ilex. Your face. You jus like a flex
where the bulb failed. Flail
upon Bahrein, at one hundred-odd degrees
at four in the morning, where the ofays’ cameras
were dutyless.—
Muscle my whack. We gotta trickle. Seize
them Moslem testicles, and pull. Please
hurt my owner, twice.
274
It’s lovely just here now in the midst of night:
cool. I take back some of my imprecations,
some. I turn the fan off.
The twenty-score people who count on me for tomorrow
probably will be satisfied. Maybe I will.
The summer has been rough,
I’ve booked our passage to a greener scene
and there my soul is earning. My insulted body
though still is earning here.
My o’ertaxed brain, in its units, hangs on between.
It even keeps an office hour, a strange lady
rang up today to know when.
We’ll do our best for the lady and the hundreds
and we will do our best for the cause of the brain
though sea-foam tugs
eastward my heart, my manuscripts are ready
for transport, and suddenly it all seems quite sane
to a man who has rolled up the rugs.
275
July 11
And yet I find myself able, at this deep point,
to carry out my duties: I lecture, I write.
I am even lecturing well,
I threw two chairs the janitors had piled
on the podium to the floor of the lecture hall:
the students were amazed
it was good for them, action in the midst of thought,
an angry Zen touch, something not written down
except in the diaries
of the unknown devoted ones of the 115:
‘Master Henry is approaching his limit.’
A little more whiskey please.
A little more whiskey please. Something’s gotta give
either in edgy Henry or the environment:
the conflict cannot last,
I soothe myself with, though for 50 years
the war’s made headlines. Waiting for fall
and the cold fogs thereof
in delicious Ireland.
276
Henry’s Farewell—I
He tossed a farewell party for his pals
who all at once sat up to groom their wives
to California’s airs,
leaving Henryville bereft, carnivals-
cum-intellect closed down now, off in pairs
they flew to lead fresh lives
alas, which was their perfect right, alas.
Henry repaired to Dublin, showing his back,
to thrive on shanty-talk.
‘They’ll miss me too’ he muttered, and ‘A sorry pass,
when the best are so dispersed one has to chalk
up thousands of miles for one crack
or canny reference’ shaking his head he groaned
and grinned at his green friends across his stout
but his heart was not in it, his heart was out
with the loss of friends now to be telephoned
only when drunk and at enormous cost:
he gnashed out a lonesome toast.
277
Henry’s Farewell—II
Willing them well! He hoped would not collapse
at once their institutions new, and houses.
His was firm enough.
He’d look for them hereafter on his maps,
with wives’ details in letters: Henry loved,
a scholar who swoops, who browses,
the daily far routine of all his friends
living, and he grew very good at it:
coward is high by ten,
mostly by noon the poets have made amends
and downed their guilt toward that of other men,
O and far scholars sit
baffled or flourish! You’re for better jobs,
I bless you in their outcomes, with a Liffey grin:
Henry is out, you’re in,
long-term: spark him a formula for mobs
you’ll tally no more: here’s to your tiny classes
tanned lads & opulent lasses
and therefore all your grand works we’ll see win
278
Henry’s Farewell—III
Fail may your enemies, abundant here,
in that most happy clime. Play it by ear
out there until all’s straight
and may no rudeness interrupt your play.
One decade’s war forget, in which, I may say,
we’ve scarcely won a battle to this date.
Fresh from the woodwork issued our blue foes
botanists & peasants of elementary german
drones, drones in the hive
Faction ran wild & so did many vermin
fresh from their woodwork and we bore their blows
& carried on our work alive.
I fear the queen is swarming, toward the west
taking her chosen workers, for a stunt
leaving behind her Henry.
No harm in that, the old survival test.
Pardon my sore toast, nominal & blunt
& let’s get on toward the sea.
VII
279
Leaving behind the country of the dead
where he must then return & die himself
he set his tired face due East
where the sun rushes up the North Atlantic
and where had paused a little the war for bread
& the war for status had ceased
forever, and he took with him five books,
a Whitman & a Purgatorio,
a one-volume dictionary,
an Oxford Bible with all its bays & nooks
& bafflements long familiar to Henry
& one other new book-O.
If ever he had crafted in the past—
but only if—he swore now to craft better
which lay in the Hands above.
He said: I’ll work on slow, O slow & fast,
if a letter comes I will answer that letter
& my whole year will be tense with love.
280
Decision taken, Henry’ll be back abroad,
from where things look more inter’sting, where things
American are seen
without America’s perpetual self-laud
as if everything in America had wings,
the world else a crawling scene,
the world else peripheral. Now good London crimes,
Irish & Spanish sports, Japanese disasters
will leave him free to think.
He’ll still have bad ol’ Time each week, & The Times,
to clue him in to the actions of his masters.
He bought a lot of ink,
having much to say, masterless after all, & gay
with probability, time being on his side,
the large work largely done,
over the years, the prizes mostly won,
we work now for ourself alone, away
even from pal & wife, in ways not to be denied.
281
The Following Gulls
We missed Quebec but now the North Shore lights
are bright against the lowered clouds of dusk,
they come in two broad bands,
neither of which was ever before in Henry’s sights,
and he is preparing not for strangeness but
familiarity’s demands.
The manic glare with which these passengers
took in one another is diminishing
into routine,
I have made my first acquaintance and one steward
has revealed to me his secret in Florida & Duluth
& London.
&nb
sp; After thirty Falls I rush back to the haunts of Yeats
& others, with a new book in my briefcase
four times too large:
all year I must in terminal debates
with me say who is to lives & who to dies
before my blessed discharge.
282
Richard & Randall, & one who never did,
two who will never cross this sea again,
& Delmore,
filled his pitted mind as the ship forged on
I hear the three freaks in their different notes
discussing more & more
our meaning to the Old World, theirs to us
which much we pondered in our younger years
and then coughed & sang
the new forms in which ancient thought appears
the altering bodies of the labile souls,
foes fang on fang.
The lovely friends, and friends the friends of friends,
pursuing insights to their journeys’ ends
subtle & steadfast:
the wind blows hard from our past into our future
and we are that wind, except that the wind’s nature
was not to last.
283
Shrouded the great stars, the great boat moves on.
A minimum of tremor in the bar.
Today was Children’s Day
& the Little Twiss prinked out ah as a bunny
won or did not win—I forget—second prize:
I forget to say.
I forget the great ship steaming thro’ the dark
I forget the souls so eager for their pain.
Two have just dropt in,
grand ships’ officers, large heads & gold braid,
the authority of the bartender is dwarfed
I forget all the old
I seem to be Henry then at twenty-one
steaming the sea again in another British boat
again, half mad with hope:
with my loved Basque friend I stroll the topmost deck
high in the windy night, in love with life
which has produced this wreck.
284
The hand I shook will operate no more
after forty years of cutting. We admire
the blossoms of youth
on the tall English boys.
The sun roars on the sea today. The old are fat.
These handsome raucous ones are said to be Rhodes scholars.
On the whole boat one passenger knows my name
& that’s too many. Fog has all the sea
we drive on purposeful.
Henry is one of the three passengers
who is doing any work. Grins given strangers
diminish his isolation.
But now he lies in the golden sun & eats.
Fun & games, the fresh acquaintances,
with a heavy heart.
Wide sported the sea behind, the land of art
lay off ahead far: meanwhile chats & dances,
trivial triumphs, defeats.
285
Much petted Henry like a petal throve,
his narthex let the girls & pupils in,
aptotic he remained
Henry’s own man, when he squirmed not in love,
fifty pressures herded one discipline:
the sun shot up, it rained,
weathering Henry kept on his own side,
whatever in the name of God that side was.
And he struggled, pal.
Apricate never: too he took in his stride
more than most monsters can. Whatever the cause
they called him Madrigal
and Introit, passing him on the road
wherever they were going and were gone.
Henry peered quite alone
as if the worlds would answer to a code
just around the corner, down gelid dawn,
beckoning like a moan.
286
So Henry’s enemy’s lost, not paranoia
but cancer, long. I would him very well,
forgetful or choiring,
whether the Great One is hiring or firing.
Stationed there permanent, does he enjoy a
bell for Mass, for matrimony, the passing bell?
Henry walked the corridor in dark, drug-drunk, smoking
and dropt it & near-sighted cannot find.
Nurses will deal hell if the ward wakes, croaking
to smoke antic with flame.
All the parts of this damned floor are the same.
He scrabbled, worried hard, with half his mind.
Like the breakfast bell on fire
it brings O ho it brings around again
what miserable Henry must desire:
aplomb
at the temps
of the tomb.
287
A best word across a void makes a hard blaze.
Henry reacted like a snake to praise,
he shed his skin
appearing thenceforward in a new guise
so the praise was for his past, he not therein,
saving him from vanity, the mirror’s eyes,
saving him from greed. Lean as a snake
he staked his claim upon obscurity:
a prayer to be left alone
escaped him sometimes or for a middle zone
where he could be & become both unknown & known,
listening & not.
A flower a year, enough to grieve him on, to the extent that one is able,
from absolutely certain wits, he was pleased with
& one has just now come,
an unexpected & triumphing cable
when least he hoped for hope, & most needed it,
making him feel at home.
288
In neighbourhoods evil of noise, he deployed, Henry,
stance unheroic. Say yes without offending.
In our career here
good will we too with ill. Wrinkle a grin.
The place is not so bad, considering
the alternative with real fear.
Being dead, I mean. ‘Well it is a long rest’
to himself said Mr Bloom. But is it that now?
As one Hungarian
Jew to another, I have seen grins that test
our patience, pal. Things are getting out
of hand, gaffered another one.
Blundering, faltering, uphill all the way
& icy. O say yes without offending.
His heart, a mud-puddle, sang.
‘Serve, Serve’ it sang, and it sang that all day.
New tasks will craze you in your happy ending.
Let go without a pang.
289
It is, after all her! & in the late afternoon
of the last day! & she is even more delightful
than longing Henry expected:
Parisienne, bi-lingual, teaches English,
at 27 unmarried, for she has not found
anyone ‘not ordinary’:
(another couple in the Club have come to terms)
on this last day she is more beautiful high-coloured
even than Henry’s wife
who is pale, pale & beautiful: Yvette’s ankles
are slim as the thought of various poets I could mention
& she tilts her head proudly.
’Twould not be possible for her to lose her dignity,
I notice this at dusk in a rising sea,
such an excellent lady
I will have more to say at a later time
with my whole cracked heart, in prose or rhyme
of this lady of the northern sea.
290
Why is Ireland the wettest place on earth
year-round, beating Calcutta in the monsoon
& the tropical rain-forest?
Clearly the sun has made an exception for Ireland,
the sun growled & shone elsewhere: Iowa,
detestable State.
Adorable country, in its countryside
& persons, & its habits, & its past,
martyrs & heroes,
its noble monks, its wild men of high pride
& poets long ago, Synge, Joyce & Yeats,
and the ranks from which they rose.
Detestable State, made of swine & corn,
rich & ignorant, pastless, with one great tree in it
& doubtless certain souls
perplexed as the Irish whether to shout or mourn
over man’s riddling fate: alter, or stet:
Fate across all them rolls.
291
Cold & golden lay the high heroine
in a wilderness of bears. His spirit fled
upon this apparition.
She never moved but the bears were moved to move
and if he could have been sure that she was dead
he would have fled for all his love
leaving behind him fractured vows, for he loathed bears.
Their giant forelegs & their terrible paws
not to mention their teeth, theirs
Like an old sabre-tooth tiger’s famished & wild
hurling himself upon a mastodon
and gorging, reconciled.
Just once, the tiger wondered to itself:
I am their enemy, I have enemies
almost as bad as Fr. Rolfe;
friendship is out. How then can we administer our affairs
in the absence of slaves & stewards, if you please,
who may hire us for theirs.
292
The Irish sky is raining, the Irish winds are high,
the Irish sun comes back & forth, and I
in my Irish pub
past puberty & into pub-erty
have sent my Irish wife & child downtown,
I lapse like an Irish clown.
I dream, and God knows Henry’s dreams are vivid
as the horses in Poona, lustrous on the track
whose father will not swim back
ruined in a grave in Oklahoma
loveless except for Henry steept in Homer
& Timon & livid.
Henry, who was always a crash programme,
smiled, and the smile was worse than the rictus of the victim,
‘Another drop’ said Mick.
He put his silver down, he took back all his lies,
His Toy, His Dream, His Rest Page 12