Part 3

Never, bolshevistically To be able to stand for all these! Alas, alas, I have got to leave it all To the youths in Sunday suits and yellow shoes Who have pulled down the salvia flowers And rosy delicate hibiscus flowers And everything else to their disgusting level, Never, of course, to put anything up again.

But yet If they pull all the world down, The process will amount to the same in the end. Instead of flame and flame-clean ash Slow watery rotting back to level muck And final humus, Whence the re-start.

And still I cannot bear it That they take hibiscus and the salvia flower. _Taormina._

THE EVANGELISTIC BEASTS

ST MATTHEW

They are not all beasts. One is a man, for example, and one is a bird.

I, Matthew, am a man.

“And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me”--

That is Jesus. But then Jesus was not quite a man. He was the Son of Man Filius Meus, O remorseless logic Out of His own mouth.

I, Matthew, being a man Cannot be lifted up, the Paraclete To draw all men unto me, Seeing I am on a par with all men.

I, on the other hand, Am drawn to the Uplifted, as all men are drawn, To the Son of Man _Filius Meus_.

_Wilt thou lift me up, Son of Man?_ How my heart beats! I am man.

I am man, and therefore my heart beats, and throws the dark blood from side to side All the time I am lifted up. Yes, even during my uplifting.

And if it ceased? If it ceased, I should be no longer man As I am, if my heart in uplifting ceased to beat, to toss the dark blood from side to side, causing my myriad secret streams.

After the cessation I might be a soul in bliss, an angel, approximating to the Uplifted; But that is another matter; I am Matthew, the man, And I am not that other angelic matter.

So I will be lifted up, Saviour, But put me down again in time, Master, Before my heart stops beating, and I become what I am not. Put me down again on the earth, Jesus, on the brown soil Where flowers sprout in the acrid humus, and fade into humus again. Where beasts drop their unlicked young, and pasture, and drop their droppings among the turf. Where the adder darts horizontal. Down on the damp, unceasing ground, where my feet belong And even my heart, Lord, forever, after all uplifting: The crumbling, damp, fresh land, life horizontal and ceaseless.

Matthew I am, the man. And I take the wings of the morning, to Thee, Crucified, Glorified. But while flowers club their petals at evening And rabbits make pills among the short grass And long snakes quickly glide into the dark hole in the wall, hearing man approach, I must be put down, Lord, in the afternoon, And at evening I must leave off my wings of the spirit As I leave off my braces And I must resume my nakedness like a fish, sinking down the dark reversion of night Like a fish seeking the bottom, Jesus, ΙΧΘΥΣ Face downwards Veering slowly Down between the steep slopes of darkness, fucus-dark, seaweed-fringed valleys of the waters under the sea Over the edge of the soundless cataract Into the fathomless, bottomless pit Where my soul falls in the last throes of bottomless convulsion, and is fallen Utterly beyond Thee, Dove of the Spirit; Beyond everything, except itself.

Nay, Son of Man, I have been lifted up. To Thee I rose like a rocket ending in mid-heaven. But even Thou, Son of Man, canst not quaff out the dregs of terrestrial manhood! They fall back from Thee.

They fall back, and like a dripping of quicksilver taking the downward track, Break into drops, burn into drops of blood, and dropping, dropping take wing Membraned, blood-veined wings. On fans of unsuspected tissue, like bats They thread and thrill and flicker ever downward To the dark zenith of Thine antipodes Jesus Uplifted.

Bat-winged heart of man Reversed flame Shuddering a strange way down the bottomless pit To the great depths of its reversèd zenith.

Afterwards, afterwards Morning comes, and I shake the dews of night from the wings of my spirit And mount like a lark, Beloved.

But remember, Saviour, That my heart which like a lark at heaven’s gate singing, hovers morning-bright to Thee, Throws still the dark blood back and forth In the avenues where the bat hangs sleeping, upside-down And to me undeniable, Jesus.

Listen, Paraclete. I can no more deny the bat-wings of my fathom-flickering spirit of darkness Than the wings of the Morning and Thee, Thou Glorified.

I am Matthew, the Man: It is understood. And Thou art Jesus, Son of Man Drawing all men unto Thee, but bound to release them when the hour strikes.

I have been, and I have returned. I have mounted up on the wings of the morning, and I have dredged down to the zenith’s reversal. Which is my way, being man. Gods may stay in mid-heaven, the Son of Man has climbed to the Whitsun zenith, But I, Matthew, being a man Am a traveller back and forth. So be it.

ST MARK

There was a lion in Judah Which whelped, and was Mark.

But winged. A lion with wings. At least at Venice. Even as late as Daniele Manin.

Why should he have wings? Is he to be a bird also? Or a spirit? Or a winged thought? Or a soaring consciousness?

Evidently he is all that The lion of the spirit.

Ah, Lamb of God Would a wingless lion lie down before Thee, as this winged lion lies?

The lion of the spirit.

Once he lay in the mouth of a cave And sunned his whiskers, And lashed his tail slowly, slowly Thinking of voluptuousness Even of blood.

But later, in the sun of the afternoon Having tasted all there was to taste, and having slept his fill He fell to frowning, as he lay with his head on his paws And the sun coming in through the narrowest fibril of a slit in his eyes.

So, nine-tenths asleep, motionless, bored, and statically angry, He saw in a shaft of light a lamb on a pinnacle, balancing a flag on its paw, And he was thoroughly startled.

Going out to investigate He found the lamb beyond him, on the inaccessible pinnacle of light. So he put his paw to his nose, and pondered.

“Guard my sheep,” came the silvery voice from the pinnacle, “And I will give thee the wings of the morning.” So the lion of the senses thought it was worth it.

Hence he became a curly sheep-dog with dangerous propensities As Carpaccio will tell you: Ramping round, guarding the flock of mankind, Sharpening his teeth on the wolves, Ramping up through the air like a kestrel And lashing his tail above the world And enjoying the sensation of heaven and righteousness and voluptuous wrath.

There is a new sweetness in his voluptuously licking his paw Now that it is a weapon of heaven. There is a new ecstasy in his roar of desirous love Now that it sounds self-conscious through the unlimited sky. He is well aware of himself And he cherishes voluptuous delights, and thinks about them And ceases to be a blood-thirsty king of beasts And becomes the faithful sheep-dog of the Shepherd, thinking of his voluptuous pleasures of chasing the sheep to the fold And increasing the flock, and perhaps giving a real nip here and there, a real pinch, but always well meant.

And somewhere there is a lioness The she-mate. Whelps play between the paws of the lion The she-mate purrs Their castle is impregnable, their cave, The sun comes in their lair, they are well-off A well-to-do family.

Then the proud lion stalks abroad, alone And roars to announce himself to the wolves And also to encourage the red-cross Lamb And also to ensure a goodly increase in the world.

Look at him, with his paw on the world At Venice and elsewhere. Going blind at last.

ST LUKE

A wall, a bastion, A living forehead with its slow whorl of hair And a bull’s large, sombre, glancing eye And glistening, adhesive muzzle With cavernous nostrils where the winds run hot Snorting defiance Or greedily snuffling behind the cows.

Horns The golden horns of power, Power to kill, power to create Such as Moses had, and God, Head-power.

Shall great wings flame from his shoulder-sockets Assyrian-wise? It would be no wonder.

Knowing the thunder of his heart The massive thunder of his dew-lapped chest Deep and reverberating, It would be no wonder if great wings, like flame, fanned out from the furnace-cracks of his shoulder-sockets.

Thud! Thud! Thud! And the roar of black bull’s blood in the mighty passages of his chest.

Ah, the dewlap swings pendulous with excess. The great, roaring weight above Like a furnace dripping a molten drip.

The urge, the massive, burning ache Of the bull’s breast. The open furnace-doors of his nostrils.

For what does he ache, and groan?

In his breast a wall?

Nay, once it was also a fortress wall, and the weight of a vast battery. But now it is a burning hearthstone only, Massive old altar of his own burnt offering.

It was always an altar of burnt offering His own black blood poured out like a sheet of flame over his fecundating herd As he gave himself forth.

But also it was a fiery fortress frowning shaggily on the world And announcing battle ready.

Since the Lamb bewitched him with that red-struck flag His fortress is dismantled His fires of wrath are banked down His horns turn away from the enemy.

He serves the Son of Man.

And hear him bellow, after many years, the bull that serves the Son of Man. Moaning, booing, roaring hollow Constrained to pour forth all his fire down the narrow sluice of procreation Through such narrow loins, too narrow.

Is he not over-charged by the dammed-up pressure of his own massive black blood Luke, the Bull, the father of substance, the Providence Bull, after two thousand years? Is he not over-full of offering, a vast, vast offer of himself Which must be poured through so small a vent?

Too small a vent.

Let him remember his horns, then. Seal up his forehead once more to a bastion, Let it know nothing. Let him charge like a mighty catapult on the red-cross flag, let him roar out challenge on the world And throwing himself upon it, throw off the madness of his blood. Let it be war.

And so it is war. The bull of the proletariat has got his head down.

ST JOHN

John, oh John, Thou honourable bird Sun-peering eagle.

Taking a bird’s-eye view Even of Calvary and Resurrection Not to speak of Babylon’s whoredom.

High over the mild effulgence of the dove Hung all the time, did we but know it, the all-knowing shadow Of John’s great gold-barred eagle.

John knew all about it Even the very beginning.

“In the beginning was the Word And the Word was God And the Word was with God.”

Having been to school John knew the whole proposition. As for innocent Jesus He was one of Nature’s phenomena, no doubt.

Oh that mind-soaring eagle of an Evangelist Staring creation out of countenance And telling it off As an eagle staring down on the Sun!

The Logos, the Logos! “In the beginning was the Word.”

Is there not a great Mind pre-ordaining? Does not a supreme Intellect ideally procreate the Universe? Is not each soul a vivid thought in the great consciousness stream of God?

Put salt on his tail The sly bird of John.

Proud intellect, high-soaring Mind Like a king eagle, bird of the most High, sweeping the round of heaven And casting the cycles of creation On two wings, like a pair of compasses; Jesus’ pale and lambent dove, cooing in the lower boughs On sufferance.

In the beginning was the Word, of course. And the word was the first offspring of the almighty Johannine mind, Chick of the intellectual eagle.

Yet put salt on the tail of the Johannine bird Put salt on its tail John’s eagle.

Shoo it down out of the empyrean Of the all-seeing, all-fore-ordaining ideal. Make it roost on bird-spattered, rocky Patmos And let it moult there, among the stones of the bitter sea.

For the almighty eagle of the fore-ordaining Mind Is looking rather shabby and island-bound these days: Moulting, and rather naked about the rump, and down in the beak, Rather dirty, on dung-whitened Patmos.

From which we are led to assume That the old bird is weary, and almost willing That a new chick should chip the extensive shell Of the mundane egg.

The poor old golden eagle of the creative spirit Moulting and moping and waiting, willing at last For the fire to burn it up, feathers and all So that a new conception of the beginning and end Can rise from the ashes.

Ah Phœnix, Phœnix John’s Eagle! You are only known to us now as the badge of an insurance Company.

Phœnix, Phœnix The nest is in flames Feathers are singeing, Ash flutters flocculent, like down on a blue, wan fledgeling. _San Gervasio._

CREATURES

THE MOSQUITO

When did you start your tricks Monsieur?

What do you stand on such high legs for? Why this length of shredded shank You exaltation?

Is it so that you shall lift your centre of gravity upwards And weigh no more than air as you alight upon me, Stand upon me weightless, you phantom?

I heard a woman call you the Winged Victory In sluggish Venice. You turn your head towards your tail, and smile.

How can you put so much devilry Into that translucent phantom shred Of a frail corpus?

Queer, with your thin wings and your streaming legs How you sail like a heron, or a dull clot of air, A nothingness.

Yet what an aura surrounds you; Your evil little aura, prowling, and casting a numbness on my mind.

That is your trick, your bit of filthy magic: Invisibility, and the anæsthetic power To deaden my attention in your direction.

But I know your game now, streaky sorcerer.

Queer, how you stalk and prowl the air In circles and evasions, enveloping me, Ghoul on wings Winged Victory.

Settle, and stand on long thin shanks Eyeing me sideways, and cunningly conscious that I am aware, You speck.

I hate the way you lurch off sideways into air Having read my thoughts against you.

Come then, let us play at unawares, And see who wins in this sly game of bluff. Man or mosquito.

You don’t know that I exist, and I don’t know that you exist. Now then!

It is your trump It is your hateful little trump You pointed fiend, Which shakes my sudden blood to hatred of you: It is your small, high, hateful bugle in my ear.

Why do you do it? Surely it is bad policy.

They say you can’t help it.

If that is so, then I believe a little in Providence protecting the innocent. But it sounds so amazingly like a slogan A yell of triumph as you snatch my scalp.

Blood, red blood Super-magical Forbidden liquor.

I behold you stand For a second enspasmed in oblivion, Obscenely ecstasied Sucking live blood My blood.

Such silence, such suspended transport, Such gorging, Such obscenity of trespass.

You stagger As well as you may. Only your accursed hairy frailty Your own imponderable weightlessness Saves you, wafts you away on the very draught my anger makes in its snatching.

Away with a pæan of derision You winged blood-drop.

Can I not overtake you? Are you one too many for me Winged Victory? Am I not mosquito enough to out-mosquito you?

Queer, what a big stain my sucked blood makes Beside the infinitesimal faint smear of you! Queer, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into! _Siracusa._

FISH

Fish, oh Fish, So little matters!

Whether the waters rise and cover the earth Or whether the waters wilt in the hollow places, All one to you.

Aqueous, subaqueous, Submerged And wave-thrilled.

As the waters roll Roll you. The waters wash, You wash in oneness And never emerge.

Never know, Never grasp.

Your life a sluice of sensation along your sides, A flush at the flails of your fins, down the whorl of your tail, And water wetly on fire in the grates of your gills; Fixed water-eyes.

Even snakes lie together.

But oh, fish, that rock in water, You lie only with the waters; One touch.

No fingers, no hands and feet, no lips; No tender muzzles, No wistful bellies, No loins of desire, None.

You and the naked element, Sway-wave. Curvetting bits of tin in the evening light.

Who is it ejects his sperm to the naked flood? In the wave-mother? Who swims enwombed? Who lies with the waters of his silent passion, womb-element? --Fish in the waters under the earth.

What price _his_ bread upon the waters?

Himself all silvery himself In the element No more.

Nothing more.

Himself, And the element. Food, of course! Water-eager eyes, Mouth-gate open And strong spine urging, driving; And desirous belly gulping.

Fear also! He knows fear! Water-eyes craning, A rush that almost screams, Almost fish-voice As the pike comes.... Then gay fear, that turns the tail sprightly, from a shadow.

Food, and fear, and joie de vivre, Without love.

The other way about: Joie de vivre, and fear, and food, All without love.

Quelle joie de vivre Dans l’eau! Slowly to gape through the waters, Alone with the element; To sink, and rise, and go to sleep with the waters; To speak endless inaudible wavelets into the wave; To breathe from the flood at the gills, Fish-blood slowly running next to the flood, extracting fish-fire; To have the element under one, like a lover; And to spring away with a curvetting click in the air, Provocative. Dropping back with a slap on the face of the flood. And merging oneself!

To be a fish!

So utterly without misgiving To be a fish In the waters.

Loveless, and so lively! Born before God was love, Or life knew loving. Beautifully beforehand with it all.

Admitted, they swarm in companies, Fishes. They drive in shoals. But soundless, and out of contact. They exchange no word, no spasm, not even anger. Not one touch. Many suspended together, forever apart, Each one alone with the waters, upon one wave with the rest.

A magnetism in the water between them only.

I saw a water-serpent swim across the Anapo, And I said to my heart, _look, look at him!_ _With his head up, steering like a bird!_ _He’s a rare one, but he belongs ..._

But sitting in a boat on the Zeller lake And watching the fishes in the breathing waters Lift and swim and go their way--

I said to my heart, _who are these?_ And my heart couldn’t own them....

A slim young pike, with smart fins And grey-striped suit, a young cub of a pike Slouching along away below, half out of sight, Like a lout on an obscure pavement....

Aha, there’s somebody in the know!

But watching closer That motionless deadly motion, That unnatural barrel body, that long ghoul nose, ... I left off hailing him.

I had made a mistake, I didn’t know him, This grey, monotonous soul in the water, This intense individual in shadow, Fish-alive.

I didn’t know his God, I didn’t know his God.

Which is perhaps the last admission that life has to wring out of us.

I saw, dimly, Once a big pike rush, And small fish fly like splinters. And I said to my heart, _there are limits_ _To you, my heart;_ _And to the one God._ _Fish are beyond me._

Other Gods Beyond my range ... gods beyond my God ...

They are beyond me, are fishes. I stand at the pale of my being And look beyond, and see Fish, in the outerwards, As one stands on a bank and looks in.

I have waited with a long rod And suddenly pulled a gold-and-greenish, lucent fish from below, And had him fly like a halo round my head, Lunging in the air on the line.

Unhooked his gorping, water-horny mouth, And seen his horror-tilted eye, His red-gold, water-precious, mirror-flat bright eye; And felt him beat in my hand, with his mucous, leaping life-throb.

And my heart accused itself Thinking: _I am not the measure of creation._ _This is beyond me, this fish._ _His God stands outside my God._

And the gold-and-green pure lacquer-mucus comes off in my hand, And the red-gold mirror-eye stares and dies, And the water-suave contour dims.

But not before I have had to know He was born in front of my sunrise, Before my day.

He outstarts me. And I, a many-fingered horror of daylight to him, Have made him die.

Fishes, With their gold, red eyes, and green-pure gleam, and under-gold, And their pre-world loneliness, And more-than-lovelessness, And white meat; They move in other circles.

Outsiders. Water-wayfarers. Things of one element. Aqueous, Each by itself.

Cats, and the Neapolitans, Sulphur sun-beasts, Thirst for fish as for more-than-water; Water-alive To quench their over-sulphureous lusts.

But I, I only wonder And don’t know. I don’t know fishes.

In the beginning Jesus was called The Fish.... And in the end. _Zell-am-See._

BAT

At evening, sitting on this terrace, When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mountains of Carrara Departs, and the world is taken by surprise ...

When the tired flower of Florence is in gloom beneath the glowing Brown hills surrounding ...

When under the arches of the Ponte Vecchio A green light enters against stream, flush from the west, Against the current of obscure Arno ...

Look up, and you see things flying Between the day and the night; Swallows with spools of dark thread sewing the shadows together.

A circle swoop, and a quick parabola under the bridge arches Where light pushes through; A sudden turning upon itself of a thing in the air. A dip to the water.

And you think: “The swallows are flying so late!”

Swallows?

Dark air-life looping Yet missing the pure loop ... A twitch, a twitter, an elastic shudder in flight And serrated wings against the sky, Like a glove, a black glove thrown up at the light, And falling back.

Never swallows! _Bats!_ The swallows are gone.

At a wavering instant the swallows gave way to bats By the Ponte Vecchio ... Changing guard.

Bats, and an uneasy creeping in one’s scalp As the bats swoop overhead! Flying madly.

Pipistrello! Black piper on an infinitesimal pipe. Little lumps that fly in air and have voices indefinite, wildly vindictive;

Wings like bits of umbrella.

Bats!

Creatures that hang themselves up like an old rag, to sleep; And disgustingly upside down.

Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags And grinning in their sleep. Bats!

Not for me!

MAN AND BAT

When I went into my room, at mid-morning, Say ten o’clock ... My room, a crash-box over that great stone rattle The Via de’ Bardi....

When I went into my room at mid-morning _Why?... a bird!_

A bird Flying round the room in insane circles.

In insane circles! _ ... A bat!_

A disgusting bat At mid-morning!...

_Out! Go out!_