A snakecame to my water-troughOn a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,To drink there.In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-treeI came down the steps with my pitcherAnd must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloomAnd trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone troughAnd rested his throat upon the stone bottom,And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,He sipped with his straight mouth,Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,Silently.Someone was before me at my water-trough,And I, like a second comer, waiting.He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,And stooped and drank a little more,Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earthOn the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.The voice of my education said to meHe must be killed,For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.And voices in me said, If you were a manYou would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.But must I confess how I liked him,How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-troughAnd depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,Into the burning bowels of this earth?Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?Was it humility, to feel so honoured?I felt so honoured.And yet those voices:If you were not afraid, you would kill him!And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,But even so, honoured still moreThat he should seek my hospitalityFrom out the dark door of the secret earth.He drank enoughAnd lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,And dickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,Seeming to lick his lips,And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,And slowly turned his head,And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,Proceeded to draw his slow length curving roundAnd climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,Overcame me now his back was turned.I looked round, I put down my pitcher,I picked up a clumsy logAnd threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.I think it did not hit him,But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,Writhed like lightning, and was goneInto the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.And immediately I regretted it.I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.And I thought of the albatross,And I wished he would come back, my snake.For he seemed to me again like a king,Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,Now due to be crowned again.And so, I missed my chance with one of the lordsOf life.And I have something to expiate;A pettiness.Taormina.
A snakecame to my water-troughOn a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,To drink there.In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-treeI came down the steps with my pitcherAnd must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloomAnd trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone troughAnd rested his throat upon the stone bottom,And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,He sipped with his straight mouth,Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,Silently.Someone was before me at my water-trough,And I, like a second comer, waiting.He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,And stooped and drank a little more,Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earthOn the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.The voice of my education said to meHe must be killed,For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.And voices in me said, If you were a manYou would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.But must I confess how I liked him,How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-troughAnd depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,Into the burning bowels of this earth?Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?Was it humility, to feel so honoured?I felt so honoured.And yet those voices:If you were not afraid, you would kill him!And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,But even so, honoured still moreThat he should seek my hospitalityFrom out the dark door of the secret earth.He drank enoughAnd lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,And dickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,Seeming to lick his lips,And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,And slowly turned his head,And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,Proceeded to draw his slow length curving roundAnd climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,Overcame me now his back was turned.I looked round, I put down my pitcher,I picked up a clumsy logAnd threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.I think it did not hit him,But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,Writhed like lightning, and was goneInto the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.And immediately I regretted it.I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.And I thought of the albatross,And I wished he would come back, my snake.For he seemed to me again like a king,Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,Now due to be crowned again.And so, I missed my chance with one of the lordsOf life.And I have something to expiate;A pettiness.Taormina.
A snakecame to my water-troughOn a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-treeI came down the steps with my pitcherAnd must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloomAnd trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone troughAnd rested his throat upon the stone bottom,And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,He sipped with his straight mouth,Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,And stooped and drank a little more,Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earthOn the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to meHe must be killed,For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a manYou would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-troughAnd depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?Was it humility, to feel so honoured?I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,But even so, honoured still moreThat he should seek my hospitalityFrom out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enoughAnd lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,And dickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,Seeming to lick his lips,And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,And slowly turned his head,And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,Proceeded to draw his slow length curving roundAnd climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,I picked up a clumsy logAnd threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,Writhed like lightning, and was goneInto the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross,And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lordsOf life.And I have something to expiate;A pettiness.Taormina.
Youknow what it is to be born alone,Baby tortoise!The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,Not yet awake,And remain lapsed on earth,Not quite alive.A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,Like some iron door;To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower baseAnd reach your skinny little neckAnd take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,Alone, small insect,Tiny bright-eye,Slow one.To take your first solitary biteAnd move on your slow, solitary hunt.Your bright, dark little eye,Your eye of a dark disturbed night,Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,So indomitable.No one ever heard you complain.You draw your head forward, slowly, from your little wimpleAnd set forward, slow-dragging, on your four-pinned toes,Rowing slowly forward.Whither away, small bird?Rather like a baby working its limbs,Except that you make slow, ageless progressAnd a baby makes none.The touch of sun excites you,And the long ages, and the lingering chillMake you pause to yawn,Opening your impervious mouth,Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly gaping pincers;Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,Then close the wedge of your little mountain front,Your face, baby tortoise.Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head in its wimpleAnd look with laconic, black eyes?Or is sleep coming over you again,The non-life?You are so hard to wake.Are you able to wonder?Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of the first lifeLooking roundAnd slowly pitching itself against the inertiaWhich had seemed invincible?The vast inanimate,And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye,Challenger.Nay, tiny shell-bird,What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must row against,What an incalculable inertia.Challenger,Little Ulysses, fore-runner,No bigger than my thumb-nail,Buon viaggio.All animate creation on your shoulder,Set forth, little Titan, under your battle-shield.The ponderous, preponderate,Inanimate universe;And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone.How vivid your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine,Stoic, Ulyssean atom;Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes.Voiceless little bird,Resting your head half out of your wimpleIn the slow dignity of your eternal pause.Alone, with no sense of being alone,And hence six times more solitary;Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial agesYour little round house in the midst of chaos.Over the garden earth,Small bird,Over the edge of all things.Traveller,With your tail tucked a little on one sideLike a gentleman in a long-skirted coat.All life carried on your shoulder,Invincible fore-runner.
Youknow what it is to be born alone,Baby tortoise!The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,Not yet awake,And remain lapsed on earth,Not quite alive.A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,Like some iron door;To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower baseAnd reach your skinny little neckAnd take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,Alone, small insect,Tiny bright-eye,Slow one.To take your first solitary biteAnd move on your slow, solitary hunt.Your bright, dark little eye,Your eye of a dark disturbed night,Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,So indomitable.No one ever heard you complain.You draw your head forward, slowly, from your little wimpleAnd set forward, slow-dragging, on your four-pinned toes,Rowing slowly forward.Whither away, small bird?Rather like a baby working its limbs,Except that you make slow, ageless progressAnd a baby makes none.The touch of sun excites you,And the long ages, and the lingering chillMake you pause to yawn,Opening your impervious mouth,Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly gaping pincers;Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,Then close the wedge of your little mountain front,Your face, baby tortoise.Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head in its wimpleAnd look with laconic, black eyes?Or is sleep coming over you again,The non-life?You are so hard to wake.Are you able to wonder?Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of the first lifeLooking roundAnd slowly pitching itself against the inertiaWhich had seemed invincible?The vast inanimate,And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye,Challenger.Nay, tiny shell-bird,What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must row against,What an incalculable inertia.Challenger,Little Ulysses, fore-runner,No bigger than my thumb-nail,Buon viaggio.All animate creation on your shoulder,Set forth, little Titan, under your battle-shield.The ponderous, preponderate,Inanimate universe;And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone.How vivid your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine,Stoic, Ulyssean atom;Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes.Voiceless little bird,Resting your head half out of your wimpleIn the slow dignity of your eternal pause.Alone, with no sense of being alone,And hence six times more solitary;Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial agesYour little round house in the midst of chaos.Over the garden earth,Small bird,Over the edge of all things.Traveller,With your tail tucked a little on one sideLike a gentleman in a long-skirted coat.All life carried on your shoulder,Invincible fore-runner.
Youknow what it is to be born alone,Baby tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,Not yet awake,And remain lapsed on earth,Not quite alive.
A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.
To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,Like some iron door;To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower baseAnd reach your skinny little neckAnd take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,Alone, small insect,Tiny bright-eye,Slow one.
To take your first solitary biteAnd move on your slow, solitary hunt.Your bright, dark little eye,Your eye of a dark disturbed night,Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,So indomitable.
No one ever heard you complain.
You draw your head forward, slowly, from your little wimpleAnd set forward, slow-dragging, on your four-pinned toes,Rowing slowly forward.Whither away, small bird?
Rather like a baby working its limbs,Except that you make slow, ageless progressAnd a baby makes none.
The touch of sun excites you,And the long ages, and the lingering chillMake you pause to yawn,Opening your impervious mouth,Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly gaping pincers;Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,Then close the wedge of your little mountain front,Your face, baby tortoise.
Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head in its wimpleAnd look with laconic, black eyes?Or is sleep coming over you again,The non-life?
You are so hard to wake.
Are you able to wonder?Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of the first lifeLooking roundAnd slowly pitching itself against the inertiaWhich had seemed invincible?
The vast inanimate,And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye,Challenger.
Nay, tiny shell-bird,What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must row against,What an incalculable inertia.
Challenger,Little Ulysses, fore-runner,No bigger than my thumb-nail,Buon viaggio.
All animate creation on your shoulder,Set forth, little Titan, under your battle-shield.
The ponderous, preponderate,Inanimate universe;And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone.
How vivid your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine,Stoic, Ulyssean atom;Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes.
Voiceless little bird,Resting your head half out of your wimpleIn the slow dignity of your eternal pause.Alone, with no sense of being alone,And hence six times more solitary;Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial agesYour little round house in the midst of chaos.
Over the garden earth,Small bird,Over the edge of all things.
Traveller,With your tail tucked a little on one sideLike a gentleman in a long-skirted coat.
All life carried on your shoulder,Invincible fore-runner.
TheCross, the CrossGoes deeper in than we know,Deeper into life;Right into the marrowAnd through the bone.Along the back of the baby tortoiseThe scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,Scale-lapping, like a lobster’s sectionsOr a bee’s.Then crossways down his sidesTiger-stripes and wasp-bands.Five, and five again, and five again,And round the edges twenty-five little ones,The sections of the baby tortoise shell.Four, and a keystone;Four, and a keystone;Four, and a keystone;Then twenty-four, and a tiny little keystone.It needed Pythagoras to see life playing with counters on the living backOf the baby tortoise;Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet,Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise shell.The first little mathematical gentlemanStepping, wee mite, in his loose trousersUnder all the eternal dome of mathematical law.Fives, and tens,Threes and fours and twelves,All thevolte faceof decimals,The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven.Turn him on his back,The kicking little beetle,And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touching belly,The long cleavage of division, upright of the eternal crossAnd on either side count five,On each side, two above, on each side, two belowThe dark bar horizontal.The Cross!It goes right through him, the sprottling insect,Through his cross-wise cloven psyche,Through his five-fold complex-nature.So turn him over on his toes again;Four pin-point toes, and a problematical thumb-piece,Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing head,Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all mathematics.The Lord wrote it all down on the little slateOf the baby tortoise.Outward and visible indication of the plan within,The complex, manifold involvedness of an individual creaturePlotted outOn this small bird, this rudiment,This little dome, this pedimentOf all creation,This slow one.
TheCross, the CrossGoes deeper in than we know,Deeper into life;Right into the marrowAnd through the bone.Along the back of the baby tortoiseThe scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,Scale-lapping, like a lobster’s sectionsOr a bee’s.Then crossways down his sidesTiger-stripes and wasp-bands.Five, and five again, and five again,And round the edges twenty-five little ones,The sections of the baby tortoise shell.Four, and a keystone;Four, and a keystone;Four, and a keystone;Then twenty-four, and a tiny little keystone.It needed Pythagoras to see life playing with counters on the living backOf the baby tortoise;Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet,Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise shell.The first little mathematical gentlemanStepping, wee mite, in his loose trousersUnder all the eternal dome of mathematical law.Fives, and tens,Threes and fours and twelves,All thevolte faceof decimals,The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven.Turn him on his back,The kicking little beetle,And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touching belly,The long cleavage of division, upright of the eternal crossAnd on either side count five,On each side, two above, on each side, two belowThe dark bar horizontal.The Cross!It goes right through him, the sprottling insect,Through his cross-wise cloven psyche,Through his five-fold complex-nature.So turn him over on his toes again;Four pin-point toes, and a problematical thumb-piece,Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing head,Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all mathematics.The Lord wrote it all down on the little slateOf the baby tortoise.Outward and visible indication of the plan within,The complex, manifold involvedness of an individual creaturePlotted outOn this small bird, this rudiment,This little dome, this pedimentOf all creation,This slow one.
TheCross, the CrossGoes deeper in than we know,Deeper into life;Right into the marrowAnd through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoiseThe scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,Scale-lapping, like a lobster’s sectionsOr a bee’s.
Then crossways down his sidesTiger-stripes and wasp-bands.
Five, and five again, and five again,And round the edges twenty-five little ones,The sections of the baby tortoise shell.
Four, and a keystone;Four, and a keystone;Four, and a keystone;Then twenty-four, and a tiny little keystone.
It needed Pythagoras to see life playing with counters on the living backOf the baby tortoise;Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet,Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise shell.
The first little mathematical gentlemanStepping, wee mite, in his loose trousersUnder all the eternal dome of mathematical law.
Fives, and tens,Threes and fours and twelves,All thevolte faceof decimals,The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven.
Turn him on his back,The kicking little beetle,And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touching belly,The long cleavage of division, upright of the eternal crossAnd on either side count five,On each side, two above, on each side, two belowThe dark bar horizontal.
The Cross!It goes right through him, the sprottling insect,Through his cross-wise cloven psyche,Through his five-fold complex-nature.
So turn him over on his toes again;Four pin-point toes, and a problematical thumb-piece,Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing head,Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all mathematics.
The Lord wrote it all down on the little slateOf the baby tortoise.Outward and visible indication of the plan within,The complex, manifold involvedness of an individual creaturePlotted outOn this small bird, this rudiment,This little dome, this pedimentOf all creation,This slow one.
Onhe goes, the little one,Bud of the universe,Pediment of life.Setting off somewhere, apparently.Whither away, brisk egg?His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were no more than droppings,And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an old rusty tin.A mere obstacle,He veers round the slow great mound of her—Tortoises always foresee obstacles.It is no use my saying to him in an emotional voice:“This is your Mother, she laid you when you were an egg.”He does not even trouble to answer: “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”He wearily looks the other way,And she even more wearily looks another way still,Each with the utmost apathy,Incognisant,Unaware,Nothing.As for papa,He snaps when I offer him his offspring,Just as he snaps when I poke a bit of stick at him,Because he is irascible this morning, an irascible tortoiseBeing touched with love, and devoid of fatherliness.Father and mother,And three little brothers,And all rambling aimless, like little perambulating pebbles scattered in the garden,Not knowing each other from bits of earth or old tins.Except that papa and mama are old acquaintances, of course,Though family feeling there is none, not even the beginnings.Fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterlessLittle tortoise.Row on then, small pebble,Over the clods of the autumn, wind-chilled sunshine,Young gaiety.Does he look for a companion?No, no, don’t think it.He doesn’t know he is alone;Isolation is his birthright,This atom.To row forward, and reach himself tall on spiny toes,To travel, to burrow into a little loose earth, afraid of the night,To crop a little substance,To move, and to be quite sure that he is moving:Basta!To be a tortoise!Think of it, in a garden of inert clodsA brisk, brindled little tortoise, all to himself—Crœsus!In a garden of pebbles and insectsTo roam, and feel the slow heart beatTortoise-wise, the first bell soundingFrom the warm blood, in the dark-creation morning.Moving, and being himself,Slow, and unquestioned,And inordinately there, O stoic!Wandering in the slow triumph of his own existence,Ringing the soundless bell of his presence in chaos,And biting the frail grass arrogantly,Decidedly arrogantly.
Onhe goes, the little one,Bud of the universe,Pediment of life.Setting off somewhere, apparently.Whither away, brisk egg?His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were no more than droppings,And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an old rusty tin.A mere obstacle,He veers round the slow great mound of her—Tortoises always foresee obstacles.It is no use my saying to him in an emotional voice:“This is your Mother, she laid you when you were an egg.”He does not even trouble to answer: “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”He wearily looks the other way,And she even more wearily looks another way still,Each with the utmost apathy,Incognisant,Unaware,Nothing.As for papa,He snaps when I offer him his offspring,Just as he snaps when I poke a bit of stick at him,Because he is irascible this morning, an irascible tortoiseBeing touched with love, and devoid of fatherliness.Father and mother,And three little brothers,And all rambling aimless, like little perambulating pebbles scattered in the garden,Not knowing each other from bits of earth or old tins.Except that papa and mama are old acquaintances, of course,Though family feeling there is none, not even the beginnings.Fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterlessLittle tortoise.Row on then, small pebble,Over the clods of the autumn, wind-chilled sunshine,Young gaiety.Does he look for a companion?No, no, don’t think it.He doesn’t know he is alone;Isolation is his birthright,This atom.To row forward, and reach himself tall on spiny toes,To travel, to burrow into a little loose earth, afraid of the night,To crop a little substance,To move, and to be quite sure that he is moving:Basta!To be a tortoise!Think of it, in a garden of inert clodsA brisk, brindled little tortoise, all to himself—Crœsus!In a garden of pebbles and insectsTo roam, and feel the slow heart beatTortoise-wise, the first bell soundingFrom the warm blood, in the dark-creation morning.Moving, and being himself,Slow, and unquestioned,And inordinately there, O stoic!Wandering in the slow triumph of his own existence,Ringing the soundless bell of his presence in chaos,And biting the frail grass arrogantly,Decidedly arrogantly.
Onhe goes, the little one,Bud of the universe,Pediment of life.
Setting off somewhere, apparently.Whither away, brisk egg?
His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were no more than droppings,And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an old rusty tin.
A mere obstacle,He veers round the slow great mound of her—Tortoises always foresee obstacles.
It is no use my saying to him in an emotional voice:“This is your Mother, she laid you when you were an egg.”
He does not even trouble to answer: “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”He wearily looks the other way,And she even more wearily looks another way still,Each with the utmost apathy,Incognisant,Unaware,Nothing.
As for papa,He snaps when I offer him his offspring,Just as he snaps when I poke a bit of stick at him,Because he is irascible this morning, an irascible tortoiseBeing touched with love, and devoid of fatherliness.
Father and mother,And three little brothers,And all rambling aimless, like little perambulating pebbles scattered in the garden,Not knowing each other from bits of earth or old tins.
Except that papa and mama are old acquaintances, of course,Though family feeling there is none, not even the beginnings.
Fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterlessLittle tortoise.
Row on then, small pebble,Over the clods of the autumn, wind-chilled sunshine,Young gaiety.
Does he look for a companion?
No, no, don’t think it.He doesn’t know he is alone;Isolation is his birthright,This atom.
To row forward, and reach himself tall on spiny toes,To travel, to burrow into a little loose earth, afraid of the night,To crop a little substance,To move, and to be quite sure that he is moving:Basta!To be a tortoise!Think of it, in a garden of inert clodsA brisk, brindled little tortoise, all to himself—Crœsus!
In a garden of pebbles and insectsTo roam, and feel the slow heart beatTortoise-wise, the first bell soundingFrom the warm blood, in the dark-creation morning.
Moving, and being himself,Slow, and unquestioned,And inordinately there, O stoic!Wandering in the slow triumph of his own existence,Ringing the soundless bell of his presence in chaos,And biting the frail grass arrogantly,Decidedly arrogantly.
Sheis large and matronlyAnd rather dirty,A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity had driven her to it.Though what she does, except lay four eggs at random in the garden once a yearAnd put up with her husband,I don’t know.She likes to eat.She hurries up, striding reared on long uncanny legs,When food is going.Oh yes, she can make haste when she likes.She snaps the soft bread from my hand in great mouthfuls,Opening her rather pretty wedge of an iron, pristine faceInto an enormously wide-beaked mouthLike sudden curved scissors,And gulping at more than she can swallow, and working her thick, soft tongue,And having the bread hanging over her chin.O Mistress, Mistress,Reptile mistress,Your eye is very dark, very bright,And it never softensAlthough you watch.She knows,She knows well enough to come for food,Yet she sees me not;Her bright eye sees, but not me, not anything,Sightful, sightless, seeing and visionless,Reptile mistress.Taking bread in her curved, gaping, toothless mouth,She has no qualm when she catches my finger in her steel overlapping gums,But she hangs on, and my shout and my shrinking are nothing to her.She does not even know she is nipping me with her curved beak.Snake-like she draws at my finger, while I drag it in horror away.Mistress, reptile mistress,You are almost too large, I am almost frightened.He is much smaller,Dapper beside her,And ridiculously small.Her laconic eye has an earthy, materialistic look,His, poor darling, is almost fiery.His wimple, his blunt-prowed face,His low forehead, his skinny neck, his long, scaled, striving legs,So striving, striving,Are all more delicate than she,And he has a cruel scar on his shell.Poor darling, biting at her feet,Running beside her like a dog, biting her earthy, splay feet,Nipping her ankles,Which she drags apathetic away, though without retreating into her shell.Agelessly silent,And with a grim, reptile determination,Cold, voiceless age-after-age behind him, serpents’ long obstinacyOf horizontal persistence.Little old manScuffling beside her, bending down, catching his opportunity,Parting his steel-trap face, so suddenly, and seizing her scaly ankle,And hanging grimly on,Letting go at last as she drags away,And closing his steel-trap face.His steel-trap, stoic, ageless, handsome face.Alas, what a fool he looks in this scuffle.And how he feels it!The lonely rambler, the stoic, dignified stalker through chaos,The immune, the animate,Enveloped in isolation,Forerunner.Now look at him!Alas, the spear is through the side of his isolation.His adolescence saw him crucified into sex,Doomed, in the long crucifixion of desire, to seek his consummation beyond himself.Divided into passionate duality,He, so finished and immune, now broken into desirous fragmentariness,Doomed to make an intolerable fool of himselfIn his effort toward completion again.Poor little earthy house-inhabiting Osiris,The mysterious bull tore him at adolescence into pieces,And he must struggle after reconstruction, ignominiously.And so behold him following the tailOf that mud-hovel of his slowly rambling spouse,Like some unhappy bull at the tail of a cow,But with more than bovine, grim, earth-dank persistence.Suddenly seizing the ugly ankle as she stretches out to walk,Roaming over the sods,Or, if it happen to show, at her pointed, heavy tailBeneath the low-dropping back-board of her shell.Their two shells like domed boats bumping,Hers huge, his small;Their splay feet rambling and rowing like paddles,And stumbling mixed up in one another,In the race of love—Two tortoises,She huge, he small.She seems earthily apathetic,And he has a reptile’s awful persistence.I heard a woman pitying her, pitying the Mère Tortue.While I, I pity Monsieur.“He pesters her and torments her,” said the woman.How much more ishepestered and tormented, say I.What can he do?He is dumb, he is visionless,Conceptionless.His black, sad-lidded eye sees but beholds notAs her earthen mound moves on,But he catches the folds of vulnerable, leathery skin,Nail-studded, that shake beneath her shell,And drags at these with his beak,Drags and drags and bites,While she pulls herself free, and rows her dull mound along.
Sheis large and matronlyAnd rather dirty,A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity had driven her to it.Though what she does, except lay four eggs at random in the garden once a yearAnd put up with her husband,I don’t know.She likes to eat.She hurries up, striding reared on long uncanny legs,When food is going.Oh yes, she can make haste when she likes.She snaps the soft bread from my hand in great mouthfuls,Opening her rather pretty wedge of an iron, pristine faceInto an enormously wide-beaked mouthLike sudden curved scissors,And gulping at more than she can swallow, and working her thick, soft tongue,And having the bread hanging over her chin.O Mistress, Mistress,Reptile mistress,Your eye is very dark, very bright,And it never softensAlthough you watch.She knows,She knows well enough to come for food,Yet she sees me not;Her bright eye sees, but not me, not anything,Sightful, sightless, seeing and visionless,Reptile mistress.Taking bread in her curved, gaping, toothless mouth,She has no qualm when she catches my finger in her steel overlapping gums,But she hangs on, and my shout and my shrinking are nothing to her.She does not even know she is nipping me with her curved beak.Snake-like she draws at my finger, while I drag it in horror away.Mistress, reptile mistress,You are almost too large, I am almost frightened.He is much smaller,Dapper beside her,And ridiculously small.Her laconic eye has an earthy, materialistic look,His, poor darling, is almost fiery.His wimple, his blunt-prowed face,His low forehead, his skinny neck, his long, scaled, striving legs,So striving, striving,Are all more delicate than she,And he has a cruel scar on his shell.Poor darling, biting at her feet,Running beside her like a dog, biting her earthy, splay feet,Nipping her ankles,Which she drags apathetic away, though without retreating into her shell.Agelessly silent,And with a grim, reptile determination,Cold, voiceless age-after-age behind him, serpents’ long obstinacyOf horizontal persistence.Little old manScuffling beside her, bending down, catching his opportunity,Parting his steel-trap face, so suddenly, and seizing her scaly ankle,And hanging grimly on,Letting go at last as she drags away,And closing his steel-trap face.His steel-trap, stoic, ageless, handsome face.Alas, what a fool he looks in this scuffle.And how he feels it!The lonely rambler, the stoic, dignified stalker through chaos,The immune, the animate,Enveloped in isolation,Forerunner.Now look at him!Alas, the spear is through the side of his isolation.His adolescence saw him crucified into sex,Doomed, in the long crucifixion of desire, to seek his consummation beyond himself.Divided into passionate duality,He, so finished and immune, now broken into desirous fragmentariness,Doomed to make an intolerable fool of himselfIn his effort toward completion again.Poor little earthy house-inhabiting Osiris,The mysterious bull tore him at adolescence into pieces,And he must struggle after reconstruction, ignominiously.And so behold him following the tailOf that mud-hovel of his slowly rambling spouse,Like some unhappy bull at the tail of a cow,But with more than bovine, grim, earth-dank persistence.Suddenly seizing the ugly ankle as she stretches out to walk,Roaming over the sods,Or, if it happen to show, at her pointed, heavy tailBeneath the low-dropping back-board of her shell.Their two shells like domed boats bumping,Hers huge, his small;Their splay feet rambling and rowing like paddles,And stumbling mixed up in one another,In the race of love—Two tortoises,She huge, he small.She seems earthily apathetic,And he has a reptile’s awful persistence.I heard a woman pitying her, pitying the Mère Tortue.While I, I pity Monsieur.“He pesters her and torments her,” said the woman.How much more ishepestered and tormented, say I.What can he do?He is dumb, he is visionless,Conceptionless.His black, sad-lidded eye sees but beholds notAs her earthen mound moves on,But he catches the folds of vulnerable, leathery skin,Nail-studded, that shake beneath her shell,And drags at these with his beak,Drags and drags and bites,While she pulls herself free, and rows her dull mound along.
Sheis large and matronlyAnd rather dirty,A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity had driven her to it.
Though what she does, except lay four eggs at random in the garden once a yearAnd put up with her husband,I don’t know.
She likes to eat.She hurries up, striding reared on long uncanny legs,When food is going.Oh yes, she can make haste when she likes.
She snaps the soft bread from my hand in great mouthfuls,Opening her rather pretty wedge of an iron, pristine faceInto an enormously wide-beaked mouthLike sudden curved scissors,And gulping at more than she can swallow, and working her thick, soft tongue,And having the bread hanging over her chin.
O Mistress, Mistress,Reptile mistress,Your eye is very dark, very bright,And it never softensAlthough you watch.
She knows,She knows well enough to come for food,Yet she sees me not;Her bright eye sees, but not me, not anything,Sightful, sightless, seeing and visionless,Reptile mistress.
Taking bread in her curved, gaping, toothless mouth,She has no qualm when she catches my finger in her steel overlapping gums,But she hangs on, and my shout and my shrinking are nothing to her.She does not even know she is nipping me with her curved beak.Snake-like she draws at my finger, while I drag it in horror away.
Mistress, reptile mistress,You are almost too large, I am almost frightened.
He is much smaller,Dapper beside her,And ridiculously small.
Her laconic eye has an earthy, materialistic look,His, poor darling, is almost fiery.
His wimple, his blunt-prowed face,His low forehead, his skinny neck, his long, scaled, striving legs,So striving, striving,Are all more delicate than she,And he has a cruel scar on his shell.
Poor darling, biting at her feet,Running beside her like a dog, biting her earthy, splay feet,Nipping her ankles,Which she drags apathetic away, though without retreating into her shell.
Agelessly silent,And with a grim, reptile determination,Cold, voiceless age-after-age behind him, serpents’ long obstinacyOf horizontal persistence.
Little old manScuffling beside her, bending down, catching his opportunity,Parting his steel-trap face, so suddenly, and seizing her scaly ankle,And hanging grimly on,Letting go at last as she drags away,And closing his steel-trap face.
His steel-trap, stoic, ageless, handsome face.Alas, what a fool he looks in this scuffle.
And how he feels it!The lonely rambler, the stoic, dignified stalker through chaos,The immune, the animate,Enveloped in isolation,Forerunner.Now look at him!
Alas, the spear is through the side of his isolation.His adolescence saw him crucified into sex,Doomed, in the long crucifixion of desire, to seek his consummation beyond himself.Divided into passionate duality,He, so finished and immune, now broken into desirous fragmentariness,Doomed to make an intolerable fool of himselfIn his effort toward completion again.
Poor little earthy house-inhabiting Osiris,The mysterious bull tore him at adolescence into pieces,And he must struggle after reconstruction, ignominiously.
And so behold him following the tailOf that mud-hovel of his slowly rambling spouse,Like some unhappy bull at the tail of a cow,But with more than bovine, grim, earth-dank persistence.
Suddenly seizing the ugly ankle as she stretches out to walk,Roaming over the sods,Or, if it happen to show, at her pointed, heavy tailBeneath the low-dropping back-board of her shell.
Their two shells like domed boats bumping,Hers huge, his small;Their splay feet rambling and rowing like paddles,And stumbling mixed up in one another,In the race of love—Two tortoises,She huge, he small.
She seems earthily apathetic,And he has a reptile’s awful persistence.
I heard a woman pitying her, pitying the Mère Tortue.While I, I pity Monsieur.“He pesters her and torments her,” said the woman.How much more ishepestered and tormented, say I.
What can he do?He is dumb, he is visionless,Conceptionless.His black, sad-lidded eye sees but beholds notAs her earthen mound moves on,But he catches the folds of vulnerable, leathery skin,Nail-studded, that shake beneath her shell,And drags at these with his beak,Drags and drags and bites,While she pulls herself free, and rows her dull mound along.
Makinghis advancesHe does not look at her, nor sniff at her,No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skinThat work beneath her while she sprawls alongIn her ungainly pace,Her folds of skin that work and rowBeneath the earth-soiled hovel in which she moves.And so he strains beneath her housey wallsAnd catches her trouser-legs in his beakSuddenly, or her skinny limb,And strange and grimly drags at herLike a dog,Only agelessly silent, with a reptile’s awful persistencyGrim, gruesome gallantry, to which he is doomed.Dragged out of an eternity of silent isolationAnd doomed to partiality, partial being,Ache, and want of being,Want,Self-exposure, hard humiliation, need to add himself on to herBorn to walk alone,Fore-runner,Now suddenly distracted into this mazy side-track,This awkward, harrowing pursuit,This grim necessity from within.Does she knowAs she moves eternally slowly away?Or is he driven against her with a bang, like a bird flying in the dark against a window,All knowledgeless?The awful concussion,And the still more awful need to persist, to follow, follow, continue,Driven, after æons of pristine, fore-god-like singleness and oneness,At the end of some mysterious, red-hot iron,Driven away from himself into her tracks,Forced to crash against her.Stiff, gallant, irascible, crook-legged reptile,Little gentleman,Sorry plight,We ought to look the other way.Save that, having come with you so far,We will go on to the end.
Makinghis advancesHe does not look at her, nor sniff at her,No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skinThat work beneath her while she sprawls alongIn her ungainly pace,Her folds of skin that work and rowBeneath the earth-soiled hovel in which she moves.And so he strains beneath her housey wallsAnd catches her trouser-legs in his beakSuddenly, or her skinny limb,And strange and grimly drags at herLike a dog,Only agelessly silent, with a reptile’s awful persistencyGrim, gruesome gallantry, to which he is doomed.Dragged out of an eternity of silent isolationAnd doomed to partiality, partial being,Ache, and want of being,Want,Self-exposure, hard humiliation, need to add himself on to herBorn to walk alone,Fore-runner,Now suddenly distracted into this mazy side-track,This awkward, harrowing pursuit,This grim necessity from within.Does she knowAs she moves eternally slowly away?Or is he driven against her with a bang, like a bird flying in the dark against a window,All knowledgeless?The awful concussion,And the still more awful need to persist, to follow, follow, continue,Driven, after æons of pristine, fore-god-like singleness and oneness,At the end of some mysterious, red-hot iron,Driven away from himself into her tracks,Forced to crash against her.Stiff, gallant, irascible, crook-legged reptile,Little gentleman,Sorry plight,We ought to look the other way.Save that, having come with you so far,We will go on to the end.
Makinghis advancesHe does not look at her, nor sniff at her,No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.
Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skinThat work beneath her while she sprawls alongIn her ungainly pace,Her folds of skin that work and rowBeneath the earth-soiled hovel in which she moves.
And so he strains beneath her housey wallsAnd catches her trouser-legs in his beakSuddenly, or her skinny limb,And strange and grimly drags at herLike a dog,Only agelessly silent, with a reptile’s awful persistency
Grim, gruesome gallantry, to which he is doomed.Dragged out of an eternity of silent isolationAnd doomed to partiality, partial being,Ache, and want of being,Want,Self-exposure, hard humiliation, need to add himself on to her
Born to walk alone,Fore-runner,Now suddenly distracted into this mazy side-track,This awkward, harrowing pursuit,This grim necessity from within.
Does she knowAs she moves eternally slowly away?Or is he driven against her with a bang, like a bird flying in the dark against a window,All knowledgeless?
The awful concussion,And the still more awful need to persist, to follow, follow, continue,
Driven, after æons of pristine, fore-god-like singleness and oneness,At the end of some mysterious, red-hot iron,Driven away from himself into her tracks,Forced to crash against her.
Stiff, gallant, irascible, crook-legged reptile,Little gentleman,Sorry plight,We ought to look the other way.
Save that, having come with you so far,We will go on to the end.
I thoughthe was dumb,I said he was dumb,Yet I’ve heard him cry.First faint scream,Out of life’s unfathomable dawn,Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon’s dawning rim,Far, far off, far scream.Tortoisein extremis.Why were we crucified into sex?Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,As we began,As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?A far, was-it-audible scream,Or did it sound on the plasm direct?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 membraneTorn 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 shellIn 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 tensionTill suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping like a jerking leap, and oh!Opening its clenched face from his outstretched neckAnd 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 onceThe inexpressible faint yell—And so on, till the last plasm of my body was melted backTo the primeval rudiments of life, and the secret.So he tups, and screamsTime after time that frail, torn screamAfter 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 nightCry 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 speechOn wild dark lips.And more than all these,And less than all these,This last,Strange, faint coition yellOf 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 silenceTearing 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.
I thoughthe was dumb,I said he was dumb,Yet I’ve heard him cry.First faint scream,Out of life’s unfathomable dawn,Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon’s dawning rim,Far, far off, far scream.Tortoisein extremis.Why were we crucified into sex?Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,As we began,As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?A far, was-it-audible scream,Or did it sound on the plasm direct?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 membraneTorn 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 shellIn 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 tensionTill suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping like a jerking leap, and oh!Opening its clenched face from his outstretched neckAnd 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 onceThe inexpressible faint yell—And so on, till the last plasm of my body was melted backTo the primeval rudiments of life, and the secret.So he tups, and screamsTime after time that frail, torn screamAfter 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 nightCry 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 speechOn wild dark lips.And more than all these,And less than all these,This last,Strange, faint coition yellOf 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 silenceTearing 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.
I thoughthe was dumb,I said he was dumb,Yet I’ve heard him cry.
First faint scream,Out of life’s unfathomable dawn,Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon’s dawning rim,Far, far off, far scream.
Tortoisein extremis.
Why were we crucified into sex?Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,As we began,As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?
A far, was-it-audible scream,Or did it sound on the plasm direct?
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 membraneTorn 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 shellIn 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 tensionTill suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping like a jerking leap, and oh!Opening its clenched face from his outstretched neckAnd 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 onceThe inexpressible faint yell—And so on, till the last plasm of my body was melted backTo the primeval rudiments of life, and the secret.
So he tups, and screamsTime after time that frail, torn screamAfter 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 nightCry 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 speechOn wild dark lips.
And more than all these,And less than all these,This last,Strange, faint coition yellOf 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 silenceTearing 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.
Youruffled black blossom,You glossy dark wind.Your sort of gorgeousness,Dark and lustrousAnd skinny repulsiveAnd poppy-glossy,Is the gorgeousness that evokes my most puzzled admiration.Your aboriginalityDeep, 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-hotAnd 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-blueAnd 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 breastAnd the point of your mantilla drops across your nose, unpleasantly.Or perhaps it is something unfinishedA 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-lapWhich 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 bowWhich quivers indrawn as you clench your spineUntil your veiled head almost touches backwardTo the root-rising of your erected tail.And one intense and backward-curving frissonSeizes you as you clench yourself togetherLike some fierce magnet bringing its poles together.Burning, pale positive pole of your wattled head!And from the darkness of that opposite oneThe upstart of your round-barred, sun-round tail!Whilst between the two, along the tense arch of your backBlows 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 arroganceTosses the crape of red across your brow and down your breastAs you draw yourself upon yourself in insistence.It is a declaration of such tension in willAs time has not dared to avouch, nor eternity been able to unbendDo 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 bronzeAnd struts blue-brilliant out of the far East.But watch a turkey prancing low on earthDrumming his vaulted wings, as savages drumTheir rhythms on long-drawn, hollow, sinister drums.The ponderous, sombre sound of the great drum of HuichilobosIn pyramid Mexico, during sacrifice.Drum, and the turkey onrushSudden, demonic dauntlessness, full abreast,All the bronze gloss of all his myriad petalsEach one apart and instant.Delicate frail crescent of the gentle outline of whiteAt each feather-tipSo delicate;Yet the bronze wind-well suddenly clashingAnd the eye over-weening into madness.Turkey-cock, turkey-cockAre 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 AmericanWhere 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.
Youruffled black blossom,You glossy dark wind.Your sort of gorgeousness,Dark and lustrousAnd skinny repulsiveAnd poppy-glossy,Is the gorgeousness that evokes my most puzzled admiration.Your aboriginalityDeep, 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-hotAnd 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-blueAnd 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 breastAnd the point of your mantilla drops across your nose, unpleasantly.Or perhaps it is something unfinishedA 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-lapWhich 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 bowWhich quivers indrawn as you clench your spineUntil your veiled head almost touches backwardTo the root-rising of your erected tail.And one intense and backward-curving frissonSeizes you as you clench yourself togetherLike some fierce magnet bringing its poles together.Burning, pale positive pole of your wattled head!And from the darkness of that opposite oneThe upstart of your round-barred, sun-round tail!Whilst between the two, along the tense arch of your backBlows 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 arroganceTosses the crape of red across your brow and down your breastAs you draw yourself upon yourself in insistence.It is a declaration of such tension in willAs time has not dared to avouch, nor eternity been able to unbendDo 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 bronzeAnd struts blue-brilliant out of the far East.But watch a turkey prancing low on earthDrumming his vaulted wings, as savages drumTheir rhythms on long-drawn, hollow, sinister drums.The ponderous, sombre sound of the great drum of HuichilobosIn pyramid Mexico, during sacrifice.Drum, and the turkey onrushSudden, demonic dauntlessness, full abreast,All the bronze gloss of all his myriad petalsEach one apart and instant.Delicate frail crescent of the gentle outline of whiteAt each feather-tipSo delicate;Yet the bronze wind-well suddenly clashingAnd the eye over-weening into madness.Turkey-cock, turkey-cockAre 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 AmericanWhere 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.
Youruffled black blossom,You glossy dark wind.
Your sort of gorgeousness,Dark and lustrousAnd skinny repulsiveAnd poppy-glossy,Is the gorgeousness that evokes my most puzzled admiration.
Your aboriginalityDeep, 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-hotAnd 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-blueAnd 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 breastAnd the point of your mantilla drops across your nose, unpleasantly.
Or perhaps it is something unfinishedA 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-lapWhich 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 bowWhich quivers indrawn as you clench your spineUntil your veiled head almost touches backwardTo the root-rising of your erected tail.And one intense and backward-curving frissonSeizes you as you clench yourself togetherLike some fierce magnet bringing its poles together.Burning, pale positive pole of your wattled head!And from the darkness of that opposite oneThe upstart of your round-barred, sun-round tail!
Whilst between the two, along the tense arch of your backBlows 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 arroganceTosses the crape of red across your brow and down your breastAs you draw yourself upon yourself in insistence.
It is a declaration of such tension in willAs time has not dared to avouch, nor eternity been able to unbendDo 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 bronzeAnd struts blue-brilliant out of the far East.But watch a turkey prancing low on earthDrumming his vaulted wings, as savages drumTheir rhythms on long-drawn, hollow, sinister drums.The ponderous, sombre sound of the great drum of HuichilobosIn pyramid Mexico, during sacrifice.Drum, and the turkey onrushSudden, demonic dauntlessness, full abreast,All the bronze gloss of all his myriad petalsEach one apart and instant.Delicate frail crescent of the gentle outline of whiteAt each feather-tipSo delicate;Yet the bronze wind-well suddenly clashingAnd the eye over-weening into madness.
Turkey-cock, turkey-cockAre 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 AmericanWhere 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.