AQUARIUM

Uniform with this volume.

BUCOLIC COMEDIES. By Edith Sitwell.

AQUARIUM

BY
HAROLD ACTON

DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON

First published in 1923.
All rights reserved.

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London.

CONTENTS

Part I
CURVES
| PAGE
Aquarium | 9
A Day Will Come | 10
Cathedral Interior | 14
Young Sailor | 15
Nights | 16
i. Mimi at the Cabaret Vert | 16
ii. Malaguenas | 17
Confetti | 18
Night of Adolescence | 19
Conversazione of Musical Instruments | 20
Paradise Villas | 32
A Morality | 33
My House | 36
Sonnet | 37
Oh! what have I to do with Thee? | 38
Fox-Trot | 39
...... | 40
Escape | 41
Pink Night | 42
Hope | 43
Pastorale | 44
Bal Saturnien | 45
For a Viola-da-gamba | 46
Contrasts | 47
The Pensile Gardens of Babylon | 49
Part II
URBANITIES
Sabbath Morning Rain | 53
A Window Speaks | 54
Seven to Bed | 57
Town Typing Office | 58
Coiffeur Choréographique | 59
L’Impératrice des Pagodes | 60
Miss Fay the Trapezist | 62
Sotie | 63
Mr. Bedlam’s Sunday Breakfast | 64

Thanks are due to the Editors of the Spectator, New Witness, Oxford Chronicle and Eton Candle for permission to reprint certain of these poems.

Part I
CURVES

Aquarium

IF you would view, buy tickets at the door.

Your brain for lucre please! the fishes here

Require some effort on your part, no more,

For comprehension; then the water’s clear

And you will see, dimpling in hyaline

Fish, oval, strange, glitter as rubied wine

In crystal goblets; fish with spotted gills,

Great flower-fish like open daffodils,

Pale fish that float with mellow, morbid eyes,

Dark fish that feed on wings of dragon flies,

Fish fulvid and fugacious, hovering

Amongst the silver cress with carmine wing,

And fish with small reticulated scales

Floundering mazed, with iridescent tails

Diaphanously quivering ...

Mad, necrophilic urchins cleft to trees

Of coral, with a sting as keen as bees

When they would kiss you; fish electrical

And fish with poniards, fierce, inimical,

Red fish that bark like mastiffs at the moon,

Blue limpets, purple jellies, fish that croon

Mauve, melancholy melodies, and fish

To suit your mood, good reader, as you wish!

A Day Will Come ...

THE ultimate experiment performed

To reach the planes of Mars and Jupiter

Without discomfort. First-class passengers

With restaurants and Adam sitting rooms,

Bathing and barbers, bars American

Could while away the slowly-dripping time.

Blast-furnaces and gasometers, yards

Of bulky timber-joists and refuse-heaps,

Pitch, cataclysmic mounds of dross and slag,

Deep yawning pits, the seething pores of Hell,

Slim towers of factories, vertiginous,

Soul-traps to vitiate and brutalize,

To mould men bitter and recalcitrant ...

The foul miasma of this atmosphere

Confabulate in retching multitudes.

In tension rapt, awaiting holocausts;

Mephitic and fuliginous, the sky—

Where green and yellow lights like demon’s eyes

Blink through the murk; ideas as microbes flock

Half-garrotted; they struggle: “Air, more air!”

Spasmodic; then neurotically grasp

A semi-groan before the strangulation.

The hooters blare

through air ...

And women sigh

near by,

For husbands thrash;

they lash

Gnarled, purple stripes.

Oh Cripes!

To bear a child

is mild

Compared to it,

a pit

Of Hell is sweet,

the heat

Is soothing, calm

as balm.

For what is home?

a tomb,

And men but wive

to thrive;

In hope they live

to give

Despair or worse,

to curse

The squalid life

of wife

With travail fraught,

distraught.

The hooters blare

through air ...

Obese black columns oscillate the streets.

The hands troop out into the twilit hour

Like billion-herded emmets, dinosaurs

That crawl with crude disaster in their souls.

There; poised above, a lemon-rind of moon

Recalls a youth of twitterings, desires

For nacreous, warm flesh. Oh God! that life

Should filter so through factory machines.

The ancient recrudescence; slowly-healed

Wounds all unripped in agony again.

Some lips are taut in bloodless nudity:

Are they enhungered for the limbs of dead?

No; they have savoured lust till they were lax

Of mind and body, with no palate for it

For smooth, white thighs and hot, fierce mouths they feel

Naught else than heavy-lidded lassitude.

All of a sudden voices rend the streets;

“Comrades, away! The spring is calling, haste

Ere we tear moon and stars from out the sky!”

The echoes give them courage, and the town

Becomes an archipelago of cries.

Men hop and run as little children run

Pink-naked on a curling yellow beach.

The women gaze from doorsteps, gorgon-eyed

And wonder what strange madness troubles them.

Sir Simon Moss, reclining in a chair,

With stout cigar held firm by regular

Well-ordered tusks of tooth, can hear the noise.

Another war? to reap more profits in

Exceeded mortal fortune. Nay; there blazed

Some sorry plague. Perhaps the rabies gript ’em.

Thus he pursues his reading of The Times.

Shrill voices fade, as stars in polychrome

Fade on the cold, grey atmosphere of dawn.

“Comrades, away! the smack of wind is sweet”

Faint as the whisper of dim violins.

“Comrades, away ...” faint as the autumn leaves

(Burnt paper crackling gently on the breeze).

And houses humped like elephants asleep,

Insolent hulks out-sprawled on many miles,

That muffled women’s sobs; for anxiously

They feared the sons would follow in their wake.

And the sons followed; far away, the hills

Exhaled a ripe, new life where no machines

Might pound away the frailly-cobwebbed air.

To casual mossy stones and thistle weeds

The city crumbled; now its walls lie bare

As lidless eyes for crows to peck at them.

And in the sloe-gin heat of summer days

The sky’s enamel is not quite Limoges

But almost; here and there a tiny scratch

Of soaring bird, some swallow on the wing

Does irritate the surface. Sheer below,

Fierce-biting on the edges, rise the trees;

Their taper-blossoms opulently lit

As girandoles that smoulder silently

Blue dust of incense; kohl-eyed evening

Sponges the face with dripping fragrances.

The vines and olives terraced on the hills

Melt on the dean horizon blurringly,

Where clouds descend in deluge, liquid-gold.

The flies fling flashes on cerulean meres

Where steely bream and roach with rosy fins

Goggle amongst the shrubberies of cress

Half-dizzied by their vacant harmonies.

The fruit of the wild gourd or hellebore

Has tranced die sense of man; die moonlight leaks

In silver puddles on the carpet-lawns.

Dry thud of hooves; the satyrs have returned!

Cathedral Interior

THE pear-shaped saffron candle-flames

Leap in the velvet-bosomed dark,

The priest speaks gently of God’s claims

To wistful folk with coughs that bark.

Here all is hushed and rabbit-still,

The bull-necked columns, numb with gout

Of countless ages by God’s will

Cast crêpe-like shadows long and stout.

Two narrow slits of coloured glass

Are pierced by spears of mellow light,

The only light allowed to pass

Into this consecrated night.

Behind a candelabra droops

A crucifix of burnished gold,

A ray of dancing sunbeams swoops

Across the cobwebbed arches old.

Here may the sick, the bleeding one

Nurture his wounds and calm his fears.

Here when their joy in life is done

Poor, crumbling men gulp salty tears.

And knotted fingers counting beads,

And prayers half-whispered never cease.

Man slumbers; only heaven heeds,

Here in this hollow womb of peace.

Young Sailor

DRUNK with the whiffs of steak in passage-ways,

With many a genial bar and kindly scene

Of sickly shrimps illumined by the rays

Of rose acetylene,

He wandered through the streets with empty maw;

And winter nights are raw.

And through a steaming window he could see

A saw-dust restaurant; a woman there

Was seated on an ancient lecher’s knee

With hat askew and hair

In blondine-tendrils falling Flora-wise

Over her blinking eyes.

Her lips like currants glistened and her arms

Sticky with strange narcotics, downy-white.

The elder pinched them, sucking in their charms

With pudgy fingers tight,

And of a sudden pealed behind her scarf

A clear, metallic laugh.

The youth outside relit his cigarette—

In silence longed for love articulate,

But he could watch no longer, for the sweat

Trickled a-down his pate

And stung his eyes; and what could be attained

When wages all were drained?

Nights

I. Mimi at the Cabaret Vert

MIMI la Brunette, each crimson evening

sways her silver serpent arms,

peals in half falsetto notes,

at the Cabaret Vert

And with greedy eyes the coarse-lipped men internally undress her.

But I sit crumpled by a marble-breasted table,

the curacoa is vitriol to my chapped, dry lips.

I see through Mimi—I see through her tragedies

and I see through the subtle cosmetics

of her tired face.

(She bore a still-born bastard once,

the man she loves, a black-eyed corporal

has shell-shock and nigh throttled her in bed).

And Mimi la Brunette, each crimson evening

peals in half falsetto notes,

sways her silver serpent arms

at the Cabaret Vert.

II. Malaguenas

BODY erect and arm defiantly curved,

she flings small steps to the clack of her castanets,

which snap their rhythm at one, more musical

than the slight scrape of the plectrum on mandoline strings.

She turns and yet so slowly, so haughtily ...

I wonder if she is an Empress masquerading

in this dim-lighted, ill-reputed café.

Click and the rhythm swims to Pedro’s head,

whose features contain the lineaments of appreciation.

Clack and the rhythm swims to Sancha’s head.

Whom then shall she favour with a rose?

Perhaps she will give no look, but flicker

flicker for a moment the darkness of her eyelids

and freeze the heart in Pedro’s body beating.

The rhythm ceases; Pedro is not the favoured one.

A gleam of dagger and muffled fall of a body.

Confetti

LET us sprinkle in the air

Colours, colours everywhere.

Peacock’s eyes in April showers

Plucked in silver-sandalled hours,

Wings of fireflies iridescent,

Jets of drift-wood incandescent.

Let us hurl them to the skies

Ere the pallid dawn arise.

Minion jewel-plumaged birds,

Specks and flecks in dappled herds,

Tangle in your moonlit hair

Whilst you’re smiling unaware.

In the paper fluttering

Pipe-like voices seem to sing,

Little flutes of heron bone,

Tremulously soft in tone

As by eerie wizards played,

Make one wonder, half afraid.

Empty trickle of the breeze

Through the perfumed orangeries

Like a tiptoe of a faun,

Come a-heralding the dawn.

Let us sprinkle in the air

Colours, colours everywhere.

Night of Adolescence

STEEL-COLD without; sheer icicles of air

That hang down perpendicular with blades,

Chimeric poniards, vitrine points of ice

To freeze the spirituous tissues numb.

But in this throbbing, warmly-bosomed room

I sit and drink the fumes of glowing coals,

Allow my limbs to spread in languid ease,

Relaxing as a selfish, pensive cat,

Absorbing warmth into my seething pores

And drowning in a mass of phantom breasts....   

The kettle bubbles humanly and croons

A far-off, distance-faded lullaby,

And I forget those frozen stalactites,

Those gushing waterfalls of winter wind,

That sap the brain and turn the blood to snow

Until I suck my breath in sudden gasps.

Within, the heat is curdling into flesh,

Vague, supple limbs to weave a night of lust

And throats lain back to kiss at my desire

White, soft and curving, I may nibble then

Such mad caresses as will flay my lips.

Those tender tendrils curling on the nape

Are coils of anaconda for my hands

To twine in subtly inspissated shapes

To my own delectation; and those eyes

Resign like perfumed stars to my caress.

Conversazione of Musical Instruments

Overture

IN the nebular effects of cigarette smoke,

The eyes may be closed heavy or drowsing open,

The iris drugged by the wine and the women,

White arms, mouths of carmine, ankles so slender

You might fear that they would snap candy-wise.

In the nebular effects of cigarette smoke,

Through the various hemispheres the eye turns,

One of us is breathing out rhythms

For the gratification of an audience.

Animated in the hum of conversation,

We achieve miracles.

When the veneer is shed and the heart lain bare

We turn men’s thoughts to Heaven or to Hell—

Cathedral Altar or the Brothel couch.

Though it be in the nebular effects of cigarette smoke

And the eyes may be closed heavy or drowsing open,

The ear-drums beat electric-nimble

And the brain is their poor prone prisoner,

When we breathe out our rhythms.

I
String Instruments

Violin (virtuosity)

A phosphorescent butterfly

I creep into the hair

Of those who are aware

That I divinely flutter by.

Or I’m a vinous liquor spirting bright

Shivers of splintered glass into the night,

Or shimmering I skate

Where lovers celebrate

The hour their captive passions, cooped with bars,

Were freed, uncrumpled shirts beneath the stars—

(Pale, weary breaths of paille-de-riz

The corsage of Semiramis).

My notes are aromatic traceries

Wherewith I swing my perfume through the trees

Fiercely exotic; fading on the breeze

Until my respiration fails

And what was ambergris

Melts now to liquorice.

I stagger on the air

With all my plumage bare,

A galleon bereft of sails.

Or I can be as vulgar as a music-hall in Paraguay,

And I can jig and jig away

To cynically flirt

With sentimental dirt;

Veneered as candied peel,

Or gilded fruit, I reel

Into a singing cabaret.

For there in my proximity

They listen to my creed,

(And so I do not need

To preach my own sublimity).

I imitate the flavour of vanille

To give distinguished patronage the chill,

And I can give neuralgia,

Hysterics and nostalgia

To counterfeit the gardens of Seville.

I can creak as any sparrow

Which pricks the curve

Of every nerve

With a throstle sharp and narrow.

And I can be as raucous as

A golden-spotted jaguar

And I can be as glaucous as

The trees in Nicaragua.

Drink in my subtle melodies,

My chartreuse-tinted threnodies....

Violoncello (known more popularly as
the ’cello to rhyme with mellow-yellow)

I am the waxen fruit of instruments;

I drone till beads of perspiration break

Upon the foreheads of my audience.

I swell tumultuous; my dullard sounds

Ebb platitudes in doleful indigo.

Voluptuously blatant in my greed,

I am the woman garbed in heliotrope,

Whose bustle panics peacocks in the park.

Some take my mellow notes for rosaries—

So holy, steadfast, pure they seem to be.

(Like dear Prince Albert on a promenade,

Inspired apostle of the simple life,

With all his homely virtues on parade).

And I am music’s Edinburgh rock,

A laxative caressing to the ear,

A sanitary purge unto the sense;

A sentimental background in the life

Of modest daughter and domestic wife.

Chorus of Guitar and Mandoline

I snatch the silence whimpering

(Nocturnal perfumes make me sneeze)

My nostrils twitch; I snap the air,

I twang along the cardboard breeze.

I jump and rattle,

Reel and prattle

In Andalusian orangeries.

Now an elegant fandango,

Now a lithe and lissome tango,

Then I swoop like a flamingo

On a juicy-breasted mango

Hidden in the noisy leafage of the Guadalquivir.

Harp

Drips of dear ineffectual water,

April showers of pallid arsenic evaporating to unsubstantial air,

I once melted the heart of Cuchulain and his warriors

And Tom Moore grew quite sentimental about me in Tara’s halls,

Where my ripply waves of watery sounds

Turned to thin strips of paper on the breeze.

Now I can faint but to transparent moons

And the intensified weariness of stars.

I can whimper the same faded melodies

With their aroma of blurred cinnamon.

But the warriors have tired of listening,

For the Trocaderos call them with their Coon jazz-bands.

Double-Bass

I strut with wicked tiger-eyes

Beware! Beware!

Bubbles of rubied flame arise

When villain gloats or hero dies

’Tis I am there.

When the last-breathed cry is uttered,

When the ghastly raven’s fluttered.

And the scoundrel’s curse is muttered

Beware! beware!

’Tis I am there.

I am a draught from an envenomed winepress

Low-humming ere the thud and thunderstorm—

And then at nightfall I decline, subsiding.

My flames will flicker out into the starlight

And I shall scoop into the dome of darkness

A filmy vault of crystallising silver.

Xylophone

Little bells on golden strings,

Little, glittering, glassy things,

Frail humming-birds with freckled wings....

Marionettes

And Pirouettes

And steel-arpeggio flutterings.

With my music-box precision

I can conjure up a vision

Of nurseries and unicorns

And silver cows with crumpled horns,

Of daisies and forget-me-nots,

Of cherry-jam and coffee-pots,

Perpetual kaleidoscopes

Of jumping-jacks and skipping ropes.

I chatter for eternity,

So help yourself to China tea!

Banjo

Kiddy, Oh ma honey

Are you giddy for a song

Or a run for your money?

For I’ll buzz you one along

For I’m tin and string and wire

And wire and string and tin,

I can tang a tune for hire;

I can thump until I’m thin.

Gee! I’ll strut a juicy fox-trot

(Lilly-oh ma loo, ma loo)

Or a Coon’s banana cakewalk

(Come and kiss me, ducky, do!).

(A vision of red-mouths, outthrust bellies in a leafy
créme-de-menthe tropic.)

Wind Instruments

Trombone

I am the brawny man without a brain

Who yawns a heartfelt music mournfully.

The military orchestra reveres

My manliness. Each Sunday afternoon

I lead in the Gaillard-Apothéose.

For I exude no poignant, fevered sounds

And yet I have my share of sentiment.

The soldier boy who perished by his will

For King and Country’s call, I represent.

I stand for honour, bravery’s my spouse

And that I swear’s no enviable rôle—

My sounds lack pepper often when they seem

To fall in relaxation on a couch,

But hold my player culpable for that;

Confiteor! I know I have defects;

But do not grudge me my solidity!

Hautbois

The descendant of that reed

The shepherds played in Attica,

Drowsing to the indolence of their brown bodies,

I peck the eyes of silence

With the vulture-beak of my primeval harshness.

Yet the high keys of an organ

Are rivals lean to mine,

Sonorous in primitive ingenuities

Which blister the most Wagnerian cynics[1]

With their clear-dropping, honey-comb dripping notes.

For you expect in flurry cohorts

The bees to swarm out “zoo-oom, zoo-oom”

Scything the phosphorescence on this air

Of agate-carved medallions,

Where all are statuettes from Tanagra.

[1] Bother those lick-spittles!

Trumpet

The turbid air is buttered over now

With streaks of marbled stillness, as the prow

Of some deserted galleon; then I,

A pennon floating down the jagged sky,

Dissolve the butter with a single blast

Until the quiet falls, a broken mast

Like giant hail that thrashes on the leads

I paralyse and rip the air to shreds,

I flash my sparks of forest-powdering noise;

The formidable fanfares that I poise,

Ominous heralds of catastrophe,

As grapes of cloudy vintage on a sea

Purple and swollen, lecherous for thirst,

That wait until the thunderclaps, then burst.

When calm is ravished and I make retreat

Still throbs the air, still fevered temples beat....

Cor.

I trumpet orange clear and strong

And then I falter in my song,

My breath falls stertorous when I climb,

My notes are sudden-shivery in the ankles.

Fierce red I turn, but like a blurry prism

Half-red, half-yellow, sinewy I grip

With potent gums onto the banister

Of music.

My notes call often desperate retreats

From battle-fields corpse-rich, still dear, still strong,

More passionate than grief, fevered than hatred,

Still dear, still strong, I wail a-down the breeze—

Which raises a poignant odour of putrefaction.

Flute

Though sharp

I ne-

ver harp

Upon

My clear-

ness like

A fear-

ful bird.

My fresh

And pier-

cing mesh

Of notes

Entrap

The sense

And lap

The mind.

I re-

present

The light

Of moon

In night

Of June.

A sea

Of scent

From wood-

land vine

I could

Define

With clear-

ness like

A fear-

ful bird.

Percussion

Cymbals

Arrows glitter through the air,

Wherewith, we, plumed of dappled rainbows,

Ravage quiet.

Shrilly shimmering, we whizz, hiss,

Thrash our eruptions volcanic,

Clattering into scythes

Which pierce the lead-of-air.

Our arrogant syncopations become

Bright sunflowers of steel waxing gigantical,

Then, more animated, clash; there....

Have two suns collided?

And tell me has the curtain been pulled down?

Drum

Men go to be murdered like innocent lambs

At the slaughter-house, gentle as beeves or as hams.

Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.

They are singing away, they are singing away,

They are bidding farewell to the realms of the day ...

Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.

And look at all the faces at the windows peering out!

The bonny lads are going to war, “Hurray! hurray!” they shout,

“The bonny boys, Hurray! Hurray!

They look so happy and so gay!”

Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.

Some are going to their funerals: I roll with bloodshot eyes.

Some are going to a land of death and never to arise.

Except to sing a “Glory, Hallelujah” to the King

And dance around his throne of gold and warble in a ring—

Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.

The fields of France will run in little rivers of their blood

And a few, all gashed and gory, will be sprawling in the mud.

Some are going to a land of death, and never to arise,

Some are going to their funerals; I roll with bloodshot eyes—

Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.

And their lithe and youthful bodies will be broken mannequins

That the Doctors will be cutting, and the bandages and pins

Will take the place of cockroaches and rats with pinkish eyes

And the lice that suck the blood of every soldier ere he dies.

Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.

And I persuade the sceptic that he’s fighting for a cause

“To fight for Right with all his Might” with fang and tooth and claws,

When I’m rolling he forgets the facts and thinks of youth and glory

And forgets that if he does return he’ll tell another story.

Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum! (bis).

Paradise Villas

LIMBS metal-cold and gorgon eyes

With nude enamelled mouth, she lies

Within a vibrant, moaning gloom,

Awaiting canker and the tomb.

And through a shifting polka-light

A clock ticks and the hours take flight,

Brown undertakers drag their feet,

Well drilled to harden at defeat.

One crumpled man with pale, thin hands

To hide his face and sorrow, stands.

With systole, a calm on all,

Diastole, they bear the pall.

A strangled sob. (What shakes the floor?)

The undertakers slam the door.

The orange sashes of the sun

Revolve to blood in unison.

A Morality, or the Twelve Forces of Nature Enchained

THE forest leaves dropped manna on the ground,

Pure amber trailed from ev’ry twining bough,

From flow’r to flow’r the comfortable sound

Of bees would echo mauvely, whilst the plough

Would print his dull design

On undulating hill

And from the rifted rocks

Clear honey would distil.

The heifer overfed on spicy herbs

And so his breath was perfume on the air.

The frisking antelope, unwilling, curbs

Abnormal appetite; he wanders there

With mouth all rosy-stained

From cropping purple meads,

As any parrot’s bill

Or pomegranate seeds.

And, as a multitude of dancing stars,

Bright, pearly dew shone tremulous in grass

Of bladed scimitars that threatened wars

On any prying mortal that would pass.

For only folk with hooves,

The Centaurs’ company,

Had leave to sojourn here—

The Titans’ empery.

The mountains lost their foreheads in the clouds;

The saffron-wingèd manticor of day,

As constellations glimmered from their shrouds,

Had taken sudden fear and flown away.

On fallen blossoms stretched

Beneath ten mango groves

One Titan slept and snored

With nostrils wide as stoves.

Caparisoned in trappings massy gold,

Six Titanesses, heaped on mammoths, ride,

That grunt beneath their weight until they scold

And lacerate each fibrous, knotted hide.

The mountains tremble now,

And cedars spin like tops,

The satyrs hide in caves

Until the thudding stops.

Theia dismounted from her mammoth first,

Adjusting pince-nez, angrily she cried:

“May nephew Zeus, ignoble and accurst,

In anguish die with will unsatisfied!”

The Titans moved their limbs—

Reverberant for miles.

The moonlight chequered lawns

Seemed sprayed with dimpled smiles.

Immediate attack upon the gods

Was counselled now, for Kronos’ fevered ire

Was kindled iron-white; the fiercest rods

Could not avenge indignities so dire.

All chaos now released—

The giants hundred-armed

Shall take them prisoners

Frustrated and alarmed.

The octopus, the dolphin and the whale

Bewildered, seek the bottom of the sea,

Where coral tree-tops clatter in the gale

And frighten mermaids sipping at their tea.

For even here, where peace

And periwinkles dwell,

Those bursts of gas and steam

Jar shrill as booths in hell.

The Titans, when they cough, engender squalls;

Their energy is not consumed by age.

They’d like to stretch their arms and shake St. Paul’s,

But they’re entrapped as mice within a cage.

And none to pity these,

Now bound in sorry plight,

Who played piquet with stars

And shuffled them at night!

My House

THERE is a place of dim, familiar things,

Of contacts vaguely subtle to the touch—

I call it home; in my imaginings

Each detail is of value overmuch.

There is a place where every little nook,

And every cupboard with its special smell, 

Are clear upon my mind as in a book,

I love it with a love that’s hard to tell.

There is a garden too where essences

Of flowers queerly mingle in the air,

And butterflies, strange iridescences,

Flutter about when evening enters there.

Sonnet

MY soul is flailed by myriad little whips

That sweetly sting my tender thoughts, but yet

There comes a time when I would fain forget

The small red cruelty that’s in your lips.                    

Forget your eyes, that ferret me from sleep,

And, if no power can help me from above,

I’ll beat your slender body into love

And bruise your silken throat until you weep.

In violence is love omnipotent—

The subtlest is the fiercely-bitten kiss

That purity and passion interweaves

Until we never know what life has meant

And wait for the supremity of bliss—

The silent thunder floating in the leaves.

Oh! what have I to do with Thee?

OH what have I to do with thee,

Thou pallid, pallid crucifix?

My sins are past all memory,

My soul fit only for the Styx.

Oh what have I to do with thee,

Hanging so limp and stark and cold?

To whom the world in revelry

Looks up ere quickly it grows old.

Oh what have I to do with thee?

The bloody sweat from off thy brow

Bears witness of thy death for me,

Who am so thankless to thee now.

Oh what have I to do with thee,

Thou death-pale Christ still fresh with youth,

Drooping thy head in agony

And anguish for the name of truth?

Oh what have I to do with thee,

Thou pierced by nail and bruised by thong?

Yet spare me in my misery,

For I am weak whilst thou art strong.

Fox-Trot (Dapper Dan)

DISTRESSFULLY aware, he was employed

In dangling clumsy legs into the void,

But the melancholy whistles

Of the ukulele wavered

And a tear-drop semiquavered

From the music, and the thistles

Were extracted

And his feet

Were attracted

By the fleet,

Neat notes ...

Those tightly-fitting pairs of gloves that dance

And beam like a Belasco star

On Broadway, where the houses all advance

To show how very small we are.

And the liquid music throbs

Jujubes,

Crystal-sparkling thoughts in gobs

And cubes—

Flicker-snicker as a scintillating blind

In the breeze,

To appease

The famished Coney Island of the mind.

.  .  .  .  .  .

OH, why was it he looked with such a fierceness the sky?

The rustling of the clouds was pearling grey and silver by,

The lady of the clouds had dropped her muff, but on she trailed,

Her dainty gown was powder-blue, her train was dragon-tailed.

Her face was pale as curds and whey with sleepy-starey look,

The stars they must have bored her, for they were her only book—

And yet she seemed disdainful as the poplars bowed their plumes,

With all the feudal worship that a cloudy queen assumes.

Oh, why was it the poet glanced with envy in his eye

Above him at the clouds a-sailing grey and silver by?

Escape

(Rêvons: c’est l’heure—Verlaine)

WE’LL build us stairs of filmy clouds

And mount until the air is clear,

Above this greasy atmosphere

Of callous, artificial crowds.

Away from fœtid cities’ feet

Where, on the asphalt, taxis skate

Like sombre souls who percolate

Through Limbo’s crumbling lazaret.

Away from cities’ clinging noise

And as we are in full ascent

I’ll know the gamut of content

In looking at your perfect poise.

No trees shall pry with envied lust

On too mature a happiness

When I shall taste your lips’ caress,

Unmindful that I sprang from dust.

Courageously, with silent tears

We’ll meet the chaos of the dawn

And silently our hearts shall mourn,

As at an exodus of years.

Pink Night

THE empty trams sing a familiar song

As plaintive as those leaves that once were green

And cling to asphalt, floating else among

The sharp white-pink of quick acetylene.

Like rich saliva sprung from hectic flow’rs

They spray the night with echoing ideas—

Some lose themselves in fickle slanting hours

And some evaporate in pallid fears.

The souls of men have fossilized, grown cold

In this sublimely artificial day,

A criminal’s revolver-crack they hold

Some new device to animate their play!

The lift drops breathless down

And stairs in armies rise.

Then vertigo, the clown

Has caught us in disguise.

Hope

I  ALWAYS sing into the night

To strangle innermost affright

When faces, twisted masks of lust,

Leer through the murk like yellow dust.

And varnished voices frailly flit

Down shuddering alleys sparsely lit.

Old harlots lurch with ghostly feet

That agonisingly entreat.

I think I’m hearing ever after

The echoes of polluted laughter,

And I can never be alone

But I must hear a hollow groan.

My mind, as in a nightmare, sees

Young bodies rotting with disease,

Strange scabs of mauve and wizened heads,

Sad hospitals with rows of beds....

Is there no harbour, no escape,

Away from whoring, blood and rape?

Two lovers on a bench: and I

Can hear a new-born baby’s cry.

Pastorale

I  RAN into the garden, for the breeze

Was clean and keen and warming to the skin

Like some Peruvian pepper soaked in gin

It forced me to contract into a sneeze.

I ran into the garden, for the sky

Was like a freshly-tinted muslin gown

Which makes the choir-boys gape, the parson frown,

His daughters, envying, look on and sigh.

I ran into the garden, for the sun

Summoned the daisies in their new-washed frills,

Summoned the cowslips and the daffodils

To gay Spring’s festival, each one by one.

I watched the blossoms with the dew in pearls,

The Spring puffed flippancies into my mind

And thoughts too abstract to have been defined

By any but the chaffinch twittering.

Bal Saturnien

I  WATCHED the dancers as they twirled

Around the candelabra’d room,

And ladies, diamonded, pearled,

Danced to the big brass jazz-band’s boom.

Rustles of skirts, perfumes that pass,

Faces aglow and eyes that beam;

Floors lucid as a looking-glass,

Lips glossy, puffed with crimson cream.

And I am sad, I know not why

With this illusive merriment;

Candles that flicker out and die,

Lilies that wither—youth that’s spent.

For a Viola-da-gamba

(To be sung by a Eunuch)

I  HAVE known beauty

Of skies at eve

Beneath the shadows

That interweave

The boughs that grieve.

I have known beauty

Of suns that set

With fire of amber

And coronet

Of pearl inlet.

I have known beauty

Of fields at dawn

When April shivers

On gilded corn,

And hope is born.

I have known beauty

Of Summer, Spring,

Nebulous Autumn

Cloud gathering

With frail-poised wing.

I have known beauty—

But none so fair

To match the splendour

Of my love’s hair

And snow limbs bare.

Contrasts

(To the sacred memory of Petronius)

AGAIN the agate chalices are filled,

And of a sudden orgiasts are stilled

In wonder, when jet Nubians outpour

The liquid flames instilled from mandragore,

Allured but fearful of their potent sway.

The lantern fruit glow succulent and gay,

Blue-veinéd grapes in massing pendulous,

Small raisins, oranges acidulous

Contracting eyelids till the features wince,

Towering domes of pineapple and quince,

And apples like a film of virgin’s breath,

Strange berries, (you would think they bleed to death!)

Piled pappy plums opaquely amethyst,

Pink furry peaches like a morning mist,

Green mangoes, mellow apricots of gold,

Figs puffed and oozy, melons crystal-cold,

Red mammals of persimmon from the South

And curious pears that glitter in the mouth,

’Mid Tyrian silk, soft laughter, drapery

Of fine-spun damask gleam white napery

Bedizened bosoms, arms baptismal white.

The guests are surfeited with food, and Night

With Sleep and Lust, her ill-assorted sons,

Creeps through the porphyry pavilions.

“Hither and sing, oh Syrian eunuch-boy,

“Those chaste and still-born songs that never cloy

“The prurient senses kindling in the flesh ...

“Come, Aphrodite, send to me a fresh

“Virginal body for my violence,

“That I may more enjoy the somnolence

“Of after-dreams!”

Thus prayed the men of Tyre

And other towns demolished by God’s ire.

But we to-day have learned and waxed more wise.

We look into dear Lady Dodo’s eyes

And sip champagne and eat our fricassee,

Discuss her spaniel’s noble pedigree;

We praise the chef. “And what a pretty dress!

Worth, dear, or Callot?” (Christ! what bashfulness).

And if we wish to have a little game,

Beguile the night in homes of evil fame.

The Pensile Gardens of Babylon

THERE beauty’s footsteps lingered in the soft

And poignant semitones that sped aloft,

In perfumes wavering with finger-tips

So faint, they scarcely fluttered on the lips.

There caravans would halt in flame of day

And many turbaned wanderers would stray

To cool their brown-limbed bodies in the deep

And juicy foam of fountains, where would leap

Eternal jets of water-diamonds

Limned intricate like myriad leafy fronds,

Wetting the marble rims with amber showers

Throughout the endless ballet of the hours....

There Bedouins with liquid amorous eyes

Would listen to the piercing notes arise

From shrilly-vivid parokeets, or pause

To overhear the chattering macaws

And watch the cranes with slender, supple necks

Preening the feathered shadows into flecks

Of purpled hues and finest, mordant white,

Or spy the swans ascend in snowy flight

Over the swinging canopy of leaves;

Whither the sky suavely interweaves

A labyrinth of azure-rifted clouds.

Where saffron-throated birds in whirring crowds

Would weep celestial music with their wings,

And tawny monkeys, tiny nimble things,

Would play their melodramas in the trees,

And throbbing swarms of honey-sucking bees

Vibrate the petalled air in droning waves,

And mingle with the murmuring of slaves.

When shadow night is poisoned by the fangs

Of daily death, with new redoubled pangs

She crackles up in films of aëry haze,

Until the reeling sun with outworn rays

Is hacked to slivers and his regal veins

Spurt crimson jets of flame along the plains,

Suffused to blazing chaos when the sky

Writhes into darkness and her empery.

Then throb the pensile gardens to a swoon,

The great rose-yellow petal of the moon

Curved, white and hovering above the trees,

Shivers a gelid lucency to freeze

The gold of sunset into coldest hues—

A monochrome of silver-tinted blues.

God’s pyrotechnics, shooting star cascades

Splash, sliding, sizzling, ever-whirling blades

Or cataracts and dagger jerks of light

In infinite gyrations down the night.

The hump-backed camels, roding lupanars

Of clouds that lust enamoured of the stars,

Shimmering jewelled pinpricks wistfully

Awed by the vastness and the mystery

Wrapped palpitating round. Then fold on fold

The shoulders of the hills are outlined bold

With pallid smoothness, undulating far

To where the empty, trackless deserts are.

Part II
URBANITIES

Sabbath Morning Rain

LIKE diamond on window pane,

The sky is jagged by spears of rain.

As splashed by layers of grease and lard

The slate-roofs glitter cold and hard.

And people drag their damp-soled feet

Like sacks of dough along the street.

Some orange peel of yesternight

Brightens the gutter’s mud-choked plight.

The ghosts of last night’s riot-spilth

Mingle with puddle, slime and filth.

A lady walks to Church, her pet

White prayer book shielded from the wet.

Umbrella dripping, gloves, frock-coat

A man sails Churchwards like a boat.

Red, smug-faced schoolboys slouch and lurch

Before the grimy Gothic Church.

Soon sound has ceased except th’ inane

Plop-plopping of the Sunday rain.

A Window Speaks

OH pity me! for day by countless day

And night by night in vain anxiety

I wait for something that will never come.

I long to splutter, crumble, cut the dust,

I long to cleave my prisoners, to gash

Their bleeding entrails, slit their tangled guts

Until they die in anguish on the floor.

A window paralysed and stiffened, I

Must even stare upon the dull world’s form

And watch the doings of a thousand clowns

Repeated lamentably day by day.

Dawn rises not with graceful motion here,

But with policemen plodding on their beat

And whistling apple-faces, clattering

Of milk-cans, painted carts and bicycles;

The water in the closet down below

Continually gingles, splish-a-splash,

And I go mad for very monotones.

The neat grey clerks trip to their offices

Meticulously punctual, little bags

Keep runic-rhythm to their gander steps.

The sun blinds like a harsh electric bulb,

Slicing the street in pools of amber light,

Chipping the railings here and chopping there

The tulips of the houses opposite.

The clock strikes nine and now with sleek top-hats,

The tea and toast still tasting in their mouths,

The Times not full digested in their minds,

The pompous middle-aged to business go

Soliloquising fondly to themselves

About the new percentage income tax.

Then convex matrons interview the cook.

A sunburnt cretin cringes down below

For pennies, jangling out the tinny notes

Of some old catch of Marie Lloyd that scarce

Can drag a tune from out its crippled box.

Some children skip in time, a monkey bows

And capers to the laughing passers-by.

The cretin then wheels off and all is still

Save for the singing of the charwoman—

“I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,” she sings

With shrill, cracked voice resounding down the street

Like the sharp scrape of tin-tacks desperate,

Persistent in the hollowed crystal air,

Till sounds dissolve to liquid quietude.

The hot dust smeared along the roadway chokes

The sneezing passers-by and slowly mounts

Into their nostril-caves distressingly

Like microscopic gnats, but now there come

Refreshing rumblings from the water-cart,

Which spits small Beardsley-drops about the street

And trickles down into the gutters fast,

Whilst I am left to numbly contemplate

The thin, white apron strings of cloud above,

Until the raucous luncheon-bell once more

Calls upon men to glut themselves with food.

Then hour on hour of thudded octaves; hour

On hour of doddering on yellow keys—

Long, shapeless valses, British Grenadiers,

Whilst water in the closet down below

Persists in gurgling semitone applause.

The clouds grow sullen and the clerks return

As neat as they set out. But in their minds,

(Impenetrable masks), their tired thoughts

Succeed each other, feeble and fatigued.

One, after supper and a game of whist,

Will rest his run-down clock-work on a bed.

The gas-lamps prick their whiteness in the skies,

The footsteps of a weary harlot’s tread

Remind the street that there is sin abroad.

But dismally sin ever fails to lure

These brazen men from happy families,

Content to snore beneath their handkerchieves.

The clock strikes twelve and I am left alone

To wait for something that will never come....

Seven to Bed

THE sentries in their boxes,

Like rigid dolls of wood,

In saffron-yellow tunics

Lethargically stood.

The shower had not finished

And still her threaded tears

Fell down like little seconds

Across the flight of years.

The pavement was a mirror

Which caught the jets of light,

The twinkling strings of jewels

That pour from lamps at night.

Suffused among the turrets

A solitary bird

Imprisoned in its feathers

A music faint and blurred....

In bed, I heard the creeping,

The rippling drum of rain

And watched the twilight falling

Upon the window pane.

Town Typing Office

HERE in an office of sickly greens

Typists tap fast on black machines;

Middle-aged drudges the hour-long day

Hammer their finger-nails away:

I have just come from the country’s crown,

Shropshire, you know, with clouds of down,

This is a change from the gaping sheep

Grazing for ever, half asleep.

I have just come from the country wealds,

Shropshire, you know, with spinach fields,

Men there are honest and plump and red,

Here they are sallow for lack of bread.

But in the office the clock ticks fast

Telling how soon the hours flit past,

Middle-aged drudges the hour-long day

Hammer their pallid lives away.

Coiffeur Choréographique

To Edith Sitwell

“NEXT gentleman,” the nervous scissors wait

To spoil the hair off some reflecting pate.

“The unemployed, Sir?—half of them are thieves,

Who soil propriety like autumn leaves.”

I wait until my turn. The crack of doom

Summons me from a plush-protected tomb.

“Short round the edge, but not too short will do,

And then I think I’ll have a dry shampoo.”

The scissors ballet-dance about one ear,

Some hairs have fallen down my neck, I fear.

Another pas-de-deux about my eyes—

I do not care for such close harmonies.

But soon the cutting’s done, the barber says:

“The unemployed are dreadful, better days

“May come and make us more content, I hope.”

My head is buried in a cloud of soap,

Till down upon my head Niagara Falls

Descend with all the heat of music halls.

He dries my hair, and as I go he says:

“The unemployed are dreadful, better days——”

I slam the door and wonder, “Will he say

‘The unemployed, Sir,’ on the Judgment Day?”

L’Impératrice des Pagodes

A POOR, drab slattern washed a greasy plate

Daubed and besmeared with crumbs and margarine,

She had small time to think of tinsel Fate

And yet she sang a Fate that might have been.

When she, the Queen of distant Bangalore,

(She saw it on a coloured map at school)

Would lie with Bob upon a cushioned floor

And jeer at Liza, dubbing her a fool.

When she would bathe her limbs in ode-colone[2]

And promenade in parks with German bands,

When she’d no longer watch the stars alone,

But with Bob’s kisses on her melting hands.

When she could gallop down the Margate beach

And have her “photo” taken on the pier—

(Bob told her once her face was like a peach,

A dubious compliment! to witness here).

And the bank-holidays, the giddy nights

Of merry-goes and switch-backs at Earl’s Court—

The penny-in-the-slot machines, the sights

Of pygmies, men deformed of every sort,

Abnormal women, men with scaley skins

And Esmeraldas wise in magic lore

Would bow to stout Viziers, Moujiks and Djins

Encircling Winnie, Queen of Bangalore!

A poor, drab slattern washed a greasy plate

Daubed and besmeared with crumbs and margarine,    

She had small time to think of tinsel Fate

And yet she sang a Fate that might have been.

[2] Kitchen-English for “Eau de Cologne.”

Miss Fay the Trapezist

RED ostrich feathers in her hair,

She balances while people stare

At her pink tights through fœtid waves

Of pulsing awe; they are her slaves.

They are her slaves; she smiles and they

Are near-bewitched to see her sway

Along the slender wire trapeze

Into the card-board painted trees.

The sugared music stops, she stands

Upon her plump and milk-white hands.

Bird-like she rises, blows a kiss

To the spectators, moist with bliss.

The brass band plays a tepid valse

Of sickly syrup-sounds, the false

Pearls of a dowager keep time.

They too were pretty in their prime.

Then the spectators clap, they burst

Applause until a molten thirst

Tugs at their dewlaps, when Miss Fay

Flutters a curtsey to the day.

Sotie

(The lion-huntress accounts for one of her rather more unprepossessing guests)

SMALL crumbs of glass he had for eyes

That blinked, myopically wise.

Like midnight suns his laughter froze,

Suavely sterile and morose.

All bistre-brown, an eerie sight,

As shrivelled as a Cenobite

Long vagrant in the Thebaid,

He quite miraculously hid.

But after many years he came

To town, and found it just the same.

He had his hair cut in the Strand

And manicured each psychic hand.

He wrote a book on Cerements

Or some such furtive elements;

He got a title for his pains,

I’m told he has terrific brains!

He had his little eyes exchanged

For larger ones—Mix X. arranged

His skin (enamel so they say!)

And so I had him here to stay.

With eucalyptus in his hair,

He trims his beard if people stare.

He loves to sip beneath the shade

The languid green of lemonade.

Mr. Bedlam’s Sunday Breakfast

MELANCHOLILY he chipped his morning egg,

So human in its roundness that he felt

A murderer, then lifted the too-small spoon

Brimmed with slippery yolk. “Oh, no you shan’t

Fall on my Sunday best.” How like a woman’s kiss

It seemed to slither nudely down his throat.

Glutinous amber. The tea, when milk had flecked it,

Softening the vulgar cairngorm to a mere distinguished

Nebulosity (pompous), nubiferousness (more pompous still),

Was almost worth the drinking, although it lacked

The romance of being specified Chinese.

The fat round butter with the daisy on it,

The daisy that he would soon decapitate,

Looked over-salted, but then the bread was always

Doughy and void of flavour.

To-day the crust was black, as if the soot

Had fallen on a country thatch ... the marmalade,

Scotch and well streaked, smiled on in invitation.

“My headache’s better now. We won’t be late.

And Dr. Chitty’s preaching on Divorce.”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been retained from the original.