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1. Far from the sea far from the sea of Breton fishermen the white clouds scudding over Lowell and the white birches the bare white birches along the blear night roads flashing by in darkness (where once he rode in Pop’s old Plymouth) And the birch-white face of a Merrimac madonna shadowed in streetlight by Merrimac’s shroudy waters —a leaf blown upon sea wind out of Brittany over endless oceans 2. There is a garden in the memory of America There is a nightbird in its memory There is an andante cantabile in a garden in the memory of America In a secret garden in a private place a song a melody a nightsong echoing in the memory of America In the sound of a nightbird outside a Lowell window In the cry of kids in tenement yards at night In the deep sound of a woman murmuring a woman singing broken melody in a shuttered room in an old wood house in Lowell As the world cracks by thundering like a lost lumber truck on a steep grade in Kerouac America The woman sits silent now rocking backward to Whistler’s Mother in Lowell and all the tough old Canuck mothers and Jack’s Mémère And they continue rocking And may still on stormy nights show through as a phantom after-image on silent TV screens a flickered after-image that will not go away in Moody Street in Beaulieu Street in ‘dirtstreet Sarah Avenue’ in Pawtucketville And in the Church of St. Jean Baptiste 3. And the Old Worthen Bar in Lowell Mass. at midnight in the now of Nineteen Eighty-seven Kerouackian revellers crowd the wood booths ancient with carved initials of a million drinking bouts the clouts of the Shrouded Stranger upon each wood pew where the likes of Kerouack lumberjack feinted their defiance of dung and death Ah the broken wood and the punka fans still turning (pull-cord wavings of the breath of the Buddha) still lost in Lowell’s ‘vast tragedies of darkness’ with Jack 4. And the Four Sisters Diner also known as ‘The Owl’ Sunday morning now March Eighty-seven or any year of Sunday specials Scrambled eggs and chopped ham the bright booths loaded with families Lowell Greek and Gaspé French Joual patois and Argos argot Spartan slaves escaped into the New World here incarnate in rush of blood of American Sunday morning And “Ti-Jean” Jack Kerouac comes smiling in baseball cap cocked up hungry for mass in this Church of All Hungry Saints haunt of all-night Owls blessing every booth ... 5. Ah he the Silent Smiler the one with the lumberjack shirt and cap with flaps askew blowing his hands in winter as if to light a flame The Shrouded Stranger knew him as Ti-Jean the Smiler grooking past redbrick mill buildings down by the riverrun (O mighty Merrimac ‘thunderous husher’) where once upon a midnight then young Ti-Jean danced with Mémère in the moondrowned light And rolled upon the greensward his mother and lover all one with Buddha in his arms 6. And then Ti-Jean Jack with Joual tongue disguised as an American fullback in plaid shirt crossing and recrossing America in speedy cars a Dr. Sax’s shadow shadowing him like a shroudy cloud over the landscape Song of the Open Road sung drunken with Whitman and Jack London and Thomas Wolfe still echoing through a Nineteen Thirties America A Nineteen Forties America an America now long gone except in broken down dusty old Greyhound Bus stations in small lost towns Ti-Jean’s vision of America seen from a moving car window the same as Wolfe’s lonely sweeping vision glimpsed from a coach-train long ago (‘And thus did he see first the dark land’) And so Jack in an angel midnight bar somewhere West of Middle America where one drunk madonna (shades of one on a Merrimac corner) makes him a gesture with her eyes a blue gesture and Ti-Jean answers only with his eyes And the night goes on with them And the light comes up on them making love in a parking lot 7. In the dark of his fellaheen night in the light of the illuminated Stations of the Cross and the illuminated Grotto down behind the Funeral Home by roar of river where now Ti-Jean alone (returned to Lowell in one more doomed Wolfian attempt to Go Home Again) gropes past the Twelve Stations of the Cross reciting aloud the French inscriptions in his Joual accent which makes the plaster French Christ laugh and cry as He hefts His huge Cross up the Eternal Hill And a very real tear drops in the Grotto from the face of the stoned Virgin 8. Light upon light The Mountain keeps still 9. Hands over ears He steals away with the Bell. . . . Writ in Lowell and Conway and Boston Mass. and San Francisco March-April 1987

let through praise while cycling —a hill or shop to match you— the shining bay the foggy gray beneath all names and phrases let through praise while working —a bird or book to watch you— the formal sun the queerer ones lifting their heads to face you let through praise while flirting —a storm or song to patch you— the iced-down bruise the new black shoes and all the things that make you let praise through earthly city —a sibling glad to catch us— the blameless meek the faceless deep please mind your house and graces

The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep, The thought of what America, The thought of what America, The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep. Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant, Now lettest thou thy servant Depart in peace. The thought of what America, The thought of what America, The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation . . . Oh well! It troubles my sleep.

And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and We set up mast and sail on that swart ship, Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward Bore us out onward with bellying canvas, Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess. Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller, Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day’s end. Sun to his slumber, shadows o’er all the ocean, Came we then to the bounds of deepest water, To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever With glitter of sun-rays Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven Swartest night stretched over wretched men there. The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place Aforesaid by Circe. Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus, And drawing sword from my hip I dug the ell-square pitkin; Poured we libations unto each the dead, First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour. Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death’s-heads; As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods, A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep. Dark blood flowed in the fosse, Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides Of youths and of the old who had borne much; Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender, Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads, Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms, These many crowded about me; with shouting, Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts; Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze; Poured ointment, cried to the gods, To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine; Unsheathed the narrow sword, I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead, Till I should hear Tiresias. But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor, Unburied, cast on the wide earth, Limbs that we left in the house of Circe, Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other. Pitiful spirit.   And I cried in hurried speech: “Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast? “Cam’st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?” And he in heavy speech: “Ill fate and abundant wine.    I slept in Circe’s ingle. “Going down the long ladder unguarded, “I fell against the buttress, “Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus. “But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied, “Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed: “A man of no fortune, and with a name to come. “And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows.” And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban, Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first: “A second time? why? man of ill star, “Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region? “Stand from the fosse, leave me my bloody bever “For soothsay.” And I stepped back, And he strong with the blood, said then: “Odysseus “Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas, “Lose all companions.”  And then Anticlea came. Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus, In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer. And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outward and away And unto Circe. Venerandam, In the Cretan’s phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite, Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, orichalchi, with golden Girdles and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. So that:

I sat on the Dogana’s steps For the gondolas cost too much, that year, And there were not “those girls”, there was one face, And the Buccentoro twenty yards off, howling, “Stretti”, And the lit cross-beams, that year, in the Morosini, And peacocks in Koré’s house, or there may have been. Gods float in the azure air, Bright gods and Tuscan, back before dew was shed. Light: and the first light, before ever dew was fallen. Panisks, and from the oak, dryas, And from the apple, mælid, Through all the wood, and the leaves are full of voices, A-whisper, and the clouds bowe over the lake, And there are gods upon them, And in the water, the almond-white swimmers, The silvery water glazes the upturned nipple, As Poggio has remarked. Green veins in the turquoise, Or, the gray steps lead up under the cedars. My Cid rode up to Burgos, Up to the studded gate between two towers, Beat with his lance butt, and the child came out, Una niña de nueve años, To the little gallery over the gate, between the towers, Reading the writ, voce tinnula: That no man speak to, feed, help Ruy Diaz, On pain to have his heart out, set on a pike spike And both his eyes torn out, and all his goods sequestered, “And here, Myo Cid, are the seals, The big seal and the writing.” And he came down from Bivar, Myo Cid, With no hawks left there on their perches, And no clothes there in the presses, And left his trunk with Raquel and Vidas, That big box of sand, with the pawn-brokers, To get pay for his menie; Breaking his way to Valencia. Ignez de Castro murdered, and a wall Here stripped, here made to stand. Drear waste, the pigment flakes from the stone, Or plaster flakes, Mantegna painted the wall. Silk tatters, “Nec Spe Nec Metu.”

Palace in smoky light, Troy but a heap of smouldering boundary stones, ANAXIFORMINGES!  Aurunculeia! Hear me.   Cadmus of Golden Prows! The silver mirrors catch the bright stones and flare, Dawn, to our waking, drifts in the green cool light; Dew-haze blurs, in the grass, pale ankles moving. Beat, beat, whirr, thud, in the soft turf under the apple trees, Choros nympharum, goat-foot, with the pale foot alternate; Crescent of blue-shot waters, green-gold in the shallows, A black cock crows in the sea-foam; And by the curved, carved foot of the couch, claw-foot and lion head, an old man seated Speaking in the low drone…: Ityn! Et ter flebiliter, Ityn, Ityn! And she went toward the window and cast her down, “All the while, the while, swallows crying: Ityn! “It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish.” “It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish?” “No other taste shall change this.” And she went toward the window, the slim white stone bar Making a double arch; Firm even fingers held to the firm pale stone; Swung for a moment, and the wind out of Rhodez Caught in the full of her sleeve. . . .  the swallows crying: ‘Tis.  ‘Tis.  ‘Ytis! Actæon… and a valley, The valley is thick with leaves, with leaves, the trees, The sunlight glitters, glitters a-top, Like a fish-scale roof, Like the church roof in Poictiers If it were gold. Beneath it, beneath it Not a ray, not a slivver, not a spare disc of sunlight Flaking the black, soft water; Bathing the body of nymphs, of nymphs, and Diana, Nymphs, white-gathered about her, and the air, air, Shaking, air alight with the goddess fanning their hair in the dark, Lifting, lifting and waffing: Ivory dipping in silver, Shadow’d, o’ershadow’d Ivory dipping in silver, Not a splotch, not a lost shatter of sunlight. Then Actæon: Vidal, Vidal.   It is old Vidal speaking, stumbling along in the wood, Not a patch, not a lost shimmer of sunlight, the pale hair of the goddess. The dogs leap on Actæon, “Hither, hither, Actæon,” Spotted stag of the wood; Gold, gold, a sheaf of hair, Thick like a wheat swath, Blaze, blaze in the sun, The dogs leap on Actæon. Stumbling, stumbling along in the wood, Muttering, muttering Ovid: “Pergusa… pool… pool… Gargaphia, “Pool… pool of Salmacis.” The empty armour shakes as the cygnet moves. Thus the light rains, thus pours,e lo soleills plovil The liquid and rushing crystal beneath the knees of the gods. Ply over ply, thin glitter of water; Brook film bearing white petals. The pine at Takasago grows with the pine of Isé! The water whirls up the bright pale sand in the spring’s mouth “Behold the Tree of the Visages!” Forked branch-tips, flaming as if with lotus. Ply over ply The shallow eddying fluid, beneath the knees of the gods. Torches melt in the glare set flame of the corner cook-stall, Blue agate casing the sky (as at Gourdon that time) the sputter of resin, Saffron sandal so petals the narrow foot: Hymenæus Io! Hymen, Io Hymenæe! Aurunculeia! One scarlet flower is cast on the blanch-white stone. And S o-Gyoku, saying: “This wind, sire, is the king’s wind, This wind is wind of the palace, Shaking imperial water-jets.” And Hsiang, opening his collar: “This wind roars in the earth’s bag, it lays the water with rushes.” No wind is the king’s wind. Let every cow keep her calf. “This wind is held in gauze curtains…” No wind is the king’s… The camel drivers sit in the turn of the stairs, Look down on Ecbatan of plotted streets, “Danaë! Danaë! What wind is the king’s?” Smoke hangs on the stream, The peach-trees shed bright leaves in the water, Sound drifts in the evening haze, The bark scrapes at the ford, Gilt rafters above black water, Three steps in an open field, Gray stone-posts leading… Père Henri Jacques would speak with the Sennin, on Rokku, Mount Rokku between the rock and the cedars, Polhonac, As Gyges on Thracian platter set the feast, Cabestan, Tereus, It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish, Vidal, or Ecbatan, upon the gilded tower in Ecbatan Lay the god’s bride, lay ever, waiting the golden rain. By Garonne.             “Saave!” The Garonne is thick like paint, Procession,—“Et sa’ave, sa’ave, sa’ave Regina!”— Moves like a worm, in the crowd. Adige, thin film of images, Across the Adige, by Stefano, Madonna in hortulo, As Cavalcanti had seen her. The Centaur’s heel plants in the earth loam. And we sit here… there in the arena…

Zeus lies in Ceres’ bosom Taishan is attended of loves under Cythera, before sunrise And he said: “Hay aquí mucho catolicismo—(sounded catoli th ismo y muy poco reliHion.” and he said: “Yo creo que los reyes desparecen” (Kings will, I think, disappear) This was Padre José Elizondo in 1906 and in 1917 or about 1917 and Dolores said: “Come pan, niño,”   eat bread, me lad Sargent had painted her before he descended (i.e. if he descended but in those days he did thumb sketches, impressions of the Velázquez in the Museo del Prado and books cost a peseta, brass candlesticks in proportion, hot wind came from the marshes and death-chill from the mountains. And later Bowers wrote: “but such hatred, I have never conceived such” and the London reds wouldn’t show up his friends (i.e. friends of Franco working in London) and in Alcázar forty years gone, they said: go back to the station to eat you can sleep here for a peseta” goat bells tinkled all night and the hostess grinned: Eso es luto,haw! mi marido es muerto (it is mourning, my husband is dead) when she gave me a paper to write on with a black border half an inch or more deep, say 5/8ths, of the locanda “We call all foreigners frenchies” and the egg broke in Cabranez’ pocket, thus making history. Basil says they beat drums for three days till all the drumheads were busted (simple village fiesta) and as for his life in the Canaries… Possum observed that the local portagoose folk dance was danced by the same dancers in divers localities in political welcome… the technique of demonstration Cole studied that (not G.D.H., Horace) “You will find” said old André Spire, that every man on that board (Crédit Agricole) has a brother-in-law “You the one, I the few” said John Adams speaking of fears in the abstract to his volatile friend Mr Jefferson. (To break the pentameter, that was the first heave) or as Jo Bard says:   they never speak to each other, if it is baker and concierge visibly it is La Rouchefoucauld and de Maintenon audibly. “Te cavero le budella” “La corata a te” In less than a geological epoch said Henry Mencken “Some cook, some do not cook some things cannot be altered” ’Iugx.  .  .  .  . ’emònpotídwmaaònandra What counts is the cultural level, thank Benin for this table ex packing box “doan yu tell no one I made it” from a mask fine as any in Frankfurt “It’ll get you offn th’ groun” Light as the branch of Kuanon And at first disappointed with shoddy the bare ram-shackle quais, but then saw the high buggy wheels and was reconciled, George Santayana arriving in the port of Boston and kept to the end of his life that faint thethear of the Spaniard as grace quasi imperceptible as did Muss the v for u of Romagna and said the grief was a full act repeated for each new condoleress working up to a climax. and George Horace said he wd/ “get Beveridge” (Senator) Beveridge wouldn’t talk and he wouldn’t write for the papers but George got him by campin’ in his hotel and assailin’ him at lunch breakfast an’ dinner three articles and my ole man went on hoein’ corn while George was a-tellin’ him, come across a vacant lot where you’d occasionally see a wild rabbit or mebbe only a loose one AOI! a leaf in the current at my grates no Althea ______ libretto ______ Yet Ere the season died a-cold Borne upon a zephyr’s shoulder I rose through the aureate sky Lawes and Jenkyns guard thy rest Dolmetsch ever be thy guest, Has he tempered the viol’s wood To enforce   both the grave   and the acute? Has he curved us the bowl of the lute? Lawes and Jenkyns guard thy rest Dolmetsch ever be thy guest Hast ’ou fashioned so airy a mood To draw up leaf from the root? Hast ’ou found   a cloud   so light As seemed neither mist nor shade? Then resolve me, tell me aright If Waller sang or Dowland played Your eyen two wol sleye me sodenly I may the beauté of hem nat susteyne And for 180 years almost nothing. Ed ascoltando al leggier mormorio there came new subtlety of eyes into my tent, whether of the spirit or hypostasis, but what the blindfold hides or at carneval nor any pair showed anger Saw but the eyes and stance between the eyes, colour, diastasis, careless or unaware it had not the whole tent’s room nor was place for the full EidwV interpass, penetrate casting but shade beyond the other lights sky’s clear night’s sea green of the mountain pool shone from the unmasked eyes in half-mask’s space. What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage Whose world, or mine or theirs or is it of none? First came the seen, then thus the palpable Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell, What thou lovest well is thy true heritage What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, Paquin pull down! The green casque has outdone your elegance. “Master thyself, then others shall thee beare” Pull down thy vanity Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail, A swollen magpie in a fitful sun, Half black half white Nor knowst’ou wing from tail Pull down thy vanity How mean thy hates Fostered in falsity, Pull down thy vanity, Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. But to have done instead of not doing this is not vanity To have, with decency, knocked That a Blunt should open To have gathered from the air a live tradition or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame This is not vanity. Here error is all in the not done, all in the diffidence that faltered  .  .  .

With Usura With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting that design might cover their face, with usura hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall harpes et luz or where virgin receiveth message and halo projects from incision, with usura seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines no picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper, with no mountain wheat, no strong flour with usura the line grows thick with usura is no clear demarcation and no man can find site for his dwelling. Stonecutter is kept from his tone weaver is kept from his loom WITH USURA wool comes not to market sheep bringeth no gain with usura Usura is a murrain, usura blunteth the needle in the maid’s hand and stoppeth the spinner’s cunning. Pietro Lombardo came not by usura Duccio came not by usura nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin’ not by usura nor was ‘La Calunnia’ painted. Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis, Came no church of cut stone signed:Adamo me fecit. Not by usura St. Trophime Not by usura Saint Hilaire, Usura rusteth the chisel It rusteth the craft and the craftsman It gnaweth the thread in the loom None learneth to weave gold in her pattern; Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered Emerald findeth no Memling Usura slayeth the child in the womb It stayeth the young man’s courting It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth between the young bride and her bridegroom CONTRA NATURAM They have brought whores for Eleusis Corpses are set to banquet at behest of usura. N.B. Usury: A charge for the use of purchasing power, levied without regard to production; often without regard to the possibilities of production. (Hence the failure of the Medici bank.)

And before hell mouth; dry plain and two mountains; On the one mountain, a running form, and another In the turn of the hill; in hard steel The road like a slow screw’s thread, The angle almost imperceptible, so that the circuit seemed hardly to rise; And the running form, naked, Blake, Shouting, whirling his arms, the swift limbs, Howling against the evil, his eyes rolling, Whirling like flaming cart-wheels, and his head held backward to gaze on the evil As he ran from it, to be hid by the steel mountain, And when he showed again from the north side; his eyes blazing toward hell mouth, His neck forward, and like him Peire Cardinal. And in the west mountain, Il Fiorentino, Seeing hell in his mirror, and lo Sordels Looking on it in his shield; And Augustine, gazing toward the invisible. And past them, the criminal lying in the blue lakes of acid, The road between the two hills, upward slowly, The flames patterned in lacquer, crimen est actio, The limbo of chopped ice and saw-dust, And I bathed myself with acid to free myself of the hell ticks, Scales, fallen louse eggs. Palux Laerna, the lake of bodies, aqua morta, of limbs fluid, and mingled, like fish heaped in a bin, and here an arm upward, clutching a fragment of marble, And the embryos, in flux, new inflow, submerging, Here an arm upward, trout, submerged by the eels; and from the bank, the stiff herbage the dry nobbled path, saw many known, and unknown, for an instant; submerging, The face gone, generation. Then light, air, under saplings, the blue banded lake under æther, an oasis, the stones, the calm field, the grass quiet, and passing the tree of the bough The grey stone posts, and the stair of gray stone, the passage clean-squared in granite: descending, and I through this, and into the earth, patet terra, entered the quiet air the new sky, the light as after a sun-set, and by their fountains, the heroes, Sigismundo, and Malatesta Novello, and founders, gazing at the mounts of their cities. The plain, distance, and in fount-pools the nymphs of that water rising, spreading their garlands, weaving their water reeds with the boughs, In the quiet, and now one man rose from his fountain and went off into the plain. Prone in that grass, in sleep; et j’entendis des voix:… wall .  .  .  Strasbourg Galliffet led that triple charge.  .  .  Prussians and he said                                                            [Plarr’s narration] it was for the honour of the army. And they called him a swashbuckler. I didn’t know what it was But I thought:    This is pretty bloody damn fine. And my old nurse, he was a man nurse, and He killed a Prussian and he lay in the street there in front of our house for three days And he stank.  .  .  .  .  .  . Brother Percy, And our Brother Percy… old Admiral He was a middy in those days, And they came into Ragusa .  .  .  .  .  .  place those men went for the Silk War.  .  .  .  . And they saw a procession coming down through A cut in the hills, carrying something The six chaps in front carrying a long thing on their shoulders, And they thought it was a funeral, but the thing was wrapped up in scarlet, And he put off in the cutter, he was a middy in those days, To see what the natives were doing, And they got up to the six fellows in livery, And they looked at it, and I can still hear the old admiral, “Was it? it was Lord Byron Dead drunk, with the face of an A  y  n.  .  .  .  .  .  .  . He pulled it out long, like that: the face of an a  y  n  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  gel.” And because that son of a bitch, Franz Josef of Austria.  .  .  .  .  . And because that son of a bitch Napoléon Barbiche… They put Aldington on Hill 70, in a trench dug through corpses With a lot of kids of sixteen, Howling and crying for their mamas, And he sent a chit back to his major: I can hold out for ten minutes With my sergeant and a machine-gun. And they rebuked him for levity. And Henri Gaudier went to it, and they killed him, And killed a good deal of sculpture, And ole T.E.H. he went to it, With a lot of books from the library, London Library, and a shell buried ‘em in a dug-out, And the Library expressed its annoyance. And a bullet hit him on the elbow …gone through the fellow in front of him, And he read Kant in the Hospital, in Wimbledon, in the original, And the hospital staff didn’t like it. And Wyndham Lewis went to it, With a heavy bit of artillery, and the airmen came by with a mitrailleuse, And cleaned out most of his company, and a shell lit on his tin hut, While he was out in the privy, and he was all there was left of that outfit. Windeler went to it, and he was out in the Ægæan, And down in the hold of his ship pumping  gas into a sausage, And the boatswain looked over the rail, down into amidships, and he said: Gees! look a’ the Kept’n, The Kept’n’s a-gettin’ ‘er up. And Ole Captain Baker went to it, with his legs full of rheumatics, So much so he couldn’t run, so he was six months in hospital, Observing the mentality of the patients. And Fletcher was 19 when he went to it, And his major went mad in the control pit, about  midnight, and started throwing the ‘phone about And he had to keep him quiet till abut six in the morning, And direct that bunch of artillery. And Ernie Hemingway went to it, too much in a hurry, And they buried him for four days. Et ma foi, vous savez, tous les nerveux.  Non, Y a une limite; les bêtes, les bêtes ne sont Pas faites pour ça, c’est peu de chose un cheval. Les hommes de 34 ans à quatre pattes qui criaient “maman.” Mais les costauds, La fin, là à Verdun, n’y avait que ces gros bonshommes Et y voyaient extrêmement clair. Qu’est-ce que ça vaut, les généraux, le lieutenant, on les pèse à un centigramme, n’y a rien que du bois, Notr’ capitaine, tout, tout ce qu’il y a de plus renfermé de vieux polytechnicien, mais solide, La tête solide. Là, vous savez, Tout, tout fonctionne, et les voleurs, tous les vices, Mais les rapaces, y avait trois dans notre compagnie, tous tués. Y sortaient fouiller un cadavre, pour rien, y n’serainet sortis pour rien que ça. Et les boches, tout ce que vous voulez, militarisme, et cætera, et cætera. Tout ça, mais, MAIS, l’français, i s’bat quand y a mangé. Mais ces pauvres types A  la  fin y s’attaquaient pour manger, Sans orders, les bêtes sauvages, on y fait Prisonniers; ceux qui parlaient français disaient: “Poo quah? Ma foi on attaquait pour manger.” C’est le corr-ggras, le corps gras, leurs trains marchaient trois kilomètres à l’heure, Et ça criait, ça grincait, on l’entendait à cinq kilomètres. (Ça qui finit la guerre.) Liste officielle des morts 5,000,000. I vous dit, bè, voui, tout sentait le pétrole. Mais, Non! je l’ai engueulé. Je lui ai dit: T’es un con! T’a raté la guerre. O voui! tous les homes de goût, y conviens, Tout ça en arrière. Mais un mec comme toi! C’t homme, un type comme ça! Ce qu’il aurait pu encaisser! Il était dans une fabrique. What, burying squad, terrassiers, avec leur tête en arrière, qui regardaient comme ça, On risquait la vie pour un coup de pelle, Faut que ça soit bein carré, exact… Dey vus a bolcheviki dere, und dey dease him: Looka vat youah Trotzsk is done, e iss madeh deh zhamefull beace!! “He iss madeh de zhamefull beace, iss he? “He is madeh de zhamevull beace? “A Brest-Litovsk, yess? Aint yuh herd? “He vinneh de vore. “De droobs iss released vrom de eastern vront, yess? “Un venn dey getts to deh vestern vront, iss it “How many getts dere? “And dose doat getts dere iss so full off revolutions “Venn deh vrench is come dhru, yess, “Dey say, “Vot?” Un de posch say: “Aint yeh heard? Say, ve got a rheffolution.” That’s the trick with a crowd, Get ‘em into the street and get ‘em moving. And all the time, there were people going Down there, over the river. There was a man there talking, To a thousand, just a short speech, and Then move ‘em on.   And he said: Yes, these people, they are all right, they Can do everything, everything except act; And go an’ hear ‘em but when they are through Come to the bolsheviki… And when it broke, there was the crowd there, And the cossacks, just as always before, But one thing, the cossacks said: “Pojalouista.” And that got round in the crowd, And then a lieutenant of infantry Ordered ‘em to fire into the crowd, in the square at the end of the Nevsky, In front of the Moscow station, And they wouldn’t, And he pulled his sword on a student for laughing, And killed him, And a cossack rode out of his squad On the other side of the square And cut down the lieutenant of infantry And there was the revolution… as soon as they named it. And you can’t make ‘em, Nobody knew it was coming. They were all ready, the old gang, Guns on the top of the post-office and the palace, But none of the leaders knew it was coming. And there were some killed at the barracks, But that was between the troops. So we used to hear it at the opera That they wouldn’t be under Haig; and that the advance was beginning; That it was going to begin in a week.

The jester walked in the garden: The garden had fallen still; He bade his soul rise upward And stand on her window-sill. It rose in a straight blue garment, When owls began to call: It had grown wise-tongued by thinking Of a quiet and light footfall; But the young queen would not listen; She rose in her pale night-gown; She drew in the heavy casement And pushed the latches down. He bade his heart go to her, When the owls called out no more; In a red and quivering garment It sang to her through the door. It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming Of a flutter of flower-like hair; But she took up her fan from the table And waved it off on the air. 'I have cap and bells,’ he pondered, 'I will send them to her and die’; And when the morning whitened He left them where she went by. She laid them upon her bosom, Under a cloud of her hair, And her red lips sang them a love-song Till stars grew out of the air. She opened her door and her window, And the heart and the soul came through, To her right hand came the red one, To her left hand came the blue. They set up a noise like crickets, A chattering wise and sweet, And her hair was a folded flower And the quiet of love in her feet.