Collected Poems 1931-74
Page 4
Well, God sends weather, the English apple,
The weeping willow.
Grum lies the consort of Prudence quite:
Mum as a long fiddle in regimentals:
This sudden IT between two tropical thumbs.
Unwrinkle him, Lord, unriddle this strange gorgon,
For tall Prudence who softens the small lamps,
Gives humble air to the organ that it hums.
IV
My uncle sleeps in the image of death.
Not a bad sport the boys will tell you,
More than a spartan in tartan.
Yet he, fearing neither God nor man,
Feared suffocation by marble,
Wrote a will in hexameters, burnt the cakes,
Came through with the cavalry, ladies from hell,
Feared neither God nor man,
Devoted to the polo-pony, mesmerized by stamps.
Now in the stable the hypnotic horse-flesh
Champ, stamp, yawn, paw in the straw,
And in the bedroom the blind warhorse
Gallops all night the dark fields of Dis.
V
My uncle has gone beyond astronomy.
His sleep is of the Babylonian deep-sea
Darker than bitumen, defter than devil’s alliances.
He has seen Golgotha in carnival:
Now in the shin-bone the smart worm
Presides at the death of the sciences,
The Trinity sleeps in his knee.
Curse Orion who pins my man like moth,
Who sleeps in the monotony of his zone,
Who is a daft ankle-bone among stars,
O shame on the beggar by silent lands
Who has nothing but carbon for his own.
Uncouple the flutes! Strike with the black rod!
Our song is no more plural, the bones
Are hollow without your air, Lord God.
Give us the language of diamonds or
The speech of the little stones.
VI
Prudence shall cross also the great white barrier.
God shall fold finally up the great fan—
Benevolent wings wheeling over the rectory,
The vicar, the thatcher, the rat-catcher,
Sure in this medicine help her all they can.
O she is sure in step with the step of the Master.
Winter loosens the apple, fastens the Eskimo.
Wearing his pug-marks for slippers shall follow,
Holding to common prayer, the Great Bear;
Over the Poles, wherever his voyages go.
Shall navigate also the great circle,
Confer with the serious mammoth, the sabre-tooth,
Come to the sole goal, palace of higher things,
Where God’s good silverware spills on all faces,
And hazardously the good wizard, gives wings.
VII
My uncle sleeps in the image of death.
He sleeps the steep sleep of his zone,
His downward tilting sleep beyond alarm.
Heu! he will come to harm so alone.
Who says for him the things he dare not say?
He cannot speak to angels from his rock.
This pediment of sleep is his impediment.
Grant him the speech of sleep,
Not this dank slag, the deathward sediment.
Strike with the rod, Lord God.
Here was a ruddy bareback man,
Emptied his blood upon the frozen lake,
Wheeled back the screaming mares,
Crossing the Jordan.
Excuse me, Lord God, numberer of hairs,
Sender of telegrams, the poisoned arrow,
Suffer your faithful hound, give him
At least the portion of the common sparrow.
VIII
My uncle has gone beyond astronomy.
Three, six, nine of the dead languages
Are folded under his lip.
He has crossed over into Tartary,
Burnt his boats, dragged the black ice for bodies,
Seen trees in the water, skippered God’s little ship.
He is now luggage, excess baggage,
Not wanted on voyage, scaling a pass,
Or swinging a cutlass in the Caribbean,
Under Barbados chewing the frantic marsh-rice,
Seven dead men, a crooked foot, a cracked jaw,
Ten teeth like hollow dice.
My uncle is sleeping in economy.
No word is wasted for the common ghost
Speaks inwards: he lies in the status
Of death’s dumb music, the dumb dead king
On an ivory coast.
IX
Prudence had no dog and but one cat,
Black of bonnet the Lord’s plain precept saw
At the at-home, on Calvary, in the darkest nook
He was there; He leaned on a window smiling,
The God Shepherd crooking his ghostly crook.
Prudence did dip and delve in the Holy Book,
Alpha to omega angels told her the tale,
Feeding the parrot, pensive over a croquet-hoop:
‘Once upon a time was boy and girl,
Living on cherry, berry, fisherman’s silver catch.
Now the crass cock crows in the coop,
Prudence, the door dangles, lacking a latch.’
X
My uncle has gone beyond astronomy.
He sleeps the sharp sleep of the unstrung harp.
Crossed into Tartary, he lies deep
In the flora and fauna of death,
Under a black snowline sleeps the steep,
Botanical, plant-pure sleep.
The soul is folded like a little mouse.
Body is mortuary here, the clock
Foiled in its own wheels—but he may be sleeping,
Even if no toe moves no where, the sock
Be empty of all but vessels—where is he creeping?
Where is my man’s address? How does he perish
Who was my relish, who was without fault?
Strike with the black rod, Lord God.
This is the marmoreal person, the rocky one.
This is the pillar of savourless salt.
XI
My uncle has gone beyond astronomy.
He sleeps in the pocket of Lapland,
Hears thunder on a Monday, has known
Bone burn to ash for the urn’s hold.
He has fine nails of his finger and of his toe.
Now colder than spittle is his mettle. The hand
Is cold bone touching cold stone. So
In the sad womb he plays the trump of doom.
Lord, here is music. This fine white ’cello
Hums no more to the gust of your air.
This supercilious fellow, think what was given
To nourish his engine, salt barley and beer.
All wasted, gone over, destroyed by death’s leaven,
Scent of the apple and stain of the berry.
Now only the ignorant hedgehog dare,
Smelling the fruit in him, dance and be merry.
XII
Prudence was told the tale of the chimney-corner
In the ingle beetled over the red troll’s book
Ate the white lie: ‘Happily ever after,
A hunchback, a thimble, a smart swan,
Ride time’s tall wave, musically on and on …’
Was it of God to bait and wait with the hook?
Was it of him black laughter at ‘happily ever after’,
A grass widow, a shadow embalmed in a story-book?
Memory is morsels offered of sparrows.
First prize a jug and bowl for correcting the clock,
Sending a telegram, gathering holy campion.
Lowly Prue is glum of finger and thumb,
Toe in the ember, dismembering spools of knitting.
Patience on a monument, passion on a cu
shion.
God’s champion darning a sock, sitting.
XIII
My uncle sleeps in the image of death.
The shadow of other worlds, deep-water penumbra
Covers his marble: he is past sighing,
Body a great slug there, a fine white
Pike in a green pond lying.
My uncle was a red man. The dead man
Knew to shoe horses: the habits of the owl,
Time of tillage, foison, cutting of lumber,
Like Saint Columba,
Could coax the squirrels into his cowl.
Heu! for the tombeau, the sombre flambeau,
Immanent with God he lies in Limbo.
Break punic rock. Weather-man of the tomb,
We are left among little mice and insects,
Time’s clock-work womb.
XIV
Prudence sweetly sang both crotchet and quaver,
Death riped an eyeball, the dog-days
Proffered salt without savour, the cards were cut.
She heard a primordial music, the Host’s tune
For the guest’s swoon—God going the gamut.
Honour a toast for the regimental mascot,
The thin girl, the boys of the blue fourteenth,
Driving to Ascot: a wedding under the sabres,
Tinker and tailorman, soldier or sailor,
Lads of the village entering harbour,
O respect also those windowless features,
The stainless face of the provincial barber.
Prudence plays monumental patience by candles:
The puffins sit in a book: the muffins are molten:
The crass clock chimes,
Timely the hour and deserved.
Presently will come the two welcome angels
Noise in the hall, the last supper be served.
1943/1938
FIVE SOLILOQUIES UPON THE TOMB OF UNCEBUNKE
I
My uncle has entered his soliloquy.
He keeps vigil under the black 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 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 POEM1
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,