246 Mythology poems

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  .  .  .

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.

To me, one silly task is like another. I bare the shambling tricks of lust and pride. This flesh will never give a child its mother,— Song, like a wing, tears through my breast, my side, And madness chooses out my voice again, Again. I am the chosen no hand saves: The shrieking heaven lifted over men, Not the dumb earth, wherein they set their graves.

O Hymen king. Hymen, O Hymen king, what bitter thing is this? what shaft, tearing my heart? what scar, what light, what fire searing my eye-balls and my eyes with flame? nameless, O spoken name, king, lord, speak blameless Hymen. Why do you blind my eyes? why do you dart and pulse till all the dark is home, then find my soul and ruthless draw it back? scaling the scaleless, opening the dark? speak, nameless, power and might; when will you leave me quite? when will you break my wings or leave them utterly free to scale heaven endlessly? A bitter, broken thing, my heart, O Hymen lord, yet neither drought nor sword baffles men quite, why must they feign to fear my virgin glance? feigned utterly or real why do they shrink? my trance frightens them, breaks the dance, empties the market-place; if I but pass they fall back, frantically; must always people mock? unless they shrink and reel as in the temple at your uttered will. O Hymen king, lord, greatest, power, might, look for my face is dark, burnt with your light, your fire, O Hymen lord; is there none left can equal me in ecstasy, desire? is there none left can bear with me the kiss of your white fire? is there not one, Phrygian or frenzied Greek, poet, song-swept, or bard, one meet to take from me this bitter power of song, one fit to speak, Hymen, your praises, lord? May I not wed as you have wed? may it not break, beauty, from out my hands, my head, my feet? may Love not lie beside me till his heat burn me to ash? may he not comfort me, then, spent of all that fire and heat, still, ashen-white and cool as the wet laurels, white, before your feet step on the mountain-slope, before your fiery hand lift up the mantle covering flower and land, as a man lifts, O Hymen, from his bride, (cowering with woman eyes,) the veil? O Hymen lord, be kind.

Be still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream That over Persian roses flew to kiss The curlèd lashes of Semiramis. Troy never was, nor green Skamander stream. Provence and Troubadour are merest lies The glorious hair of Venice was a beam Made within Titian’s eye. The sunsets seem, The world is very old and nothing is. Be still. Thou foolish thing, thou canst not wake, Nor thy tears wedge thy soldered lids apart, But patter in the darkness of thy heart. Thy brain is plagued. Thou art a frighted owl Blind with the light of life thou ’ldst not forsake, And Error loves and nourishes thy soul.

O Tree into the World, Man the chosen Rose out of Chaos: Song Thunder amid held daffodil, the hills of yellow celandine in sudden sun

the bear was born thrown from its side by killer-of-enemies its rage scratched open several rivers and the gulf of mexico an aspect so to speke made fulsomely as it were one whos habitat full somely made reaches all its leaves and feathers to the smoky air a tanager on an elm in oahu really reminded of the grand canyon by the souvenir mug of the muleskinner & the horse & the name angel

Each living thing is like a kingdom that rises not quite out of nothing: April stirrings of some boy and the May beauty of a generous princess. Then came children— who could calculate their splendor? And there were factories in valleys, mile after mile, dragons of purple smoke, blue flames at night, castles hidden in forests equally hidden where a shining company rode through flowers to pacify the dangerous land. Triangular sails, violet, saffron, and rose, glowed beyond coves under cliffs dangling silver torques of waterfall. Later the parents aged and grew more grateful, more full of a certainty that could not be glimpsed or dismayed, and then the children were gone to some other land as if to heaven, yet the mourning was not for death. Now by a quiet wall buckled cement gives a bright home to milkweeds like strange skeletons, pale green, intact and upright, and tall white grasses that never wave. The sole survivor— a duty was laid on him to tell the tale among new minds, other ways, and how do we imagine him, wherever he’s gone—all that remains, scholar of an unread book, beggar of an unfilled cup, an unknown variation, the thought of the kingdom in a lost man?

I Behoild Pelides with his yellow hair, Proud child of Thetis, hero loved of Jove; Above the frowning of his brows of wove A crown of gold, well combed, with Spartan care. Who might have seen him, sullen, great, and fair, As with the wrongful world he proudly strove, And by high deeds his wilder passion shrove, Mastering love, resentment, and despair. He knew his end, and Phoebus’ arrow sure He braved for fame immortal and a friend, Despising life; and we, who know our end, Know that in our decay he shall endure And all our children’s hearts to grief inure, With whose first bitter battles his shall blend. II Who brought thee forth, immortal vision, who In Phthia or in Tempe brought thee forth? Out of the sunlight and the sapful earth What god the simples of thy spirit drew? A goddess rose from the green waves, and threw Her arms about a king, to give thee birth; A centaur, patron of thy boyish mirth, Over the meadows in thy footsteps flew. Now Thessaly forgets thee, and the deep Thy keeled bark furrowed answers not thy prayer; But far away new generations keep Thy laurels fresh; where branching Isis hems The lawns of Oxford round about, or where Enchanted Eton sits by pleasant Thames. III I gaze on thee as Phidias of old Or Polyclitus gazed, when first he saw These hard and shining limbs, without a flaw, And cast his wonder in heroic mould. Unhappy me who only may behold, Nor make immutable and fix in awe A fair immortal form no worm shall gnaw, A tempered mind whose faith was never told! The godlike mien, the lion’s lock and eye, The well-knit sinew, utter a brave heart Better than many words that part by part Spell in strange symbols what serene and whole In nature lives, nor can in marble die. The perfect body itself the soul.

Tragedy began with a dance in the guise of goats , said Aristotle.