A shilling life will give you all the facts:How Father beat him, how he ran away,What were the struggles of his youth, what actsMade him the greatest figure of his dayOf how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea:Some of the last researchers even writeLove made him weep his pints like you and me.With all his honours on, he sighed for one,Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;Did little jobs about the house with skillAnd nothing else; could whistle; would sit stillOr potter round the garden; answered someOf his long marvelous letters but kept none
The Ship
All streets are brightly lit; our city is kept clean;Her Third-Class deal from greasy packs, her First bid high;Her beggars banished to the bows have never seenWhat can be done in state-rooms: no one asks why.Lovers are writing latters, athletes playing ball,One doubts the virtue, one the beauty of his wife,A boy's ambitious: perhaps the Captain hates us all;Someone perhaps is leading a civilised life.Slowly our Western culture in full pomp progressesOver the barren plains of the sea; somewhere aheadA septic East, odd fowl and flowers, odder dresses:Somewhere a strange and shrewd To-morrow goes to bed,Planning a test for men from Europe; no one guessesWho will be most ashamed, who richer, and who dead.
"O, Tell Me The Truth About Love"
Some say that love 's a little boy, And some say it's a bird,Some say it makes the world go round, And some say that's absurd,And when I asked the man next-door, Who looked as if he knew,His wife got very cross indeed, And said it wouldn't do. Does it look like a pair of pyjamas, Or the ham in a temperance hotel? Does its odour remind one of llamas, Or has it a comforting smell? Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is, Or soft as eiderdown fluff? Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges? O tell me the truth about love.Our history books refer to it In cryptic little notes.It's quite a common topic on The Transatlantic boats;I've found the subject mentioned in Account of suicides,And even seen it scribbled on The back of railway-guides. Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian, Or boom like a military band?Could one give a first-rate imitation On a saw or a Steinway Grand?Is it's singing at parties a riot? Does it only like classical stuff?Will it stop when one wants to be quiet? O tell me the truth about love.I looked inside the summer-house; It wasn't ever there:I tried the Thames at Maidenhead, And Brighton's bracing air.I don't know what the blackbird sang, Or what the tulip said;But it wasn't in the chicken-run, Or underneath the bed.Can it pull extraordinary faces? Is it usually sick on a swing?Does it spend all its time at the races, Or fiddling with pieces of string?Has it views of its own about money? Does it think Patriotism enough?Are its stories vulgar but funny? O tell me the truth about love.When it comes, will it come without warning Just as I'm picking my nose?Will it knock on my door in the morning, Or tread in the bus on my toes?Will it come like a change in the weather? Will its greeting be courteous or rough?Will it alter my life altogether?O tell me the truth about love.
Their Lonely Betters
As I listened from a beach-chair in the shadeTo all the noises that my garden made,It seemed to me only proper that wordsShould be withheld from vegetables and birds.A robin with no Christian name ran throughThe Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,And rustling flowers for some third party waitedTo say which pairs, if any, should get mated.Not one of them was capable of lying,There was not one which knew that it was dyingOr could have with a rhythm or a rhymeAssumed responsibility for time.Let them leave language to their lonely bettersWho count some days and long for certain letters;We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:Words are for those with promises to keep.
Shorts
Pick a quarrel, go to war,Leave the hero in the bar;Hunt the lion, climb the peak:No one guesses you are weak.The friends of the born nurseAre always getting worse.I'm beginning to lose patienceWith my personal relations:They are not deep,And they are not cheap.I'm for freedom because I mistrust the Censor in office,But if I held the job, my! how severe I should be!When he is wellShe gives him hell;But she's a brickWhen he is sick.Those who will not reasonPerish in the act;Those who will not actPerish for that reason.Let us honor if we canThe vertical man,Though we value noneBut the horizontal one.Private facesIn public placesAre wiser and nicerThan public facesIn private places.The conversation of birdsSay very little,But mean a great deal.Among the mammalsOnly Man has earsThat can display no emotion.In moments of joyAll of us wish we possessedA tail we could wag.The shame in ageingis not that Desire should fail(Who mourns for somethinghe no longer needs?): it isThat someone else must be told.The tyrant's device:Whatever is PosiibleIs Necessary.Passing Beautystill delights him,but he no longerhas to turn round.Does God ever judge usby appearances?I suspect that He does.Today two poems begged to be written: I had to refuse them.Sorry, no longer, my dear! Sorry, my precious, not yet!Only look in the mirror to detect a removable blamish,As of the permanent ones already you know quite enough.God never makes knots,But is expert, if asked to,At untying them.A poet's hope: to be,Like some valley cheese,Local, but prized elsewhere.
WORDS
A sentence uttered makes a world appearWhere all things happen as it says they do;We doubt the speaker, not the tongue we hear:Words have no word for words that are not true.Syntactically, though, it must be clear;One cannot change the subject half-way through,Nor alter tenses to appease the ear:Arcadian tales are hard-luck stories too.But should we want to gossip all the time,Were fact not fiction for us at its best,Or find a charm in syllables that rhyme,Were not our fate by verbal chance expressed,As rustics in a ring-dance pantomimeThe Knight at some lone cross-roads of his quest?
Uncle Henry
When the Flyin’ Scot [138]fills for shootin’, I go southward,wisin’ after coffee, leavin’Lady Starkie.Weady for some fun,visit yearly Wome, Damascus,in Mowocco look for fwesh a —— musin’ places.Where I’ll find a fwend,don’t you know, a charmin’ creature,like a Gweek God and devoted:how delicious!All they have they bwing,Abdul, Nino, Manfwed, Kosta:here’s to women for they bear suchlovely kiddies!
138
Flyin’ Scot = Flying Scotchman = "Летучий шотландец" (экспресс Лондон — Эдинбург). Сезон охоты на дичь в Англии и Шотландии длится с сентября по январь. Так что в первых строках дядюшка говорит о наступлении осени
Adolescence
"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters."
By landscape reminded once of his mother's figureThe mountain heights he remembers get bigger and biggerWith the finest of mapping pens he fondly tracesAll the family names on the familiar places.In a green pasture straying, he walks by still waters;Surely a swan he seems to earth's unwise daughters,Bending a beautiful head, worshipping not lying,'Dear' the dear beak in the dear concha crying.Under the trees the summer bands were playing;'Dear boy, be brave as these roots', he heard them saying:Carries the good news gladly to a world in danger,Is ready to argue, he smiles, with any stranger.And yet this prophet, homing the day is ended,Receives odd welcome from the country he so defended:The band roars 'Coward, Coward', in his human fever,The giantess shuffles near, cries 'Deceiver'.
139
"Он покоит меня на злачных пажитях и водит меня к водам тихим."
(Псалтирь 22:2)
Are You There?
Each lover has some theory of his ownAbout the difference between the acheOf being with his love, and being alone:Why what, when dreaming, is dear flesh and boneThat really stirs the senses, when awake,Appears a simulacrum of his own.Narcissus disbelieves in the unknown;He cannot join his image in the lakeSo long as he assumes he is alone.The child, the waterfall, the fire, the stone,Are always up to mischief, though, and takeThe universe for granted as their own.The elderly, like Proust, are always proneTo think of love as a subjective fake;The more they love, the more they feel alone.Whatever view we hold, it must be shownWhy every lover has a wish to makeSome kind of otherness his own:Perhaps, in fact, we never are alone.
Blues (For Hedli Anderson)
Ladies and gentlemen, sitting here,Eating and drinking and warming a chair,Feeling and thinking and drawing your breath,Who’s sitting next to you? It may be Death.As a high-stepping blondie with eyes of blueIn the subway, on beaches, Death looks at you;And married or single or young or old,You’ll become a sugar daddy and do as you’re told.Death is a G-man. You may think yourself smart,But he’ll send you to the hot-seat or plug you through the heart;He may be a slow worker, but in the endHe’ll get you for the crime of being born, my friend.Death as a doctor has first-class degrees;The world is on his panel; he charges no fees;He listens to your chest, says — "You’re breathing. That’s bad.But don’t worry; we’ll soon see to that, my lad."Death knocks at your door selling real estate,The value of which will not depreciate;It’s easy, it’s convenient, it’s old world. You’ll sign,Whatever your income, on the dotted line.Death as a teacher is simply grand;The dumbest pupil can understand.He has only one subject and that is the Tomb;But no one ever yawns or asks to leave the room.So whether you’re standing broke in the rain,Or playing poker or drinking champagne,Death’s looking for you, he’s already on the way,So look out for him tomorrow or perhaps today.
Detective Story
For who is ever quite without his landscape,The straggling village street, the house in trees,All near the church, or else the gloomy town house,The one with the Corinthian pillars, orThe tiny workmanlike flat: in any caseA home, the centre where the three or four thingsThat happen to a man do happen? Yes,Who cannot draw the map of his life, shade inThe little station where he meets his lovesAnd says good-bye continually, and mark the spotWhere the body of his happiness was first discovered?An unknown tramp? A rich man? An enigma alwaysAnd with a buried past but when the truth,The truth about our happiness comes outHow much it owed to blackmail and philandering.The rest's traditional. All goes to plan:The feud between the local common senseAnd that exasperating brilliant intuitionThat's always on the spot by chance before us;All goes to plan, both lying and confession,Down to the thrilling final chase, the kill.Yet on the last page just a lingering doubt:That verdict, was it just? The judge's nerves,That clue, that protestation from the gallows,And our own smile… why yes…But time is always killed. Someone must pay forOur loss of happiness, our happiness itself.