I canimagine, in some otherworldPrimeval-dumb, far backIn 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 brillianceAnd went whizzing through the slow, vast, succulent stems.I believe there were no flowers, thenIn 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 bigAs 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.
I canimagine, in some otherworldPrimeval-dumb, far backIn 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 brillianceAnd went whizzing through the slow, vast, succulent stems.I believe there were no flowers, thenIn 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 bigAs 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.
I canimagine, in some otherworldPrimeval-dumb, far backIn 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 brillianceAnd went whizzing through the slow, vast, succulent stems.
I believe there were no flowers, thenIn 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 bigAs 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.
Towardsthe sun, towards the south-westA scorched breast.A scorched breast, breasting the sun like an answer,Like a retort.An eagle at the top of a low cedar-bushOn the sage-ash desertReflecting 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 feathersIn scorched white feathersIn burnt dark feathersIn feathers still fire-rusted;Sickle-overswept, sickle dripping over and above.Sun-breaster,Staring two ways at once, to right and left;Masked-oneDark-visagedSickle-maskedWith iron between your two eyes;You feather-glovedTo 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 breastLooks straight at the sun.You are darkExcept scorch-pale-breasted;And dark cleaves down and weapon-hard downward curvingAt your scorched breast,Like a sword of Damocles,Beaked eagle.You’ve dipped it in blood so many timesThat 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 birdDo 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 thinkIn America, still,Old eagle?Does the sun in New Mexico sail like a fiery bird of prey in the skyHovering?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 eagleWhom 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 sunThat sucks up bloodLeaving 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 lastBy the life in the hearts of men.And you, great bird, sun-starer, heavy black beakCan be put out of office as sacrifice bringer.Taos.
Towardsthe sun, towards the south-westA scorched breast.A scorched breast, breasting the sun like an answer,Like a retort.An eagle at the top of a low cedar-bushOn the sage-ash desertReflecting 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 feathersIn scorched white feathersIn burnt dark feathersIn feathers still fire-rusted;Sickle-overswept, sickle dripping over and above.Sun-breaster,Staring two ways at once, to right and left;Masked-oneDark-visagedSickle-maskedWith iron between your two eyes;You feather-glovedTo 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 breastLooks straight at the sun.You are darkExcept scorch-pale-breasted;And dark cleaves down and weapon-hard downward curvingAt your scorched breast,Like a sword of Damocles,Beaked eagle.You’ve dipped it in blood so many timesThat 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 birdDo 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 thinkIn America, still,Old eagle?Does the sun in New Mexico sail like a fiery bird of prey in the skyHovering?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 eagleWhom 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 sunThat sucks up bloodLeaving 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 lastBy the life in the hearts of men.And you, great bird, sun-starer, heavy black beakCan be put out of office as sacrifice bringer.Taos.
Towardsthe sun, towards the south-westA scorched breast.A scorched breast, breasting the sun like an answer,Like a retort.
An eagle at the top of a low cedar-bushOn the sage-ash desertReflecting 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 feathersIn scorched white feathersIn burnt dark feathersIn feathers still fire-rusted;Sickle-overswept, sickle dripping over and above.
Sun-breaster,Staring two ways at once, to right and left;Masked-oneDark-visagedSickle-maskedWith iron between your two eyes;You feather-glovedTo 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 breastLooks straight at the sun.
You are darkExcept scorch-pale-breasted;And dark cleaves down and weapon-hard downward curvingAt your scorched breast,Like a sword of Damocles,Beaked eagle.
You’ve dipped it in blood so many timesThat 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 birdDo 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 thinkIn America, still,Old eagle?
Does the sun in New Mexico sail like a fiery bird of prey in the skyHovering?
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 eagleWhom 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 sunThat sucks up bloodLeaving 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 lastBy the life in the hearts of men.And you, great bird, sun-starer, heavy black beakCan be put out of office as sacrifice bringer.Taos.
Theblue jay with a crest on his headComes 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 cloudImmense above the cabinComes a strident laugh as we approach, this little black dog and I.So halts the little black bitch on four spread paws in the snowAnd 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 atmefor?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 hereThe 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 crestWho are you?Whose boss are you, with all your bully way?You copper-sulphate blue-bird!Lobo.
Theblue jay with a crest on his headComes 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 cloudImmense above the cabinComes a strident laugh as we approach, this little black dog and I.So halts the little black bitch on four spread paws in the snowAnd 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 atmefor?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 hereThe 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 crestWho are you?Whose boss are you, with all your bully way?You copper-sulphate blue-bird!Lobo.
Theblue jay with a crest on his headComes 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 cloudImmense above the cabinComes a strident laugh as we approach, this little black dog and I.So halts the little black bitch on four spread paws in the snowAnd 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 atmefor?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 hereThe 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 crestWho are you?Whose boss are you, with all your bully way?You copper-sulphate blue-bird!Lobo.
Thelong-drawn bray of the assIn 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 twilightI 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,Andnoli 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 memberAnd his head gone heavy with the knowledge of desireAnd 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 obstaclesIn 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—ureQuite which!Which!Taormina.
Thelong-drawn bray of the assIn 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 twilightI 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,Andnoli 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 memberAnd his head gone heavy with the knowledge of desireAnd 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 obstaclesIn 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—ureQuite which!Which!Taormina.
Thelong-drawn bray of the assIn 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 twilightI 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,Andnoli 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 memberAnd his head gone heavy with the knowledge of desireAnd 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 obstaclesIn 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—ureQuite which!Which!Taormina.
Seehis 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 herdAnd rows among the females like a ship pertinaciously,Heavy with a rancid cargo, through the lesser ships—Old fatherSniffing 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 shipsThen swerving and steering afreshAnd never, never arriving at journey’s end, at the rear of the female ships.Yellow eyes incomprehensible with thin slitsTo round-eyed us.Yet if you had whorled horns of bronze in a frontal dark wallAt 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 elsewhereYou 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 hairAnd 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 hornSlowly revolving towards unexploded explosion,As from the stem of his bristling, lightning-conductor tailIn a rush up the shrieking duct of his vertebral wayRuns a rage drawn in from the other divinely through himTowards a shock and a crash and a smiting of horns ahead.That is a grand old lust of his, to gather the greatRage of the sullen-stagnating atmosphere of goatsAnd bring it hurtling to a head, with crash of horns against the hornsOf the opposite enemy goat,Thus hammering the mettle of goats into proof, and smiting outThe 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-goatIn the business of beating the mettle of goats to a godhead.But they’ve taken his enemy from himAnd left him only his libidinousness,His nostrils turning back, to sniff at even himselfAnd 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 peakLike 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 darkAt the living rock he is up against;While she with her goaty mouth stands smiling the while as he strikes, since sureHe will neverquitestrike home, on the target-quick, for her quickIs just beyond range of the arrow he shootsFrom 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 orgasmAnd 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 catWho is like a fur folding a fur,The cat who laps blood, and knowsThe soft welling of blood invincible even beyond bone or metal of bone.The soft, the secret, the unfathomable bloodThe cat has lappedAnd known it subtler than frisson-shaken nerves,Stronger than multiplicity of bone on boneAnd darker than even the arrows of violentest willCan 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 peakOverlooking the world for his own.But bah, how can he, poor domesticated beast!Taormina.
Seehis 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 herdAnd rows among the females like a ship pertinaciously,Heavy with a rancid cargo, through the lesser ships—Old fatherSniffing 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 shipsThen swerving and steering afreshAnd never, never arriving at journey’s end, at the rear of the female ships.Yellow eyes incomprehensible with thin slitsTo round-eyed us.Yet if you had whorled horns of bronze in a frontal dark wallAt 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 elsewhereYou 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 hairAnd 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 hornSlowly revolving towards unexploded explosion,As from the stem of his bristling, lightning-conductor tailIn a rush up the shrieking duct of his vertebral wayRuns a rage drawn in from the other divinely through himTowards a shock and a crash and a smiting of horns ahead.That is a grand old lust of his, to gather the greatRage of the sullen-stagnating atmosphere of goatsAnd bring it hurtling to a head, with crash of horns against the hornsOf the opposite enemy goat,Thus hammering the mettle of goats into proof, and smiting outThe 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-goatIn the business of beating the mettle of goats to a godhead.But they’ve taken his enemy from himAnd left him only his libidinousness,His nostrils turning back, to sniff at even himselfAnd 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 peakLike 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 darkAt the living rock he is up against;While she with her goaty mouth stands smiling the while as he strikes, since sureHe will neverquitestrike home, on the target-quick, for her quickIs just beyond range of the arrow he shootsFrom 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 orgasmAnd 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 catWho is like a fur folding a fur,The cat who laps blood, and knowsThe soft welling of blood invincible even beyond bone or metal of bone.The soft, the secret, the unfathomable bloodThe cat has lappedAnd known it subtler than frisson-shaken nerves,Stronger than multiplicity of bone on boneAnd darker than even the arrows of violentest willCan 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 peakOverlooking the world for his own.But bah, how can he, poor domesticated beast!Taormina.
Seehis 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 herdAnd rows among the females like a ship pertinaciously,Heavy with a rancid cargo, through the lesser ships—Old fatherSniffing 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 shipsThen swerving and steering afreshAnd never, never arriving at journey’s end, at the rear of the female ships.
Yellow eyes incomprehensible with thin slitsTo round-eyed us.
Yet if you had whorled horns of bronze in a frontal dark wallAt 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 elsewhereYou 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 hairAnd 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 hornSlowly revolving towards unexploded explosion,As from the stem of his bristling, lightning-conductor tailIn a rush up the shrieking duct of his vertebral wayRuns a rage drawn in from the other divinely through himTowards a shock and a crash and a smiting of horns ahead.
That is a grand old lust of his, to gather the greatRage of the sullen-stagnating atmosphere of goatsAnd bring it hurtling to a head, with crash of horns against the hornsOf the opposite enemy goat,Thus hammering the mettle of goats into proof, and smiting outThe 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-goatIn the business of beating the mettle of goats to a godhead.
But they’ve taken his enemy from himAnd left him only his libidinousness,His nostrils turning back, to sniff at even himselfAnd 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 peakLike 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 darkAt the living rock he is up against;While she with her goaty mouth stands smiling the while as he strikes, since sureHe will neverquitestrike home, on the target-quick, for her quickIs just beyond range of the arrow he shootsFrom 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 orgasmAnd 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 catWho is like a fur folding a fur,The cat who laps blood, and knowsThe soft welling of blood invincible even beyond bone or metal of bone.
The soft, the secret, the unfathomable bloodThe cat has lappedAnd known it subtler than frisson-shaken nerves,Stronger than multiplicity of bone on boneAnd darker than even the arrows of violentest willCan 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 peakOverlooking the world for his own.
But bah, how can he, poor domesticated beast!Taormina.
Goatsgo 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 dayLike 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.Queer it is, suddenly, in the gardenTo catch sight of her standing like some huge, ghoulish grey bird in the air, on the bough of the leaning almond-tree,Straight as a board on the bough, looking down like some hairy horrid God the Father in a William Blake imagination.Come down, crapa, out of that almond tree!Instead of which she strangely rears on her perch in the air, vast beast,And strangely paws the air, delicate,And reaches her black-striped face up like a snake, far up,Subtly, to the twigs overhead, far up, vast beast,And snaps them sharp, with a little twist of her anaconda head;All her great hairy-shaggy belly open against the morning.At seasons she curls back her tail like a green leaf in the fire,Or like a lifted hand, hailing at her wrong end.And having exposed the pink place of her nakedness, fixedly,She trots on blithe toes,And if you look at her, she looks back with a cold, sardonic stare.Sardonic, sardonyx, rock of cold fire.See me?She says,That’s me!That’s her.Then she leaps the rocks like a quick rock,Her back-bone sharp as a rock,Sheer will.Along which ridge of libidinous magnetismDefiant, curling the leaf of her tail as if she were curling her lip behind her at all life,Libidinous desire runs back and forth, asserting itself in that little lifted bare hand.Yet she has such adorable spurty kids, like spurts of black ink.And in a month again is as if she had never had them.And when the billy goat mounts herShe is brittle as brimstone.While his slitted eyes squint back to the roots of his ears.Taormina.
Goatsgo 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 dayLike 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.Queer it is, suddenly, in the gardenTo catch sight of her standing like some huge, ghoulish grey bird in the air, on the bough of the leaning almond-tree,Straight as a board on the bough, looking down like some hairy horrid God the Father in a William Blake imagination.Come down, crapa, out of that almond tree!Instead of which she strangely rears on her perch in the air, vast beast,And strangely paws the air, delicate,And reaches her black-striped face up like a snake, far up,Subtly, to the twigs overhead, far up, vast beast,And snaps them sharp, with a little twist of her anaconda head;All her great hairy-shaggy belly open against the morning.At seasons she curls back her tail like a green leaf in the fire,Or like a lifted hand, hailing at her wrong end.And having exposed the pink place of her nakedness, fixedly,She trots on blithe toes,And if you look at her, she looks back with a cold, sardonic stare.Sardonic, sardonyx, rock of cold fire.See me?She says,That’s me!That’s her.Then she leaps the rocks like a quick rock,Her back-bone sharp as a rock,Sheer will.Along which ridge of libidinous magnetismDefiant, curling the leaf of her tail as if she were curling her lip behind her at all life,Libidinous desire runs back and forth, asserting itself in that little lifted bare hand.Yet she has such adorable spurty kids, like spurts of black ink.And in a month again is as if she had never had them.And when the billy goat mounts herShe is brittle as brimstone.While his slitted eyes squint back to the roots of his ears.Taormina.
Goatsgo 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 dayLike 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.
Queer it is, suddenly, in the gardenTo catch sight of her standing like some huge, ghoulish grey bird in the air, on the bough of the leaning almond-tree,Straight as a board on the bough, looking down like some hairy horrid God the Father in a William Blake imagination.Come down, crapa, out of that almond tree!
Instead of which she strangely rears on her perch in the air, vast beast,And strangely paws the air, delicate,And reaches her black-striped face up like a snake, far up,Subtly, to the twigs overhead, far up, vast beast,And snaps them sharp, with a little twist of her anaconda head;All her great hairy-shaggy belly open against the morning.
At seasons she curls back her tail like a green leaf in the fire,Or like a lifted hand, hailing at her wrong end.And having exposed the pink place of her nakedness, fixedly,She trots on blithe toes,And if you look at her, she looks back with a cold, sardonic stare.Sardonic, sardonyx, rock of cold fire.See me?She says,That’s me!
That’s her.
Then she leaps the rocks like a quick rock,Her back-bone sharp as a rock,Sheer will.
Along which ridge of libidinous magnetismDefiant, curling the leaf of her tail as if she were curling her lip behind her at all life,Libidinous desire runs back and forth, asserting itself in that little lifted bare hand.
Yet she has such adorable spurty kids, like spurts of black ink.And in a month again is as if she had never had them.
And when the billy goat mounts herShe is brittle as brimstone.While his slitted eyes squint back to the roots of his ears.Taormina.
Yougo down shade to the river, where naked men sit on flat brown rocks, to watch the ferry, in the sun;And you cross the ferry with the naked people, go up the tropical laneThrough the palm-trees and past hollow paddy-fields where naked men are threshing riceAnd the monolithic water-buffaloes, like old, muddy stones with hair on them, are being idle;And through the shadow of bread-fruit trees, with their dark green, glossy, fanged leavesVery handsome, and some pure yellow fanged leaves;Out into the open, where the path runs on the top of a dyke between paddy-fields:And there, of course, you meet a huge and mud-grey elephant advancing his frontal bone, his trunk curled round a log of wood:So you step down the bank, to make way.Shuffle, shuffle, and his little wicked eye has seen you as he advances above you,The slow beast curiously spreading his round feet for the dust.And the slim naked man slips down, and the beast deposits the lump of wood, carefully.The keeper hooks the vast knee, the creature salaams.White man, you are saluted.Pay a few cents.But the best is the Pera-hera, at midnight, under the tropical stars,With a pale little wisp of a Prince of Wales, diffident, up in a small pagoda on the temple sideAnd white people in evening dress buzzing and crowding the stand upon the grass below and opposite:And at last the Pera-hera procession, flambeaux aloft in the tropical night, of blazing cocoa-nut,Naked dark men beneath,And the huge frontal of three great elephants stepping forth to the tom-tom’s beat, in the torch-light,Slowly sailing in gorgeous apparel through the flame-light, in front of a towering, grimacing white image of wood.The elephant bells striking slow, tong-tong, tong-tong,To music and queer chanting:Enormous shadow-processions filing on in the flare of fireIn the fume of cocoa-nut oil, in the sweating tropical night,In the noise of the tom-toms and singers;Elephants after elephants curl their trunks, vast shadows, and some cry outAs they approach and salaam, under the dripping fire of the torchesThat pale fragment of a Prince up there, whose motto isIch dien.Pale, dispirited Prince, with his chin on his hands, his nerves tired out,Watching and hardly seeing the trunk-curl approach and clumsy, knee-lifting salaamOf the hugest, oldest of beasts in the night and the fire-flare below.He is royalty, pale and dejected fragment up aloft.And down below huge homage of shadowy beasts; barefoot and trunk-lipped in the night.Chieftains, three of them abreast, on footStrut like peg-tops, wound around with hundreds of yards of fine linen.They glimmer with tissue of gold, and golden threads on a jacket of velvet,And their faces are dark, and fat, and important.They are royalty, dark-faced royalty, showing the conscious whites of their eyesAnd stepping in homage, stubborn, to that nervous pale lad up there.More elephants, tong, tong-tong, loom up,Huge, more tassels swinging, more dripping fire of new cocoa-nut cressetsHigh, high flambeaux, smoking of the east;And scarlet hot embers of torches knocked out of the sockets among bare feet of elephants and men on the path in the dark.And devil dancers luminous with sweat, dancing on to the shudder of drums,Tom-toms, weird music of the devil, voices of men from the jungle singing;Endless, under the Prince.Towards the tail of the everlasting processionIn the long hot night, mere dancers from insignificant villages,And smaller, more frightened elephants.Men-peasants from jungle villages dancing and running with sweat and laughing,Naked dark men with ornaments on, on their naked arms and their naked breasts, the grooved loinsGleaming like metal with running sweat as they suddenly turn, feet apart,And dance, and dance, forever dance, with breath half sobbing in dark, sweat-shining breasts,And lustrous great tropical eyes unveiled now, gleaming a kind of laugh,A naked, gleaming dark laugh, like a secret out in the dark,And flare of a tropical energy, tireless, afire in the dark, slim limbs and breasts,Perpetual, fire-laughing motion, among the slow shuffleOf elephants,The hot dark blood of itself a-laughing, wet, half-devilish, men all motionApproaching under that small pavilion, and tropical eyes dilated look upInevitably look upTo the PrinceTo that tired remnant of royalty up thereWhose motto isIch dien.As if the homage of the kindled blood of the eastWent up in wavelets to him, from the breasts and eyes of jungle torch-men,And he couldn’t take it.What would they do, those jungle men running with sweat, with the strange dark laugh in their eyes, glancing up,And the sparse-haired elephants slowly following,If they knew that his motto wasIch dien?And that he meant it.They begin to understandThe rickshaw boys begin to understandAnd then the devil comes into their faces,But a different sort, a cold, rebellious, jeering devil.In elephants and the east are two devils, in all men maybe.The mystery of the dark mountain of blood, reeking in homage, in lust, in rage,And passive with everlasting patience,Then the little, cunning pig-devil of the elephant’s lurking eyes, the unbeliever.We dodged, when the Pera-hera was finished, under the hanging, hairy pigs’ tailsAnd the flat, flaccid mountains of the elephants’ standing haunches,Vast-blooded beasts,Myself so little dodging rather scared against the eternal wrinkled pillars of their legs, as they were being dismantled;Then I knew they were dejected, having come to hear the repeatedRoyal summons:Dient Ihr!Serve!Serve, vast mountainous blood, in submission and splendour, serve royalty.Instead of which, the silent, fatal emission from that pale, shattered boy up there:Ich dien.That’s why the night fell in frustration.That’s why, as the elephants ponderously, with unseeming swiftness, galloped uphill in the night, going back to the jungle villages,As the elephant bells sounded tong-tong-tong, bell of the temple of blood in the night, swift-striking,And the crowd like a field of rice in the dark gave way like liquid to the darkLooming gallop of the beasts,It was as if the great bare bulks of elephants in the obscure light went over the hill-brow swiftly, with their tails between their legs, in haste to get away,Their bells sounding frustrate and sinister.And all the dark-faced, cotton-wrapped people, more numerous and whispering than grains of rice in a ricefield at night,All the dark-faced, cotton-wrapped people, a countless host on the shores of the lake, like thick wild rice by the water’s edge,Waiting for the fireworks of the after-show,As the rockets went up, and the glare passed over countless faces, dark as black rice growing,Showing a glint of teeth, and glancing tropical eyes aroused in the night,There was the faintest twist of mockery in every face, across the hiss of wonders as the rocket burstHigh, high up, in flakes, shimmering flakes of blue fire, above the palm-trees of the islet in the lake,O faces upturned to the glare, O tropical wonder, wonder, a miracle in heaven!And the shadow of a jeer, of underneath disappointment, as the rocket-coruscation died, and shadow was the same as before.They were foiled, the myriad whispering dark-faced cotton-wrapped people.They had come to see royalty,To bow before royalty, in the land of elephants, bow deep, bow deep.Bow deep, for it’s good as a draught of cool water to bow very, very low to the royal.And all there was to bow to, a weary, diffident boy whose motto isIch dien.I serve! I serve!in all the weary iron of his mien—’Tis I who serve!Drudge to the public.I wish they had given the three feathers to me;That I had been he in the pavilion, as in a pepper-box aloft and aloneTo stand and hold feathers, three feathers above the world,And say to them:Dient Ihr! Dient!Omnes, vos omnes, servite.Serve me, I am meet to be served.Being royal of the gods.And to the elephants:First great beasts of the earthA prince has come back to you,Blood-mountains.Crook the knee and be glad.Kandy.
Yougo down shade to the river, where naked men sit on flat brown rocks, to watch the ferry, in the sun;And you cross the ferry with the naked people, go up the tropical laneThrough the palm-trees and past hollow paddy-fields where naked men are threshing riceAnd the monolithic water-buffaloes, like old, muddy stones with hair on them, are being idle;And through the shadow of bread-fruit trees, with their dark green, glossy, fanged leavesVery handsome, and some pure yellow fanged leaves;Out into the open, where the path runs on the top of a dyke between paddy-fields:And there, of course, you meet a huge and mud-grey elephant advancing his frontal bone, his trunk curled round a log of wood:So you step down the bank, to make way.Shuffle, shuffle, and his little wicked eye has seen you as he advances above you,The slow beast curiously spreading his round feet for the dust.And the slim naked man slips down, and the beast deposits the lump of wood, carefully.The keeper hooks the vast knee, the creature salaams.White man, you are saluted.Pay a few cents.But the best is the Pera-hera, at midnight, under the tropical stars,With a pale little wisp of a Prince of Wales, diffident, up in a small pagoda on the temple sideAnd white people in evening dress buzzing and crowding the stand upon the grass below and opposite:And at last the Pera-hera procession, flambeaux aloft in the tropical night, of blazing cocoa-nut,Naked dark men beneath,And the huge frontal of three great elephants stepping forth to the tom-tom’s beat, in the torch-light,Slowly sailing in gorgeous apparel through the flame-light, in front of a towering, grimacing white image of wood.The elephant bells striking slow, tong-tong, tong-tong,To music and queer chanting:Enormous shadow-processions filing on in the flare of fireIn the fume of cocoa-nut oil, in the sweating tropical night,In the noise of the tom-toms and singers;Elephants after elephants curl their trunks, vast shadows, and some cry outAs they approach and salaam, under the dripping fire of the torchesThat pale fragment of a Prince up there, whose motto isIch dien.Pale, dispirited Prince, with his chin on his hands, his nerves tired out,Watching and hardly seeing the trunk-curl approach and clumsy, knee-lifting salaamOf the hugest, oldest of beasts in the night and the fire-flare below.He is royalty, pale and dejected fragment up aloft.And down below huge homage of shadowy beasts; barefoot and trunk-lipped in the night.Chieftains, three of them abreast, on footStrut like peg-tops, wound around with hundreds of yards of fine linen.They glimmer with tissue of gold, and golden threads on a jacket of velvet,And their faces are dark, and fat, and important.They are royalty, dark-faced royalty, showing the conscious whites of their eyesAnd stepping in homage, stubborn, to that nervous pale lad up there.More elephants, tong, tong-tong, loom up,Huge, more tassels swinging, more dripping fire of new cocoa-nut cressetsHigh, high flambeaux, smoking of the east;And scarlet hot embers of torches knocked out of the sockets among bare feet of elephants and men on the path in the dark.And devil dancers luminous with sweat, dancing on to the shudder of drums,Tom-toms, weird music of the devil, voices of men from the jungle singing;Endless, under the Prince.Towards the tail of the everlasting processionIn the long hot night, mere dancers from insignificant villages,And smaller, more frightened elephants.Men-peasants from jungle villages dancing and running with sweat and laughing,Naked dark men with ornaments on, on their naked arms and their naked breasts, the grooved loinsGleaming like metal with running sweat as they suddenly turn, feet apart,And dance, and dance, forever dance, with breath half sobbing in dark, sweat-shining breasts,And lustrous great tropical eyes unveiled now, gleaming a kind of laugh,A naked, gleaming dark laugh, like a secret out in the dark,And flare of a tropical energy, tireless, afire in the dark, slim limbs and breasts,Perpetual, fire-laughing motion, among the slow shuffleOf elephants,The hot dark blood of itself a-laughing, wet, half-devilish, men all motionApproaching under that small pavilion, and tropical eyes dilated look upInevitably look upTo the PrinceTo that tired remnant of royalty up thereWhose motto isIch dien.As if the homage of the kindled blood of the eastWent up in wavelets to him, from the breasts and eyes of jungle torch-men,And he couldn’t take it.What would they do, those jungle men running with sweat, with the strange dark laugh in their eyes, glancing up,And the sparse-haired elephants slowly following,If they knew that his motto wasIch dien?And that he meant it.They begin to understandThe rickshaw boys begin to understandAnd then the devil comes into their faces,But a different sort, a cold, rebellious, jeering devil.In elephants and the east are two devils, in all men maybe.The mystery of the dark mountain of blood, reeking in homage, in lust, in rage,And passive with everlasting patience,Then the little, cunning pig-devil of the elephant’s lurking eyes, the unbeliever.We dodged, when the Pera-hera was finished, under the hanging, hairy pigs’ tailsAnd the flat, flaccid mountains of the elephants’ standing haunches,Vast-blooded beasts,Myself so little dodging rather scared against the eternal wrinkled pillars of their legs, as they were being dismantled;Then I knew they were dejected, having come to hear the repeatedRoyal summons:Dient Ihr!Serve!Serve, vast mountainous blood, in submission and splendour, serve royalty.Instead of which, the silent, fatal emission from that pale, shattered boy up there:Ich dien.That’s why the night fell in frustration.That’s why, as the elephants ponderously, with unseeming swiftness, galloped uphill in the night, going back to the jungle villages,As the elephant bells sounded tong-tong-tong, bell of the temple of blood in the night, swift-striking,And the crowd like a field of rice in the dark gave way like liquid to the darkLooming gallop of the beasts,It was as if the great bare bulks of elephants in the obscure light went over the hill-brow swiftly, with their tails between their legs, in haste to get away,Their bells sounding frustrate and sinister.And all the dark-faced, cotton-wrapped people, more numerous and whispering than grains of rice in a ricefield at night,All the dark-faced, cotton-wrapped people, a countless host on the shores of the lake, like thick wild rice by the water’s edge,Waiting for the fireworks of the after-show,As the rockets went up, and the glare passed over countless faces, dark as black rice growing,Showing a glint of teeth, and glancing tropical eyes aroused in the night,There was the faintest twist of mockery in every face, across the hiss of wonders as the rocket burstHigh, high up, in flakes, shimmering flakes of blue fire, above the palm-trees of the islet in the lake,O faces upturned to the glare, O tropical wonder, wonder, a miracle in heaven!And the shadow of a jeer, of underneath disappointment, as the rocket-coruscation died, and shadow was the same as before.They were foiled, the myriad whispering dark-faced cotton-wrapped people.They had come to see royalty,To bow before royalty, in the land of elephants, bow deep, bow deep.Bow deep, for it’s good as a draught of cool water to bow very, very low to the royal.And all there was to bow to, a weary, diffident boy whose motto isIch dien.I serve! I serve!in all the weary iron of his mien—’Tis I who serve!Drudge to the public.I wish they had given the three feathers to me;That I had been he in the pavilion, as in a pepper-box aloft and aloneTo stand and hold feathers, three feathers above the world,And say to them:Dient Ihr! Dient!Omnes, vos omnes, servite.Serve me, I am meet to be served.Being royal of the gods.And to the elephants:First great beasts of the earthA prince has come back to you,Blood-mountains.Crook the knee and be glad.Kandy.
Yougo down shade to the river, where naked men sit on flat brown rocks, to watch the ferry, in the sun;And you cross the ferry with the naked people, go up the tropical laneThrough the palm-trees and past hollow paddy-fields where naked men are threshing riceAnd the monolithic water-buffaloes, like old, muddy stones with hair on them, are being idle;And through the shadow of bread-fruit trees, with their dark green, glossy, fanged leavesVery handsome, and some pure yellow fanged leaves;Out into the open, where the path runs on the top of a dyke between paddy-fields:And there, of course, you meet a huge and mud-grey elephant advancing his frontal bone, his trunk curled round a log of wood:So you step down the bank, to make way.
Shuffle, shuffle, and his little wicked eye has seen you as he advances above you,The slow beast curiously spreading his round feet for the dust.And the slim naked man slips down, and the beast deposits the lump of wood, carefully.The keeper hooks the vast knee, the creature salaams.
White man, you are saluted.Pay a few cents.
But the best is the Pera-hera, at midnight, under the tropical stars,With a pale little wisp of a Prince of Wales, diffident, up in a small pagoda on the temple sideAnd white people in evening dress buzzing and crowding the stand upon the grass below and opposite:And at last the Pera-hera procession, flambeaux aloft in the tropical night, of blazing cocoa-nut,Naked dark men beneath,And the huge frontal of three great elephants stepping forth to the tom-tom’s beat, in the torch-light,Slowly sailing in gorgeous apparel through the flame-light, in front of a towering, grimacing white image of wood.
The elephant bells striking slow, tong-tong, tong-tong,To music and queer chanting:Enormous shadow-processions filing on in the flare of fireIn the fume of cocoa-nut oil, in the sweating tropical night,In the noise of the tom-toms and singers;Elephants after elephants curl their trunks, vast shadows, and some cry outAs they approach and salaam, under the dripping fire of the torchesThat pale fragment of a Prince up there, whose motto isIch dien.
Pale, dispirited Prince, with his chin on his hands, his nerves tired out,Watching and hardly seeing the trunk-curl approach and clumsy, knee-lifting salaamOf the hugest, oldest of beasts in the night and the fire-flare below.He is royalty, pale and dejected fragment up aloft.And down below huge homage of shadowy beasts; barefoot and trunk-lipped in the night.
Chieftains, three of them abreast, on footStrut like peg-tops, wound around with hundreds of yards of fine linen.They glimmer with tissue of gold, and golden threads on a jacket of velvet,And their faces are dark, and fat, and important.
They are royalty, dark-faced royalty, showing the conscious whites of their eyesAnd stepping in homage, stubborn, to that nervous pale lad up there.
More elephants, tong, tong-tong, loom up,Huge, more tassels swinging, more dripping fire of new cocoa-nut cressetsHigh, high flambeaux, smoking of the east;And scarlet hot embers of torches knocked out of the sockets among bare feet of elephants and men on the path in the dark.And devil dancers luminous with sweat, dancing on to the shudder of drums,Tom-toms, weird music of the devil, voices of men from the jungle singing;Endless, under the Prince.
Towards the tail of the everlasting processionIn the long hot night, mere dancers from insignificant villages,And smaller, more frightened elephants.Men-peasants from jungle villages dancing and running with sweat and laughing,Naked dark men with ornaments on, on their naked arms and their naked breasts, the grooved loinsGleaming like metal with running sweat as they suddenly turn, feet apart,And dance, and dance, forever dance, with breath half sobbing in dark, sweat-shining breasts,And lustrous great tropical eyes unveiled now, gleaming a kind of laugh,A naked, gleaming dark laugh, like a secret out in the dark,And flare of a tropical energy, tireless, afire in the dark, slim limbs and breasts,Perpetual, fire-laughing motion, among the slow shuffleOf elephants,The hot dark blood of itself a-laughing, wet, half-devilish, men all motionApproaching under that small pavilion, and tropical eyes dilated look upInevitably look upTo the PrinceTo that tired remnant of royalty up thereWhose motto isIch dien.
As if the homage of the kindled blood of the eastWent up in wavelets to him, from the breasts and eyes of jungle torch-men,And he couldn’t take it.
What would they do, those jungle men running with sweat, with the strange dark laugh in their eyes, glancing up,And the sparse-haired elephants slowly following,If they knew that his motto wasIch dien?And that he meant it.
They begin to understandThe rickshaw boys begin to understandAnd then the devil comes into their faces,But a different sort, a cold, rebellious, jeering devil.
In elephants and the east are two devils, in all men maybe.The mystery of the dark mountain of blood, reeking in homage, in lust, in rage,And passive with everlasting patience,Then the little, cunning pig-devil of the elephant’s lurking eyes, the unbeliever.
We dodged, when the Pera-hera was finished, under the hanging, hairy pigs’ tailsAnd the flat, flaccid mountains of the elephants’ standing haunches,Vast-blooded beasts,Myself so little dodging rather scared against the eternal wrinkled pillars of their legs, as they were being dismantled;Then I knew they were dejected, having come to hear the repeatedRoyal summons:Dient Ihr!Serve!Serve, vast mountainous blood, in submission and splendour, serve royalty.Instead of which, the silent, fatal emission from that pale, shattered boy up there:Ich dien.
That’s why the night fell in frustration.That’s why, as the elephants ponderously, with unseeming swiftness, galloped uphill in the night, going back to the jungle villages,As the elephant bells sounded tong-tong-tong, bell of the temple of blood in the night, swift-striking,And the crowd like a field of rice in the dark gave way like liquid to the darkLooming gallop of the beasts,It was as if the great bare bulks of elephants in the obscure light went over the hill-brow swiftly, with their tails between their legs, in haste to get away,Their bells sounding frustrate and sinister.
And all the dark-faced, cotton-wrapped people, more numerous and whispering than grains of rice in a ricefield at night,All the dark-faced, cotton-wrapped people, a countless host on the shores of the lake, like thick wild rice by the water’s edge,Waiting for the fireworks of the after-show,As the rockets went up, and the glare passed over countless faces, dark as black rice growing,Showing a glint of teeth, and glancing tropical eyes aroused in the night,There was the faintest twist of mockery in every face, across the hiss of wonders as the rocket burstHigh, high up, in flakes, shimmering flakes of blue fire, above the palm-trees of the islet in the lake,O faces upturned to the glare, O tropical wonder, wonder, a miracle in heaven!And the shadow of a jeer, of underneath disappointment, as the rocket-coruscation died, and shadow was the same as before.
They were foiled, the myriad whispering dark-faced cotton-wrapped people.They had come to see royalty,To bow before royalty, in the land of elephants, bow deep, bow deep.Bow deep, for it’s good as a draught of cool water to bow very, very low to the royal.
And all there was to bow to, a weary, diffident boy whose motto isIch dien.I serve! I serve!in all the weary iron of his mien—’Tis I who serve!Drudge to the public.
I wish they had given the three feathers to me;That I had been he in the pavilion, as in a pepper-box aloft and aloneTo stand and hold feathers, three feathers above the world,And say to them:Dient Ihr! Dient!Omnes, vos omnes, servite.Serve me, I am meet to be served.Being royal of the gods.
And to the elephants:First great beasts of the earthA prince has come back to you,Blood-mountains.Crook the knee and be glad.Kandy.
Inthe northern hemisphereLife seems to leap at the air, or skim under the windLike stags on rocky ground, or pawing horses, or springy scut-tailed rabbits.Or else rush horizontal to charge at the sky’s horizon,Like bulls or bisons or wild pigs.Or slip like water slippery towards its ends,As foxes, stoats, and wolves, and prairie dogs.Only mice, and moles, and rats, and badgers, and beavers, and perhaps bearsSeem belly-plumbed to the earth’s mid-navel.Or frogs that when they leap come flop, and flop to the centre of the earth.But the yellow antipodal Kangaroo, when she sits up,Who can unseat her, like a liquid drop that is heavy, and just touches earth.The downward drip.The down-urge.So much denser than cold-blooded frogs.Delicate mother KangarooSitting up there rabbit-wise, but huge, plumb-weighted,And lifting her beautiful slender face, oh! so much more gently and finely lined than a rabbit’s, or than a hare’s,Lifting her face to nibble at a round white peppermint drop, which she loves, sensitive mother Kangaroo.Her sensitive, long, pure-bred face.Her full antipodal eyes, so dark,So big and quiet and remote, having watched so many empty dawns in silent Australia.Her little loose hands, and drooping Victorian shoulders.And then her great weight below the waist, her vast pale bellyWith a thin young yellow little paw hanging out, and straggle of a long thin ear, like ribbon,Like a funny trimming to the middle of her belly, thin little dangle of an immature paw, and one thin ear.Her belly, her big haunchesAnd in addition, the great muscular python-stretch of her tail.There, she shan’t have any more peppermint drops.So she wistfully, sensitively sniffs the air, and then turns, goes off in slow sad leapsOn the long flat skis of her legs,Steered and propelled by that steel-strong snake of a tail.Stops again, half turns, inquisitive to look back.While something stirs quickly in her belly, and a lean little face comes out, as from a window,Peaked and a bit dismayed,Only to disappear again quickly away from the sight of the world, to snuggle down in the warmth,Leaving the trail of a different paw hanging out.Still she watches with eternal, cocked wistfulness!How full her eyes are, like the full, fathomless, shining eyes of an Australian black-boyWho has been lost so many centuries on the margins of existence!She watches with insatiable wistfulness.Untold centuries of watching for something to come,For a new signal from life, in that silent lost land of the South.Where nothing bites but insects and snakes and the sun, small life.Where no bull roared, no cow ever lowed, no stag cried, no leopard screeched, no lion coughed, no dog barked,But all was silent save for parrots occasionally, in the haunted blue bush.Wistfully watching, with wonderful liquid eyes.And all her weight, all her blood, dripping sack-wise down towards the earth’s centre,And the live little one taking in its paw at the door of her belly.Leap then, and come down on the line that draws to the earth’s deep, heavy centre.Sydney
Inthe northern hemisphereLife seems to leap at the air, or skim under the windLike stags on rocky ground, or pawing horses, or springy scut-tailed rabbits.Or else rush horizontal to charge at the sky’s horizon,Like bulls or bisons or wild pigs.Or slip like water slippery towards its ends,As foxes, stoats, and wolves, and prairie dogs.Only mice, and moles, and rats, and badgers, and beavers, and perhaps bearsSeem belly-plumbed to the earth’s mid-navel.Or frogs that when they leap come flop, and flop to the centre of the earth.But the yellow antipodal Kangaroo, when she sits up,Who can unseat her, like a liquid drop that is heavy, and just touches earth.The downward drip.The down-urge.So much denser than cold-blooded frogs.Delicate mother KangarooSitting up there rabbit-wise, but huge, plumb-weighted,And lifting her beautiful slender face, oh! so much more gently and finely lined than a rabbit’s, or than a hare’s,Lifting her face to nibble at a round white peppermint drop, which she loves, sensitive mother Kangaroo.Her sensitive, long, pure-bred face.Her full antipodal eyes, so dark,So big and quiet and remote, having watched so many empty dawns in silent Australia.Her little loose hands, and drooping Victorian shoulders.And then her great weight below the waist, her vast pale bellyWith a thin young yellow little paw hanging out, and straggle of a long thin ear, like ribbon,Like a funny trimming to the middle of her belly, thin little dangle of an immature paw, and one thin ear.Her belly, her big haunchesAnd in addition, the great muscular python-stretch of her tail.There, she shan’t have any more peppermint drops.So she wistfully, sensitively sniffs the air, and then turns, goes off in slow sad leapsOn the long flat skis of her legs,Steered and propelled by that steel-strong snake of a tail.Stops again, half turns, inquisitive to look back.While something stirs quickly in her belly, and a lean little face comes out, as from a window,Peaked and a bit dismayed,Only to disappear again quickly away from the sight of the world, to snuggle down in the warmth,Leaving the trail of a different paw hanging out.Still she watches with eternal, cocked wistfulness!How full her eyes are, like the full, fathomless, shining eyes of an Australian black-boyWho has been lost so many centuries on the margins of existence!She watches with insatiable wistfulness.Untold centuries of watching for something to come,For a new signal from life, in that silent lost land of the South.Where nothing bites but insects and snakes and the sun, small life.Where no bull roared, no cow ever lowed, no stag cried, no leopard screeched, no lion coughed, no dog barked,But all was silent save for parrots occasionally, in the haunted blue bush.Wistfully watching, with wonderful liquid eyes.And all her weight, all her blood, dripping sack-wise down towards the earth’s centre,And the live little one taking in its paw at the door of her belly.Leap then, and come down on the line that draws to the earth’s deep, heavy centre.Sydney
Inthe northern hemisphereLife seems to leap at the air, or skim under the windLike stags on rocky ground, or pawing horses, or springy scut-tailed rabbits.
Or else rush horizontal to charge at the sky’s horizon,Like bulls or bisons or wild pigs.
Or slip like water slippery towards its ends,As foxes, stoats, and wolves, and prairie dogs.
Only mice, and moles, and rats, and badgers, and beavers, and perhaps bearsSeem belly-plumbed to the earth’s mid-navel.Or frogs that when they leap come flop, and flop to the centre of the earth.
But the yellow antipodal Kangaroo, when she sits up,Who can unseat her, like a liquid drop that is heavy, and just touches earth.
The downward drip.The down-urge.So much denser than cold-blooded frogs.
Delicate mother KangarooSitting up there rabbit-wise, but huge, plumb-weighted,And lifting her beautiful slender face, oh! so much more gently and finely lined than a rabbit’s, or than a hare’s,Lifting her face to nibble at a round white peppermint drop, which she loves, sensitive mother Kangaroo.
Her sensitive, long, pure-bred face.Her full antipodal eyes, so dark,So big and quiet and remote, having watched so many empty dawns in silent Australia.
Her little loose hands, and drooping Victorian shoulders.And then her great weight below the waist, her vast pale bellyWith a thin young yellow little paw hanging out, and straggle of a long thin ear, like ribbon,Like a funny trimming to the middle of her belly, thin little dangle of an immature paw, and one thin ear.
Her belly, her big haunchesAnd in addition, the great muscular python-stretch of her tail.
There, she shan’t have any more peppermint drops.So she wistfully, sensitively sniffs the air, and then turns, goes off in slow sad leaps
On the long flat skis of her legs,Steered and propelled by that steel-strong snake of a tail.
Stops again, half turns, inquisitive to look back.While something stirs quickly in her belly, and a lean little face comes out, as from a window,Peaked and a bit dismayed,Only to disappear again quickly away from the sight of the world, to snuggle down in the warmth,Leaving the trail of a different paw hanging out.
Still she watches with eternal, cocked wistfulness!How full her eyes are, like the full, fathomless, shining eyes of an Australian black-boyWho has been lost so many centuries on the margins of existence!
She watches with insatiable wistfulness.Untold centuries of watching for something to come,For a new signal from life, in that silent lost land of the South.
Where nothing bites but insects and snakes and the sun, small life.Where no bull roared, no cow ever lowed, no stag cried, no leopard screeched, no lion coughed, no dog barked,But all was silent save for parrots occasionally, in the haunted blue bush.
Wistfully watching, with wonderful liquid eyes.And all her weight, all her blood, dripping sack-wise down towards the earth’s centre,And the live little one taking in its paw at the door of her belly.
Leap then, and come down on the line that draws to the earth’s deep, heavy centre.Sydney