Part 5

Worse than the cry of the new-born, A scream, A yell, A shout, A pæan, A death-agony, A birth-cry, A submission, All tiny, tiny, far away, reptile under the first dawn. War-cry, triumph, acute delight, death-scream reptilian, Why was the veil torn? The silken shriek of the soul’s torn membrane? The male soul’s membrane Torn with a shriek half music, half horror.

Crucifixion.

Male tortoise, cleaving behind the hovel-wall of that dense female, Mounted and tense, spread-eagle, out-reaching out of the shell In tortoise-nakedness, Long neck, and long vulnerable limbs extruded, spread-eagle over her house-roof, And the deep, secret, all-penetrating tail curved beneath her walls, Reaching and gripping tense, more reaching anguish in uttermost tension Till suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping like a jerking leap, and oh! Opening its clenched face from his outstretched neck And giving that fragile yell, that scream, Super-audible, From his pink, cleft, old-man’s mouth, Giving up the ghost, Or screaming in Pentecost, receiving the ghost.

His scream, and his moment’s subsidence, The moment of eternal silence, Yet unreleased, and after the moment, the sudden, startling jerk of coition, and at once The inexpressible faint yell-- And so on, till the last plasm of my body was melted back To the primeval rudiments of life, and the secret.

So he tups, and screams Time after time that frail, torn scream After each jerk, the longish interval, The tortoise eternity, Age-long, reptilian persistence, Heart-throb, slow heart-throb, persistent for the next spasm.

I remember, when I was a boy, I heard the scream of a frog, which was caught with his foot in the mouth of an up-starting snake; I remember when I first heard bull-frogs break into sound in the spring; I remember hearing a wild goose out of the throat of night Cry loudly, beyond the lake of waters; I remember the first time, out of a bush in the darkness, a nightingale’s piercing cries and gurgles startled the depths of my soul; I remember the scream of a rabbit as I went through a wood at midnight; I remember the heifer in her heat, blorting and blorting through the hours, persistent and irrepressible; I remember my first terror hearing the howl of weird, amorous cats; I remember the scream of a terrified, injured horse, the sheet-lightning, And running away from the sound of a woman in labour, something like an owl whooing, And listening inwardly to the first bleat of a lamb, The first wail of an infant, And my mother singing to herself, And the first tenor singing of the passionate throat of a young collier, who has long since drunk himself to death, The first elements of foreign speech On wild dark lips.

And more than all these, And less than all these, This last, Strange, faint coition yell Of the male tortoise at extremity, Tiny from under the very edge of the farthest far-off horizon of life.

The cross, The wheel on which our silence first is broken, Sex, which breaks up our integrity, our single inviolability, our deep silence Tearing a cry from us.

Sex, which breaks us into voice, sets us calling across the deeps, calling, calling for the complement, Singing, and calling, and singing again, being answered, having found.

Torn, to become whole again, after long seeking for what is lost, The same cry from the tortoise as from Christ, the Osiris-cry of abandonment, That which is whole, torn asunder, That which is in part, finding its whole again throughout the universe.

BIRDS

TURKEY-COCK

You ruffled black blossom, You glossy dark wind.

Your sort of gorgeousness, Dark and lustrous And skinny repulsive And poppy-glossy, Is the gorgeousness that evokes my most puzzled admiration.

Your aboriginality Deep, unexplained, Like a Red Indian darkly unfinished and aloof, Seems like the black and glossy seeds of countless centuries.

Your wattles are the colour of steel-slag which has been red-hot And is going cold, Cooling to a powdery, pale-oxydised sky-blue.

Why do you have wattles, and a naked, wattled head? Why do you arch your naked-set eye with a more-than-comprehensible arrogance?

The vulture is bald, so is the condor, obscenely, But only you have thrown this amazing mantilla of oxydised sky-blue And hot red over you.

This queer dross shawl of blue and vermilion, Whereas the peacock has a diadem.

I wonder why. Perhaps it is a sort of uncanny decoration, a veil of loose skin. Perhaps it is your assertion, in all this ostentation, of raw contradictoriness. Your wattles drip down like a shawl to your breast And the point of your mantilla drops across your nose, unpleasantly.

Or perhaps it is something unfinished A bit of slag still adhering, after your firing in the furnace of creation.

Or perhaps there is something in your wattles of a bull’s dew-lap Which slips down like a pendulum to balance the throbbing mass of a generous breast,

The over-drip of a great passion hanging in the balance. Only yours would be a raw, unsmelted passion, that will not quite fuse from the dross.

You contract yourself, You arch yourself as an archer’s bow Which quivers indrawn as you clench your spine Until your veiled head almost touches backward To the root-rising of your erected tail. And one intense and backward-curving frisson Seizes you as you clench yourself together Like some fierce magnet bringing its poles together. Burning, pale positive pole of your wattled head! And from the darkness of that opposite one The upstart of your round-barred, sun-round tail!

Whilst between the two, along the tense arch of your back Blows the magnetic current in fierce blasts, Ruffling black, shining feathers like lifted mail, Shuddering storm wind, or a water rushing through.

Your brittle, super-sensual arrogance Tosses the crape of red across your brow and down your breast As you draw yourself upon yourself in insistence.

It is a declaration of such tension in will As time has not dared to avouch, nor eternity been able to unbend Do what it may. A raw American will, that has never been tempered by life; You brittle, will-tense bird with a foolish eye.

The peacock lifts his rods of bronze And struts blue-brilliant out of the far East. But watch a turkey prancing low on earth Drumming his vaulted wings, as savages drum Their rhythms on long-drawn, hollow, sinister drums. The ponderous, sombre sound of the great drum of Huichilobos In pyramid Mexico, during sacrifice. Drum, and the turkey onrush Sudden, demonic dauntlessness, full abreast, All the bronze gloss of all his myriad petals Each one apart and instant. Delicate frail crescent of the gentle outline of white At each feather-tip So delicate; Yet the bronze wind-well suddenly clashing And the eye over-weening into madness.

Turkey-cock, turkey-cock Are you the bird of the next dawn?

Has the peacock had his day, does he call in vain, screecher, for the sun to rise? The eagle, the dove, and the barnyard rooster, do they call in vain, trying to wake the morrow? And do you await us, wattled father, Westward? Will your yell do it?

Take up the trail of the vanished American Where it disappeared at the foot of the crucifix. Take up the primordial Indian obstinacy, The more than human, dense insistence of will, And disdain, and blankness, and onrush, and prise open the new day with them?

The East a dead letter, and Europe moribund.... Is that so? And those sombre, dead, feather-lustrous Aztecs, Amerindians, In all the sinister splendour of their red blood sacrifices, Do they stand under the dawn, half-godly, half-demon, awaiting the cry of the turkey-cock?

Or must you go through the fire once more, till you’re smelted pure, Slag-wattled turkey-cock, Dross-jabot? _Fiesole._

HUMMING-BIRD

I can imagine, in some otherworld Primeval-dumb, far back In that most awful stillness, that only gasped and hummed, Humming-birds raced down the avenues.

Before anything had a soul, While life was a heave of Matter, half inanimate, This little bit chipped off in brilliance And went whizzing through the slow, vast, succulent stems.

I believe there were no flowers, then In the world where the humming-bird flashed ahead of creation. I believe he pierced the slow vegetable veins with his long beak.

Probably he was big As mosses, and little lizards, they say were once big. Probably he was a jabbing, terrifying monster.

We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time, Luckily for us. _Española._

EAGLE IN NEW MEXICO

Towards the sun, towards the south-west A scorched breast. A scorched breast, breasting the sun like an answer, Like a retort.

An eagle at the top of a low cedar-bush On the sage-ash desert Reflecting the scorch of the sun from his breast; Eagle, with the sickle dripping darkly above.

Erect, scorched-pallid out of the hair of the cedar, Erect, with the god-thrust entering him from below, Eagle gloved in feathers In scorched white feathers In burnt dark feathers In feathers still fire-rusted; Sickle-overswept, sickle dripping over and above.

Sun-breaster, Staring two ways at once, to right and left; Masked-one Dark-visaged Sickle-masked With iron between your two eyes; You feather-gloved To the feet; Foot-fierce; Erect one; The god-thrust entering you steadily from below.

You never look at the sun with your two eyes. Only the inner eye of your scorched broad breast Looks straight at the sun.

You are dark Except scorch-pale-breasted; And dark cleaves down and weapon-hard downward curving At your scorched breast, Like a sword of Damocles, Beaked eagle.

You’ve dipped it in blood so many times That dark face-weapon, to temper it well, Blood-thirsty bird.

Why do you front the sun so obstinately, American eagle? As if you owed him an old, old grudge, great sun: or an old, old allegiance.

When you pick the red smoky heart from a rabbit or a light-blooded bird Do you lift it to the sun, as the Aztec priests used to lift red hearts of men?

Does the sun need steam of blood do you think In America, still, Old eagle?

Does the sun in New Mexico sail like a fiery bird of prey in the sky Hovering?

Does he shriek for blood? Does he fan great wings above the prairie, like a hovering, blood-thirsty bird?

And are you his priest, big eagle Whom the Indians aspire to? Is there a bond of bloodshed between you?

Is your continent cold from the ice-age still, that the sun is so angry? Is the blood of your continent somewhat reptilian still, That the sun should be greedy for it?

I don’t yield to you, big, jowl-faced eagle. Nor you nor your blood-thirsty sun That sucks up blood Leaving a nervous people.

Fly off, big bird with a big black back, Fly slowly away, with a rust of fire in your tail, Dark as you are on your dark side, eagle of heaven.

Even the sun in heaven can be curbed and chastened at last By the life in the hearts of men. And you, great bird, sun-starer, heavy black beak Can be put out of office as sacrifice bringer. _Taos._

THE BLUE JAY

The blue jay with a crest on his head Comes round the cabin in the snow. He runs in the snow like a bit of blue metal, Turning his back on everything.

From the pine-tree that towers and hisses like a pillar of shaggy cloud Immense above the cabin Comes a strident laugh as we approach, this little black dog and I. So halts the little black bitch on four spread paws in the snow And looks up inquiringly into the pillar of cloud, With a tinge of misgiving. _Ca-a-a!_ comes the scrape of ridicule out of the tree.

_What voice of the Lord is that, from the tree of smoke?_

Oh Bibbles, little black bitch in the snow, With a pinch of snow in the groove of your silly snub nose. What do you look at _me_ for? What do you look at me for, with such misgiving?

It’s the blue jay laughing at us. It’s the blue jay jeering at us, Bibs.

Every day since the snow is here The blue jay paces round the cabin, very busy, picking up bits, Turning his back on us all, And bobbing his thick dark crest about the snow, as if darkly saying: _I ignore those folk who look out_.

You acid-blue metallic bird, You thick bird with a strong crest Who are you? Whose boss are you, with all your bully way? You copper-sulphate blue-bird! _Lobo._

ANIMALS

THE ASS

The long-drawn bray of the ass In the Sicilian twilight--

_All mares are dead!_ _All mares are dead!_ _Oh-h!_ _Oh-h-h!_ _Oh-h-h-h-h--h!!_ _I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it,_ _I can’t!_ _Oh, I can’t!_ _Oh--_ _There’s one left!_ _There’s one left!_ _One!_ _There’s one ... left...._

So ending on a grunt of agonised relief.

This is the authentic Arabic interpretation of the braying of the ass. And Arabs should know.

And yet, as his brass-resonant howling yell resounds through the Sicilian twilight I am not sure--

His big, furry head, His big, regretful eyes, His diminished, drooping hindquarters, His small toes.

Such a dear! Such an ass! With such a knot inside him! He regrets something that he remembers. That’s obvious.

The Steppes of Tartary, And the wind in his teeth for a bit, And _noli me tangere_.

Ah then, when he tore the wind with his teeth, And trod wolves underfoot, And over-rode his mares as if he were savagely leaping an obstacle, to set his teeth in the sun....

Somehow, alas, he fell in love, And was sold into slavery.

He fell into the rut of love, Poor ass, like man, always in a rut, The pair of them alike in that.

All his soul in his gallant member And his head gone heavy with the knowledge of desire And humiliation.

The ass was the first of all animals to fall finally into love, From obstacle-leaping pride, Mare obstacle, Into love, mare-goal, and the knowledge of love. Hence Jesus rode him in the Triumphant Entry. Hence his beautiful eyes. Hence his ponderous head, brooding over desire, and downfall, Jesus, and a pack-saddle, Hence he uncovers his big ass-teeth and howls in that agony that is half-insatiable desire and half-unquenchable humiliation. Hence the black cross on his shoulders.

The Arabs were only half right, though they hinted the whole; Everlasting lament in everlasting desire.

See him standing with his head down, near the Porta Cappuccini, Asinello, Somaro; With the half-veiled, beautiful eyes, and the pensive face not asleep, Motionless, like a bit of rock.

Has he seen the Gorgon’s head, and turned to stone? Alas, Love did it. Now he’s a jackass, a pack-ass, a donkey, somaro, burro, with a boss piling loads on his back. Tied by the nose at the Porta Cappuccini. And tied in a knot, inside, dead-licked between two desires: To overleap like a male all mares as obstacles In a leap at the sun; And to leap in one last heart-bursting leap like a male at the goal of a mare, And there end. Well, you can’t have it both roads.

_Hee! Hee! Ehee! Ehow! Ehaw!! Oh! Oh! Oh-h-h!!_ The wave of agony bursts in the stone that he was, Bares his long ass’s teeth, flattens his long ass’s ears, straightens his donkey neck, And howls his pandemonium on the indignant air.

Yes, it’s a quandary. Jesus rode on him, the first burden on the first beast of burden. Love on a submissive ass. So the tale began.

But the ass never forgets.

The horse, being nothing but a nag, will forget. And men, being mostly geldings and knacker-boned hacks, have almost all forgot. But the ass is a primal creature, and never forgets.

The Steppes of Tartary, And Jesus on a meek ass-colt: mares: Mary escaping to Egypt: Joseph’s cudgel.

_Hee! Hee! Ehee! Ehow-ow-!-ow!-aw!-aw!-aw!_ _All mares are dead!_ _Or else I am dead!_ _One of us, or the pair of us,_ _I don’t know--ow!--ow!_ _Which!_ _Not sure--ure--ure_ _Quite which!_ _Which!_ _Taormina._

HE-GOAT

See his black nose snubbed back, pressed over like a whale’s blow-holes, As if his nostrils were going to curve back to the root of his tail.

As he charges slow among the herd And rows among the females like a ship pertinaciously, Heavy with a rancid cargo, through the lesser ships-- Old father Sniffing forever ahead of him, at the rear of the goats, that they lift the little door, And rowing on, unarrived, no matter how often he enter: Like a big ship pushing her bowsprit over the little ships Then swerving and steering afresh And never, never arriving at journey’s end, at the rear of the female ships.

Yellow eyes incomprehensible with thin slits To round-eyed us.

Yet if you had whorled horns of bronze in a frontal dark wall At the end of a back-bone ridge, like a straight sierra roquena, And nerves urging forward to the wall, you’d have eyes like his, Especially if, being given a needle’s eye of egress elsewhere You tried to look back to it, and couldn’t. Sometimes he turns with a start, to fight, to challenge, to suddenly butt. And then you see the God that he is, in a cloud of black hair And storm-lightning-slitted eye. Splendidly planting his feet, one rocky foot striking the ground with a sudden rock-hammer announcement.

_I am here!_ And suddenly lowering his head, the whorls of bone and of horn Slowly revolving towards unexploded explosion, As from the stem of his bristling, lightning-conductor tail In a rush up the shrieking duct of his vertebral way Runs a rage drawn in from the other divinely through him Towards a shock and a crash and a smiting of horns ahead.

That is a grand old lust of his, to gather the great Rage of the sullen-stagnating atmosphere of goats And bring it hurtling to a head, with crash of horns against the horns Of the opposite enemy goat, Thus hammering the mettle of goats into proof, and smiting out The godhead of goats from the shock. Things of iron are beaten on the anvil, And he-goat is anvil to he-goat, and hammer to he-goat In the business of beating the mettle of goats to a godhead.

But they’ve taken his enemy from him And left him only his libidinousness, His nostrils turning back, to sniff at even himself And his slitted eyes seeking the needle’s eye, His own, unthreaded, forever.

So it is, when they take the enemy from us, And we can’t fight.

He is not fatherly, like the bull, massive Providence of hot blood; The goat is an egoist, aware of himself, devilish aware of himself, And full of malice prepense, and overweening, determined to stand on the highest peak Like the devil, and look on the world as his own.

And as for love: With a needle of long red flint he stabs in the dark At the living rock he is up against; While she with her goaty mouth stands smiling the while as he strikes, since sure He will never _quite_ strike home, on the target-quick, for her quick Is just beyond range of the arrow he shoots From his leap at the zenith in her, so it falls just short of the mark, far enough. It is over before it is finished. She, smiling with goaty munch-mouth, Mona Lisa, arranges it so. Orgasm after orgasm after orgasm And he smells so rank and his nose goes back, And never an enemy brow-metalled to thresh it out with in the open field; Never a mountain peak, to be king of the castle. Only those eternal females to overleap and surpass, and never succeed.

The involved voluptuousness of the soft-footed cat Who is like a fur folding a fur, The cat who laps blood, and knows The soft welling of blood invincible even beyond bone or metal of bone.

The soft, the secret, the unfathomable blood The cat has lapped And known it subtler than frisson-shaken nerves, Stronger than multiplicity of bone on bone And darker than even the arrows of violentest will Can pierce, for that is where will gives out, like a sinking stone that can sink no further.

But he-goat, Black procreant male of the selfish will and libidinous desire, God in black cloud with curving horns of bronze, Find an enemy, Egoist, and clash the cymbals in face-to-face defiance, And let the lightning out of your smothered dusk.

Forget the female herd for a bit, And fight to be boss of the world. Fight, old Satan with a selfish will, fight for your selfish will; Fight to be the devil on the tip of the peak Overlooking the world for his own.

But bah, how can he, poor domesticated beast! _Taormina._

SHE-GOAT

Goats go past the back of the house like dry leaves in the dawn, And up the hill like a river, if you watch.

At dusk they patter back like a bough being dragged on the ground, Raising dusk and acridity of goats, and bleating.

Our old goat we tie up at night in the shed at the back of the broken Greek tomb in the garden, And when the herd goes by at dawn she begins to bleat for me to come down and untie her.

_Merr--err--err! Merr--er--errr! Mer! Mé!_ _Wait, wait a bit, I’ll come when I’ve lit the fire._ _Merrr!_ _Exactly._ _Mé! Mer! Merrrrrrr!!!_ _Tace, tu, crapa, bestia!_ _Merr-ererrr-ererrrr! Merrrr!_

She is such an alert listener, with her ears wide, to know am I coming! Such a canny listener, from a distance, looking upwards, lending first one ear, then another.

There she is, perched on her manger, looking over the boards into the day Like a belle at her window.

And immediately she sees me she blinks, stares, doesn’t know me, turns her head and ignores me vulgarly with a wooden blank on her face.

What do I care for her, the ugly female, standing up there with her long tangled sides like an old rug thrown over a fence. But she puts her nose down shrewdly enough when the knot is untied, And jumps staccato to earth, a sharp, dry jump, still ignoring me, Pretending to look round the stall.

_Come on, you, crapa! I’m not your servant!_

She turns her head away with an obtuse, female sort of deafness, bête. And then invariably she crouches her rear and makes water. That being her way of answer, if I speak to her.--Self-conscious! _Le bestie non parlano, poverine!_

She was bought at Giardini fair, on the sands, for six hundred lire.

An obstinate old witch, almost jerking the rope from my hands to eat the acanthus, or bite at the almond buds, and make me wait. Yet the moment I hate her she trips mild and smug like a woman going to mass. The moment I really detest her.