Ara vus prec — Reading Companion

Defunctive music under sea Passed seaward with the passing bell Slowly: the god Hercules Had left him, that had loved him well.

The horses, under the axletree Beat up the dawn from Istria With even feet. Her shuttered barge Burned on the water all the day.

But this or such was Bleistein’s way: A saggy bending of the knees And elbows, with the palms turned out, Chicago Semite Viennese.

A lustreless protrusive eye Stares from the protozoic slime At a perspective of Canaletto. The smoky candle end of time

Declines. On the Rialto once. The rats are underneath the piles. The jew is underneath the lot. Money in furs. The boatman smiles,

Princess Volupine extends A meagre, blue-nailed, phthisic hand To climb the waterstair. Lights, lights, She entertains Sir Ferdinand

Klein. Who clipped the lion’s wings And flea’d his rump and pared his claws? —Thought Burbank, meditating on Time’s ruins, and the seven laws.

SWEENEY AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES

ὤμοι, πέπληγμαι καιρίαν πγελὴν ἔσω

WHY SHOULD I SPEAK OF THE NIGHTINGALE?

THE NIGHTINGALE SINGS OF ADULTEROUS WRONG.

Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees Letting his arms hang down to laugh, The zebra stripes along his jaw Swelling to maculate giraffe.

The circles of the stormy moon Slide westward to the River Plate, Death and the Raven drift above And Sweeney guards the horned gate.

Gloomy Orion and the Dog Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas; The person in the Spanish cape Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees

Slips and pulls the table cloth Overturns a coffee cup, Reorganised upon the floor She yawns and draws a stocking up;

The silent man in mocha brown Sprawls at the window sill and gapes; The waiter brings in oranges, Bananas, figs and hot-house grapes;

The silent vertebrate exhales, Contracts and concentrates, withdraws; Rachel née Rabinovitch Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

She and the lady in the cape Are suspect, thought to be in league; Therefore the man with heavy eyes Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,

Leaves the room and reappears Outside the window, leaning in, Branches of wistaria Circumscribe a golden grin;

The host with someone indistinct Converses at the door apart, The nightingales are singing near The convent of the Sacred Heart,

And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud And let their liquid siftings fall To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

_And the trees about me Let them be dry & leafless; let the rocks Groan with continual surges; & behind me Make all a desolation. Look, Look, wenches!_

Paint me a cavernous waste shore Cast in the unstilled Cyclades, Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.

Display me Æolus above Reviewing the insurgent gales Which tangle Ariadne’s hair And swell with haste the perjured sails.

Morning stirs the feet and hands (Nausicaa and Polypheme); Gesture of orang-outang Rises from the sheets in steam.

This withered root of knots of hair Slitted below and gashed with eyes, This oval O cropped out with teeth; The sickle motion from the thighs

Jackknifes upward at the knees Then straightens down from heel to hip Pushing the framework of the bed And clawing at the pillow slip.

Sweeney addressed full-length to shave Broadbottomed, pink from nape to base, Knows the female temperament And wipes the suds around his face.

(The lengthened shadow of a man Is history, says Emerson, Who had not seen the silhouette Of Sweeney straddled in the sun).

Tests the razor on his leg Waiting until the shriek subsides; The epileptic on the bed Curves backward, clutching at her sides.

The ladies of the corridor Find themselves involved, disgraced; Call witness to their principles Deprecate the lack of taste

Observing that hysteria Might easily be misunderstood; Mrs. Turner intimates It does the house no sort of good.

But Doris towelled from the bath Enters padding on broad feet, Bringing sal volatile And a glass of brandy neat.

MR. ELIOT’S SUNDAY MORNING SERVICE

“_Look, look master, here comes two of the religious caterpillars_”. JEW OF MALTA

Polyphiloprogenitive The sapient sutlers of the Lord Drift across the window-panes. In the beginning was the Word.

In the beginning was the Word, Superfetation of το εν And at the mensual turn of time Produced enervate Origen.

A painter of the Umbrian school Designed upon a gesso ground The nimbus of the Baptised God. The wilderness is cracked and browned

But through the water pale and thin Still shine the unoffending feet And there above the painter set The father and the Paraclete.

The sable presbyters approach The avenue of penitence; The young are red and pustular Clutching piaculative pence,

Under the penitential gates Sustained by staring Seraphim Where the souls of the devout Burn invisible and dim.