Collected Poems 1931-74 Read Online Free PDF

sigil.
    To be or not to be at God’s suggestion.
    That is the question, to know or not to know.
    Smoke powder-blue and soft brass handles,
    The puma swoons among the silken candles,
    O Elsinore, my son, my son,
    Tiger of the zenith, heifer of the red herd,
    His fugue of flesh and ours in counterpoint,
    Which moves, or seems to move.
    It is only God’s breath in the nave,
    Moving the cinquefoils, only the footwork
    Of mongols, cretins, and mutes smelling of beer.
    (The candles breathe in their pollen)
    He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,
    Let him bear false witness,
    Cough out the candles, covet his neighbour.
    Let him crack the ten tablets, burn the puma,
    Set up as father, son and ghost,
    This, my black humour.
ANTHEM
    World without end means voyage beyond feeling.
    Trek without turning spells voyage without meaning.
    Being, seeing, is voyage at morning.
    Dying and praying are travel by kneeling.
II
    Friends, Romans, countrymen,
    Conduct his entry to soliloquy
    With this marginal ritual.
    We come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
    God will raise up his bachelor, this widow’s mite
    A foothold for the scientific worm.
    ( Deliver us from evil.
    Deliver us from the trauma of death ’ s pupil,
    From the forked tongue of devil,
    Deliver us from the vicar’s bubonic purple,
    From the canine hysteria, the lethal smile,
    O deliver us from botanical sleep,
    The canonical sugar, the rabbinical pose,
    Deliver us from death’s terrific pinnacle,
    Biological silence, a clinical sleep. )
    This man, my friends,
    The lion and the lizard keep,
    Mourned by the cottagers on windy porches,
    By the cracked hearth-stone, the calendar,
    Mourned at the vicarage among the larches:
    The shoe full of nails, the ploughboy
    Whetting his axe on a bush remembers,
    Recalls and regrets: Whom the Gods love
    Is death’s superlative decoy.
    Numen inest. Only the stone puma,
    Fluminous under the butter of candles,
    Shares this fierce humour.
ANTHEM
    Little man’ s food is brief barley.
    His patron is black malt.
    Afterwards death is his matron.
    Bringing musical bread:
    God with his footwork
    Bringing musical bread.
    Dipped in the heart’ s dark salt.
III
    Friends, Humans, Englishmen!
    Officer at the bar and gentleman in bed,
    Kings in your counting-houses, clerks at cricket,
    All you who play in this desperate game,
    Hopes of the side, the tenth wicket,
    Who will be certainly raised to the rank of aunt
    In the new millennium: permit
    The bromoid encomium of the harmonium,
    Wear the heart at half-mast and signal
    A feudal death of an old order,
    The dissolving warrior in his iron hat.
    Observe the soul’s decorum: stand, my son,
    Hymn number one.
ANTHEM
    Poor Tom, whose hope was sterile dust
    Now perches on an angel’s thumb.
    While cherubims with silky limbs
    Around him hymn and hum.
IV
    My uncle has entered his soliloquy;
    Under the black sigil the old white one
    Kneels in the Lamb’s blood,
    Hymned by portentous crotchets,
    Keeps his smart vigil.
    Puma of powder-blue whose stony lip
    Reflects the candles, with a mineral eye
    Covets the blood, but does not dare to sip.
    This man, my Romans, was a Roman,
    A breaker of skyline, took first prize
    In the regatta for men past menopause,
    Passed through the eye of the needle, broke
    The hug of the Great Bear, the hug
    Of a glacier’s hairy back and oxygen claws.
    Spat on Orion, left his shoes in a church,
    Hung a harp on every weeping willow,
    Took tiffin by the Indian bulrushes, saw
    The last deranged crater, swallowed the Word.
    Shot his bolt in the Gobi.
    Was left in the lurch,
    Then like a Roman, fell upon his sword.
    This prince, this bug, this human,
    Who sleeps under the great cat sleeping,
    Shares with the smiling paranoiac,
    Shares with the baby in the creeping-suit,
    An amniotic balance, the diver’s grief.
    Has followed a Roman nose past Mandalay,
    Ladybird on a leaf.
ANTHEM
    Simple addition, simple subtraction.
    One is left and the other is