New Collected Poems

by David Gascoyne

  tenderness of children’s solitude, a pulp

  of snowy substance resembling oxygen

  oozes out of a confession, and converts

  itself into strength sufficient to deny

  everything that could possibly be said

  concerning the relationship between man and woman.

  If man is no less than the initial of

  a vanished species, the hasty signature of a verte-

  brate, if man is a thistle growing out of

  the concentrated essence of his own contra-

  diction and if he stands still before the

  gaping mouths of wounds caused by falling

  thoughtlessly through outer space, he is to

  woman what an ultra-violet ray is to an infra-

  red ray disclosing the decimal system which

  forms the main structure of red sand-

  stone, and woman is a tigress in the

  dock, defending her right to weep for

  all the children she devoured before they

  even issued from her body and to

  lament an opportunity of making her-

  self at least the equal of those who

  gaze upon her silently as she tears their

  limbs to pieces before scattering them

  like melted coins across the surface of the

  plain which is about to be destroyed

  by an eternal earthquake.

  Man is a padded cell in which woman can

  fling herself from floor to ceiling without the least

  sound of her screams being heard by

  the world outside. Man is the finger

  of a hand extended into the night to

  see whether the rain is falling. Woman,

  a bright and tinkling rain like that

  which falls on mountain fields and

  gems the threads of gossamer stretched

  crazily between the eidelweiss, man a spear

  of grass forcing its way out of the crevice

  of a top-most rock and silhouetted

  against the blue of distant heights. The

  veins are curdled by the mysterious

  discussion which goes on throughout the

  night, the nerves awake and sing, a dew

  of honey falls. Man and woman united

  by the tremulous voice which rings

  across the space between two peaks, man

  and woman in their unity a mountain

  range, a geological system, and at the

  same time a pad of wadding between

  two of the hardest surfaces which

  ever pressed towards one another

  in an attempt to crush everything

  which is most glittering and most

  evasively triumphant in the world.

  ‘Out of the rainy night, a voice, a

  hand, a spear. O lightnings, sear

  the wigs of all those sombre heads

  which pass in a silent procession

  down the gorge; strike down the

  branchy pines which mar the horizon’s

  ghostly clarity; and charge all

  the mountain streams with electric light

  and let them glitter down the vale

  like morning staircases.’

  ‘Out of the Polar city, a white road

  climbs up into the burning plateau; and

  man and woman must traverse that road.

  When we are lost we shall look

  back, and everything which was only

  revealed to us in a passing flash

  of light will stand out clear as

  boulders from the sand.’

  Lip to lip, wrenched out of

  solitude by a force greater than

  all their solitary resistance, forced to

  see their own faces in the light

  of another’s mirror – the twisted

  wreckage dangling, twirling lazily in

  the empty space above the roofs of the enormous

  city, mangled railway-lines

  a conglomerate mess

  of shattered metals, – (the great

  destruction has already begun), –

  the body of love expressed

  and radiant in the gaze of eyes

  enlarged to the size of inner lakes,

  with a great light breaking forth in

  breathless rays in all directions, the

  perfume of perfect flesh smouldering

  in the dilated nostrils of the assembled

  tribes, -for ever.

  ‘Both land and sea reach up towards

  the highest breaking-point of atmospheric

  pressure, where a single heart, its

  beating having perpetually increased in speed

  and force in proportion to the

  increase in height and desperation, tears

  through the imagined night like a mighty

  phallus, winged and glowing red as the

  warning lantern of an express train,

  whose thundering pistons shake the

  surrounding hills. Yet the true source

  of its movement remains unshaken as the gradual

  and awesome flowering of some crystal, breaking with

  calm and relentless intensity out of formless

  clouds of matter into the eternally

  predestined figuration of the star which

  is at the core of all explosions. A star

  with an infinite number of rays,

  each of which points out towards the

  unnamed location of the unification of two bodies. And the

  exploding heart breaks into an infinite number of pieces each of

  which [is] about to undergo a similar

  process of combustion. The heart at the

  heart of the heart at the heart of the heart -is

  an endless series: and each part of the

  series is predestined to explode.

  ‘Forms, barriers, torrential rain,

  the bright mind breaking

  the earth’s crust cracking, we have lain

  asleep too long, there is nothing to impede

  the progress of the waking planet towards

  the sun. The loaves of rain-soaked bread

  shall harden in the heat; we shall put on our

  many-coloured robes, the sea shall come to meet us

  and the dark shall die.

  Our eyes, all eyes are

  fixed upon the unfolding blossom of the

  horizon, the summit too long hidden by

  the intermingled bodies of the halt and

  blind. The world is moss, peat,

  velvet, sand, and water fired with the

  reflection of its burning vapours – the world

  is stigma, orange, dew-pond, metal

  ragged leaf and petal’s odour, -dust

  and syrens, clover, sparks, tumescence

  pregnancy and rock.’

  w. 1936

  THE HILLS AND IN THE LIGHT, DAILY

  When love sequestered from the mad dream of this man

  Breaks into branches that unfold

  In all the bounty that the brightest sun can boast

  Smooth lips declaim their names and clear eyes scan

  The heroes – whose the exploits shall be told

  To these to come, whom the whole earth loves most

  Now in the Perfect Tense we tell what they shall do:

  Who loosed the captives, burnt their prisons, who

  Made what seemed false the single true.

  They held the sword that cleft in twain;

  They took his stolen gold and gave it back again;

  They broke the torture rack and stopped the pain;

  And in all places built the bright abode

  Of wisdom and the wide pleasant road

  Away from darkness, that ensuing races trod.

  But times do not revolve so easily;

  And love is still unsheltere
d from the dream

  That comes by night to make man restless, turn

  Distraught from side to side, uneasily,

  Torn between quietude and the destroying scream, -

  Still ignorant, unable yet to learn.

  What you involve. In perfect present time,

  Are sewage systems breeding plagues of crime

  Sapraemic cesspools choked with stinking slime.

  w. 1936

  COMPLINE FOR THE OCCIDENT.

  A Cantata for Choir and Solo Voice (Fragment)

  First voice:

  To be

  Open to every influx to obey

  The law that governs mercury

  First voice, Recitative:

  To be

  The first voice, and to break

  The silence, and to say:

  O speak

  Now, voices of the speechless, in

  My voice: O let me be

  More than the voice

  Of a young man alone

  In a suburban bedroom, writing verse,

  More than the mere

  Articulation of ephemeral despair:

  And let my one

  Be subject to your many, at the core

  Of the immense confusion and distress

  Which drowns us. And to cry:

  Be more than my confused subjective cry,

  Confused, confusing cries, let my cry be not less

  Than all yours crying, let me be possessed

  By your obsession, and let me confess

  To a confused distress not mine alone:

  To be this voice, to give voice to this cry

  So that the other voices may begin,

  And having spoken to give place

  To each voice in its turn

  Chorus of questions:

  Why do we wake

  Each morning into shadow and not light?

  Though sunlight may still fall

  Across the coverlet, we can no longer feel

  A sun within us radiate response:

  And where there once

  Rose like a spring in us the love of life

  A dry stone lies. Why does each day

  To which we wake seem like a lake of ice,

  Whose unsafe surface we must cross

  With swift and anxious steps

  To reach sleep’s brief security? Bad dreams

  Recur more frequently each night though no-one knows

  Their real interpretation; and sometimes

  They even drift across the waking mind like clouds.

  w. 1937

  TWO FRAGMENTS

  The twilight eats the reeds

  a crooked pin

  breaks the water into shapes

  like those of frozen shawls

  with which the dawn was decked.

  All in the carious mouth is ash, sand in the teeth

  But were our mouths, as red as madder meant to

  Kiss and communicate?

  w. 1937-38

  COME DUNGEON DARK (PART III: CONCLUSION)

  Though now the false cheque’s countersigned, the fog

  Of dream’s delusion lifted from the air, and split will’s

  Confusion, realized at last, made all too clear:

  Though now the spell be broken of the drug,

  The faithful dozing dog awake to find

  That he’s been muzzled: though each slight mistake

  Be seen to form a link in a tight chain

  That now binds freedom to the stake of its defeat:

  Though all past struggle to defend seems in vain;

  O do not think that this must mean that Man

  Is fated never to transcend his servitude,

  Nor that the first and last condition of his world

  Made this conclusion of defeat foregone.

  w. 1939

  DARK’S FIDELITY

  While manhood’s fire still burn the blood,

  And quietens with unspent desire my breath,

  There come to share the shadows of my bed

  Many a slim sweet girl and sleek-limbed youth,

  Though never next day by my side

  Remains even a wraith.

  But when they come no more, I’ll turn

  Gratefully to the dark’s great emptiness

  And sink, clasped in Night’s arms, more deeply than

  Ever in any girl’s or young man’s kiss;

  Nor shall I wish to rise again

  From that timeless embrace.

  w. 1941

  EPILOGUE TO AN EPISODE

  I

  An adolescent brooding on a bomb

  Of hatred of appearances, longing to crack

  The gimcrack and exasperating crust of everyday,

  Frustrated by the gunpowder’s failure to explode,

  I jumped on to a bus at Charing Cross

  One overcast Spring dusk, clutching my latest hope

  Between the covers of a just discovered book.

  For the first time, on a lurching top-deck seat,

  Spelling out Breton’s high-flown phrases’ spell

  I felt the toxic thrill

  Of letting-go normal surface-hold to sink, though still awake,

  Into wild mental regions far beyond the pale

  Of Reason and beneath the genteel veil of

  Calm, commonsense and compromise. His exhortations made

  South Kensington, Earl’s Court and quiet Kew

  Seem built above volcanoes’ buried mouths,

  Strained violently to bursting-point in the green sunset glow

  By the tense imminence of the super-real …

  How finely attuned the nerves were that dark Spring

  To the least hint of the miraculous! The sulphur in the air,

  The tinkling of faint bells beneath the skin,

  Bats buried suffocating in the hair of

  Aunts at tea-time! broken window-panes

  Through which the sky pushed inwards with grey rain-drenched

  Groping hands! Flux of provoked delusions wherein lay

  This single true conviction: the sublime

  Existence I aspired to was always elsewhere,

  Unprisoned by the walls of Space and Time.

  II

  Behind my single-handed unripe mutiny of mind

  I found the solidarity of a well-trained band

  Of bandits and conspirators already sworn for years

  To systematic sabotage of ‘the so-called real world’,

  And stealthy preparation of a series of strange coups

  Planned finally to culminate in the storming of the Past’s

  Reactionary Bastilles by massed international groups

  United in their frenzy by the flag

  Of Revolution, Poetry and Love.

  L’Amour

  (In me confined still to the head) was synonym

  For Poésie: the poetry of bed, that famous chance

  Encounter there: a Man Ray dream of fair

  Surrealist women, glossy, svelte and flat.

  Devotee more

  Of Poetry per se than of its flesh, for hours each day

  I’d stare at zero, trying to glimpse the ‘flash

  Of silver on the brain’s insuperable wall’; a spark

  Out of the dark of that deep crucible where ‘all

  Our doubts, our poor abilities, the radical idea

  Of impotence, and reputation’s shreds, mixed up

  With other sensitive glass instruments’, were to be thrown

  As though into a cellar: where mysterious light

  ‘Might one day cease to flicker …’

  And for hours on end

  I’d listen-in to the white voice inside my skull

  (Like Death each minute murmuring a name)

  Announcing non-stop nonsense news: ‘The Iron Starfish Kneels

  Under the Thirteenth Chair …’: make records of its drool:

  Or track the automatic paper-chase through outlawed, queer

>   Half-baked expanses where like weeds break through

  A few weak obscene puns, where verbal mist

  Is rarely stabbed by any ray of daylight making plain

  The lie of the obscure surrounding text.

  And often now

  I was a guest at that rococo vast chateau

  Which had been built up slowly, wing by wing, upon a site

  Staked out in the last century by seers:

  Museum, zoo or waxworks, more involved than a mad brain,

  A Tower of Babel full of winding stairs,

  Corridors ravelled as intestines, secret doors

  And rooms more difficult to count than those of Glamis,

  Each one more unexpected than the room before, like tanks

  In a deep-sea aquarium, full of alarming freaks:

  Anthropomorphic, ectoplasmic forms

  Far too profuse and complex to rehearse:

  Unwieldy objects of no earthly use

  From the fleamarket of the mind, oneiric beasts

  Uncatalogued by heraldry, and sculpture carved

  By Sleep’s instinctive and unsteady hand.

  Among these shapes the visitor may stray

  As through a maze and with amazement see

  The drawing-room whose ceiling is a lake, the corridor

  Of which the lofty windows view the mountains of the moon;

  The gallery whose niche of honour shrines

  The statue of Lautréamont, piano-tuned,

  Perched on a pillar of quinine; the hall

  Where railway-engines fight with brontosaurs;

  And somewhere lost in the colossal central court,

  That desecrated chapel on whose windy stone-paved floor

  The Dreamer and his mistress lie star-crossed,

  United at their axe as by a sword …

  w. 1939–40

  DEAD END

  It has become more difficult, more

  Tiresome and more painful than before

  To write the poem that perverse desire

  To write a poem leads to. Most

  Difficult of all lines is the first;

  And hard again when one has written five

  Or six, to clear away the mist

  And seize an image (while excitement’s still

  Alive) and plant it in the shallow shifting soil

  Of the first stanza: like a fist,

  A flag, a lantern or a door. That done,

  It then should need less effort to move on:

  To choose, from many possibles, the one

  Route that will take me to the end

  By way of the most interesting

  Scenery.

  But O! what scenery can I

  Now see, through all the thicknesses

  Of scruple, like smoked glasses, that descend