John Fuller

When they confess that they have lost the penial bone and outer space is Once again a numinous void, when they’re kept out of Other Places, And Dr Fieser falls asleep at last and dreams of unburnt faces, When gold medals are won by the ton for forgetting about the different races, God Bless America. When in the Latin shanties the scented priesthood suffers metempsychosis And with an organ entry tutti copula the dollar uncrosses Itself and abdicates, when the Pax Americana cuts its losses And a Pinkville memorial’s built in furious shame by Saigon’s puppet bosses,God Bless America. When they can be happy without noise, without knowing where on earth they’ve been, When they cease to be intellectual tourists and stop wanting to be clean, When they send their children to bed at the proper time and say just what they mean, And no longer trust the Quarterly Symposium and the Vicarious Screen,God Bless America. When they feel thoroughly desolated by the short-haired Christ they pray to, When they weep over their plunder of Europe stone by stone, releasing Plato And other Freshman Great Books, when they switch off their Hoover and unplug Nato, Pulling the chain on the CIA and awarding Time a rotten potato,God Bless America. When qua-birds, quickhatches and quinnets agree at last to admit the quail, When Captain Queeg is seen descending from the bridge as small and pale As everyone else, and is helped with sympathetic murmurs to the rail, When the few true defenders of love and justice survive to tell the tale,Then, perhaps then, God Bless America.

Fingers: Cramped, you are hardly anything but fidgets. We, active, differentiate the digits: Whilst you are merely little toe and big (Or, in the nursery, some futile pig) Through vital use as pincers there has come Distinction of the finger and the thumb; Lacking a knuckle you have sadly missed Our meaningful translation to a fist; And only by the curling of that joint Could the firm index come to have a point. You cannot punch or demonstrate or hold And therefore cannot write or pluck or mould: Indeed, it seems deficiency in art Alone would prove you the inferior part. Toes: Not so, my friends. Our clumsy innocence And your deft sin is the main difference Between the body’s near extremities. Please do not think that we intend to please: Shut in the dark, we once were free like you. Though you enslaved us, are you not slaves, too? Our early balance caused your later guilt, Erect, of finding out how we were built. Your murders and discoveries compile A history of the crime of being agile, And we it is who save you when you fight Against the odds: you cannot take to flight. Despite your fabrications and your cunning, The deepest instinct is expressed in running.

Father’s opinion of savages And dogs, a gay Bloomsbury epigram: ‘The brutes may possibly have souls,’ he says, ‘But reason, no. Nevertheless, I am Prepared not to extend this to my spouse And children.’ This demands a careful pity: Poor Father! Whooping and romping in their house, A holiday from ruin in the City. His wit falls flat, his tie just will not tie. The dog’s in chains, the reasonable books Grazed by his children as they learn to fly. He takes his dear wife’s arm (his hands grow hooks). Pirates and pudding! Come, such cruelty! His beard is branching like a burning tree.

Ar. Now you have been taught words and I am free, My pine struck open, your thick tongue untied, And bells call out the music of the sea. From this advantage I can clearly see You will abuse me in your grovelling pride Now you have been taught words: and I am free To pinch and bully you eternally, Swish round the island while the mermaids hide And bells call out the music of the sea. I watched you closely from within my tree: Explicit fish, implicit homicide, Now you have been taught words, and I am free To hear, who has the real victory? For you may drown as I draw in the tide And bells call out the music of the sea. You lust for Her and bare your teeth at me. Your roarings only mock the ache inside Now you have been taught words. And I am free While bells call out the music of the sea. Cal. Have you no feelings that you cannot tame? Ar. My target’s everything, and in my aim, Achievement, while another, Lesser lusts may drive: Legs hate their lazy brother Who saps your precious Five To keep alive. Cal. Have you no visions that you cannot name? Ar. A picture should extend beyond its frame, There being no limitation To bright reality: For all their declaration And complexity, Words cannot see. Cal. Are not the object and the word the same? Ar. Words are but counters in a childish game; Each move you make is token Only of the rules: Any rule may be broken By the boy from a clever school Or a bored fool. Cal. How is it, then, that words can hurt and maim? Ar. If words do that, you are already lame, Bowed down by words like firewood, Clenched with words like ice: Language is for the coward Who thinks a rule is nice At any price. Cal. O then unteach me language, let the cool Sea sidle up and draw me to its deep Silence. Teach me how to break the rule. Ar. Once in the game you cannot make that leap. The sea will cast you up again if you Pretend to break the rule you really keep. Cal. But tell me, then, if what you say is true, What was your knowledge when you could not move? What instinct told what function what to do? Ar. Words would not help the channelled sea to prove It was not ocean-free, nor pine no fuel: I just existed, wordless, in my groove. Nor do I use words now, though you In innocence may think I do: We’ve left the island and engage In conversation on a page Sand-white and, like it, bounded by A vast of dull eternity. And I (since I can understand) Am master of this paper land. Think I am quick? I am so too, But when I’m bored with biffing you, Eve’s monkey, still that is not all, Nor Milan’s ghost, his beck and call To all the fancies that I can. You are too human, Caliban. You lunge and ape the human dance. Music and love are sustenance Withheld from you like tinkling charms Beyond your crying outstretched arms. You think I did not want my tree? Or tire of showing off? Being ‘free’ All of the time is like your choice Of endless fireworks of the voice: You splutter, gasp and madly shout, But dampness seeps up: you go out, The silly words trail off your tongue. So wings get tired, flapping among The fussy spirits of the air. You curse. I sulk. Always He’s there. The bullet’s speed is not a feat. Of time, but photograph of wheat, A summer fly caught in a flash Of speckled stillness. Hear a splash? You think a glacier does not move? Brilliance of struggling wings can prove Treacle of amber, and a spark The universe, my world my bark I long for, longing for the dark. Cal. A language learnt but nothing understood: Now you at large, and all I owned before Lost like my name within the magic wood. No word for saying ‘no’ to fetching wood. The marvellous Glove splits on the hairy claw: A language learnt but nothing understood. At first I framed what syllables I could: She laughed at me and left me on the shore, Lost, like my name within the magic wood. Think of my rage then, Ariel, as I stood, (A picture in my head I could not draw, A language learnt but nothing understood), Weeping into the sea, hoping She would Turn back to lead me through that little door, Lost like my name within the magic wood. Our Master calls: I think it is not good To be unhappy with your freedom or My language (learnt, but nothing understood), Lost like my name within the magic wood.

Heureux ceux qui ont la clim—Corse-Matin (6.8.94) Heureux ceux qui ont la clim Pendant la grande canicule. Heureux those whose culs are cool. Heureuse her and heureux him. C’est la canicule qui hurle, Ready to tear you limb from limb. Heureux ceux qui ont la clim, Cri-criant: ‘O turlútuturle!’ La situation est grim, The mise-en-scène a trifle burle. À chaleur disons donc: ‘Ta gueule!’ And keep ourselves amused and slim. Heureux qui par terre se roule: Lucky Luke and Lucky Jim, Edith Piaf, Tiger Tim, Et le plus divin Poupoule. Heureux Toccate, heureux Hymne, Heureux Mouvements Perpetuels, Heureuses Les Bîches immortelles, De tristesse sexuelle synonyme. Je ne regrette rien. I’m full Of love as are the seraphim, And plein de bonheur to the brim, Pendant cette grande canicule. La vie has satisfying sym: For every lui there lives an elle. Finding its level in her well, La source sauvage is in the swim. Ni ouragan ni canicule, Ni pretexte prompte ou assez flim, Can keep le coeur from feeling imm, Allègre in the planet’s pull. Let’s fly together in a bim, Au-dessus de la fou-foule Qui mange ses menus et ses moules, Impregné de sueur, et prim! For always I’ll have you, and you’ll Have me, and though desire grows dim, Heureux ceux qui ont la quim, Heureuses celles qui ont le tool. Forever through the sky will skim Le pé-pédalo de Dédale, Escaladant sans escale The blue horizon’s endless rim. En pénitence, le tournesol Beguiné, poudreuz, anonyme, Turns and turns, and at a whim Sonne, en sol, son son du sol. From Chatellerault to Arles and Nîmes Le visage bronze du tournesol S’incline comme un pa-parasol Trouve une épaule coquette, intime. Devisé dans le banderole: ‘Heureux ceux qui ont la clim.’ Across the fields the notes are dim: Son sol, son sol, son sol, son sol.

Think of a self-effacing missionary Tending the vices of a problem tribe. He knows the quickest cure for beri-beri And how to take a bribe. And so the mind will never say it’s beaten By primitive disturbance of the liver; Its logic will prevent its being eaten, Get it across the river. But faced with this assured inconsequence That damns the very method that is used, It leaves the heart unproselytised and hence Admits that it’s confused. I know I’m acting, but I still must act. I melt to foolishness, and want it ended. Why it continues is this simple fact: I’d hate to end it. For now the jungle moods assert their terms And there’s no way to check them if they lie: The mind attempts to solve the thing, but squirms And knows exactly why. The world is everything that is the case. You cannot see it if you are inside it. That’s why the tortoise always wins the race: the very terms decide it. I cannot help it if I am contented With being discontented that I falter: That’s why psychology was first invented So that we needn’t alter. It is a strange position to be in. It would be different if I didn’t know Why the unlikely animal should win, Which cannibal should row. You’d think there’d be a way of cutting out Those self-destructive layers of introspection. To reach the truth at last without a doubt Of making the connection. That’s why the missionary, on his guard, Is wondering why the cannibal’s so merry, And why it is so very very hard To be a missionary.