Where wheels, confusing music, confused doubts.
Rolled down all images into the pits
where half-dead vanities were sleeping curled
Like cats, and lusts lay hot in the cold
Within his head the engines made their hell,
The veins at either temple made him mad
And, mad, he called his curses upon God,
Spied moon-mad beasts carousing on the hill
Mad birds in trees, mad fish in a pool
Across the sun was spread a crazy smile
The moon leered down the valley like a fool.
Now did the softest sound of foot or voice
Echo a hundred times, the flight of birds
Drum harshly on the air, the lightning swords
Tear with a great sound through the skies,
And there was thunder in an opening rose.
All reason broke, and horror walked the roads
A smile let loose a divel, a bell struck.
He could hear women breathing in the dark.
See women's faces under dark snoods,
With serpents mouths and scalecophidian voids
Where eyes should be, and nostrils full of toads.
Taxis and lilies to tnned music striped
A measure on the lawn where cupids blew
Water from nose and arse. A sanager's show
Paraded up the aisles and in the crypt
Of churches made from abstract and concrete.
Pole sitting girls descended for a meal,
Stopped non-stop dancing to let hot feet cool,
Or all-in wrestling for torn limbs to heal,
The moon leered down the valley like a fool
Where, what's my God among this crazy rattling?
Of knives on forks, he cried, of nerve on nerve.
Man's rib on woman, straight line on a curve,
And hand to buttock, man to engine, battling,
Bruising, where's God's my Shepherd, God is Love?
No loving Shepherd in this upside life.
So crying, he was dragged into the sewer,
Voles at his armpits, down the sad canal
Where floated a dead dog, who made him ill
Plunged in black waters, under hail and fire
Knee deep in vomit, I saw him there
And thus I saw him searching for his soul.
And swimming down the gutters he looks up
At cotton worlds revolving on a hip,
Riding on girders of the air, looks down
On garages and clinics in the town
Where, what's my God among this taxi stepping,
This lily crawling round the local bars?
It was November there were whizzbangs hopping,
But now there are the butt-ends of spent squibs,
So crying he was pushed into the Jordan.
And felt a skewer enter at his side.
He too has seen the world as bottom rotten
Kicked, with a clatter ash-bins marked verboten.
And heard the teeth of weasels drawing blood.
And thus I saw him; he was posed like this,
One hand at head, the other at a loss,
Between the streetlamps and the ill-lit sky,
And thus between the seasons, heard him cry;
What, where, have searched for shells
and signs on the seashore,
Struck straw and seven stars upon my hair,
And leant on stiles, and on the golden bar,
I have ridden on gutter dung and cloud,
Under hideous seas where coral men
Feed in the armpits of drowned girls, I've swum
And sunk; waved flags to every fife and drum;
Said all the usual things over and over again;
Lain with parched things, loved dogs and women;
I have desired the circle of the sun,
Tested by fire, double thumbs to nose.
I've mocked the moving of the universe.
Where, what? There was commotion in the skies.
But no god rose I have seen bad and worse,
Gibed at the coitus of the stars, No god
comes from my evil or my good, Mad, mad,
Feeling the pinpricks of blood, I've said
The novel things, but it has been no good.
Crying such words, he left the crying crowds,
Unshackled the weights of words from tired limbs,
And took to feeding birds with broken crumbs
Taxis and lilies, noise and no noise,
Pair off, make harmonies, a harmonious chord,
For he has found his soul in loneliness,
Now he is one with many, one with all
Fire and Jordan and the sad canal.
Now he has heard and read the happy word.
Still in his hut he broods among his birds.
I see him in crowds, not shut
From you or me or wind or rat
Or this or that