Part 1

AN INDIAN ASS

_By the same author_

AQUARIUM

AN INDIAN ASS

BY

HAROLD ACTON

“Ha ha! ha ha! this world doth pass Most merrily, I’ll be sworn; For many an honest Indian ass Goes for an Unicorn.

Ty hye! ty hye! O sweet delight! He tickles this age that can Call Tullia’s ape a marmosyte And Leda’s goose a swan.”

DUCKWORTH

3 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W.C.

_First published in 1925_ _All rights reserved_

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

CONTENTS

PAGE

LAMENT FOR ADONIS 7

WHEN FRIGATES FROM LONG VOYAGES 13

CAPRICCIO ESPAGNOL 15

TRÉPAK 18

THE INVESTITURE OF A SPINSTER HOB-GOBLIN 20

THE WERE-WOLF 21

HILARITY 22

THE GODS 26

AS DMITRI KARAMAZOFF SANG ON THE WAY TO CHAOS 27

IN THE TRAIN DE LUXE 31

THE PRODIGAL SON 33

VENTILATION 38

AFTER 40

GREEN GROW THE RUSHES, O 43

WORDS 44

GREENNESS UNSECRETED 46

BACK STREETS 48

WERTHER-INTROSPECTION 49

ON THE THEME OF OPHELIA’S MADNESS 51

THESE CONSOLATIONS 53

IN THE MONTH OF ATHYR 55

DISCOVERIES 56

OLD WOMAN 57

COLD JOINTS I 59

COLD JOINTS II 60

COLD JOINTS III 61

INVOCATION 63

LAME LADY 64

CONVERSATIONS AND CRUMBLING 66

INTERMEZZO 69

THREE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE FRENCH

I THE GIBBET 71

II SAINT 73

III HÉRODIADE 74

_Lament for Adonis_

Now fogs enfold the sea And berries fall from eaves, The cat’s eyes glitter green into the dark. The sloping hills of myrrh, The trees with tender anise overweighed, The pointed flag-leaves stir Only to weep again, Only to sob and mourn Adonis dead.

Throughout this dolorous night of cloudy jade Even the hornless dragon of the sea, The green and golden sequined basilisk, The water-scorpion and the python-king Like sad eclipses trail about the land. The crane, the ibis and the mango-bird, The jungle-fowl, the heron and the roc, The badger and three-footed tortoise join In pouring out their eyes.

O Cypris violet-stoled, O wrapped in purple woof Arise and beat your azure-veined breasts! Small jewelled nipples, bleed! For I have seen you make that curved mouth A bed of balsam, bed of crisp lush flowers, Whose poor crushed frozen lips compactly closed Lie, flakes of ice, where once were flakes of fire, Their loveliness a thing of agony. The moon has slanted off, and querulous ghosts Hover along the brink of treacherous voids And leap into this night of blinded eyes (Blind now to pleasure’s lapping ecstasies); This peacock-throated night whose stifling cries Shudder and crack: ’tis Misery who calls “Woe” to the black solemnities of sky For loveliest Adonis--he is dead.

Low on the hills he lies, the lovely bleeding one, His throat aflash with faint stunned strands of light. Low on the hills he lies and breathes his life away And from his thigh of milk-white agate gashed, Slit by the cruel tusk, The ruby blood drips down his skin of snow. Beneath his brows stars set in crystal deep (Once memories, hungers glinted in their pools), Are glazed dim, opaque and lustreless, The blue orbs burn no more beneath translucent lids. His locks are wet with the clear drops of night, The rose has fled his lip: the very kiss hangs dead, The kiss that Cypris never will forego.

And when the bitter white wind breaks the morn, His gathered hounds bay gloom about his corpse, The green-haired Nereids of the marsh make moan, Frail flowers dabble pollened cheeks with tears, From vavicel to calyx petals weep.... Long spiral tufts of drooping galingale, The shadowy deer-grass and the swallow-wort Sob through their bat’s wing tissues tremulous, The poplars weeping amber in the vales, The orchises and sandal-trees, lament.

But Aphrodite with unbraided hair And tragic thorn-pierced feet so delicate, Calls through the woodlands and again, again. O, more than music’s many stringèd charms, His lulling name reverberates afar Where faint sails clasp the ribbands of the sea. But round his navel leaps the thick dark blood, His chest is lapped in scarlet from the thighs, Now purpled are those limbs afore as white As veils of snow unflecked by merest breeze.

Cypris was fair: whilst her Adonis lived The light would melt her body into song, But with Adonis has her beauty died, Died as a vaporous melody on a lute. “Woe, woe, for Cypris!” all the mountains call, The oak-trees answer: “For Adonis, woe!” For Aphrodite all the rivers weep, The wells bewail Adonis on the hills. Echo resounds “Ai, ai ... Adonis dead ... Most beautiful Adonis ... he is dead.” As Venus saw the wasting limbs, the wound Gashed in the whiteness of her loved one’s thighs, She clasped him to her, moaning supply warm Against his chilled inertness:

“Farewell, Adonis; once, as I was telling Deluding tales of happiness, the morrow, When I had thought that joy had come for dwelling, Came sorrow.

“The almoner of death, the silent creeper, Has snared my love, and I shall see him never, I, manacled in miseries, a weeper For ever.

“A widowed goddess with her beauty setting Like a gold sun to rise no longer, never, Whose love, with Acheron, is fast forgetting Her for ever.”

For each blood drop the Paphian sheds a tear, And tears and blood on earth are turned to flowers: The ruby blood brings forth the pursy rose, The tears bring forth the air-white wind-flower, For loveliest Adonis--he is dead.

No seemly couch, this lonely bed of leaves For dead Adonis: beautiful in death As one that stumbles on a slumber, falls On downy-wingèd doze of braided air.

Your bed let him possess, O Cytherea, Lay him to sleep on couch of twisted gold, The couch that yearns for wan Adonis’ limbs. Cast on him drooping eyes of jasmine-flowers, Nay, all the flowers have faded in his death, As keen swift lovely murmurs drowned on breeze. Sprinkle his limbs with bakkaris and myrrh, Nay, perished all the perfumes in his death, All flushed soft legendary scents dissolve-- Disquieting erotic memories.

The torches on the lintel all are quenched And Hymenæus rends the bridal crown. No more the song is “Hymen”: a new song The Graces grieve like mournful Autumn boughs, The toneless sound that means a broken heart: “Woe, for Adonis, son of Cinyrus!” To him the Muses chant their starry music, And painted insects floating motionless At their weird sound, unconscious of the day, Bright feathered wings hung in the gloom of thought Mimic the melancholy atmosphere And dry words start and rattle in the throat, Shudder in sorrow; but he does not heed.

The bending vault of stars, Of cool green quiet stars, Where clouds but catch the palest tinge of day, Is tangled with the sea; The moonlight tossed and thrown by jostling waves Refrain from dirges, cease, O Cypris, your lament. Again you must bewail another year!

_When Frigates from Long Voyages_ ...

When frigates from long voyages Drift into harbour, then I see Whirled momentary mirages Of inspissated greenery-- Mazed mangroves casting their aerial roots, And diamond water-shoots Embroidering the air. And in the drowsy hanging-gardens there Roam slowly-swaying elephants; The fulgurant phœnix with her sycophants, Those trailing-plumèd birds of paradise, Sits on a cactus thorn. And gleaming in the ruby-veinèd morn Lie pools of liquid amber for the indolent crocodile To flounder in and dolorously smile. Spick diving gannets, speckled pelicans, Flutter with feather-footed ptarmigans. Orange-liveried marmosets Climb slender cypress minarets. Strange garrisons Of emerald-mailed chameleons, And peacocks, fans outspread as gonfalons, Shrill-voiced as amazons; Coiled dinosaurs that lap the hydromel From many a mauve-lipped shell.... The unicorns are neighing from afar, Where hills of cinnabar Loom high Like venomous Borgia-philtres on the sky.

_Capriccio Espagnol_

“Y entre puente y otro puente Zaragoza es my tierra.”

Of blood blown-dry brown velvet, baldaquins, Words guttural--then soft as dulcimers: Of rays of rapid light through fishes’ fins Prisoned in tanks profound where nothing stirs; Of nights that ooze weird sounds, and starry eyes On lattice fixed and bulging balconies:--

Of these my brain built castles rapidly, And tolled metallic like a beaten bell Of hard green copper; straggling aimlessly Over ravine and granite citadel Were cities unpremeditated, dry, As draughts of space inhaled from scorching sky.

Through these Cathedrals rose like cachalots Twisted of height and gloom and sudden glow. Their glossy floors reflect the crimson clots Of vestment swirling, swishing to and fro-- And when the beadle taps his ponderous mace Faint echoes rustle from the Altar’s lace.

Within the town: feeble electric light Among the dusty foliage of the trees, Like gentle cheeks against the steely night, With boughs of thick smooth silver; jubilees Of saints are frequent--in their thoughtfulness The citizens will give their saint a dress.

They lift her from the gilded canopy, Studded in far Peru, on which she stands, Sumptuous, realistic, in each eye A gaping jewel; sprouting from her hands Are paper flowers--in their thoughtfulness They give their saint a new magenta dress.

The ceremony done, and people doff Their piety: serrated streets resound With gossip, vacuous laughter, idle scoff. Like strips of tape the scattered crowds confound, Mantillas and a rout of dusky hair, Stray thoughts jerk off and clatter in the air....

Austere this land, and yet it utters flesh: The longing ache of contact, lids like song And lips like speech melodious: a mesh For Don Juans and sanguine passions; strong This earth of sprinkled blood, the seed of gold, Whose tainted glitters dazzle young and old!

Jagged umber ridges freaked with lines of snow, Bitumen lakes, austere as faded fire, And vague waste lands where gypsies squatting low Croon winged abandoned musics that expire Like bruised sweet herbs, gushed madness, agonies Of lances hurled at pulseless arteries.

Like vapours anchored to a mountain’s thigh Legioned, remote and abstract, yet withal Evocative of an infinity-- Beauty becoming metaphysical-- This Phœnix-land breeds new birds in the brain From ash, for I have never been to Spain.

_Trépak_

The trees sprawl up like trumpets in the night, Great ghosts of once-viridian: but now, Fibred with brittle tufts of massy snow, They creak with burdened whiteness, for the bright Blue-prismed stalactites like wounds of light Are pendulous from their pagoda-boughs. And when a wind whirs in among the trees, As some Silenus fumbling frantic hands Into a cleft of honey, they cast off A whittling dust of little hispid stars. The moon is hungry. Lo! the moon has thinned To finger-nail’s fine fringe; she is forlorn With thought of Spring’s flown hollow spells of joy, When the now-passionless statue of her mind Was tremulous with passion, nescient lips Stammered lush ingenuities of love. Then Summer crackled like a yawn of fire: The big-lipped consummation of desire. A starved, lean-ribbed dog with rheumy eyes Yelps up at her, his poor thin thread of voice Nigh snaps, and trails its note into a growl, Then tumbles, frozen stark, amongst the snow. The barbèd minutes shiver chillily In wait for something.

Ho! who’s this, a man? In this torn catafalque of barren boughs? A patriarchal bearded brittle-bones Daft, dazed with drink, shuffles his slipshod feet Scattering sprays of crisply sparkling snow. Death clanks his rusty mail and flaps his wings And ogling, draws the man into a dance:

“No more the malady of life unlived With no grand-opera effects; no more Heroic sunsets, agonies of rose To wear you faint; no more the whirlpool’s mist Of good and evil. It shall be revealed There is no meaning, no significance In all this clamour, in this viscous trail Of sentimental sanatoriums. Those frowning stoic caryatides, Who contemplate in decorous solitude This elegant Golgotha of futile birth, Are fraudulent mountebanks; unmanicured, Life’s pointed nails grapple and tear your flanks Without a murmur trembling from your lips, O broken vessel sprayed with broken light, Come to oblivion’s arms; sepulchral night, Inchoate truth await you--they are kind. Close your red lashless eyelids. Death is fair....”

_The Investiture of a Spinster Hob-Goblin_

Oh have you heard the chaunt of snails Tilting upon a big brown leaf, And held the insect world in fief And pared the devil’s gilded nails?

And have you parlied with the rose, And seen the ballet of the bats And watched the sloths, our acrobats, Performing at our antic-shows?

And have you drunk the tears of stars, And bathed in bubbles of the moon, And heard the gay grasshoppers croon, Who use their bodies as guitars?

Then, if you’ve seen the phœnix land Or if a satyr’s beard you’ve sawn, And filed the eye-brows of a faun, We will admit you to our band.

The hedonistic unicorns, Who drive our chariots through the sky, Will lead you to our empery Of languid dappled damson dawns.

_The Were-Wolf_

All in the hush of a green night, He left the downy marriage-bed In a chill sweat, his face chalk-white, His voice spoke hoarsely of the dead.

The young wife, wakened by his howls, Clutched bed-post dumb with fright, surprise; Like lepers huddled under cowls, Red films lay on her husband’s eyes.

“I am become a wolf,” he said, “And I will to the churchyard-site To throttle graves, to raise the dead. Strange flesh will be my fare to-night!”

And barking at the slice of moon He scampered nimbly on all fours. She never saw him more; one noon She spied the imprint of wolf’s claws.

_Hilarity_

Come, let us sing the world’s hilarity, Now that a silence overspreads the hills, Each crevice, muscle, wimpling in a haze, Blue-ragged fustian of twilight: come And crack the sky with laughter, mounting shrill, Let it dissolve the æther, let it break In bubbles, circles ever-bosoming, As when a trout has troubled a still pool.

Scatter it like a hungry pack of hounds, Worry and tear and grind it into strips, Ravish and tread on it, then let it be To crawl before us like the ooze of oil, A worm of shame, a mean and squamous thing.

Hysteria, guide us! Let our laughter heave, Swell shriek on shriek, till it engender fear Like peacocks in abandoned palaces Whose sharp and melancholy discords ring And rinse like lightning through the vaulted roofs At sunset hour, when skies are smeared with blood. Come, drown the viol’s pallid amber notes, Submerge the fevered pluckings at the lute, Let no soft rippling cadences be spilled, But beat a riot out upon the drums. Fescennine gongs shall kindle us to blaze, And thus our fumes, well ballasted, will steer Towards the placid stars and make them reel.

Our lives are cratered with great pocks and scabs, Meticulously morselled into pangs, Birth-scream, death-rattle, straggling years between, Of childhood and uneasy puberty, Of adolescence and maturity, Resolve tormented into slow decay, Crabbed, agued, rheumatic, cough our lives away. And some, less fortunate, cough up their blood.

Then let us sing the world’s hilarity! With plunging pistons let our laughter press, Lumbering in massed squadrons, vitriol To blister the anæmic orb of moon. And there are many hours before the dawn. The hilewort, nightshade, agrimony-wand Surrender to the fingers of the breeze, Lay bare their throats, let loose their floating hair.

Some luckless women bear their children blind And some hare-lipped and others lunatick With soft and fumbling brains and shifting eyes, Who dandle curly flowers, their lolling tongues Clicking and moist with unrestrained saliva. Perhaps ’twere better that they were born blind, Never to see the ugliness of man, The mirrors of his noisome, clammy thoughts, Like night-grown fungi pushing on the air, But hold sweet music palpable, and sounds, Tones, undertones: a paradise of hues, And glowing forms in silk embroideries. The silence, too, will seem a rhythmic motion, A saraband for snow-white feet to tread, And not a tortured cripple crouching low Amongst the blotting shadows of his soul, To nurse his agony with evil oaths, The blight-scarred sickly vapours of remorse, Sputtered and writhing from his twisted lips.

Were a revolver fired with loud report, The only music welcome to our ears, The poor blind man would tremble, clutch a chair....

Day after day the limbs of man are gnawed And flayed by every manner of disease, Eaten of lice, they seem the spawn of slugs, And cancer slowly scrabbles at their vitals. The small-pox ploughs their faces into ruts And scurvy furrows, strange deformities Distend and hunch them into monstrous shapes, Like shadows gripping at realities, To scrape a livid grave amongst the slime. Some calcined ashen white with leprosy Will scream for terror at their dreadful hands, The touch of which would seem to cause decay The roots they tear, the pappy fruit they pluck, And prowling beasts will turn in haste and flee Before their weary footsteps through the night.

Our quickened hearts have grated on themselves, We groin with lappered morphews of the mind, Our wanton mirth has frozen into sorrow, And we had thought to fashion of our joy Round crackling pearls to pelt our wine-drenched loves. But we were to have sung hilarity!

Our clowns are turned into tragedians, And Pierrot’s chalk-white face is crinkled up With bitter weeping; roguish Harlequin, His apple cheeks all wet and blobbed with tears, Wanders the streets of Bergamo alone. And floating through the utter silences, Our sobs well hugely, spasms echoing To jeer and mock at us, abortive fools, Who came to sing the world’s hilarity.

_The Gods_

Lightning zigzags and again Comets reel like tipsy girls, Bulbous clouds let down the rain, Little silver chains of pearls.

Through the frenzied city beats A bourdon-drumming, heavy, low. In long and apoplectic streets The gods are passing to and fro.

I watch them walk among the crowds, Their beards a-glittering with stars, Until they merge into the clouds Among the chimney’s fat cigars.

While lovers in their foolishness Lisp out the night with hopes and fears, Whilst into void and emptiness Time clatters off and disappears.

_As Dmitri Karamazoff sang on the way to Chaos_

Eight days without a sun: but I am calm And cultivate my tulips fixedly, I watch them flick their flighty freckled tongues Mocking and sweetly monstrous blares of time. (We weep to see you haste away so soon!) The gas is near extinct upon the plush, Like the last birds its flares have ebbed away. Blue witness of the Second Empire, gas!-- In cabriolets we echoed through the night And caracoled with busselled courtesans-- You lit the boulevards and avenues, While Paul Verlaine, a candle in his hand, Would totter up to bed and watch the moon _Comme un point sur un i_--so orotund.... Through fumes and crapulous velleities.

But now the batteries like headaches beat Against the temples of humanity; A network of pure electricity Installed for quick transmission through the world Pours a perpetual electric day. Men plough their fields by searchlights from the skies, By searchlights blatant, geometrical, As fingers from each god-like aeroplane Pointed to each created mass of flesh Accusing and forewarning.

O empresses of jade who slumber on your cushions, Who slumber delicately on your cushions! If we were moulded of a subtle stone Instead of being merely flesh and bone, We’d imitate your cool and elegant curves. To chill green jade our hot and shattered nerves Would clot or petrify or fossilize-- And moss to moist the finnèd lids of eyes, Lush velvet soaking on the irises Looped round with tiredness and its swollen reds Would grow about our damask four-post beds. We would be green, an ecstasy of green! As small sea-violets, virgin forest’s green, Where trees like coral sponges dab the air, And through each weft you hear a piece of wind, A tiny concertina-push of sound And then an inrush, sobbing gently inward.

Why do we drown in customs, why become Lost dying flames and strangers to the skies Whose beams with clouds like wingèd chariots fly? Why do we climb the towers which break our knees, Horrible towers from which, when we look down We wish to hurl ourselves? O, then the ant-like herd below would feel A gentle spray of entrails--they’d recoil!-- Perhaps one woman faints: we do not care, The worm has not become our paramour, The worm has not yet pierced our winding-sheets.