LXXXIV

8th October:

                        If all the grief and tears

                                                            he is dead

all worth, all good

                                                            he is dead

“an’ doan you think he chop an’ change all the time

stubborn az a mule, sah, stubborn as a MULE,

got th’ eastern idea about money”

                                                Thus Senator

“am sure I don’t know what a man like you

            would find to do here”

                                                said Senator

Thus the solons, in Washington,

on the executive, and on the country, a.d. 1939

ye spotted lambe

                        that is both blacke and white

is yeven to us for the eyes’ delight

and now Richardson, Roy Richardson,

                        says he is different

will I mention his name?

and Demattia is checking out.

                        White, Fazzio, Bedell, blessed

Sarnone, two Washingtons (dark) J and M

            Bassier, Starcher, H. Crowder and

no soldier he although his name is Slaughter

this day October the whateverth

                                    bonds and their

                                                            interest

apparently as a basis of issue

and Mr Sinc Lewis has not

                        and Bartók has left us

We will be about as popular as Mr John Adams

and less widely perused

and the he leopard lay on his back playing with straw

in sheer boredom

                        (Memoirs of the Roman zoo)

                                                            in sheer boredom

Incense to Apollo

                                    Carrara

                                                snow on the marble

snow-white

                        against stone-white

on the mountain

and as who passed the gorges between sheer cliffs

as it might be by,

                        where one walks into Spain

                                                                        music

            as it might be at the Peach-blossom Fountain

where are smooth lawns with the clear stream

between them, silver, dividing,

                                    destroyed the whole town

for hiding a woman, fearful Aphrodite

                                    the desert rat said

“when we came out we had

                        80 thousand dollars’ worth”

                                                (“of experience”)

that was from mining

            having spent their capital on equipment

but not cal’lated the time for return

and my old great aunt did likewise

with that too large hotel

but at least she saw damn all Europe

            and rode on that mule in Tangiers

                        and in general had a run for her money

                                    “perhaps more than was in it”

            Under white clouds sky of Pisa

out of all this beauty something must come,

O moon my pin-up,

                                    chronometer

                        these three men full of humaneness (manhood)

                                                or humanity

and as to gradations

who went out of industrials into Government

            when the slump was in the offing

as against whom, prepense, got OUT

in 1938

so as not to be nourished by blood-bath?

when you come to the top of the stairs

                                                            usage   gradations

These are distinctions in clarity

intelligence            these are distinctions

John Adams, the Brothers Adams

                        there is our norm of spirit

our            balance

                        whereto we may pay our

                                                                        homage

                                    Saith Micah:

                                                            Each in the name of . . .

So that looking at the sputtering tank of nicotine and

                        stale whiskey

                                                (on its way out)

Kumrad Bear remarked:

                                    I will believe the American.

                                                                        Berlin 1945

the last appearance of Winston P.M. in that connection

                        and then I asked the sister

of the little swine shepherdess:

and these Americans?

                        do they behave well?

and she: hardly.

                        Hardly, hardly.

and I: worse than Germans?

                        and she: the same, thru the barbed wire

                                                you can, said Stef (Lincoln Steffens)

do nothing with revolutionaries

            until they are at the end of their tether

If the hoar frost grip thy tent

Thou wilt give thanks when night is spent.

LXXXIII

water

WATER and Peace

                                    stemmed all from Neptune

                        hence the

                                                            bas reliefs

Sd Mr Yeats (W. B.) “Nothing affects these people

                                    Except our conversation”

for light

                        is an attribute of fire    and,

wrote the priest in his edition of Scotus:

Cheerfulness    the virtue cheerfulness

the queen stitched King Carolus’ shirts or whatever

                                                greek tags in his excellent verses

                        in fact an excellent poet, Paris

                                    always Pari’

                                                            (Charles the Bald)

                        and you might find a bit of enamel

                        a bit of true blue enamel

                                    on a metal pyx or whatever

            all, that is, light is, or whatever

so they dug up his bones

                        (Simon)

                                    Paradise is not artificial

and Uncle William dawdling around Notre Dame

in search of whatever

                                                paused to admire the symbol

with Notre Dame standing inside it

mermaids, that carving,

            in the drenched tent there is quiet

                                                sered eyes are at rest

            the rain beat as with colour of feldspar

            blue as the flying fish

peace, water                                                WATER

                        the sage

delighteth in water

            the humane man has amity with the hills

as the grass grows by the weirs

                                    thought Uncle William    grieving

as the grass on the roof of St What’s his name

            near “Dog and Cat”

                        is to be your love

it would be about a-level the windows

                        the grass would, or I dare say above that

                        when they bless the wax for the horserace

Formerly

                                    with Maria’s face there in the fresco

                        painted two centuries sooner,

                        at least that

before she wore it

in that family group of about 1820

            not wholly Hardy’s material

                                    or everything flows

as he was standing below the altars

                        of the spirits of rain

            “When every hollow is full

                        it moves forward”

            to the phantom mountain above the cloud

But in the caged panther’s eyes:

                                    “Nothing. Nothing that you can do . . .”

green pool, under green of the jungle,

caged: “Nothing, nothing that you can do.”

Tree nymph, your eyes are like clouds

Nor can who has passed a month in the death cells

            believe in capital punishment

No man who has passed a month in the death cells

            believes in cages for beasts

Tree nymph, your eyes are like the clouds

            When some of the rain has fallen

            and half remains yet to fall

The roots go down to the river’s edge

            and the hidden city moves upward

                        white ivory under the bark

With clouds

                        when the blackberry ripens

and now the new moon

one must count by the dawn star

            Tree Nymph, thy peace is like water

There is September sun on the pools

More things diaphanous

                        the Sun’s daughters lift the mist from the young willows

there is no base seen

                        but the brightness of water            water

the poplar tips float in brightness

only the stockade posts stand

And now the ants seem to stagger

                                    as the dawn sun has trapped their shadows,

this breath wholly covers the mountains

                        it shines and divides

it nourishes by its rectitude

does no injury

overstanding the earth it fills the nine fields

                                                to heaven

Boon companion to equity

            it joins with the process

                        lacking it, there is inanition

When the equities are gathered together

as birds alighting

it springeth up vital

If deeds be not ensheaved and garnered in the heart

there is inanition

            (have I perchance a debt to a man)

that he eat of the barley corn

and move with the seed’s breath

the sun as a golden eye

                        between dark cloud and the mountain

“Don’t fight” said Jane

                        meaning, as before stated, don’t work so hard

don’t

                        not

                        help

                        grow

Old John raced at seventy after his glories

                        and came in long last

and the family eyes stayed the same Adriatic

                        for three generations

and was, I suppose, last month

Will I ever see Venice again?

            or the lights

or the two towers where are the cypress no more

                        or the boats moored off

or the north quai

                                                                        OF TEARS            WEEPING

            and Brother Wasp is building a very neat house

            of four rooms, one shaped like a squat indian bottle

            The wasp, the wasp, mud, swallow system

so that dreaming

                                    cat that with a well timed leap

            could turn the level-shaped door handle

It comes over me that Mr. Walls must be a ten-strike

with the young women

and in the warmth after chill sunrise

an infant, green as new grass

has stuck its head or tip

out of Mrs. Wasp’s bottle

mint springs up again

                        in spite of Jones’ rodents

as had the clover by the gorilla cage

            with a four-leaf

When the mind swings by a grass-blade

            an ant’s forefoot shall save you

the clover leaf smells and tastes as its flower

            The infant has descended,

            from mud on the tent roof to Earth,

like to like colour he goes amid grass-blades

            greeting them that dwell under EARTH            EARTH

THOSE OF EARTH;            to carry our news

                        THOSE OF EARTH            to them that dwell under the earth,

begotten of air, that shall sing in the bower

            of Persephone,                                    Persephone

and have speech with Tiresias, of Thebes

                        Christ the King, God the Sun

in about 1/2 a day she has made her adobe

(the wasp) the tiny mud-flask

            and that day I wrote no further

There is fatigue deep as the grave.

                        grows in flat land out of mist

            sun rises lop-sided over the mountain

                        so that I recalled the noise in the chimney

as it were the wind in the chimney

                        but was in reality Uncle William

downstairs composing

that had made a great Peeeeacock

            in the proide ov his oiye

            had made a great peeeeeeecock in the . . .

made a great peacock

                        in the proide of his oyyee

proide ov his oy-ee

as indeed he had, and perdurable

a great peacock more enduring than bronze

            or as in the advice to the young man to

breed and get married (or not)

                                    as you choose to regard it

at Stone Cottage in Sussex by the waste moor

(or whatever) and the holly bush

            who would not eat ham for dinner

because peasants eat ham for dinner

            despite the excellent quality

and the pleasure of having it hot

well those days are gone forever

                        and the traveling rug with the coon-skin tabs

and his hearing nearly all Wordsworth

                        for the sake of his conscience but

preferring

                        Witches

did we ever get to the end of Doughty:

                        The Dawn in Britain?

                                                            perhaps not

            Summons withdrawn, sir.)

(bein’ aliens in prohibited area)

clouds lift their small mountains

                        before the elder hills

A fat moon rises lop-sided over the mountain

The eyes, this time my world,

            But pass and look from mine

                        between my lids

                                    sea, sky, and pool

                                    alternate

                                    pool, sky, sea,

morning moon against sunrise

like a bit of the best antient greek coinage

                        and

The women

say to me

you are old,

And that a twentieth-century Madonna

cd/ be as a fifteenth-century Madonna

This I learned in the Tyrol

                        and as perfect

where they paint the houses outside with figures

and the deep inner courts run back triple

            “That’s called Walter Square”

            heard in Bozen (Bolzano)

and in my mother’s time it was respectable,

it was social, apparently,

                                                to sit in the Senate gallery

or even in that of the House

            to hear the fire-works of the senators

(and possibly representatives)

as was still done in Westminster in my time

and a very poor show from the once I saw it)

but if Senator

                        cd/ speak

and have his tropes stay in the memory 40 years, 60 years?

in short / the descent

has not been of advantage either

            to the Senate or to “society”

                                                or to the people

            The States have passed thru a

                                    dam’d supercilious era

Down, Derry-down /

                        Oh let an old man rest.

LXXXII

When with his hunting dog I see a cloud

            “Good morning, Sir” yells the black boy

                                                                        from the jo-cart

(Jeffers, Lovell and Harley

                        also Mr Walls who has lent me a razor

                        Persha, Nadasky and Harbell)

Swinburne my only miss

and I didn’t know he’d been to see Landor

                                                and they told me this that an’ tother

            But given what I know now I’d have

            got thru it somehow . . .

                                                            shade

                                                or a blackjack.

When the french fishermen hauled him out he

recited ’em

                        might have been Aeschylus

in the original

“like a dog . . . and a good job

                                    MY HUSBAND . . . HAND

                                                            by this right hand

                                                            dead by this hand

and “our brother Shelley”

                                    manuscript with the

greek moulds in the margin

the “marble men” shall pass into nothingness,

Three birds on the wire

and as to who wd/ pay for the composition

if same were not used

            After all”

                                                “it is only the same old story

                                    Her Ladyship arose in the night

and moved all the furniture

                        (that is her Ladyship YX)

her Ladyship Z disliked dining alone and

            The proud shall not lie by the proud

                        amid dim green lighted with candles

                                    red head for a glory

Mr Masefield murmuring: Death

            and Old Neptune meaning something unseizable

            in a discussion of Flaubert

                                    the medium

baffling the society for metaphysical research

                        and the idea that CONversation . . . . .

                        should not utterly wither

even I can remember

            at 18 Woburn Buildings

                                                                        to Yeats,

“If you would read us one of your own choice

                        and

                                    perfect

                                                lyrics”

and more’s the pity that Dickens died twice

with the disappearance

            and for all that old Ford’s conversation was better,

consisting in objects not words,

                        despite William’s anecdotes, in that Fordie

            never dented an idea for a phrase’s sake

and had more humanity                        humaneness

            (Aphrodite            Aphrodite)

                                    in one bark convey’d

Be glad poor beaste, love follows after thee

Till the cricket hops

                                    but does not chirrp in the drill field

                        8th day of September

                           f    f

                                    d

                                                g

                                                  write the birds in their treble scale

                        there are no righteous wars in “The Spring and Au-

                                                                                                tumn”

that is, perfectly right on one side or the other

total right on either side of the battle line

                        and the news is a long time moving

            a long time in arriving

                                                thru the impenetrable

crystalline, indestructible

                        ignorance of locality

The news was quicker in Troy’s time

a match

                                                a glow worm on Lesbos,

            Till forty years since,

“Fvy! in Tdaenmarck efen dh’ beasantz gnow him,”

                        meaning Whitman, exotic, still suspect

            four miles from Camden

                        “O troubled reflection

                        “O Throat, O throbbing heart”

            How drawn, O EARTH EARTH,

                        what draws as thou drawest

                                    till one sink into thee by an arm’s width

            embracing thee. Drawest,

                                    truly thou drawest.

            Wisdom lies next thee,

                        simply, past metaphor.

Where I lie let the thyme rise

                                                and basil

                                    let the herbs rise in April abundant

wind: man to my house

lie into earth to the breast bone, to the left shoulder

                        Kipling suspected it

            to the height of ten inches or over

man, earth : two halves of the tally

but I will come out of this knowing no one

neither they me

                                                marriage of earth            she said my husband

                                                                                    EARTH-BORN, mystery

fluid OF EARTH o’erflowed me

            lay in the fluid OF EARTH;

                                                that lie

under the air’s solidity

            drunk with ICHOR of EARTH

                                    fluid OF EARTH, strong as the undertow

                        of the wave receding

but that a man should live in that further terror, and live

            the loneliness of death came upon me

                        (at 3 P. M., for an instant)                                    of tears

                                                                                    thereupon

three solemn half notes

                                    their white downy chests black-rimmed

on the middle wire

                                                periplum