Improved and up to date—sublime
Quite at home in the universe
Shaking cocktails on a hearse.
It’s Broadway after dark!
Here let a clownesque be sounded
on the sandboard and bones.
15
If you’re walking on the beach
When the girls are ready for a swim
You hear everyone remark
Look at him!
You will find me looking them over
20
Just out of reach
First born child of the absolute
Neat, complete,
In the quintessential flannel suit.
I guess there’s nothing the matter with us!
25
—But say, just be serious,
Do you think that I’m all right?
[Commentary I 1111–14 · Textual History II 572–73]
IV
In the last contortions of the dance
The milkmaids and the village girls incline
To the smiling boys with rattan canes
Withdraw, advance;
5
The hero captures the Columbine
The audience rises hat in hand
And disdains
To watch the final saraband
The discovered masquerades
10
And the cigarettes and compliments
But through the painted colonnades
There falls a shadow dense, immense
It’s the comedian again
Explodes in laughter, spreads his toes
15
(The most expressive, real of men)
Concentred into vest and nose.
The Triumph of Bullshit
Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited
If you consider my merits are small
Etiolated, alembicated,
Orotund, tasteless, fantastical,
5
Monotonous, crotchety, constipated,
Impotent galamatias
Affected, possibly imitated,
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.
Ladies, who find my intentions ridiculous
10
Awkward insipid and horridly gauche
Pompous, pretentious, ineptly meticulous
Dull as the heart of an unbaked brioche
Floundering versicles feebly versiculous
Often attenuate, frequently crass
15
Attempts at emotions that turn out isiculous,
For Christs sake stick it up your ass.
[Commentary I 1114–15 · Textual History II 573]
Ladies who think me unduely vociferous
Amiable cabotin making a noise
That people may cry out ‘this stuff is too stiff for us’—
20
Ingenuous child with a box of new toys
Toy lions carnivorous, cannons fumiferous
Engines vaporous—all this will pass;
Quite innocent—‘he only wants to make shiver us.’
For Christs sake stick it up your ass.
25
And when thyself with silver foot shalt pass
Among the Theories scattered on the grass
Take up my good intentions with the rest
And then for Christs sake stick them up your ass.
Fourth Caprice in Montparnasse
We turn the corner of the street
And again
Here is a landscape grey with rain
On black umbrellas, waterproofs,
5
And dashing from the slated roofs
Into a mass of mud and sand.
Behind a row of blackened trees
The dripping plastered houses stand
Like mendicants without regrets
10
For unpaid debts
Hand in pocket, undecided,
Indifferent if derided.
[Commentary I 1115–16 · Textual History II 573–74]
Among such scattered thoughts as these
We turn the corner of the street;
15
But why are we so hard to please?
Inside the gloom
1
Inside the gloom
Of a garret room
2
The constellations
Took up their stations
3
5
Menagerie
Of the August sky
4
The Scorpion
All alone
5
With his tail on fire
10
Danced on a wire
6
And Cassiopea
Explained the Pure Idea
[Commentary I 1116–18 · Textual History II 574]
7
The Major Bear
Balanced a chair
8
15
To show the direction
Of intellection
9
And Pegasus the winged horse
Explained the scheme of Vital Force
10
And Cetus too, by way of a satire
20
Explained the relation of life to matter
11
And the Pole Star while the debate was rife
Explained the use of a Place in Life
12
Then Bootes, unsettled
And visibly nettled
13
25
Said Are not all these questions
Brought up by indigestions?
14
So they cried and chattered
As if it mattered.
[Commentary I 1118–19 · Textual History II 574]
Entretien dans un parc
[Was it a morning or an afternoon
That has such things to answer for!]
We walked along, under the April trees,
With their uncertainties
5
Struggling intention that becomes intense.
I wonder if it is too late or soon
For the resolution that our lives demand.
With a sudden vision of incompetence
I seize her hand
10
In silence and we walk on as before.
And apparently the world has not been changed;
Nothing has happened that demands revision.
She smiles, as if, perhaps, surprised to see
So little her composure disarranged:
15
It is not that life has taken a new decision—
It has simply happened so to her and me.
And yet this while we have not spoken a word
It becomes at last a bit ridiculous
And irritating. All the scene’s absurd!
20
She and myself and what has come to us
And what we feel, or not;
And my exasperation. Round and round, as in a bubbling pot
That will not cool
Simmering upon the fire, piping hot
25
Upon the fire of ridicule.
—Up a blind alley, stopped with broken walls
Papered with posters, chalked with childish scrawls!—
>
[Commentary I 1119–21 · Textual History II 575]
But if we could have given ourselves the slip
What explanations might have been escaped—
30
No stumbling over ends unshaped.
We are helpless. Still … it was unaccountable … odd …
Could not one keep ahead, like ants or moles?
Some day, if God—
But then, what opening out of dusty souls!
Interlude: in a Bar
Across the room the shifting smoke
Settles around the forms that pass
Pass through or clog the brain;
Across the floors that soak
5
The
dregs from broken glass
The walls fling back the scattered streams
Of life that seems
Visionary, and yet hard;
Immediate, and far;
10
But hard …
Broken and scarred
Like dirty broken fingernails
Tapping the bar.
Bacchus and Ariadne:
2nd Debate between the Body and Soul
I saw their lives curl upward like a wave
And break. And after all it had not broken—
It might have broken even across the grave
Of tendencies unknown and questions never spoken.
5
The drums of life were beating on their skulls
The floods of life were swaying in their brains
[Commentary I 1121–24 · Textual History II 575]
A ring of silence closes round me and annuls
These sudden insights that have marched across
Like railway-engines over desert plains.
10
The world of contact sprang up like a blow
The wind beyond the world had passed without a trace
I saw that Time began again its slow
Attrition on a hard resistant face.
Yet to burst out at last, ingenuous and pure
15
Surprised, but knowing—it is triumph unendurable to miss!
Not to set free the purity that clings
To the cautious midnight of its chrysalis
Lies in its cell and meditates its wings
Nourished in earth and stimulated by manure.
20
—I am sure it is like this
I am sure it is this
I am sure.
The smoke that gathers blue and sinks
The smoke that gathers blue and sinks
The torpid smoke of rich cigars
The torpid after-dinner drinks
The overpowering immense
5
After dinner insolence
Of matter ‘going by itself’
Existence just about to die
Stifled with glutinous liqueurs
Till hardly a sensation stirs
10
The overoiled machinery …
>
[Commentary I 1124–26 · Textual History II 575–76]
What, you want action?
Some attraction?
Now begins
The piano and the flute and two violins
15
Someone sings
A lady of almost any age
But chiefly breast and rings
‘Throw your arms around me—Aint you glad you found me’
Still that’s hardly strong enough—
20
Here’s a negro (teeth and smile)
Has a dance that’s quite worth while
That’s the stuff!
(Here’s your gin
Now begin!)
He said: this universe is very clever
He said: this universe is very clever
The scientists have laid it out on paper
Each atom goes on working out its law, and never
Can cut an unintentioned caper.
5
He said: it is a geometric net
And in the middle, like a syphilitic spider
The Absolute sits waiting, till we get
All tangled up and end ourselves inside her.
He said: ‘this crucifixion was dramatic
10
He had not passed his life on officechairs
They did not crucify him in an attic
Up six abysmal flights of broken stairs.’
<
[Commentary I 1126–28 · Textual History II 576–77]
He said I am put together with a pot and scissors
Out of old clippings
15
No one took the trouble to make an article.
Interlude in London
We hibernate among the bricks
And live across the window panes
With marmalade and tea at six
Indifferent to what the wind does
5
Indifferent to sudden rains
Softening last year’s garden plots
And apathetic, with cigars
Careless, while down the street the spring goes
Inspiring mouldy flowerpots,
10
And broken flutes at garret windows.
Ballade pour la grosse Lulu
I
The Outlook gives an interview
By Lyman Abbot kindly sent
Entitled ‘What it means to You
That God is in his Firmament.’
5
The papers say ‘300 Boers
On Roosevelt have paid a call,’
But, My Lulu, ‘Put on your rough red drawers
And come to the Whore House Ball!’
[Commentary I 1128–31 · Textual History II 577]
II
10
An interview from Booker T.
Entitled ‘Up from Possum Stew!’
Or ‘How I set the nigger free!’
The papers say ‘the learned horse
Jim Key, was murdered in his stall.’
15
But My Lulu ‘Put on your rough red drawers
And come to the Whore House Ball!’
III
The Outlook gives an interview
From Rockefellar, fresh & frank,
Entitled ‘How my Money grew’
20
Or ‘Jesus as a Savings Bank.’
The papers say ‘South Boston scores
On Roxbury at basket ball’
But, My Lulu, ‘Put on your Rough Red Drawers
And come to the Whore House Ball.’
IV
25
The Outlook gives an interview
From Harvard’s great ex-president
Called ‘Oh if only people knew
That Virtue doesn’t cost a cent!’
The papers say ‘For hard wood floors
30
TURPTINO WAX is best of all’.
But My Lulu ‘Put on your rough red drawers
And come to the Whore House Ball!’
[Commentary I 1131 · Textual History II 577–78]
The Little Passion
From ‘An Agony in the Garret’
Upon those stifling August nights
I know he used to walk the streets
Now following the lines of lights
Or diving into dark retreats
5
Or following the lines of lights
And knowing well to what they lead:
To one inevitable cross
Whereon our souls are pinned, and bleed.
The Burnt Dancer
sotta la pioggia dell’ aspro martiro
Within the yellow ring of flame
A black moth through the night
Caught in the circle of desire
Expiates his heedless flight
5
With beat of wings that do not tire
Distracted from more vital values
To golden values of the flame
What is the virtue that he shall use
In a world too strange for pride or shame?
10
A world too strange for praise or blame
Too strange for good or evil:
How drawn here from a distant star
For mirthless dance and silent revel
O danse mon papillon noir!
>
[Commentary I 1132–34 · Textual History II 578–79]
15
The tropic odours of your name
From Mozambique or Nicobar
Fall on the ragged teeth of flame
Like perfumed oil upon the waters
What is the secret you have brought us
20
Children’s voices in little corners
Whimper whimper through the night
Of what disaster do you warn us
Agony nearest to delight?
Dance fast dance faster
25
There is no mortal disaster
The destiny that may be leaning
Toward us from your hidden star
Is grave, but not with human meaning
O danse mon papillon noir!
30
Within the circle of my brain
The twisted dance continues.
The patient acolyte of pain,
The strong beyond our human sinews,
The singèd reveller of the fire,
35
Caught on those horns that toss and toss,
Losing the end of his desire
Desires completion of his loss.
O strayed from whiter flames that burn not
O vagrant from a distant star
40
O broken guest that may return not
O danse danse mon papillon noir!
[Commentary I 1135–37 · Textual History II 579]
Oh little voices of the throats of men
Oh little voices of the throats of men
That come between the singer and the song;
Oh twisted little hands of men held up
To rend the beautiful and curse the strong.