Collected Poems in English and French Read online

  bites like a dog against its chastisement.

  I trundle along rapidly now on my ruined feet

  flush with the livid canal;

  at Parnell Bridge a dying barge

  carrying a cargo of nails and timber

  rocks itself softly in the foaming cloister of the lock;

  on the far bank a gang of down and outs would seem to

  be mending a beam.

  Then for miles only wind

  and the weals creeping alongside on the water

  and the world opening up to the south

  across a travesty of champaign to the mountains

  and the stillborn evening turning a filthy green

  manuring the night fungus

  and the mind annulled

  wrecked in wind.

  I splashed past a little wearish old man,

  Democritus,

  scuttling along between a crutch and a stick,

  his stump caught up horribly, like a claw, under his

  breech, smoking.

  Then because a field on the left went up in a sudden blaze

  of shouting and urgent whistling and scarlet and blue ganzies

  I stopped and climbed the bank to see the game.

  A child fidgeting at the gate called up:

  “Would we be let in Mister?”

  “Certainly” I said “you would.”

  But, afraid, he set off down the road.

  “Well” I called after him “why wouldn't you go on in?”

  “Oh” he said, knowingly,

  “I was in that field before and I got put out.”

  So on,

  derelict,

  as from a bush of gorse on fire in the mountain after dark,

  or, in Sumatra, the jungle hymen,

  the still flagrant rafflesia.

  Next:

  a lamentable family of grey verminous hens,

  perishing out in the sunk field,

  trembling, half asleep, against the closed door of a shed,

  with no means of roosting.

  The great mushy toadstool,

  green-black,

  oozing up after me,

  soaking up the tattered sky like an ink of pestilence,

  in my skull the wind going fetid,

  the water …

  Next:

  on the hill down from the Fox and Geese into Chapelizod

  a small malevolent goat, exiled on the road,

  remotely pucking the gate of his field;

  the Isolde Stores a great perturbation of sweaty heroes,

  in their Sunday best,

  come hastening down for a pint of nepenthe or moly or

  half and half

  from watching the hurlers above in Kilmainham.

  Blotches of doomed yellow in the pit of the Liffey;

  the fingers of the ladders hooked over the parapet,

  soliciting;

  a slush of vigilant gulls in the grey spew of the sewer.

  Ah the banner

  the banner of meat bleeding

  on the silk of the seas and the arctic flowers

  that do not exist.

  Enueg II

  world world world world

  and the face grave

  cloud against the evening

  de morituris nihil nisi

  and the face crumbling shyly

  too late to darken the sky

  blushing away into the evening

  shuddering away like a gaffe

  veronica mundi

  veronica munda

  give us a wipe for the love of Jesus

  sweating like Judas

  tired of dying

  tired of policemen

  feet in marmalade

  perspiring profusely

  heart in marmalade

  smoke more fruit

  the old heart the old heart

  breaking outside congress

  doch I assure thee

  lying on O'Connell Bridge

  goggling at the tulips of the evening

  the green tulips

  shining round the corner like an anthrax

  shining on Guinness's barges

  the overtone the face

  too late to brighten the sky

  doch doch I assure thee

  Alba

  before morning you shall be here

  and Dante and the Logos and all strata and mysteries

  and the branded moon

  beyond the white plane of music

  that you shall establish here before morning

  grave suave singing silk

  stoop to the black firmament of areca

  rain on the bamboos flower of smoke alley of willows

  who though you stoop with fingers of compassion

  to endorse the dust

  shall not add to your bounty

  whose beauty shall be a sheet before me

  a statement of itself drawn across the tempest of emblems

  so that there is no sun and no unveiling

  and no host

  only I and then the sheet

  and bulk dead

  Dortmunder

  In the magic the Homer dusk

  past the red spire of sanctuary

  I null she royal hulk

  hasten to the violet lamp to the thin K'in music of the

  bawd.

  She stands before me in the bright stall

  sustaining the jade splinters

  the scarred signaculum of purity quiet

  the eyes the eyes black till the plagal east

  shall resolve the long night phrase.

  Then, as a scroll, folded,

  and the glory of her dissolution enlarged

  in me, Habbakuk, mard of all sinners.

  Schopenhauer is dead, the bawd

  puts her lute away.

  Sanies I

  all the livelong way this day of sweet showers from

  Portrane on the seashore

  Donabate sad swans of Turvey Swords

  pounding along in three ratios like a sonata

  like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra cura on the step

  Botticelli from the fork down pestling the transmission

  tires bleeding voiding zeep the highway

  all heaven in the sphincter

  the sphincter

  müüüüüüüde now

  potwalloping now through the promenaders

  this trusty all-steel this super-real

  bound for home like a good boy

  where I was born with a pop with the green of the larches

  ah to be back in the caul now with no trusts

  no fingers no spoilt love

  belting along in the meantime clutching the bike

  the billows of the nubile the cere wrack

  pot-valiant caulless waisted in rags hatless

  for mamma papa chicken and ham

  warm Grave too say the word

  happy days snap the stem shed a tear

  this day Spy Wedsday seven pentades past

  oh the larches the pain drawn like a cork

  the glans he took the day off up hill and down dale

  with a ponderous fawn from the Liverpool London and

  Globe

  back the shadows lengthen the sycomores are sobbing

  to roly-poly oh to me a spanking boy

  buckets of fizz childbed is thirsty work

  for the midwife he is gory

  for the proud parent he washes down a gob of gladness

  for footsore Achates also he pants his pleasure

  sparkling beestings for me

  tired now hair ebbing gums ebbing ebbing home

  good as gold now in the prime after a brief prodigality

  yea and suave

  suave urbane beyond good and evil

  biding my time without rancour you may take your oath

  distraught half-crooked courting the sneers of these fauns

  these smart nymphs

  clip
ped like a pederast as to one trouser-end

  sucking in my bloated lantern behind a Wild Woodbine

  cinched to death in a filthy slicker

  flinging the proud Swift forward breasting the swell of

  Stürmers

  I see main verb at last

  her whom alone in the accusative

  I have dismounted to love

  gliding towards me dauntless nautch-girl on the face of the

  waters

  dauntless daughter of desires in the old black and flamingo

  get along with you now take the six the seven the eight or

  the little single-decker

  take a bus for all I care walk cadge a lift

  home to the cob of your web in Holles Street

  and let the tiger go on smiling

  in our hearts that funds ways home

  Sanies II

  there was a happy land

  the American Bar

  in Rue Mouffetard

  there were red eggs there

  I have a dirty I say henorrhoids

  coming from the bath

  the steam the delight the sherbet

  the chagrin of the old skinnymalinks

  slouching happy body

  loose in my stinking old suit

  sailing slouching up to Puvis the gauntlet of tulips

  lash lash me with yaller tulips I will let down

  my stinking old trousers

  my love she sewed up the pockets alive the live-oh she did

  she said that was better

  spotless then within the brown rags gliding

  frescoward free up the fjord of dyed eggs and thongbells

  I disappear don't you know into the local

  the mackerel are at billiards there they are crying the scores

  the Barfrau makes a big impression with her mighty bottom

  Dante and blissful Beatrice are there

  prior to Vita Nuova

  the balls splash no luck comrade

  Gracieuse is there Belle-Belle down the drain

  booted Percinet with his cobalt jowl

  they are necking gobble-gobble

  suck is not suck that alters

  lo Alighieri has got off au revoir to all that

  I break down quite in a titter of despite

  hark

  upon the saloon a terrible hush

  a shiver convulses Madame de la Motte

  it courses it peals down her collops

  the great bottom foams into stillness

  quick quick the cavaletto supplejacks for mumbo-jumbo

  vivas puellas mortui incurrrrrsant boves

  oh subito subito ere she recover the cang bamboo for

  bastinado

  a bitter moon fessade la mode

  oh Becky spare me I have done thee no wrong spare me

  damn thee

  spare me good Becky

  call off thine adders Becky I will compensate thee in full

  Lord have mercy upon

  Christ have mercy upon us

  Lord have mercy upon us

  Serena I

  without the grand old British Museum

  Thales and the Aretino

  on the bosom of the Regent's Park the phlox

  crackles under the thunder

  scarlet beauty in our world dead fish adrift

  all things full of gods

  pressed down and bleeding

  a weaver-bird is tangerine the harpy is past caring

  the condor likewise in his mangy boa

  they stare out across monkey-hill the elephants

  Ireland

  the light creeps down their old home canyon

  sucks me aloof to that old reliable

  the burning btm of George the drill

  ah across the way a adder

  broaches her rat

  white as snow

  in her dazzling oven strom of peristalsis

  limae labor

  ah father father that art in heaven

  I find me taking the Crystal Palace

  for the Blessed Isles from Primrose Hill

  alas I must be that kind of person

  hence in Ken Wood who shall find me

  my breath held in the midst of thickets

  none but the most quarried lovers

  I surprise me moved by the many a funnel hinged

  for the obeisance to Tower Bridge

  the viper's curtsy to and from the City

  till in the dusk a lighter

  blind with pride

  tosses aside the scarf of the bascules

  then in the grey hold of the ambulance

  throbbing on the brink ebb of sighs

  then I hug me below among the canaille

  until a guttersnipe blast his cernèd eyes

  demanding 'ave I done with the Mirror

  I stump off in a fearful rage under Married Men's Quarters

  Bloody Tower

  and afar off at all speed screw me up Wren's giant bully

  and curse the day caged panting on the platform

  under the flaring urn

  I was not born Defoe

  but in Ken Wood

  who shall find me

  my brother the fly

  the common housefly

  sidling out of darkness into light

  fastens on his place in the sun

  whets his six legs

  revels in his planes his poisers

  it is the autumn of his life

  he could not serve typhoid and mammon

  Serena II

  this clonic earth

  see-saw she is blurred in sleep

  she is fat half dead the rest is free-wheeling

  part the black shag the pelt

  is ashen woad

  snarl and howl in the wood wake all the birds

  hound the harlots out of the ferns

  this damfool twilight threshing in the brake

  bleating to be bloodied

  this crapulent hush

  tear its heart out

  in her dreams she trembles again

  way back in the dark old days panting

  in the claws of the Pins in the stress of her hour

  the bag writhes she thinks she is dying

  the light fails it is time to lie down

  Clew Bay vat of xanthic flowers

  Croagh Patrick waned Hindu to spite a pilgrim

  she is ready she has lain down above all the islands of glory

  straining now this Sabbath evening of garlands

  with a yo-heave-ho of able-bodied swans

  out from the doomed land their reefs of tresses

  in a hag she drops her young

  the whales in Blacksod Bay are dancing

  the asphodels come running the flags after

  she thinks she is dying she is ashamed

  she took me up on to a watershed

  whence like the rubrics of a childhood

  behold Meath shining through a chink in the hills

  posses of larches there is no going back on

  a rout of tracks and streams fleeing to the sea

  kindergartens of steeples and then the harbour

  like a woman making to cover her breasts

  and left me

  with whatever trust of panic we went out

  with so much shall we return

  there shall be no loss of panic between a man and his dog

  bitch though he be

  sodden packet of Churchman

  muzzling the cairn

  it is worse than dream

  the light randy slut can't be easy

  this clonic earth

  all these phantoms shuddering out of focus

  it is useless to close the eyes

  all the chords of the earth broken like a woman pianist's

  the toads abroad again on their rounds

  sidling up to their snares

  the fairy-tales of Meath ended

  so say your prayers
now and go to bed

  your prayers before the lamps start to sing behind the larches

  here at these knees of stone

  then to bye-bye on the bones

  Serena III

  fix this pothook of beauty on this palette

  you never know it might be final

  or leave her she is paradise and then

  plush hymens on your eyeballs

  or on Butt Bridge blush for shame

  the mixed declension of those mammae

  cock up thy moon thine and thine only

  up up up to the star of evening

  swoon upon the arch-gasometer

  on Misery Hill brand-new carnation

  swoon upon the little purple

  house of prayer

  something heart of Mary

  the Bull and Pool Beg that will never meet

  not in this world

  whereas dart away through the cavorting scapes

  bucket o'er Victoria Bridge that's the idea

  slow down slink down the Ringsend Road

  Irishtown Sandymount puzzle find the Hell Fire

  the Merrion Flats scored with a thrillion sigmas

  Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour His Finger

  girls taken strippin that's the idea

  on the Bootersgrad breakwind and water

  the tide making the dun gulls in a panic

  the sands quicken in your hot heart

  hide yourself not in the Rock keep on the move

  keep on the move

  Malacoda

  thrice he came

  the undertaker's man

  impassible behind his scutal bowler

  to measure

  is he not paid to measure

  this incorruptible in the vestibule

  this malebranca knee-deep in the lilies

  Malacoda knee-deep in the lilies

  Malacoda for all the expert awe

  that felts his perineum mutes his signal

  sighing up through the heavy air

  must it be it must be it must be

  find the weeds engage them in the garden

  hear she may see she need not

  to coffin

  with assistant ungulata

  find the weeds engage their attention

  hear she must see she need not

  to cover

  to be sure cover cover all over

  your targe allow me hold your sulphur