In the Light Of Read online

  There’s a troupe of strolling players and their motley brood

  glimpsed on the road through the trees at the edge of the wood.

  And then, when you’re hungry and thirsty, there’s always

  somebody to chase you away.

  5

  I am the saint at prayer on the terrace skyline

  like the beasts which graze down to the sea of Palestine.

  I am the scholar in the armchair in the dark eyrie.

  Rain and branches beat against the casements of the library.

  I am the wanderer of the high road through

  the blasted dwarfish woods; the roar of sluices

  deafens my footsteps. For a long time I sit stunned

  by the melancholy gold laundry of the setting sun.

  I might well be the child abandoned on the pier

  floating out to the high seas, the little muleteer

  following the mountain track which climbs to the sky.

  The paths are rough, hillocks spiked with gorse nearby.

  How still the air! How far away the springs and birds!

  This must be the end of the world. Ever onwards upwards.

  6

  When the bit comes to the bit, let them rent

  me this tomb covered in bumpy whitewashed cement,

  deep down in the earth. I lean my elbow on

  the desk. I read by lamplight, fool enough to con

  these boring books again. Enormously remote

  above my subterranean salon, houses send down roots,

  fogs gather. The muck is red or black. Monstrous

  city, endless night! Not so far above, the noxious

  sewers. Their walls the very thickness of the globe.

  Chasms of azure, walls of fire? I send a probe

  into these levels, maybe to discover this is where

  moons encounter comets, and pterodactyls whirr.

  In hours of bitterness I imagine spheres of sapphire

  and of metal. I am master of silence. I hear no choir.

  Why then, for all the cynicism that I vaunt,

  should the ghost of a vent pale in the corner of my vault?

  What Goes Round (Ornières)

  To the right, the summer dawn awakes the leaves,

  the mists, the noises of the park, and pales the palings’ sheaves.

  And the slopes to the left hold in their violet shadows

  the thousand quickening ruts of the dewy road.

  Fairytale procession! Wagons loaded with animals

  of gilded wood, rainbow-hued poles and awnings and panels,

  all drawn by twenty galloping dappled circus horses, men

  and children bouncing on marvellous animals — twice times ten

  vehicles bedecked with flowers, ornate as coaches from a fairy tale,

  brimming with children dressed up for a suburban pastoral —

  coffins under ebon canopies each swaying their pair

  of black plumes to the trot of huge blue and black mares.

  Curtain Raiser (Parade)

  Most sturdy rogues. Several of them have ripped you off.

  Such little needs they have, no rush to take advantage of

  you, knowing what they do about you. What mature men!

  Eyes blank as the summer night, eyes of energumen,

  red and black and tricoloured, steel studded with gold stars;

  faces distorted, leaden, pale, aflame. Burlesque bazaar!

  Cruel, gaudy swank and swagger. Some are young — how

  would they regard Cherubino? — well endowed

  with terrifying voices. A bunch of very dangerous clowns,

  they’re sent to take it up the back way in the nearest town,

  dressed to kill. O most brutal leering paradise

  of smirk and sneer! Not to be compared with your prize

  fakirs or your average buffoon. In furbelows and frills

  like something from a bad dream, they dance quadrilles,

  play romances, tragedies, villains, demi-gods and queens

  in histories or religions that have never been.

  Chinese, Hottentots, bohemians and nitwits,

  Molochs, lizards of the lounge, hyenas, little squits,

  they mix up clapped-out schticks with sleazy poses,

  or the latest sketch; sing girly arias on tippy-toes.

  Master jugglers, they transpose the fore to aft,

  and cunningly deploy electrifying stagecraft.

  Eyes blaze, rouge weeps, bones stretch, blood sings.

  Whether travesty or terror, they aim to do their thing —

  which lasts a minute or whole months on end.

  And who’s behind this wild curtain raiser? I, my friend.

  Cities (Villes)

  The official acropolis exceeds the most

  colossal modern barbarity, not to boast

  of the dull light ever leaching from the grey sky,

  the imperial glare of the buildings. Snow lies

  all the year round. A singular enormity

  of awful taste has reproduced by committee

  the architectures of the Ancient World. I go

  to shows of paintings whose quality is zero,

  in premises the size of twenty Hampton Courts.

  ‘Simply not to be missed’, according to reports.

  A Norwegian Nebuchadnezzar has constructed

  the marble ministerial staircase as instructed;

  even the lackeys, prouder than Brahmans, look down

  their noses at you, and I tremble at the frown

  of the colossal doormen, not to talk of foremen.

  And can you find your way around? Ask the hackney-men —

  they’ll go on all day about closed squares, cul-de-sacs,

  security barriers. It fairly puts their backs

  up, I can tell you. As for the parks, here you find

  ‘Primitive nature organized by high art’. Mind

  you, it’s inexplicable, this part of the town:

  a boatless arm of the sea shivers its sleet-blue gown

  between quays decked out with giant candelabra.

  ‘Ministry of Works’: the usual palabra.

  A little pontoon leads you to a postern gate

  right under the dome of ‘Sainte-Chapelle’. It’s really great:

  diameter of said dome, fifteen thousand feet.

  Having said that, parts of it are still incomplete.

  The brass footbridges offer certain points of view

  from platforms and stairs from which I thought I’d see through

  to the depths of the acropolis. Here’s the wonder

  I could not discover: how a man might wander

  on all the other levels above or below

  the city. Where might they be found? Which way to go?

  For the contemporary visitor, to check

  his whereabouts would take at least an all-day trek.

  The business district is a circus, uniformly styled,

  extensive galleries and arcades undefiled

  by shops, though the snow has been trampled on the roadside:

  nabobs, rare as London Sunday morning walkers, stride

  towards a diamond coach. Several divans of red velvet;

  polar drinks are served, at prices variably elevated —

  anything from eight hundred to eight thousand

  rupees; more, if you happen to come from Iceland.

  Are there theatres to be found in this zone of snow?

  Maybe the boutiques put on the odd, small, sordid show.

  And there must be a police force, though what strange laws

  apply here are beyond me. It’s given me some pause,

  trying to conceive of what adventurers venture here.

  It must be said the suburb has an atmosphere

  as elegant as a beautiful Paris street. Democrats

  are but a hundred strong; the houses are detached:

  the suburb peters out biz
arrely in the woods of what

  they call ‘The County’. There are groves abounding in foxtrot,

  immense plantations yielding all kinds of delight,

  where untamed gentlemen hunt through the journals by night,

  scanning for gossip or sport by the newly invented light.

  Être Belle (Being beauteous)

  Against a snow, a Being Beautiful of great size.

  Death-whistles and circles of mute music give rise

  to this adorable hulk, and make it get up

  spectre-like to loom and quiver. Seen in close-up,

  wounds of black and scarlet burst through the haughty flesh.

  The colours of real life shimmer, flit and flash

  about this apparition in the builder’s yard.

  Shudders grumble thunder as — electric-charged

  with spits and blips of deadly static that the world,

  receding ever further like a marble swirled

  in space behind us, hurls against our Mother

  of Beauty — she backs off, straightens, and becomes another.

  And oh! our bones are clothed anew with flesh and sex.

  O ashen face, O hair escutcheon, what comes next?

  The cannon against which I am saboteur

  amid the clash of trees and weightless air.

  The Twilight of History

  (Soir historique)

  In whatever evening the naïve tourist happens

  to be, escaping from our economic horrors,

  a master’s hand awakes the spinet of the meadows.

  They’re playing cards in the depths of the pond; posed

  in the mirror are cuties and queens; there are female

  saints, veils, threads of harmony, legendary scales

  of colour iridescent in the setting sun.

  He shudders as hunt and horde rush by. A gun

  sounds. Hullaballoo. Drama drips on the stage of grass.

  Watch the ceiling people bang their heads against the glass!

  To his captive vision, Germany scaffolds upwards

  to the moon; Tatar deserts catch fire; blizzard

  revolutions sweep Celestial China; detailed

  by stairs and armchairs cut into the rock, a little world, pale

  and flat — Africa the Occident — will come to pass.

  Afterwards, the ballet of familiar seas and nights, worthless

  chemistry and empty arias. The same small-town

  bourgeois magic wherever the mail boat sets you down.

  Even the most elementary physicist feels

  it’s impossible to endure this egotistical zeal,

  the mist of physical regret, which even to observe

  is more than any sane tellurian deserves.

  No! The moment of the boiler room, of rising seas,

  of subterranean stirrings, of the planet seized

  by conflagration, and the consequent exterminations,

  certainties so blithely skimmed by Biblical interpretation,

  by the Norms … we need serious people to see through it.

  Though that’s hardly the stuff of legend, I admit.

  The Point (Promontoire)

  Golden dawn and shivering evening find our ship

  riding just off this villa and its dependent townships

  which comprise a promontory extensive as Epirus

  or Greater Japan, Arabia and the Peloponnesus!

  Shrines illuminated by returning embassies;

  vast panoramas of the coastal cheveaux-de-frise;

  dunes illustrious with sultry flowers and bacchanals;

  levees of a sleazy Venice, and Carthaginian canals;

  drowsy eruptions of Etnas, flowers and water in crevasses;

  glaciers; wash-houses surrounded by German aspens;

  slopes of magnificent parks; circular façades

  of Grand Hotels in Brooklyn; while their railways, I should add,

  go under, round, and overhang the premises,

  selected from historical examples of naves and apses

  from the most colossal architectural gazebos

  culled from Asia, the Americas and Italy, whose windows,

  lit by champagne, chandeliers and heady breezes, open

  to the whim of travellers and nobles, welcome in

  through daylight hours a host of coastal ritornellos,

  not to mention the most artistic tarentellas,

  all to decorate the grand façades of Promontory Palace.

  High Society (Scènes)

  The Ancient Theatre pursues its musical accords

  and divides its idylls: boulevards of trestle boards.

  A wooden pier extends the length of a stony field

  where the uncouth wander under the naked trees.

  In corridors of black gauze designed by troglodytes,

  pursuing the promenaders under lantern-light

  and leaves, bird actors swoop onto a pontoon

  of masonry hitched to a flotilla of balloons

  pitching and yawing amid the archipelago

  of crowded jolly boats and pleasure-cruising bateaux.

  Lyric scenes accompanied by drum and flute

  look down from niches intricate and convolute

  contrived upon the ceilings of a modern club

  or hall of Orient, or renovated pub.

  The Faery Spectacle manoeuvres on a summit

  of the amphitheatre in a wooden thicket,

  or sings and shimmies for the ignorami

  in the shadow of the waving forest’s origami

  which overhangs the ridge of cultivated fields.

  On this our stage, the Opéra-Comique can be seen

  between the gallery and footlights. What a scene.

  Antic (Antique)

  Elegant son of Pan! About your forehead crowned

  with wild flowerets and berries, you move around

  those precious orbs, your eyes. Stained with brown lees

  of wine, your cheeks grow hollow. Your fangs gleam.

  Your chest is a lyre, plucked strings shivering the blond hair

  of your arms. Your heart pulses in the dark lair

  of your belly. Where sleeps the double sex. Walk through the night

  gently moving that thigh, that second thigh, that left leg …

  Twenty Years A-Growing (Jeunesse)

  I SUNDAY

  Calculus put by, a fallen heaven I recall,

  and memories sidle in to hold the house in thrall:

  the old séance of rap and rhyme, of what goes on

  inside the head, the spirit world, encephalon.

  A horse careers off on the suburban racetrack

  past ploughland, hazel groves, as if on switchback,

  riddled with carbonic plague. Somewhere, who knows where,

  a desperate drama queen laments her last affair —

  improbable desertion. Desperadoes pine

  for pandemonium and drunkenness and crime.

  Along the rivers little children come and go

  in straggling gangs, stifling what little curses they know.

  Let us resume our studies to the rising clatter

  of the workers, and the middle classes’ chatter.

  2 SONNET

  O man of common constitution, was not the flesh

  a fruit hung in the orchard? You come back in a flash,

  O childhood days! Squanderable treasure of the body.

  Which to love, the peril or the power of Psyche?

  The earth had hillsides blossoming with men of art

  and power; and lineage and race inclined your heart

  to crimes and mourning — the world your fortune

  and your peril. But with that labour long since proven,

  you, your calculations!, are no more than your dance

  and voice, unfixed, unforced, though of a double consequence,

  invention and achievement in agreement — reciprocal

  despite the image-empty
universe — of that fraternal

  and discreet humanity. Might and right

  reflect that dance, that voice, only now appreciated.

  3 TWENTY YEARS A-GROWING

  The voices of instruction exiled … all gone sour,

  that physical innocence lost hour after hour …

  adagio. Ah, the infinite egoism

  of adolescence, the studious optimism!

  How full of flowers was the world that summer!