cigar,
Wishing some Princess predatory as Volupine would pass.
P. S.
Lucky for B. it was not on the bell-tower
He was together with her in that fell hour.
w. 1950
WHO ARE THE ORTHOSEXUAL?
How unkind are those models of their kind
The heterogeneous orthodox who would forbid
Me to express a warmth springing, not from my mind
But from the blood, and force it to stay hid
Behind a false hard heart like those they wear
Upon their sleeves, as on their chests crêpe hair.
L’HOMME ASSEZ MOYEN (pas très sensuel)
He did not care for too tempestuous cries
Nor for the passions that cause jaws to lather.
He looked upon the world with wry dry eyes
And saw it was not very, nay, but rather.
w. 1950
OTHER POEMS
1950–1956
QU’EST-CE QUE LA DÉCADENCE?
Jeune homme qui n’as peut-être connu que vingt-cinq été
Entendu tout nu sur l’herbe verte fraîche d’une prairie