Capricornus, or, The Goat

Supervises over the teatable our voluble hostess The passing round of titterings and toasties. Her glass-eyed friends, confidence's make-and-breaks, Give each in series gobbets of another's cakes. Dough drips into their tight triangular shoes. Their mouths give vent to evil-smelling news Keep their minds pure, make mental products crisper, With speaking eyeball rolls and the not too improper whisper. Fawn-eyed, the daughter, a gossip apprentice, Festoons gilt malice on her unmalicious twenties. Holiday smarmed the manureminded ephebus Sees in every skirt lubricity's rebus. Sex is their unknown god, with neither purity nor pox, To whom they genuflect whenever they enjoy their shocks. A little of everything, is the note they strike, The only limitation, what they think they do not like. Always they suffer inexpressible injustices, Making their own beds, these amateur Procrusteses, But expect their maids to lie in them. The middle classes Must have some defence against the vulgar masses. They have no use for idle gossips that scarify: But in their own leisure get together to verify Rumours of rationalists, use of contraceptives, Probable bastards, hope of their proving defectives (Details being perquisites of good detectives). This of course for the parish's sake. These long nose weevils Seek knowledge of others', as expression of their own, evils: And naught escapes being twisted and messed, Their own souls included, on matters of interest. Ignorant, superficial, malignant, self-deceived, Ashamed to bear, but proud to be bereaved, Devoted to truth's medals, but dismayed to see its flesh— Babies are born to them in prams and crêches. Lip-honouring peace, by their indignant whispers Others they desecrate, their own insure, in their smug vespers. At mattins for their own sins pray to be forgiven, Revelling in others while walking home from heaven. Martrylike suffer for transgressions of the parish, Or say they do, particularly the most garish. But humbly at their bedside never hope that Jesus has destroyed Others' misfortunes wholly, lest themselves be unemployed. Such and so balsting are their faded Joys Which Time, nor Sickness, never quite destroys. Balder and balder every haircut Cutting a caper as lewd as he dare cut, Quasiphilosophically Capricorn carouses Ill at ease in such respectable houses, The disinherited soul of an atrabilious Semi self-deprecating paterfamilias. With many eyeglitters at women's legs in stockings And at the schoolboys' furtive corybantic eyecockings, His Bacchanalian belly he wobbles like a sack with metaphysical justification as Dionysiac, And ungenteel jokes undoubtedly due to his strabismus Distorting even the quaint festivities of Christmas. Remembering in the artificial afternoon Old days when Pan his saxophonic tune Under the ilex played, and how the figwood image Nimbly swayed in the nights of lustful scrimmage, And how in pleased surprise he uttered several Eurekas At finding the gross fungus Ithyphallus Impudicus. With him his father's hair his father's scalp reveals Commensurate, with scratching too much during silent meals, With virgin's blood the holly on the wall Drips. As from Druid branches fail to fall Light, intense pearl juices from alabaster fitting, The proper tight-drawn hostess cuts unwitting Symbols of fertility from Christmas cake. All jollity Is fastened down. Only innocent frivolity Saturnalia is allowed in houses of good quality. Tiddledywog. Meh, meh. The door bursts open wide The Sunday china stands up horrified. Tiddledywog. Meh, meh. All he has ever remembered Bulges out like a plaster panel badly distempered. Tiddledywog. Meh, membrum caprinum erexit: Culpabat, alia aliam, quia ipsa conspexit. Tiddledywog. Tiddledywog. Tiddledywog. First he puts under the mat Persian cat and Pekinese dog. Then the tables' and chairbacks' torselling Smashes, and piles on potsherds of Worcester porcelain. Tiddledywog. Tiddledywog. Forefeet dangling like clappers Dancing about he grips the frightened flapper's Flaxen coils, throws to the ground and violates her. Which done she becomes he: he hates her, And turning on the boy, knocks his eyes out, Strips him, and using sinewy tail as a knout Flogs the boy till he eddies and faints. And the mother faints, Whom Capricorn props up upon the chintz And bathing her forehead with cold milk and tea Reverses coldness that used to be. But when she recovers, recovers himself and batters The woman to death. This seems to mend matters. Next pausing somewhat incommoded by his toils, The carpets, cushions, colour schemes he soils. Last in fierce memory of dislocate desire The house itself he dislocates with fire. Scatters the redhot imitation coals Over this mortuary of human souls. The imitation furniture goes up in smoke And well fired china serves as admirable coke. Like wood distilled that dribbles clammily Oozes the ectoplasm of his burning family. Various vermicular disseminations