and also alone. —
And yet
reeling with connection
spinning with the heaviness of balance
and flowing invisibly, gasping
towards the breathing stars and the central of all sunninesses.
The earth leans its weight on the sun, and the sun on the sun of
suns.
Back and forth goes the balance and the electric breath.
The soul of man also leans in the unconscious inclination we call
religion
towards the sun of suns, and back and forth goes the breath
of incipient energetic life.
Out of the soul’s middle to the middle-most sun, way-off, or in
every atom.
The Primal Passions
If you will go down into yourself, under your surface personality
you will find you have a great desire to drink life direct
from the source, not out of bottles and bottled personal vessels.
What the old people call immediate contact with God.
That strange essential communication of life
not bottled in human bottles.
What even the wild witchcraft of the past was seeking
before it degenerated.
Life from the source, unadulterated
with the human taint.
Contact with the sun of suns
that shines somewhere in the atom, somewhere pivots the curved space,
and cares not a straw for the put-up human figments.
Communion with the Godhead, they used to say in the past.
But even that is human-tainted now,
tainted with the ego and the personality.
To feel a fine, fine breeze blowing through the navel and the knees
and have a cool sense of truth, inhuman truth at last
softly fluttering the senses, in the exquisite orgasm of coition
with the godhead of energy that cannot tell lies.
The cool, cool truth of pure vitality
pouring into the veins from the direct contact with the source.
Uncontaminated by even the beginnings of a lie.
The soul’s first passion is for sheer life
entering in shocks of truth, unfouled by lies.
And the soul’s next passion is to reflect
and then turn round and embrace the extant body of life
with the thrusting embrace of new justice, new justice
between men and men, men and women, and earth and stars and
suns.
The passion of justice being profound and subtle
and changing in a flow as all passions change.
But the passion of justice is a primal embrace
between man and all his known universe.
And the passion of truth is the embrace between man and his god
in the sheer coition of the life-flow, stark and unlying.
Escape
When we get out of the glass bottles of our own ego,
and when we escape like squirrels from turning in the cages of our
personality
and get into the forest again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don’t know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.
The Root of Our Evil
The root of our present evil is that we buy and sell.
Ultimately, we are all busy buying and selling one another.
It began with Judas, and goes on in the wage-system.
Men sell themselves for a wage, and employers look out for a
bargain.
And employers are bought by financiers, and financiers are sold to
the devil.
— Get thou behind me, Satan! —
That was just what Satan wanted to do,
for then nobody would have their eye on him.
And Jesus never looked round.
That is the great reproach we have against him.
He was frightened to look round
and see Satan bargaining the world away
and men, and the bread of men
behind his back
with satanically inspired financiers.
If Jesus had kept a sharp eye on Satan,
and refused to let so many things happen behind his back
we shouldn’t be where we are now.
Come, Satan, don’t go dodging behind my back any longer.
If you’ve got the goods, come forward, boy, and let’s see’em.
I’m perfectly willing to strike a decent bargain.
But I’m not having any dodging going on behind my back.
What we want is some sort of communism
not based on wages, nor profits, nor any sort of buying and selling
but on a religion of life.
The Ignoble Procession
When I see the ignoble procession
streaming forth from little doorways
citywards, in little rivers that swell to a great stream,
of men in bowler hats, hurrying
and a mingling of wallet-carrying women
hurrying, hurrying, legs going quick, quick, quick
in ignoble haste, for fear of being late —
I am filled with humiliation.
Their haste
is so
humiliating.
No Joy in Life
Never, my young men,
you who complain you know no joy in your lives,
never will you know any joy in your lives
till you ask for lightning instead of love
till you pray for the right gods, for the thunderbolt instead of pity
till you look to the right man, to put you into touch.
Then you will hit the Flat-iron Building and flatten it out.
Then you will shatter the Bank.
Then you will settle the hash of Business finally.
Wild Things in Captivity
Wild things in captivity
while they keep their own wild purity
won’t breed, they mope, they die.
All men are in captivity,
active with captive activity,
and the best won’t breed, though they don’t know why.
The great cage of our domesticity
kills sex in a man, the simplicity
of desire is distorted and twisted awry.
And so with bitter perversity
gritting against the great adversity,
the young ones copulate, hate it, and want to cry.
Sex is a state of grace.
In a cage it can’t take place.
Break the cage, then, start in and try.
Mournful Young Man
Mournful young man in your twenties
who think the only way out of your mournfulness is
through a woman,
yet you fail to find the woman, when there are so many
women about.
Why don’t you realise
that you’re not desirable?
that no woman will ever desire you, as you are,
except, of course, for secondary motives.
The women are in the cage as much as you are.
They look at you, they see a caged monkey.
How do you expect them ever to desire you?
Anyhow they never will, except for secondary motives,
or except you change.
There is No Way Out
There is no way out, we are all caged monkeys
blue-arsed with the money-bruise
and wearing our seats out sitting on money.
There is no way out, the cage has no door, it’s rusted
solid.
If you copulate with the finest woman on earth
there’s no relief, only a moment’s sullen respite.
You’re a caged monkey again in five minutes.
Therefore be prepared to tackle the cage.
Money-Madness
Money is our madness, our vast collective madness.
And, of course, if the multitude is mad
the individual carries his own grain of insanity around with him.
I doubt if any man living hands out a pound note without a pang;
and a real tremor, if he hands out a ten-pound note.
We quail, money makes us quail.
It has got us down, we grovel before it in strange terror.
And no wonder, for money has a fearful cruel power among men.
But it is not money we are so terrified of,
it is the collective money-madness of mankind.
For mankind says with one voice: How much is he worth?
Has he no money? Then let him eat dirt, and go cold.
And if I have no money, they will give me a little bread
so I do not die,
but they will make me eat dirt with it.
I shall have to eat dirt, I shall have to eat dirt
if I have no money.
It is that that I am frightened of.
And that fear can become a delirium.
It is fear of my money-mad fellow-men.
We must have some money
to save us from eating dirt.
Bread should be free,
shelter should be free,
fire should be free,
to all and anybody, all and anybody, all over the world.
We must regain our sanity about money
before we start killing one another about it.
It’s one thing or the other.
Kill Money
Kill money, put money out of existence.
It is a perverted instinct, a hidden thought
which rots the brain, the blood, the bones, the stones, the soul.
Make up your mind about it:
that society must establish itself upon a different principle
from the one we’ve got now.
We must have the courage of mutual trust.
We must have the modesty of simple living.
And the individual must have his house, food and fire all free
like a bird.
Men Are Not Bad
Men are not bad, when they are free.
Prison makes men bad, and the money compulsion makes men bad.
If men were free from the terror of earning a living
there would be abundance in the world
and men would work gaily.
Nottingham’s New University
In Nottingham, that dismal town
where I went to school and college,
they’ve built a new university
for a new dispensation of knowledge.
Built it most grand and cakeily
out of the noble loot
derived from shrewd cash-chemistry
by good Sir Jesse Boot.
Little I thought, when I was a lad
and turned my modest penny
over on Boot’s Cash Chemist’s counter,
that Jesse, by turning many
millions of similar honest pence
over, would make a pile
that would rise at last and blossom out
in grand and cakey style
into a university
where smart men would dispense
doses of smart cash-chemistry
in language of common-sense!
That future Nottingham lads would be
cash-chemically B.Sc.
that Nottingham lights would rise and say:
— By Boots I am M.A.
From this I learn, though I knew it before,
that culture has her roots
in the deep dung of cash, and lore
is a last offshoot of Boots.
I am in a Novel
I read a novel by a friend of mine
in which one of the characters was me,
the novel it sure was mighty fine
but the funniest thing that could be
was me, or what was supposed for me,
for I had to recognise
a few of the touches, like a low-born jake,
but the rest was a real surprise.
Well damn my eyes! I said to myself.
Well damn my little eyes!
If this is what Archibald thinks I am
he sure thinks a lot of lies.
Well think o’ that now, think o’ that!
That’s what he sees in me!
I’m about as much like a Persian cat,
or a dog with a harrowing flea.
My Lord! a man’s friends’ ideas of him
would stock a menagerie
with a marvellous outfit! How did Archie see
such a funny pup in me?
No! Mr Lawrence!
No, Mr Lawrence, it’s not like that!
I don’t mind telling you
I know a thing or two about love,
perhaps more than you do.
And what I know is that you make it
too nice, too beautiful.
It’s not like that, you know; you fake it.
It’s really rather dull.
Red-Herring
My father was a working man
and a collier was he,
at six in the morning they turned him down
and they turned him up for tea
My mother was
a superior soul
a superior soul was she,
cut out to play a superior role
in the god-damn bourgeoisie.
We children were the in-betweens
little nondescripts were we,
indoors we called each other you,
outside, it was tha and thee.
But time has fled, our parents are dead
we’ve risen in the world all three;
but still we are in-betweens, we tread
between the devil and the deep sad sea.
I am a member of the bourgeoisie
and a servant-maid brings me my tea —
But I’m always longing for someone to say
‘ark’ere, lad! atween thee an’ me
they’re a’ a b — d — lot o’ — s,
an’ I reckon it’s nowt but right
we should start an’ kick their — ses for’em
an’ tell’em to — .
Our Moral Age
Of course, if you make naughtiness nasty,
spicily nasty, of course,
then it’s quite all right; we understand
life’s voice, even when she’s hoarse.
But when you go and make naughtiness nice
there’s no excuse;
if such things were nice, and we needn’t think twice,
what would be the use?
My Naughty Book
They say I wrote a naughty book
With perfectly awful things in it,
putting in all the impossible words
like b — and f — and sh —
Most of my friends were deeply hurt
and haven’t forgiven me yet;
I’d loaded the camel’s back before
with dirt they couldn’t forget.
And now, no really, the final straw
was words like sh — and f — !
I heard the camel’s back go crack
beneath the weight of muck.
Then out of nowhere rushed John Bull,
that mildewed pup, good doggie!
squeakily bellowing for all he was worth,
and slavering wet and soggy.
He couldn’t bite’em, he was much too old,
but he made a pool of dribblings;
so while the other one heaved her sides,
with moa
ns and hollow bibblings,
he did his best, the good old dog,
to support her, the hysterical camel,
and everyone listened and loved it, the
ridiculous bimmel-bammel.
But still, one has no right to take
the old dog’s greenest bones
that he’s buried now for centuries
beneath England’s garden stones.
And, of course, one has no right to lay
such words to the camel’s charge,
when she prefers to have them left
in the WC writ large.
Poor homely words. I must give you back
to the camel and the dog,
for her to mumble and him to crack
in secret, great golliwog!
And hereby I apologise
to all my foes and friends
for using words they privately keep
for their own immortal ends.
And henceforth I will never use
more than the chaste, short dash;
so do forgive me! I sprinkle my hair
with grey, repentant ash.
The Little Wowser
There is a little wowser
John Thomas by name,
and for every bloomin’, mortal thing
that little blighter’s to blame.
It was’’im as made the first mistake
of putting us in the world,
forcin’ us out of the unawake,
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 854