One into the other pass, and crowds with flags
Rush over them, and clouds like acrobats
Swing on an invisible trapeze.
The light like a sharpened pencil
Writes histories of darkness on the wall,
While walls fall inwards, septic wounds
Burst open like sewn mouths, and rain
Eternally descends through planetary space.
We ask: Whence comes this light?
Whence comes the rain, the planetary
Silences, these aqueous monograms
Of our unique and isolated selves?
Only a dusty statue lifts and drops its hand …
p. 1934
SPECULATION
By marking off this footstep from that
And various other efficiencies of the day
One can easily dismiss the mind’s insistence
As to direction, one can protect
The suspicious eye by diversion from the
Horizon’s symmetrical doom, its carefully
Draped clouds, patterned stain, the rain
Coming in curtains of downward arrows, not
Yet felt upon the skin.
Though one must hear
Distant thunder, when the alert attention
Is drawn away from its visible manifesto
That can mean not omen, not cannon.
Can mean bold perhaps music or heavy
Traffic of increased commerce or crass
Stupid bodies’ collapse of those we loathed.
Shortly the arriving rain will lay a chill
Finger on the unprepared skin, then up-
ward focused eye, annoyed at disturbance will
Appreciate storm’s reality, appreciating
Folly past not fully, thinking Here’s a
Splendid show, what grandeur Nature in this mood
Displays! gazing around in idiot wonder till
The sudden lightning shatters skulls,
Melts bones, coagulates all blood.
p. 1934
SONNET
Progressing forward to the backward gates
With frequent conquests followed by despairs,
Divided thus and so the Soul repairs
Not to the tabernacle carved with dates
And stuffy with death-quiet, where there waits
Some chance of rediffusion, where a hand
Rises in blessing over this fast land,
But to null vacuum, as the wind states.
Or are there pastures somewhere off the track
Patterned with light of This and shade of That
Where pain and pleasure both alike fall flat …
The pilgrimage is weary and the heart
Ticks not so fast as at the giddy start.
Has not the hour arrived for turning back?
p. 1934
THEY SPOKE OF A NEW CITY
And they spoke of a new city, a new order
And as it were a new race of men who
Shared all one with another and thought
The same thoughts, to live there where
There was a new architecture which meant
Clean buildings light and ribbed strongly with
Steel, for theirs was the steel age, the age
Of machines (day and night throbbing and
Electricity always burning). One could
Imagine the muscular bare arms of the men
Moving like pistons, and the strange lights and
The streets and the marching, the plain food,
The stone vistas. One could imagine it all
Clear as a film when they spoke of
Revolution and the proletariat and of
Russia. To them the words of Lenin were
More beautiful than any poem. And they had
An incorrigible dialectic to bind together their
Images of flags and tools and workers’ unions. But
It seemed that this new city they spoke of
(Using an image) was to them only a
Utopia, or an escape for their minds from the
Dirty fly-blown offices where they worked,
The grey towns and the hard set faces
Of their ordinary neighbours, from the hard
Times and the narrow ways, because it was
Sordid to them to be working for only
Wages.
These young have the power, though, driven
By desperation and disgust, to carve upon the
Future that lies like an untouched jewel before them,
As a triumphant insignia marking the commencement
p. 1934
THE ROOTS OF EVIL
The roots of evil in the depths of silence
The silently boiling sea dissolves the rocks
And a depraved star takes root
On the foreheads of those whose days are numbered
Out of the black sack leaps the livid crime
A boneless cudgel with a blinding eye.
The roots of evil in the swollen landscape
The bright landscape of fountains and green dresses
Penetrating the rich sod of fallen fruit
Where foaming monsters gorge in the succulent mire
Poison the source of the sources and springs
The web of sweet waters enclosing its fields.
Pluck the roots from the flaming carapace
Pluck the hotel’s roots from the burglar’s alarum
Pluck the androgynous calumny from the midst of the tuppeny crabs
And the water will boil in the frozen jungle
The brainless acolyte will rush into the jungle
And the herds will come home.
p. 1934
GERMINAL
In a manner of speaking
I should in that manner indicate
That which has processed through my skull
Yesterday entering at the eyes and ears
Issuing tomorrow from the mouth
The marvellous is yet unborn
In the Manor of the Tongue
Seed fallen until now on stony ground
Spoken then
An announcement of future marvels.
p. 1935
GNU OPAQUE
No more resistance
No letters this morning
Tomorrow will be a fine day
Screeds of such blossomings
Should fill each lenten interval
Lobster-clawed love should diminish
On the roads leading to all countries
Famine veers away
They said maritime provinces
N or M
It isn’t easy to see in this light
And night writes no replies
p. 1934
MARROW
O talisman and all the rest
Where is the teeming myriad gone
I seem to see a mushroom growing upon the globe
Women are often spectral
They often walk down the street like banjos
Their eyes are often no more than mere scraps of paper
Incandescent mutability
Decrees that emotion goes early to bed
Metallic starshine of the mood
Indicates losing breath
Losing head and heart
In the shopwindows of the wind
Like watercress
Until I wear the close chaplet
There will be no more time for tears.
p. 1935
BAPTISM
Have had enough barbarity
But enough too of illusion
Dreams of peace
Walking in the water
Or upon it
With wet fingers on the brow
And sombre eyes turned upwards
No longer expectant but prepared
Have had enough of was …
Statement:
If you are
with us you are red.
p. 1935
FUTURE REFERENCE
The roof-garden was full of strangled flowers
Full of stones like feet and feet like fronds
There was a still pool in the garden’s eye
But now there is no more time to see
How in the unanimously carried vote of censure
There could be even a vestige of saltpetre
How could there be a voice talking in the annexe
How could there be a machine to reproduce trees
And if all these questions remain unanswered
It is not the fault of the cheese-mites
Those dainty creatures with fleur-de-lys on their breasts
No it is not my fault if the ovens get cold
Nor yours if the blades of the swords get warm
My little dog has folds of skin round his arse
That worry him all day long
My little Jesus my little Jesus what pretty curls you’ve got
What pretty pansies you wear in your seething hair
And if the oppressive odour of gelatine gets too much for you
Under your eyes will appear a whole hornets’ nest
To tickle your weeping glands.
But stay but stay you have not yet learnt to fly
You cannot climb stairs without chains round your knees
Nor will the sky descend to kiss you
Till every aquarium under the sun is broken
And duets are danced no more in the holes in the sand
For colossal fruits are about to fall from the trees
And every child in the world will be able to bite their pink flesh
A colossal thigh covered with veins
Is the monument to be raised on the seaswept shore
To all who have lost their lives in pursuit of a dream.
w.1935, p.1985
MAN’S LIFE IS THIS MEAT
(1936)
THE CHARIOT
At sound of heaven cracking, stars collide.
From trembling atmosphere such forms condense
As earth has never gazed upon before:
A chariot with horses, wheels immense.
The hills declare a prodigy, amazed
They wreathe the charioteer with omens proud.
He rushes through them utt’ring wildest cries,
Spurs on the horses, drives into a cloud.
The sea envisages huge wheels of flame,
Engulfs the mariner who only craves
Such vision of a violent sudden death.
The chariot crashes on between the waves.
In vain the firmament postpones its doom:
Its orbs disintegrate with hollow roar,
The chariot grinds their debris into dust
And rides into the infinite once more.
c. 1936
THE COLD RENUNCIATORY BEAUTY
The cold renunciatory beauty of those who would die
to hide their love from scornful fingers of the drab
is not that which glistens like wing or leaf in eyes
of erotic statues standing breast to chest
on high and open mountainside.
Complex draws tighter like a steel wire mesh
about the awkward bodies of those born under shame,
striping the tender flesh with blood like tears
flowing; their love they dare not name;
Each is divided by desire and fear.
The young sons of the hopeless blind shall strike
matches in the marble corridor and find
their bodies cool and white as the stone walls,
and shall embrace, emerging like mingled springs
on to the height to face the fearless sun.
c. 1936
LIGHT OF THE SUN OVER ARCTIC REGIONS
Light of the sun over arctic regions
Presides, striking the sides of icebergs
With slanting oblique rays, setting
The opaque snow translucently aglow,
Illumining blocks sedate in indigo depths.
There the unending fields of frost are blown
Upon by the harsh desolate blast;
The sun lacks warmth; alone at last
With wind from beyond, night from above and below,
Snow’s light is negative, white equals black.
On the heart’s bitter winter shines love’s face.
Breaking, a berg groans response;
A facet’s radiance, a moment’s melting
Are answer. Soon gone is the sun.
The frigid heart feels death’s wind only.
p. 1934
MORNING DISSERTATION
Wakening, peering through eye-windows, uncurious, not amazed,
Balance the day, know you lie there, think: I’m on earth.
Remember death walks in the daylight, and life still through filter seeps,
While you will remain unchanged, perhaps, throughout the day.
Time like an urgent finger moves across the chart,
But you are you, Time is not yours alone,
You are but one dot on the complex diagram.
Then are you a star, a nucleus, centre of moving points?
Are you a rock-crumb, broken from cliff, alone?
Or are you the point of a greater star, moving in unison?
If you are isolate, only a self, then petrify there where you stand;
Destinies crumble and bodies run down, the single sconces burn out,
But you are complete if without you completion is lacking,
Then you burn with the perfect light and are Time’s bodyman.
p. 1933
THE UNATTAINED
On the evening of a day on the threshold of Summer,
Before the full blast of vertiginous Summer, I flung
This foursquare body down upon the crumpled ground,
Moist with a dew-like sweat; and on all sides heard
The ceaseless clicking and fret of insect swarms;
I felt energy drain from these limbs spread cruciform,
Dribble away like sap from crushed bracken’s veins;
Felt this my heaviness upon acid-green grass and sand,
Under the passive sky, becoming magnetic as stone;
And my lids slid down over eyes fanned by coloured winds.
And fierce desires swelled up from out my quiet:
To pierce through this flesh outwards, to embrace
The eternal blue, against my nostrils to smother
The fragrant cotton of the clouds; to feel beneath
Impatient soles of feet the grinding grit
Of gravel, the sharp sides of stones; and without end
Against the eyeballs’ skin to press fresh images,
To lave in the swift stream of forms these avid eyes:
By passion suspended, hands stretched out, gnawed
From within, O how and to where could I pass?
Not within facile grasp swings that unattainable globe:
Though to catch an echo of the spheres’ music these ears strain
And nostrils yearn for the rich scent of flame and of blood,
Hands strive clumsily phantom’s ambiguous flesh to caress,
In vain the inward divinity batters against the gates,
Kicking against the pricks until the urgent spirit breaks.
Hourly the ocean, World’s clock, smashes against the cliffs;
And savage relentless Time shreds onwards through the skull,
Whispers: ‘Come home, only Death burns out there’. And I know
That this is my body, my cell, and I am alone and prone.
p. 1934
REINTEGRATION
After a plenitude of defeat, a load of sorrow.
Forget your coward victories, your crown of thorns,
And send the sulky eye-witness away;
Block out that solitary figure, the proud
Indomitable one. Hack down the heavy
black
Statue. And because you can only remember
The darkest days of defeat, your weariness,
Because you can see but death’s sinister finger
Always pointing to the shadowed wall,
Raise no more gloomy monuments, or build
A more transparent wall.
And listen
To the rich voice like flute-voice breaking
Suddenly from the white marble larynx;
Sunlight breaking suddenly upon the naked torso
Like the rustling down of a flimsy dress.
Listening, join proud singing with the voice,
As the sound of an inland sea now freed,
Smashing its winter cage of ice and rushing
With liquid arms and hands of foam uplifted
Across the frozen lands toward the outer seas.
p. 1934
NO SOLUTION
Above and below
The roll of days spread out like a cloth
Days engraved on everyone’s forehead
Yesterday folding Tomorrow opening
Today like a horse without a rider
Today a drop of water falling into a lake
Today a white light above and below
A fan of days held in a virgin hand
A burning taper burning paper
And you can turn back no longer
No longer stand still
The words of poems curling among the ashes
Hieroglyphics of larger despairs than ours.
c. 1936
DIRECT RESPONSE
The four elements are sitting at the table
There is a shipwreck on the sands
A warm hand in the mist
Flowers turn colour in the mist
Without moving
Sensitive needle at the extremity of breathing
What can you etch upon the eyes’ quick web?
Up to your middle in the dewy grass
Whose profile can you sketch upon their filmy screen?
I have long forgotten why I am young
A bird’s blue shadow trembles on my breasts
A bird’s song blossoms from the water
Till my neck bends back in a curve like stone
And I am neither white nor warm nor cold
c. 1936
THE LAST HEAD
In the warm sand-coloured room at the end of the watery road