Collected Poems 1931-74 Read Online Free PDF Page B

taken:
    Simple condition but multiple fraction.
    One is a doll: the other will waken.
    Simple reflection, simple refraction.
    Plus or minus, but never just ONE.
    Simple equation but multiple action
    Ten little nigger boys: now there are none.
V
    My uncle has entered his soliloquy.
    The candles shed their fur.
    O world be nobler for her sake.
    The boys hang in the vestry, the days
    Are drawing in. Blow out the flesh,
    The three-score ten of candles,
    This squalid birthday-cake.
    Give us to God with slim and shining handles.
    All this Peter and Paul knew,
    Talked over in the nazarene evenings,
    Walked over Galilee arm in arm,
    Moved by no wires, by pure imagination.
    The prophet who sat under the tall rock
    Wrote in a small pure hand this canon
    For stockbrokers to read at Cannon Street,
    At the Metropole, around the Maypole,
    Or smiling in the Ritz: perhaps to endow
    An evening conversation at the Plough.
    Cousin Judas, let us admit
    It is the hour for affirmations,
    Let us affirm the no-claim bonus,
    The wages of sin, let us admit
    Chaos itself as a form of order,
    Bear the sinner’s pretty onus,
    Rediscover the taste of ashes,
    Crucify the choirboys: and above all
    Preserve the senseless trajectory,
    The doom of the bobbin in the loom,
    From the rectory to the priory,
    From bed to refectory,
    From little womb eke to little tomb.
    In the name of the Great Whale, then,
    Be hale and whole! Amen.
    1943/ 1938

EGYPTIAN POEM
    EGYPTIAN POEM 1
    And to-day death comes to the house.
    To-day upon the waters, the sunset sail,
    Death enters and the swallow’s eye
    Under the roof is no larger and darker
    Than this scent of death.
    A disciple crossed over by water.
    The acorn was planted.
    In the Ionian villa among the marble
    The fountain plays the sea’s piano,
    And by the clock the geometric philosopher
    Walks in white linen while death
    Squats in the swallow’s eye.
    The dogs are muzzled. Lord,
    See to the outer gate, our protection.
    I rest between the born and the unborn.
    The father, the mother, the baby unicorn
    Intercede for me, attended the christening.
    Exempt me.
    I have friends in the underworld.
    1943/ 1 938
    1 Originally published as ‘Egyptian Pastiche’.

CAROL ON CORFU
    (1937)
    I, per se I, I sing on.
    Let flesh falter, or let bone break
    Break, yet the salt of a poem holds on,
    Even in empty weather
    When beak and feather have done.
    I am such fiddle-glib strokes,
    As play on the nerves, glance the bare bone
    With the madman’s verve I quicken,
    Leaven and liven body’s prime carbon,
    I, per se I, alone.
    This is my medicine: trees speak and doves
    Talk, woods walk: in the pith of the planet
    Is undertone, overtone, status of music: God
    Opens each fent, scent, memory, aftermath
    In the sky and the sod.
    O per se O, I sing on.
    Never tongue falters or love lessens,
    Lessens. The salt of the poem lives on
    Like this carol of empty weather
    Now feather and beak have gone.
    1943/ 1938

LINES TO MUSIC
    Ride out at midnight,
    You will meet your sun.
    Into what arsenal now seem fallen
    The germs of the plum and the peppercorn?
    The born and the unborn will report
    What poison licks the wheat,
    Or in the melon’s gold retort
    Repeat what melody fattens the leopard
    From his mother’s dusky teat.
    Ride out at midnight
    And number the sparrows.
    Who put great wings to the Ark?
    Who gave the unicorn spurs?
    Only the women with thighs like mackerel,
    Nourish the germ of the man of sorrows,
    Are true to their monsters.
    Be you to yours.
    1960/ 1938

THEMES HERALDIC
    I
    If I say what I honestly mean
    It’s only because
    I honestly mean what I say.
    Shall I renounce you for a new theme
    Who are a warm green stone, green girl,
    Warm in a white bone bed?
    It is no victory to write you,
    But to become you. Gnosis
    By osmosis. Knowing in becoming.
    Desire is quite heraldic yet—
    A lion or griffin on a playing-card,
    Or Fiat Voluntas, and a page of uncials.
    What do we care, though? I imagine