Peaceis written on the doorstepIn lava.Peace, black peace congealed.My heart will know no peaceTill the hill bursts.Brilliant, intolerable lavaBrilliant as a powerful burning-glassWalking like a royal snake down the mountain towards the sea.Forests, cities, bridgesGone again in the bright trail of lava.Naxos thousands of feet below the olive-roots,And now the olive leaves thousands of feet below the lava fire.Peace congealed in black lava on the doorstep.Within, white-hot lava, never at peaceTill it burst forth blinding, withering the earth;To set again into rockGrey-black rock.Call it Peace?Taormina.
Peaceis written on the doorstepIn lava.Peace, black peace congealed.My heart will know no peaceTill the hill bursts.Brilliant, intolerable lavaBrilliant as a powerful burning-glassWalking like a royal snake down the mountain towards the sea.Forests, cities, bridgesGone again in the bright trail of lava.Naxos thousands of feet below the olive-roots,And now the olive leaves thousands of feet below the lava fire.Peace congealed in black lava on the doorstep.Within, white-hot lava, never at peaceTill it burst forth blinding, withering the earth;To set again into rockGrey-black rock.Call it Peace?Taormina.
Peaceis written on the doorstepIn lava.
Peace, black peace congealed.My heart will know no peaceTill the hill bursts.
Brilliant, intolerable lavaBrilliant as a powerful burning-glassWalking like a royal snake down the mountain towards the sea.
Forests, cities, bridgesGone again in the bright trail of lava.Naxos thousands of feet below the olive-roots,And now the olive leaves thousands of feet below the lava fire.
Peace congealed in black lava on the doorstep.Within, white-hot lava, never at peaceTill it burst forth blinding, withering the earth;To set again into rockGrey-black rock.
Call it Peace?Taormina.
Tuscancypresses,What is it?Folded in like a dark thoughtFor which the language is lost,Tuscan cypresses,Is there a great secret?Are our words no good?The undeliverable secret,Dead with a dead race and a dead speech, and yetDarkly monumental in you,Etruscan cypresses.Ah, how I admire your fidelity,Dark cypresses,Is it the secret of the long-nosed Etruscans?The long-nosed, sensitive-footed, subtly-smiling Etruscans,Who made so little noise outside the cypress groves?Among the sinuous, flame-tall cypressesThat swayed their length of darkness all aroundEtruscan-dusky, wavering men of old Etruria:Naked except for fanciful long shoes,Going with insidious, half-smiling quietnessAnd some of Africa’s imperturbable sang-froidAbout a forgotten business.What business, then?Nay, tongues are dead, and words are hollow as hollow seed-pods,Having shed their sound and finished all their echoingEtruscan syllables,That had the telling.Yet more I see you darkly concentrate,Tuscan cypresses,On one old thought:On one old slim imperishable thought, while you remainEtruscan cypresses;Dusky, slim marrow-thought of slender, flickering men of Etruria,Whom Rome called vicious.Vicious, dark cypresses:Vicious, you supple, brooding, softly-swaying pillars of dark flame.Monumental to a dead, dead raceEmbalmed in you!Were they then vicious, the slender, tender-footed,Long-nosed men of Etruria?Or was their way only evasive and different, dark, like cypress-trees in a wind?They are dead, with all their vices,And all that is leftIs the shadowy monomania of some cypressesAnd tombs.The smile, the subtle Etruscan smile still lurkingWithin the tombs,Etruscan cypresses.He laughs longest who laughs last;Nay, Leonardo only bungled the pure Etruscan smile.What would I not giveTo bring back the rare and orchid-likeEvil-yclept Etruscan?For as to the evilWe have only Roman word for it,Which I, being a little weary of Roman virtue,Don’t hang much weight on.For oh, I know, in the dust where we have buriedThe silenced races and all their abominations,We have buried so much of the delicate magic of life.There in the deepsThat churn the frankincense and ooze the myrrh,Cypress shadowy,Such an aroma of lost human life!They say the fit survive,But I invoke the spirits of the lost.Those that have not survived, the darkly lost,To bring their meaning back into life again,Which they have taken awayAnd wrapt inviolable in soft cypress-trees,Etruscan cypresses.Evil, what is evil?There is only one evil, to deny lifeAs Rome denied EtruriaAnd mechanical America Montezuma still.Fiesole.
Tuscancypresses,What is it?Folded in like a dark thoughtFor which the language is lost,Tuscan cypresses,Is there a great secret?Are our words no good?The undeliverable secret,Dead with a dead race and a dead speech, and yetDarkly monumental in you,Etruscan cypresses.Ah, how I admire your fidelity,Dark cypresses,Is it the secret of the long-nosed Etruscans?The long-nosed, sensitive-footed, subtly-smiling Etruscans,Who made so little noise outside the cypress groves?Among the sinuous, flame-tall cypressesThat swayed their length of darkness all aroundEtruscan-dusky, wavering men of old Etruria:Naked except for fanciful long shoes,Going with insidious, half-smiling quietnessAnd some of Africa’s imperturbable sang-froidAbout a forgotten business.What business, then?Nay, tongues are dead, and words are hollow as hollow seed-pods,Having shed their sound and finished all their echoingEtruscan syllables,That had the telling.Yet more I see you darkly concentrate,Tuscan cypresses,On one old thought:On one old slim imperishable thought, while you remainEtruscan cypresses;Dusky, slim marrow-thought of slender, flickering men of Etruria,Whom Rome called vicious.Vicious, dark cypresses:Vicious, you supple, brooding, softly-swaying pillars of dark flame.Monumental to a dead, dead raceEmbalmed in you!Were they then vicious, the slender, tender-footed,Long-nosed men of Etruria?Or was their way only evasive and different, dark, like cypress-trees in a wind?They are dead, with all their vices,And all that is leftIs the shadowy monomania of some cypressesAnd tombs.The smile, the subtle Etruscan smile still lurkingWithin the tombs,Etruscan cypresses.He laughs longest who laughs last;Nay, Leonardo only bungled the pure Etruscan smile.What would I not giveTo bring back the rare and orchid-likeEvil-yclept Etruscan?For as to the evilWe have only Roman word for it,Which I, being a little weary of Roman virtue,Don’t hang much weight on.For oh, I know, in the dust where we have buriedThe silenced races and all their abominations,We have buried so much of the delicate magic of life.There in the deepsThat churn the frankincense and ooze the myrrh,Cypress shadowy,Such an aroma of lost human life!They say the fit survive,But I invoke the spirits of the lost.Those that have not survived, the darkly lost,To bring their meaning back into life again,Which they have taken awayAnd wrapt inviolable in soft cypress-trees,Etruscan cypresses.Evil, what is evil?There is only one evil, to deny lifeAs Rome denied EtruriaAnd mechanical America Montezuma still.Fiesole.
Tuscancypresses,What is it?
Folded in like a dark thoughtFor which the language is lost,Tuscan cypresses,Is there a great secret?Are our words no good?
The undeliverable secret,Dead with a dead race and a dead speech, and yetDarkly monumental in you,Etruscan cypresses.
Ah, how I admire your fidelity,Dark cypresses,
Is it the secret of the long-nosed Etruscans?The long-nosed, sensitive-footed, subtly-smiling Etruscans,Who made so little noise outside the cypress groves?
Among the sinuous, flame-tall cypressesThat swayed their length of darkness all aroundEtruscan-dusky, wavering men of old Etruria:Naked except for fanciful long shoes,Going with insidious, half-smiling quietnessAnd some of Africa’s imperturbable sang-froidAbout a forgotten business.
What business, then?Nay, tongues are dead, and words are hollow as hollow seed-pods,Having shed their sound and finished all their echoingEtruscan syllables,That had the telling.
Yet more I see you darkly concentrate,Tuscan cypresses,On one old thought:On one old slim imperishable thought, while you remainEtruscan cypresses;Dusky, slim marrow-thought of slender, flickering men of Etruria,Whom Rome called vicious.
Vicious, dark cypresses:Vicious, you supple, brooding, softly-swaying pillars of dark flame.Monumental to a dead, dead raceEmbalmed in you!
Were they then vicious, the slender, tender-footed,Long-nosed men of Etruria?Or was their way only evasive and different, dark, like cypress-trees in a wind?
They are dead, with all their vices,And all that is leftIs the shadowy monomania of some cypressesAnd tombs.
The smile, the subtle Etruscan smile still lurkingWithin the tombs,Etruscan cypresses.He laughs longest who laughs last;Nay, Leonardo only bungled the pure Etruscan smile.
What would I not giveTo bring back the rare and orchid-likeEvil-yclept Etruscan?
For as to the evilWe have only Roman word for it,Which I, being a little weary of Roman virtue,Don’t hang much weight on.
For oh, I know, in the dust where we have buriedThe silenced races and all their abominations,We have buried so much of the delicate magic of life.
There in the deepsThat churn the frankincense and ooze the myrrh,Cypress shadowy,Such an aroma of lost human life!
They say the fit survive,But I invoke the spirits of the lost.Those that have not survived, the darkly lost,To bring their meaning back into life again,Which they have taken awayAnd wrapt inviolable in soft cypress-trees,Etruscan cypresses.
Evil, what is evil?There is only one evil, to deny lifeAs Rome denied EtruriaAnd mechanical America Montezuma still.Fiesole.
Fig-trees, weird fig-treesMade of thick smooth silver,Made of sweet, untarnished silver in the sea-southern air—I say untarnished, but I mean opaque—Thick, smooth-fleshed silver, dull only as human limbs are dullWith the life-lustre,Nude with the dim light of full, healthy lifeThat is always half-dark,And suave like passion-flower petals,Like passion-flowers,With the half-secret gleam of a passion-flower hanging from the rock,Great, complicated, nude fig-tree, stemless flower-mesh,Flowerily naked in flesh, and giving off hues of life.Rather like an octopus, but strange and sweet-myriad-limbed octopus;Like a nude, like a rock-living, sweet-fleshed sea-anemone,Flourishing from the rock in a mysterious arrogance.Let me sit down beneath the many-branching candelabrumThat lives upon this rockAnd laugh at Time, and laugh at dull Eternity,And make a joke of stale Infinity,Within the flesh-scent of this wicked tree,That has kept so many secrets up its sleeve,And has been laughing through so many agesAt man and his uncomfortablenesses,And his attempt to assure himself that what is so is not so,Up its sleeve.Let me sit down beneath this many-branching candelabrum,The Jewish seven-branched, tallow-stinking candlestick kicked over the cliffAnd all its tallow righteousness got rid of,And let me notice it behave itself.And watch it putting forth each time to heaven,Each time straight to heaven,With marvellous naked assurance each single twigEach one setting off straight to the skyAs if it were the leader, the main-stem, the forerunner,Intent to hold the candle of the sun upon its socket-tip,It alone.Every young twigNo sooner issued sideways from the thigh of his predecessorThan off he starts without a qualmTo hold the one and only lighted candle of the sun in his socket-tip.He casually gives birth to another young bud from his thigh,Which at once sets off to be the one and only,And hold the lighted candle of the sun.Oh many-branching candelabrum, oh strange up-starting fig-tree,Oh weird Demos, where every twig is the arch twig,Each imperiously over-equal to each, equality over-reaching itselfLike the snakes on Medusa’s head,Oh naked fig-tree!Still, no doubt every one of you can be the sun-socket as well as every other of you.Demos, Demos, Demos!Demon, too,Wicked fig-tree, equality puzzle, with your self-conscious secret fruits.Taormina.
Fig-trees, weird fig-treesMade of thick smooth silver,Made of sweet, untarnished silver in the sea-southern air—I say untarnished, but I mean opaque—Thick, smooth-fleshed silver, dull only as human limbs are dullWith the life-lustre,Nude with the dim light of full, healthy lifeThat is always half-dark,And suave like passion-flower petals,Like passion-flowers,With the half-secret gleam of a passion-flower hanging from the rock,Great, complicated, nude fig-tree, stemless flower-mesh,Flowerily naked in flesh, and giving off hues of life.Rather like an octopus, but strange and sweet-myriad-limbed octopus;Like a nude, like a rock-living, sweet-fleshed sea-anemone,Flourishing from the rock in a mysterious arrogance.Let me sit down beneath the many-branching candelabrumThat lives upon this rockAnd laugh at Time, and laugh at dull Eternity,And make a joke of stale Infinity,Within the flesh-scent of this wicked tree,That has kept so many secrets up its sleeve,And has been laughing through so many agesAt man and his uncomfortablenesses,And his attempt to assure himself that what is so is not so,Up its sleeve.Let me sit down beneath this many-branching candelabrum,The Jewish seven-branched, tallow-stinking candlestick kicked over the cliffAnd all its tallow righteousness got rid of,And let me notice it behave itself.And watch it putting forth each time to heaven,Each time straight to heaven,With marvellous naked assurance each single twigEach one setting off straight to the skyAs if it were the leader, the main-stem, the forerunner,Intent to hold the candle of the sun upon its socket-tip,It alone.Every young twigNo sooner issued sideways from the thigh of his predecessorThan off he starts without a qualmTo hold the one and only lighted candle of the sun in his socket-tip.He casually gives birth to another young bud from his thigh,Which at once sets off to be the one and only,And hold the lighted candle of the sun.Oh many-branching candelabrum, oh strange up-starting fig-tree,Oh weird Demos, where every twig is the arch twig,Each imperiously over-equal to each, equality over-reaching itselfLike the snakes on Medusa’s head,Oh naked fig-tree!Still, no doubt every one of you can be the sun-socket as well as every other of you.Demos, Demos, Demos!Demon, too,Wicked fig-tree, equality puzzle, with your self-conscious secret fruits.Taormina.
Fig-trees, weird fig-treesMade of thick smooth silver,Made of sweet, untarnished silver in the sea-southern air—I say untarnished, but I mean opaque—Thick, smooth-fleshed silver, dull only as human limbs are dullWith the life-lustre,Nude with the dim light of full, healthy lifeThat is always half-dark,And suave like passion-flower petals,Like passion-flowers,With the half-secret gleam of a passion-flower hanging from the rock,Great, complicated, nude fig-tree, stemless flower-mesh,Flowerily naked in flesh, and giving off hues of life.
Rather like an octopus, but strange and sweet-myriad-limbed octopus;Like a nude, like a rock-living, sweet-fleshed sea-anemone,Flourishing from the rock in a mysterious arrogance.
Let me sit down beneath the many-branching candelabrumThat lives upon this rockAnd laugh at Time, and laugh at dull Eternity,And make a joke of stale Infinity,Within the flesh-scent of this wicked tree,That has kept so many secrets up its sleeve,And has been laughing through so many agesAt man and his uncomfortablenesses,And his attempt to assure himself that what is so is not so,Up its sleeve.
Let me sit down beneath this many-branching candelabrum,The Jewish seven-branched, tallow-stinking candlestick kicked over the cliffAnd all its tallow righteousness got rid of,And let me notice it behave itself.
And watch it putting forth each time to heaven,Each time straight to heaven,With marvellous naked assurance each single twigEach one setting off straight to the skyAs if it were the leader, the main-stem, the forerunner,Intent to hold the candle of the sun upon its socket-tip,It alone.
Every young twigNo sooner issued sideways from the thigh of his predecessorThan off he starts without a qualmTo hold the one and only lighted candle of the sun in his socket-tip.He casually gives birth to another young bud from his thigh,Which at once sets off to be the one and only,And hold the lighted candle of the sun.
Oh many-branching candelabrum, oh strange up-starting fig-tree,Oh weird Demos, where every twig is the arch twig,Each imperiously over-equal to each, equality over-reaching itselfLike the snakes on Medusa’s head,Oh naked fig-tree!
Still, no doubt every one of you can be the sun-socket as well as every other of you.Demos, Demos, Demos!Demon, too,Wicked fig-tree, equality puzzle, with your self-conscious secret fruits.Taormina.
Wetalmond-trees, in the rain,Like iron sticking grimly out of earth;Black almond trunks, in the rain,Like iron implements twisted, hideous, out of the earth,Out of the deep, soft fledge of Sicilian winter-green,Earth-grass uneatable,Almond trunks curving blackly, iron-dark, climbing the slopes.Almond-tree, beneath the terrace rail,Black, rusted, iron trunk,You have welded your thin stems finer,Like steel, like sensitive steel in the air,Grey, lavender, sensitive steel, curving thinly and brittly up in a parabola.What are you doing in the December rain?Have you a strange electric sensitiveness in your steel tips?Do you feel the air for electric influencesLike some strange magnetic apparatus?Do you take in messages, in some strange code,From heaven’s wolfish, wandering electricity, that prowls so constantly round Etna?Do you take the whisper of sulphur from the air?Do you hear the chemical accents of the sun?Do you telephone the roar of the waters over the earth?And from all this, do you make calculations?Sicily, December’s Sicily in a mass of rainWith iron branching blackly, rusted like old, twisted implementsAnd brandishing and stooping over earth’s wintry fledge, climbing the slopesOf uneatable soft green!Taormina.
Wetalmond-trees, in the rain,Like iron sticking grimly out of earth;Black almond trunks, in the rain,Like iron implements twisted, hideous, out of the earth,Out of the deep, soft fledge of Sicilian winter-green,Earth-grass uneatable,Almond trunks curving blackly, iron-dark, climbing the slopes.Almond-tree, beneath the terrace rail,Black, rusted, iron trunk,You have welded your thin stems finer,Like steel, like sensitive steel in the air,Grey, lavender, sensitive steel, curving thinly and brittly up in a parabola.What are you doing in the December rain?Have you a strange electric sensitiveness in your steel tips?Do you feel the air for electric influencesLike some strange magnetic apparatus?Do you take in messages, in some strange code,From heaven’s wolfish, wandering electricity, that prowls so constantly round Etna?Do you take the whisper of sulphur from the air?Do you hear the chemical accents of the sun?Do you telephone the roar of the waters over the earth?And from all this, do you make calculations?Sicily, December’s Sicily in a mass of rainWith iron branching blackly, rusted like old, twisted implementsAnd brandishing and stooping over earth’s wintry fledge, climbing the slopesOf uneatable soft green!Taormina.
Wetalmond-trees, in the rain,Like iron sticking grimly out of earth;Black almond trunks, in the rain,Like iron implements twisted, hideous, out of the earth,Out of the deep, soft fledge of Sicilian winter-green,Earth-grass uneatable,Almond trunks curving blackly, iron-dark, climbing the slopes.
Almond-tree, beneath the terrace rail,Black, rusted, iron trunk,You have welded your thin stems finer,Like steel, like sensitive steel in the air,Grey, lavender, sensitive steel, curving thinly and brittly up in a parabola.
What are you doing in the December rain?Have you a strange electric sensitiveness in your steel tips?Do you feel the air for electric influencesLike some strange magnetic apparatus?Do you take in messages, in some strange code,From heaven’s wolfish, wandering electricity, that prowls so constantly round Etna?Do you take the whisper of sulphur from the air?Do you hear the chemical accents of the sun?Do you telephone the roar of the waters over the earth?And from all this, do you make calculations?
Sicily, December’s Sicily in a mass of rainWith iron branching blackly, rusted like old, twisted implementsAnd brandishing and stooping over earth’s wintry fledge, climbing the slopesOf uneatable soft green!Taormina.
Sun, dark sunSun of black void heatSun of the torrid mid-day’s horrific darkness.Behold my hair twisting and going black.Behold my eyes turn tawny yellowNegroid;See the milk of northern spumeCoagulating and going black in my veinsAromatic as frankincense.Columns dark and softSunblack menSoft shafts, sunbreathing mouthsEyes of yellow, golden sandAs frictional, as perilous, explosive as brimstone.Rock, waves of dark heat;Waves of dark heat, rock, sway upwardsWaver perpendicular.What is the horizontal rolling of waterCompared to the flood of black heat that rolls upward past my eyes?Taormina.
Sun, dark sunSun of black void heatSun of the torrid mid-day’s horrific darkness.Behold my hair twisting and going black.Behold my eyes turn tawny yellowNegroid;See the milk of northern spumeCoagulating and going black in my veinsAromatic as frankincense.Columns dark and softSunblack menSoft shafts, sunbreathing mouthsEyes of yellow, golden sandAs frictional, as perilous, explosive as brimstone.Rock, waves of dark heat;Waves of dark heat, rock, sway upwardsWaver perpendicular.What is the horizontal rolling of waterCompared to the flood of black heat that rolls upward past my eyes?Taormina.
Sun, dark sunSun of black void heatSun of the torrid mid-day’s horrific darkness.
Behold my hair twisting and going black.Behold my eyes turn tawny yellowNegroid;See the milk of northern spumeCoagulating and going black in my veinsAromatic as frankincense.
Columns dark and softSunblack menSoft shafts, sunbreathing mouthsEyes of yellow, golden sandAs frictional, as perilous, explosive as brimstone.
Rock, waves of dark heat;Waves of dark heat, rock, sway upwardsWaver perpendicular.
What is the horizontal rolling of waterCompared to the flood of black heat that rolls upward past my eyes?Taormina.
Comeup, thou red thing.Come up, and be called a moon.The mosquitoes are biting to-nightLike memories.Memories, northern memories,Bitter-stinging white world that bore usSubsiding into this night.Call it moonriseThis red anathema?Rise, thou red thing,Unfold slowly upwards, blood-dark;Burst the night’s membrane of tranquil starsFinally.MaculateThe red Macula.Taormina.
Comeup, thou red thing.Come up, and be called a moon.The mosquitoes are biting to-nightLike memories.Memories, northern memories,Bitter-stinging white world that bore usSubsiding into this night.Call it moonriseThis red anathema?Rise, thou red thing,Unfold slowly upwards, blood-dark;Burst the night’s membrane of tranquil starsFinally.MaculateThe red Macula.Taormina.
Comeup, thou red thing.Come up, and be called a moon.
The mosquitoes are biting to-nightLike memories.
Memories, northern memories,Bitter-stinging white world that bore usSubsiding into this night.
Call it moonriseThis red anathema?
Rise, thou red thing,Unfold slowly upwards, blood-dark;Burst the night’s membrane of tranquil starsFinally.
MaculateThe red Macula.Taormina.
Eveniron can put forth,Even iron.This is the iron age,But let us take heartSeeing iron break and bud,Seeing rusty iron puff with clouds of blossom.The almond-tree,December’s bare iron hooks sticking out of earth.The almond-tree,That knows the deadliest poison, like a snakeIn supreme bitterness.Upon the iron, and upon the steel,Odd flakes as if of snow, odd bits of snow,Odd crumbs of melting snow.But you mistake, it is not from the sky;From out the iron, and from out the steel,Flying not down from heaven, but storming up,Strange storming up from the dense under-earthAlong the iron, to the living steelIn rose-hot tips, and flakes of rose-pale snowSetting supreme annunciation to the world.Nay, what a heart of delicate super-faith,Iron-breaking,The rusty swords of almond-trees.Trees suffer, like races, down the long ages.They wander and are exiled, they live in exile through long agesLike drawn blades never sheathed, hacked and gone black,The alien trees in alien lands: and yetThe heart of blossom,The unquenchable heart of blossom!Look at the many-cicatrised frail vine, none more scarred and frail,Yet see him fling himself abroad in fresh abandonFrom the small wound-stump.Even the wilful, obstinate, gummy fig-treeCan be kept down, but he’ll burst like a polyp into prolixity.And the almond-tree, in exile, in the iron age!This is the ancient southern earth whence the vases were baked, amphoras, craters, cantharus, œnochœ, and open-hearted cylix,Bristling now with the iron of almond-treesIron, but unforgotten,Iron, dawn-hearted,Ever-beating dawn-heart, enveloped in iron against the exile, against the ages.See it come forth in blossomFrom the snow-remembering heartIn long-nighted January,In the long dark nights of the evening star, and Sirius, and the Etna snow-wind through the long night.Sweating his drops of blood through the long-nighted GethsemaneInto blossom, into pride, into honey-triumph, into most exquisite splendour.Oh, give me the tree of life in blossomAnd the Cross sprouting its superb and fearless flowers!Something must be reassuring to the almond, in the evening star, and the snow-wind, and the long, long, nights,Some memory of far, sun-gentler lands,So that the faith in his heart smiles againAnd his blood ripples with that untellable delight of once-more-vindicated faith,And the Gethsemane blood at the iron pores unfolds, unfolds,Pearls itself into tenderness of budAnd in a great and sacred forthcoming steps forth, steps out in one strideA naked tree of blossom, like a bridegroom bathing in dew, divested of cover,Frail-naked, utterly uncoveredTo the green night-baying of the dog-star, Etna’s snow-edged windAnd January’s loud-seeming sun.Think of it, from the iron fastnessSuddenly to dare to come out naked, in perfection of blossom, beyond the sword-rust.Think, to stand there in full-unfolded nudity, smiling,With all the snow-wind, and the sun-glare, and the dog-star baying epithalamion.Oh, honey-bodied beautiful one,Come forth from iron,Red your heart is.Fragile-tender, fragile-tender life-body,More fearless than iron all the time,And so much prouder, so disdainful of reluctances.In the distance like hoar-frost, like silvery ghosts communing on a green hill,Hoar-frost-like and mysterious.In the garden raying outWith a body like spray, dawn-tender, and looking aboutWith such insuperable, subtly-smiling assurance,Sword-blade-born.Unpromised,No bounds being set.Flaked out and come unpromised,The tree being life-divine,Fearing nothing, life-blissful at the coreWithin iron and earth.Knots of pink, fish-silveryIn heaven, in blue, blue heaven,Soundless, bliss-full, wide-rayed, honey-bodied,Red at the core,Red at the core,Knotted in heaven upon the fine light.Open,Open,Five times wide open,Six times wide open,And given, and perfect;And red at the core with the last sore-heartedness,Sore-hearted-looking.Fontana Vecchia.
Eveniron can put forth,Even iron.This is the iron age,But let us take heartSeeing iron break and bud,Seeing rusty iron puff with clouds of blossom.The almond-tree,December’s bare iron hooks sticking out of earth.The almond-tree,That knows the deadliest poison, like a snakeIn supreme bitterness.Upon the iron, and upon the steel,Odd flakes as if of snow, odd bits of snow,Odd crumbs of melting snow.But you mistake, it is not from the sky;From out the iron, and from out the steel,Flying not down from heaven, but storming up,Strange storming up from the dense under-earthAlong the iron, to the living steelIn rose-hot tips, and flakes of rose-pale snowSetting supreme annunciation to the world.Nay, what a heart of delicate super-faith,Iron-breaking,The rusty swords of almond-trees.Trees suffer, like races, down the long ages.They wander and are exiled, they live in exile through long agesLike drawn blades never sheathed, hacked and gone black,The alien trees in alien lands: and yetThe heart of blossom,The unquenchable heart of blossom!Look at the many-cicatrised frail vine, none more scarred and frail,Yet see him fling himself abroad in fresh abandonFrom the small wound-stump.Even the wilful, obstinate, gummy fig-treeCan be kept down, but he’ll burst like a polyp into prolixity.And the almond-tree, in exile, in the iron age!This is the ancient southern earth whence the vases were baked, amphoras, craters, cantharus, œnochœ, and open-hearted cylix,Bristling now with the iron of almond-treesIron, but unforgotten,Iron, dawn-hearted,Ever-beating dawn-heart, enveloped in iron against the exile, against the ages.See it come forth in blossomFrom the snow-remembering heartIn long-nighted January,In the long dark nights of the evening star, and Sirius, and the Etna snow-wind through the long night.Sweating his drops of blood through the long-nighted GethsemaneInto blossom, into pride, into honey-triumph, into most exquisite splendour.Oh, give me the tree of life in blossomAnd the Cross sprouting its superb and fearless flowers!Something must be reassuring to the almond, in the evening star, and the snow-wind, and the long, long, nights,Some memory of far, sun-gentler lands,So that the faith in his heart smiles againAnd his blood ripples with that untellable delight of once-more-vindicated faith,And the Gethsemane blood at the iron pores unfolds, unfolds,Pearls itself into tenderness of budAnd in a great and sacred forthcoming steps forth, steps out in one strideA naked tree of blossom, like a bridegroom bathing in dew, divested of cover,Frail-naked, utterly uncoveredTo the green night-baying of the dog-star, Etna’s snow-edged windAnd January’s loud-seeming sun.Think of it, from the iron fastnessSuddenly to dare to come out naked, in perfection of blossom, beyond the sword-rust.Think, to stand there in full-unfolded nudity, smiling,With all the snow-wind, and the sun-glare, and the dog-star baying epithalamion.Oh, honey-bodied beautiful one,Come forth from iron,Red your heart is.Fragile-tender, fragile-tender life-body,More fearless than iron all the time,And so much prouder, so disdainful of reluctances.In the distance like hoar-frost, like silvery ghosts communing on a green hill,Hoar-frost-like and mysterious.In the garden raying outWith a body like spray, dawn-tender, and looking aboutWith such insuperable, subtly-smiling assurance,Sword-blade-born.Unpromised,No bounds being set.Flaked out and come unpromised,The tree being life-divine,Fearing nothing, life-blissful at the coreWithin iron and earth.Knots of pink, fish-silveryIn heaven, in blue, blue heaven,Soundless, bliss-full, wide-rayed, honey-bodied,Red at the core,Red at the core,Knotted in heaven upon the fine light.Open,Open,Five times wide open,Six times wide open,And given, and perfect;And red at the core with the last sore-heartedness,Sore-hearted-looking.Fontana Vecchia.
Eveniron can put forth,Even iron.
This is the iron age,But let us take heartSeeing iron break and bud,Seeing rusty iron puff with clouds of blossom.
The almond-tree,December’s bare iron hooks sticking out of earth.
The almond-tree,That knows the deadliest poison, like a snakeIn supreme bitterness.
Upon the iron, and upon the steel,Odd flakes as if of snow, odd bits of snow,Odd crumbs of melting snow.
But you mistake, it is not from the sky;From out the iron, and from out the steel,Flying not down from heaven, but storming up,Strange storming up from the dense under-earthAlong the iron, to the living steelIn rose-hot tips, and flakes of rose-pale snowSetting supreme annunciation to the world.
Nay, what a heart of delicate super-faith,Iron-breaking,The rusty swords of almond-trees.
Trees suffer, like races, down the long ages.They wander and are exiled, they live in exile through long agesLike drawn blades never sheathed, hacked and gone black,The alien trees in alien lands: and yetThe heart of blossom,The unquenchable heart of blossom!
Look at the many-cicatrised frail vine, none more scarred and frail,Yet see him fling himself abroad in fresh abandonFrom the small wound-stump.
Even the wilful, obstinate, gummy fig-treeCan be kept down, but he’ll burst like a polyp into prolixity.
And the almond-tree, in exile, in the iron age!
This is the ancient southern earth whence the vases were baked, amphoras, craters, cantharus, œnochœ, and open-hearted cylix,Bristling now with the iron of almond-trees
Iron, but unforgotten,Iron, dawn-hearted,Ever-beating dawn-heart, enveloped in iron against the exile, against the ages.
See it come forth in blossomFrom the snow-remembering heartIn long-nighted January,In the long dark nights of the evening star, and Sirius, and the Etna snow-wind through the long night.
Sweating his drops of blood through the long-nighted GethsemaneInto blossom, into pride, into honey-triumph, into most exquisite splendour.Oh, give me the tree of life in blossomAnd the Cross sprouting its superb and fearless flowers!
Something must be reassuring to the almond, in the evening star, and the snow-wind, and the long, long, nights,Some memory of far, sun-gentler lands,So that the faith in his heart smiles againAnd his blood ripples with that untellable delight of once-more-vindicated faith,And the Gethsemane blood at the iron pores unfolds, unfolds,Pearls itself into tenderness of budAnd in a great and sacred forthcoming steps forth, steps out in one strideA naked tree of blossom, like a bridegroom bathing in dew, divested of cover,Frail-naked, utterly uncoveredTo the green night-baying of the dog-star, Etna’s snow-edged windAnd January’s loud-seeming sun.
Think of it, from the iron fastnessSuddenly to dare to come out naked, in perfection of blossom, beyond the sword-rust.Think, to stand there in full-unfolded nudity, smiling,With all the snow-wind, and the sun-glare, and the dog-star baying epithalamion.
Oh, honey-bodied beautiful one,Come forth from iron,Red your heart is.Fragile-tender, fragile-tender life-body,More fearless than iron all the time,And so much prouder, so disdainful of reluctances.
In the distance like hoar-frost, like silvery ghosts communing on a green hill,Hoar-frost-like and mysterious.
In the garden raying outWith a body like spray, dawn-tender, and looking aboutWith such insuperable, subtly-smiling assurance,Sword-blade-born.
Unpromised,No bounds being set.Flaked out and come unpromised,The tree being life-divine,Fearing nothing, life-blissful at the coreWithin iron and earth.
Knots of pink, fish-silveryIn heaven, in blue, blue heaven,Soundless, bliss-full, wide-rayed, honey-bodied,Red at the core,Red at the core,Knotted in heaven upon the fine light.
Open,Open,Five times wide open,Six times wide open,And given, and perfect;And red at the core with the last sore-heartedness,Sore-hearted-looking.Fontana Vecchia.
Who gave us flowers?Heaven? The white God?Nonsense!Up out of hell,From Hades;Infernal Dis!Jesus the god of flowers——?Not he.Or sun-bright Apollo, him so musical?Him neither.Who then?Say who.Say it—and it is Pluto,Dis,The dark one,Proserpine’s master.Who contradicts——?When she broke forth from below,Flowers came, hell-hounds on her heels.Dis, the dark, the jealous god, the husband,Flower-sumptuous-blooded.Go then, he said.And in Sicily, on the meadows of Enna,She thought she had left him;But opened around her purple anemones,Caverns,Little hells of colour, caves of darkness,Hell, risen in pursuit of her; royal, sumptuousPit-falls.All at her feetHell opening;At her white anklesHell rearing its husband-splendid, serpent heads,Hell-purple, to get at her—Why did he let her go?So he could track her down again, white victim.Ah mastery!Hell’s husband-blossomsOut on earth again.Look out, Persephone!You, Madame Ceres, mind yourself, the enemy is upon you.About your feet spontaneous aconite,Hell-glamorous, and purple husband-tyrannyEnveloping your late-enfranchised plains.You thought your daughter had escaped?No more stockings to darn for the flower-roots, down in hell?But ah my dear!Aha, the stripe-cheeked whelps, whippet-slim crocuses,At ’em, boys, at ’em!Ho golden-spaniel, sweet alert narcissus,Smell ’em, smell ’em out!Those two enfranchised women.Somebody is coming!Oho there!Dark blue anemones!Hell is up!Hell on earth, and Dis within the depths!Run, Persephone, he is after you already.Why did he let her go?To track her down;All the sport of summer and spring, and flowers snapping at her ankles and catching her by the hair!Poor Persephone and her rights for women.Husband-snared hell-queen,It is spring.It is spring,And pomp of husband-strategy on earth.Ceres, kiss your girl, you think you’ve got her back.The bit of husband-tilth she is,Persephone!Poor mothers-in-law!They are always sold.It is spring.Taormina.
Who gave us flowers?Heaven? The white God?Nonsense!Up out of hell,From Hades;Infernal Dis!Jesus the god of flowers——?Not he.Or sun-bright Apollo, him so musical?Him neither.Who then?Say who.Say it—and it is Pluto,Dis,The dark one,Proserpine’s master.Who contradicts——?When she broke forth from below,Flowers came, hell-hounds on her heels.Dis, the dark, the jealous god, the husband,Flower-sumptuous-blooded.Go then, he said.And in Sicily, on the meadows of Enna,She thought she had left him;But opened around her purple anemones,Caverns,Little hells of colour, caves of darkness,Hell, risen in pursuit of her; royal, sumptuousPit-falls.All at her feetHell opening;At her white anklesHell rearing its husband-splendid, serpent heads,Hell-purple, to get at her—Why did he let her go?So he could track her down again, white victim.Ah mastery!Hell’s husband-blossomsOut on earth again.Look out, Persephone!You, Madame Ceres, mind yourself, the enemy is upon you.About your feet spontaneous aconite,Hell-glamorous, and purple husband-tyrannyEnveloping your late-enfranchised plains.You thought your daughter had escaped?No more stockings to darn for the flower-roots, down in hell?But ah my dear!Aha, the stripe-cheeked whelps, whippet-slim crocuses,At ’em, boys, at ’em!Ho golden-spaniel, sweet alert narcissus,Smell ’em, smell ’em out!Those two enfranchised women.Somebody is coming!Oho there!Dark blue anemones!Hell is up!Hell on earth, and Dis within the depths!Run, Persephone, he is after you already.Why did he let her go?To track her down;All the sport of summer and spring, and flowers snapping at her ankles and catching her by the hair!Poor Persephone and her rights for women.Husband-snared hell-queen,It is spring.It is spring,And pomp of husband-strategy on earth.Ceres, kiss your girl, you think you’ve got her back.The bit of husband-tilth she is,Persephone!Poor mothers-in-law!They are always sold.It is spring.Taormina.
Who gave us flowers?Heaven? The white God?
Nonsense!Up out of hell,From Hades;Infernal Dis!
Jesus the god of flowers——?Not he.Or sun-bright Apollo, him so musical?Him neither.
Who then?Say who.Say it—and it is Pluto,Dis,The dark one,Proserpine’s master.
Who contradicts——?
When she broke forth from below,Flowers came, hell-hounds on her heels.Dis, the dark, the jealous god, the husband,Flower-sumptuous-blooded.
Go then, he said.And in Sicily, on the meadows of Enna,She thought she had left him;But opened around her purple anemones,Caverns,Little hells of colour, caves of darkness,Hell, risen in pursuit of her; royal, sumptuousPit-falls.
All at her feetHell opening;At her white anklesHell rearing its husband-splendid, serpent heads,Hell-purple, to get at her—Why did he let her go?So he could track her down again, white victim.
Ah mastery!Hell’s husband-blossomsOut on earth again.
Look out, Persephone!You, Madame Ceres, mind yourself, the enemy is upon you.About your feet spontaneous aconite,Hell-glamorous, and purple husband-tyrannyEnveloping your late-enfranchised plains.
You thought your daughter had escaped?No more stockings to darn for the flower-roots, down in hell?But ah my dear!
Aha, the stripe-cheeked whelps, whippet-slim crocuses,At ’em, boys, at ’em!Ho golden-spaniel, sweet alert narcissus,Smell ’em, smell ’em out!
Those two enfranchised women.
Somebody is coming!Oho there!
Dark blue anemones!Hell is up!Hell on earth, and Dis within the depths!
Run, Persephone, he is after you already.
Why did he let her go?To track her down;All the sport of summer and spring, and flowers snapping at her ankles and catching her by the hair!Poor Persephone and her rights for women.
Husband-snared hell-queen,It is spring.
It is spring,And pomp of husband-strategy on earth.
Ceres, kiss your girl, you think you’ve got her back.The bit of husband-tilth she is,Persephone!
Poor mothers-in-law!They are always sold.
It is spring.Taormina.
Whenhe pushed his bush of black hair off his brow:When she lifted her mop from her eyes, and screwed it in a knob behind—O act of fearful temerity!When they felt their foreheads bare, naked to heaven, their eyes revealed:When they felt the light of heaven brandished like a knife at their defenceless eyes,And the sea like a blade at their face,Mediterranean savages:When they came out, face-revealed, under heaven, from the shaggy undergrowth of their own hairFor the first time,They saw tiny rose cyclamens between their toes, growingWhere the slow toads sat brooding on the past.Slow toads, and cyclamen leavesStickily glistening with eternal shadowKeeping to earth.Cyclamen leavesToad-filmy, earth-iridescentBeautifulFrost-filigreedSpumed with mudSnail-nacreousLow down.The shaking aspect of the seaAnd man’s defenceless bare faceAnd cyclamens putting their ears back.Long, pensive, slim-muzzled greyhound budsDreamy, not yet present,Drawn out of earthAt his toes.Dawn-roseSub-delighted, stone-engenderedCyclamens, young cyclamensArchingWaking, pricking their earsLike delicate very-young greyhound bitchesHalf-yawning at the open, inexperiencedVista of day,Folding back their soundless petalled ears.Greyhound bitchesSending their rosy muzzled pensive down,And breathing soft, unwilling to wake to the new dayYet sub-delighted.Ah Mediterranean morning, when our world began!Far-off Mediterranean mornings,Pelasgic faces uncovered,And unbudding cyclamens.The hare suddenly goes uphillLaying back her long ears with unwinking bliss.And up the pallid, sea-blenched Mediterranean stone-slopesRose cyclamen, ecstatic fore-runner!Cyclamens, ruddy-muzzled cyclamensIn little bunches like bunches of wild haresMuzzles together, ears-aprickWhispering witchcraftLike women at a well, the dawn-fountain.Greece, and the world’s morningWhere all the Parthenon marbles still fostered the roots of the cyclamen.VioletsPagan, rosy-muzzled violetsAutumnalDawn-pink,Dawn-paleAmong squat toad-leaves sprinkling the unbornErechtheion marbles.Taormina.
Whenhe pushed his bush of black hair off his brow:When she lifted her mop from her eyes, and screwed it in a knob behind—O act of fearful temerity!When they felt their foreheads bare, naked to heaven, their eyes revealed:When they felt the light of heaven brandished like a knife at their defenceless eyes,And the sea like a blade at their face,Mediterranean savages:When they came out, face-revealed, under heaven, from the shaggy undergrowth of their own hairFor the first time,They saw tiny rose cyclamens between their toes, growingWhere the slow toads sat brooding on the past.Slow toads, and cyclamen leavesStickily glistening with eternal shadowKeeping to earth.Cyclamen leavesToad-filmy, earth-iridescentBeautifulFrost-filigreedSpumed with mudSnail-nacreousLow down.The shaking aspect of the seaAnd man’s defenceless bare faceAnd cyclamens putting their ears back.Long, pensive, slim-muzzled greyhound budsDreamy, not yet present,Drawn out of earthAt his toes.Dawn-roseSub-delighted, stone-engenderedCyclamens, young cyclamensArchingWaking, pricking their earsLike delicate very-young greyhound bitchesHalf-yawning at the open, inexperiencedVista of day,Folding back their soundless petalled ears.Greyhound bitchesSending their rosy muzzled pensive down,And breathing soft, unwilling to wake to the new dayYet sub-delighted.Ah Mediterranean morning, when our world began!Far-off Mediterranean mornings,Pelasgic faces uncovered,And unbudding cyclamens.The hare suddenly goes uphillLaying back her long ears with unwinking bliss.And up the pallid, sea-blenched Mediterranean stone-slopesRose cyclamen, ecstatic fore-runner!Cyclamens, ruddy-muzzled cyclamensIn little bunches like bunches of wild haresMuzzles together, ears-aprickWhispering witchcraftLike women at a well, the dawn-fountain.Greece, and the world’s morningWhere all the Parthenon marbles still fostered the roots of the cyclamen.VioletsPagan, rosy-muzzled violetsAutumnalDawn-pink,Dawn-paleAmong squat toad-leaves sprinkling the unbornErechtheion marbles.Taormina.
Whenhe pushed his bush of black hair off his brow:When she lifted her mop from her eyes, and screwed it in a knob behind—O act of fearful temerity!When they felt their foreheads bare, naked to heaven, their eyes revealed:When they felt the light of heaven brandished like a knife at their defenceless eyes,And the sea like a blade at their face,Mediterranean savages:When they came out, face-revealed, under heaven, from the shaggy undergrowth of their own hairFor the first time,They saw tiny rose cyclamens between their toes, growingWhere the slow toads sat brooding on the past.
Slow toads, and cyclamen leavesStickily glistening with eternal shadowKeeping to earth.Cyclamen leavesToad-filmy, earth-iridescentBeautifulFrost-filigreedSpumed with mudSnail-nacreousLow down.
The shaking aspect of the seaAnd man’s defenceless bare faceAnd cyclamens putting their ears back.
Long, pensive, slim-muzzled greyhound budsDreamy, not yet present,Drawn out of earthAt his toes.
Dawn-roseSub-delighted, stone-engenderedCyclamens, young cyclamensArchingWaking, pricking their earsLike delicate very-young greyhound bitchesHalf-yawning at the open, inexperiencedVista of day,Folding back their soundless petalled ears.
Greyhound bitchesSending their rosy muzzled pensive down,And breathing soft, unwilling to wake to the new dayYet sub-delighted.
Ah Mediterranean morning, when our world began!Far-off Mediterranean mornings,Pelasgic faces uncovered,And unbudding cyclamens.
The hare suddenly goes uphillLaying back her long ears with unwinking bliss.
And up the pallid, sea-blenched Mediterranean stone-slopesRose cyclamen, ecstatic fore-runner!Cyclamens, ruddy-muzzled cyclamensIn little bunches like bunches of wild haresMuzzles together, ears-aprickWhispering witchcraftLike women at a well, the dawn-fountain.
Greece, and the world’s morningWhere all the Parthenon marbles still fostered the roots of the cyclamen.VioletsPagan, rosy-muzzled violetsAutumnalDawn-pink,Dawn-paleAmong squat toad-leaves sprinkling the unbornErechtheion marbles.Taormina.
Hark! Hark!The dogs do bark!It’s the socialists come to town,None in rags and none in tags,Swaggering up and down.Sunday morning,And from the Sicilian townlets skirting EtnaThe socialists have gathered upon us, to look at us.How shall we know them when we see them?How shall we know them now they’ve come?Not by their rags and not by their tags,Nor by any distinctive gown;The same unremarkable Sunday suitAnd hats cocked up and down.Yet there they are, youths, loutishlyStrolling in gangs and staring along the CorsoWith the gang-stareAnd a half-threatening envyAt everyforestière,Every lordly tuppenny foreigner from the hotels, fattening on the exchange.Hark! Hark!The dogs do bark!It’s the socialists in the town.Sans rags, sans tags,Sans beards, sans bags,Sans any distinction at all except loutish commonness.How do we know then, that they are they?Bolshevists.Leninists.Communists.Socialists.-Ists!-Ists!Alas, salvia and hibiscus flowers.Salvia and hibiscus flowers.Listen again.Salvia and hibiscus flowers.Is it not so?Salvia and hibiscus flowers.Hark! Hark!The dogs do bark!Salvia and hibiscus flowers.Who smeared their doors with blood?Who on their breastsPut salvias and hibiscus?Rosy, rosy scarlet,And flame-rage, golden-throatedBloom along the Corso on the living, perambulating bush.Who said they might assume these blossoms?What god did they consult?Rose-red, princess hibiscus, rolling her pointed Chinese petals!Azalea and camellia, single peonyAnd pomegranate bloom and scarlet mallow-flowerAnd all the eastern, exquisite royal plantsThat noble blood has brought us down the ages!Gently nurtured, frail and splendidHibiscus flower—Alas, the Sunday coats of Sicilian bolshevists!Pure blood, and noble blood, in the fine and rose-red veins;Small, interspersed with jewels of white goldFrail-filigreed among the rest;Rose of the oldest races of princesses, PolynesianHibiscus.Eve, in her happy moments,Put hibiscus in her hair,Before she humbled herself, and knocked her knees with repentance.Sicilian bolshevists,With hibiscus flowers in the buttonholes of your Sunday suits,Come now, speaking of rights, what right have you to this flower?The exquisite and ageless aristocracyOf a peerless soul,Blessed are the pure in heart and the fathomless in bright pride;The loveliness that knowsnoblesse oblige;The native royalty of red hibiscus flowers;The exquisite assertion of new delicate lifeRisen from the roots:Is this how you’ll have it, red-decked socialists,Hibiscus-breasted?If it be so, I fly to join you,And if it be not so, brutes to pull down hibiscus flowers!Or salvia!Or dragon-mouthed salvia with gold throat of wrath!Flame-flushed, enraged, splendid salvia,Cock-crested, crowing your orange scarlet like a tocsinAlong the Corso all this Sunday morning.Is your wrath red as salvias,You socialists?You with your grudging, envious, furtive rage,In Sunday suits and yellow boots along the Corso.You look well with your salvia flowers, I must say.Warrior-like, dawn-cock’s-comb flaring flowerShouting forth flame to set the world on fire,The dust-heap of man’s filthy world on fire,And burn it down, the glutted, stuffy world,And feed the young new fields of life with ash,With ash I say,Bolshevists,Your ashes even, my friends,Among much other ash.If there were salvia-savage bolshevistsTo burn the world back to manure-good ash,Wouldn’t I stick the salvia in my coat!But these themselves must burn, these louts!The dragon-faced,The anger-reddened, golden-throated salviaWith its long antennæ of rage put outUpon the frightened air.Ugh, how I love its fangs of perfect rageThat gnash the air;The molten gold of its intolerable rageHot in the throat.I long to be a bolshevistAnd set the stinking rubbish-heap of this foul worldAfire at a myriad scarlet points,A bolshevist, a salvia-faceTo lick the world with flame that licks it clean.I long to see its chock-full crowdednessAnd glutted squirming populousness on fireLike a field of filthy weedsBurnt back to ash,And then to see the new, real souls sprout up.Not this vast rotting cabbage patch we call the world;But from the ash-scarred fallowNew wild souls.Nettles, and a rose sprout,Hibiscus, and mere grass,Salvia still in a rageAnd almond honey-still,And fig-wort stinking for the carrion wasp;All the lot of them, and let them fight it out.But not a trace of foul equality,Nor sound of still more foul human perfection.You need not clear the world like a cabbage patch for me;Leave me my nettles,Let me fight the wicked, obstreperous weeds myself, and put them in their place,Severely in their place.I don’t at all want to annihilate them,I like a row with them,But I won’t be put on a cabbage-idealistic level of equality with them.What rot, to see the cabbage and hibiscus-treeAs equals!What rot, to say the louts along the CorsoIn Sunday suits and yellow shoesAre my equals!I am their superior, saluting the hibiscus flower, not them.The same I say to the profiteers from the hotels, the money-fat-ones,Profiteers here being called dog-fish, stinking dog-fish, sharks.The same I say to the pale and elegant persons,Pale-face authorities loitering tepidly:That I salute the red hibiscus flowersAnd send mankind to its inferior blazes.Mankind’s inferior blazes,And these along with it, all the inferior lot—These bolshevists,These dog-fish,These precious and ideal ones,All rubbish ready for fire.And I salute hibiscus and the salvia flowerUpon the breasts of loutish bolshevists,Damned loutish bolshevists,Who perhaps will do the business after all,In the long run, in spite of themselves.Meanwhile, alasFor me no fellow-men,No salvia-frenzied comrades, antennæOf yellow-red, outreaching, living wrathUpon the smouldering air,And throat of brimstone-molten angry gold.Red, angry men are a race extinct, alas!NeverTo be a bolshevistWith a hibiscus flower behind my earIn sign of life, of lovely, dangerous lifeAnd passionate disqualify of men;In sign of dauntless, silent violets,And impudent nettles grabbing the under-earth,And cabbages born to be cut and eat,And salvia fierce to crow and shout for fight,And rosy-red hibiscus wincinglyUnfolding all her coiled and lovely selfIn a doubtful world.Never, bolshevisticallyTo be able to stand for all these!Alas, alas, I have got to leave it allTo the youths in Sunday suits and yellow shoesWho have pulled down the salvia flowersAnd rosy delicate hibiscus flowersAnd everything else to their disgusting level,Never, of course, to put anything up again.But yetIf they pull all the world down,The process will amount to the same in the end.Instead of flame and flame-clean ashSlow watery rotting back to level muckAnd final humus,Whence the re-start.And still I cannot bear itThat they take hibiscus and the salvia flower.Taormina.
Hark! Hark!The dogs do bark!It’s the socialists come to town,None in rags and none in tags,Swaggering up and down.Sunday morning,And from the Sicilian townlets skirting EtnaThe socialists have gathered upon us, to look at us.How shall we know them when we see them?How shall we know them now they’ve come?Not by their rags and not by their tags,Nor by any distinctive gown;The same unremarkable Sunday suitAnd hats cocked up and down.Yet there they are, youths, loutishlyStrolling in gangs and staring along the CorsoWith the gang-stareAnd a half-threatening envyAt everyforestière,Every lordly tuppenny foreigner from the hotels, fattening on the exchange.Hark! Hark!The dogs do bark!It’s the socialists in the town.Sans rags, sans tags,Sans beards, sans bags,Sans any distinction at all except loutish commonness.How do we know then, that they are they?Bolshevists.Leninists.Communists.Socialists.-Ists!-Ists!Alas, salvia and hibiscus flowers.Salvia and hibiscus flowers.Listen again.Salvia and hibiscus flowers.Is it not so?Salvia and hibiscus flowers.Hark! Hark!The dogs do bark!Salvia and hibiscus flowers.Who smeared their doors with blood?Who on their breastsPut salvias and hibiscus?Rosy, rosy scarlet,And flame-rage, golden-throatedBloom along the Corso on the living, perambulating bush.Who said they might assume these blossoms?What god did they consult?Rose-red, princess hibiscus, rolling her pointed Chinese petals!Azalea and camellia, single peonyAnd pomegranate bloom and scarlet mallow-flowerAnd all the eastern, exquisite royal plantsThat noble blood has brought us down the ages!Gently nurtured, frail and splendidHibiscus flower—Alas, the Sunday coats of Sicilian bolshevists!Pure blood, and noble blood, in the fine and rose-red veins;Small, interspersed with jewels of white goldFrail-filigreed among the rest;Rose of the oldest races of princesses, PolynesianHibiscus.Eve, in her happy moments,Put hibiscus in her hair,Before she humbled herself, and knocked her knees with repentance.Sicilian bolshevists,With hibiscus flowers in the buttonholes of your Sunday suits,Come now, speaking of rights, what right have you to this flower?The exquisite and ageless aristocracyOf a peerless soul,Blessed are the pure in heart and the fathomless in bright pride;The loveliness that knowsnoblesse oblige;The native royalty of red hibiscus flowers;The exquisite assertion of new delicate lifeRisen from the roots:Is this how you’ll have it, red-decked socialists,Hibiscus-breasted?If it be so, I fly to join you,And if it be not so, brutes to pull down hibiscus flowers!Or salvia!Or dragon-mouthed salvia with gold throat of wrath!Flame-flushed, enraged, splendid salvia,Cock-crested, crowing your orange scarlet like a tocsinAlong the Corso all this Sunday morning.Is your wrath red as salvias,You socialists?You with your grudging, envious, furtive rage,In Sunday suits and yellow boots along the Corso.You look well with your salvia flowers, I must say.Warrior-like, dawn-cock’s-comb flaring flowerShouting forth flame to set the world on fire,The dust-heap of man’s filthy world on fire,And burn it down, the glutted, stuffy world,And feed the young new fields of life with ash,With ash I say,Bolshevists,Your ashes even, my friends,Among much other ash.If there were salvia-savage bolshevistsTo burn the world back to manure-good ash,Wouldn’t I stick the salvia in my coat!But these themselves must burn, these louts!The dragon-faced,The anger-reddened, golden-throated salviaWith its long antennæ of rage put outUpon the frightened air.Ugh, how I love its fangs of perfect rageThat gnash the air;The molten gold of its intolerable rageHot in the throat.I long to be a bolshevistAnd set the stinking rubbish-heap of this foul worldAfire at a myriad scarlet points,A bolshevist, a salvia-faceTo lick the world with flame that licks it clean.I long to see its chock-full crowdednessAnd glutted squirming populousness on fireLike a field of filthy weedsBurnt back to ash,And then to see the new, real souls sprout up.Not this vast rotting cabbage patch we call the world;But from the ash-scarred fallowNew wild souls.Nettles, and a rose sprout,Hibiscus, and mere grass,Salvia still in a rageAnd almond honey-still,And fig-wort stinking for the carrion wasp;All the lot of them, and let them fight it out.But not a trace of foul equality,Nor sound of still more foul human perfection.You need not clear the world like a cabbage patch for me;Leave me my nettles,Let me fight the wicked, obstreperous weeds myself, and put them in their place,Severely in their place.I don’t at all want to annihilate them,I like a row with them,But I won’t be put on a cabbage-idealistic level of equality with them.What rot, to see the cabbage and hibiscus-treeAs equals!What rot, to say the louts along the CorsoIn Sunday suits and yellow shoesAre my equals!I am their superior, saluting the hibiscus flower, not them.The same I say to the profiteers from the hotels, the money-fat-ones,Profiteers here being called dog-fish, stinking dog-fish, sharks.The same I say to the pale and elegant persons,Pale-face authorities loitering tepidly:That I salute the red hibiscus flowersAnd send mankind to its inferior blazes.Mankind’s inferior blazes,And these along with it, all the inferior lot—These bolshevists,These dog-fish,These precious and ideal ones,All rubbish ready for fire.And I salute hibiscus and the salvia flowerUpon the breasts of loutish bolshevists,Damned loutish bolshevists,Who perhaps will do the business after all,In the long run, in spite of themselves.Meanwhile, alasFor me no fellow-men,No salvia-frenzied comrades, antennæOf yellow-red, outreaching, living wrathUpon the smouldering air,And throat of brimstone-molten angry gold.Red, angry men are a race extinct, alas!NeverTo be a bolshevistWith a hibiscus flower behind my earIn sign of life, of lovely, dangerous lifeAnd passionate disqualify of men;In sign of dauntless, silent violets,And impudent nettles grabbing the under-earth,And cabbages born to be cut and eat,And salvia fierce to crow and shout for fight,And rosy-red hibiscus wincinglyUnfolding all her coiled and lovely selfIn a doubtful world.Never, bolshevisticallyTo be able to stand for all these!Alas, alas, I have got to leave it allTo the youths in Sunday suits and yellow shoesWho have pulled down the salvia flowersAnd rosy delicate hibiscus flowersAnd everything else to their disgusting level,Never, of course, to put anything up again.But yetIf they pull all the world down,The process will amount to the same in the end.Instead of flame and flame-clean ashSlow watery rotting back to level muckAnd final humus,Whence the re-start.And still I cannot bear itThat they take hibiscus and the salvia flower.Taormina.
Hark! Hark!The dogs do bark!It’s the socialists come to town,None in rags and none in tags,Swaggering up and down.
Sunday morning,And from the Sicilian townlets skirting EtnaThe socialists have gathered upon us, to look at us.
How shall we know them when we see them?How shall we know them now they’ve come?
Not by their rags and not by their tags,Nor by any distinctive gown;The same unremarkable Sunday suitAnd hats cocked up and down.
Yet there they are, youths, loutishlyStrolling in gangs and staring along the CorsoWith the gang-stareAnd a half-threatening envyAt everyforestière,Every lordly tuppenny foreigner from the hotels, fattening on the exchange.
Hark! Hark!The dogs do bark!It’s the socialists in the town.
Sans rags, sans tags,Sans beards, sans bags,Sans any distinction at all except loutish commonness.
How do we know then, that they are they?Bolshevists.Leninists.Communists.Socialists.-Ists!-Ists!
Alas, salvia and hibiscus flowers.Salvia and hibiscus flowers.
Listen again.Salvia and hibiscus flowers.Is it not so?Salvia and hibiscus flowers.
Hark! Hark!The dogs do bark!Salvia and hibiscus flowers.
Who smeared their doors with blood?Who on their breastsPut salvias and hibiscus?
Rosy, rosy scarlet,And flame-rage, golden-throatedBloom along the Corso on the living, perambulating bush.
Who said they might assume these blossoms?What god did they consult?
Rose-red, princess hibiscus, rolling her pointed Chinese petals!Azalea and camellia, single peonyAnd pomegranate bloom and scarlet mallow-flowerAnd all the eastern, exquisite royal plantsThat noble blood has brought us down the ages!Gently nurtured, frail and splendidHibiscus flower—Alas, the Sunday coats of Sicilian bolshevists!
Pure blood, and noble blood, in the fine and rose-red veins;Small, interspersed with jewels of white goldFrail-filigreed among the rest;Rose of the oldest races of princesses, PolynesianHibiscus.
Eve, in her happy moments,Put hibiscus in her hair,Before she humbled herself, and knocked her knees with repentance.
Sicilian bolshevists,With hibiscus flowers in the buttonholes of your Sunday suits,Come now, speaking of rights, what right have you to this flower?
The exquisite and ageless aristocracyOf a peerless soul,Blessed are the pure in heart and the fathomless in bright pride;The loveliness that knowsnoblesse oblige;The native royalty of red hibiscus flowers;The exquisite assertion of new delicate lifeRisen from the roots:Is this how you’ll have it, red-decked socialists,Hibiscus-breasted?
If it be so, I fly to join you,And if it be not so, brutes to pull down hibiscus flowers!
Or salvia!Or dragon-mouthed salvia with gold throat of wrath!Flame-flushed, enraged, splendid salvia,Cock-crested, crowing your orange scarlet like a tocsinAlong the Corso all this Sunday morning.
Is your wrath red as salvias,You socialists?You with your grudging, envious, furtive rage,In Sunday suits and yellow boots along the Corso.You look well with your salvia flowers, I must say.Warrior-like, dawn-cock’s-comb flaring flowerShouting forth flame to set the world on fire,The dust-heap of man’s filthy world on fire,And burn it down, the glutted, stuffy world,And feed the young new fields of life with ash,With ash I say,Bolshevists,Your ashes even, my friends,Among much other ash.
If there were salvia-savage bolshevistsTo burn the world back to manure-good ash,Wouldn’t I stick the salvia in my coat!But these themselves must burn, these louts!
The dragon-faced,The anger-reddened, golden-throated salviaWith its long antennæ of rage put outUpon the frightened air.Ugh, how I love its fangs of perfect rageThat gnash the air;The molten gold of its intolerable rageHot in the throat.
I long to be a bolshevistAnd set the stinking rubbish-heap of this foul worldAfire at a myriad scarlet points,A bolshevist, a salvia-faceTo lick the world with flame that licks it clean.
I long to see its chock-full crowdednessAnd glutted squirming populousness on fireLike a field of filthy weedsBurnt back to ash,And then to see the new, real souls sprout up.
Not this vast rotting cabbage patch we call the world;But from the ash-scarred fallowNew wild souls.
Nettles, and a rose sprout,Hibiscus, and mere grass,Salvia still in a rageAnd almond honey-still,And fig-wort stinking for the carrion wasp;All the lot of them, and let them fight it out.
But not a trace of foul equality,Nor sound of still more foul human perfection.You need not clear the world like a cabbage patch for me;Leave me my nettles,Let me fight the wicked, obstreperous weeds myself, and put them in their place,Severely in their place.I don’t at all want to annihilate them,I like a row with them,But I won’t be put on a cabbage-idealistic level of equality with them.
What rot, to see the cabbage and hibiscus-treeAs equals!What rot, to say the louts along the CorsoIn Sunday suits and yellow shoesAre my equals!I am their superior, saluting the hibiscus flower, not them.The same I say to the profiteers from the hotels, the money-fat-ones,Profiteers here being called dog-fish, stinking dog-fish, sharks.The same I say to the pale and elegant persons,Pale-face authorities loitering tepidly:That I salute the red hibiscus flowersAnd send mankind to its inferior blazes.Mankind’s inferior blazes,And these along with it, all the inferior lot—These bolshevists,These dog-fish,These precious and ideal ones,All rubbish ready for fire.And I salute hibiscus and the salvia flowerUpon the breasts of loutish bolshevists,Damned loutish bolshevists,Who perhaps will do the business after all,In the long run, in spite of themselves.
Meanwhile, alasFor me no fellow-men,No salvia-frenzied comrades, antennæOf yellow-red, outreaching, living wrathUpon the smouldering air,And throat of brimstone-molten angry gold.Red, angry men are a race extinct, alas!
NeverTo be a bolshevistWith a hibiscus flower behind my earIn sign of life, of lovely, dangerous lifeAnd passionate disqualify of men;In sign of dauntless, silent violets,And impudent nettles grabbing the under-earth,And cabbages born to be cut and eat,And salvia fierce to crow and shout for fight,And rosy-red hibiscus wincinglyUnfolding all her coiled and lovely selfIn a doubtful world.
Never, bolshevisticallyTo be able to stand for all these!Alas, alas, I have got to leave it allTo the youths in Sunday suits and yellow shoesWho have pulled down the salvia flowersAnd rosy delicate hibiscus flowersAnd everything else to their disgusting level,Never, of course, to put anything up again.
But yetIf they pull all the world down,The process will amount to the same in the end.Instead of flame and flame-clean ashSlow watery rotting back to level muckAnd final humus,Whence the re-start.
And still I cannot bear itThat they take hibiscus and the salvia flower.Taormina.