[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Together at his vitals tore, and rent him that he laughted and died.
So with the last convulsive shred of spending life, his fingers fold
So subtly on that face of gold that all its peace is perfected.
* * * * * *
And there it hangs, a thought obscene, to haunt our love with damnéd ghosts
Hark to their execrable hosts exulting as I kiss Katrine!
It conquers? We will show it things memorial of its splendours gone,
Things grosser than it looked upon where Neva rolls or Tiber swings.
We shall exceed: its lips unclean shall answer at the Judgement Day:
 The greatest of them all, I say, were this my poet and his queen!
Ah, God! we look upon the Thames: the Arno s palaces are gone.
Dull glows the misty horizon with London s stinking stratagems.
But lift the lid of earth and see the good flame gush and wrap us round!
For us, the Gods of the Profound, may England equal Italy.
And I who revelled with Faustine in Rome make madder music here
Who poise upon my bleeding spear the severed kisses of Katrine.
I eat her flesh: I drink her blood. God! could I love a woman more
By Arno s flower-enamelled shore, or Father Tiber s tawny flood?
And reeking with her lusty life I hack the gilded mask and burn
With joy and hate. Aha! to turn to my own guts the glutted knife!
KONX OM PAX
66
O Satan! stand morose and cold above our bodies swimming thus
And plunge thy glory into us, and fan our death with plumes of gold!
Write with our blood before thee spilt on catafalque and catacomb
The dire monition of our doom, the story of the Mask of Gilt.
The paradox is right, by Heaven! exclaimed the big man. That poem is bad enough,
but a long explanation qui s excuse s accuse. Better look for God in the filth itself
than in the lame excuse for it!
I once knew people as mad as that, said the Doctor. They were all right; they knew
their own business; but they were misunderstood and they re in the Asylum at this
minute.
Misunderstanding! said the big man; why will people try to judge others? I know less
of my own brain and à fortiori of my brother s than I do of an oyster. Yet I try to
instruct my brother, and let the oyster gang his ain gait.
Read that jest of yours about the Qabalistic Rabbi! said Arthur.
I will. He was the dearest old man in the world; absolutely incapable of doing
anything to shock the most puritanical. Yet his curious studies in the Zohar got him a
reputation unfit even to speak of.
He was too innocent to guess what trouble he was making! Let it be a warning to us!
So he read:
THE RABBI MISUNDERSTOOD
 TEMURAH tells us praise to Adonai!
Rabbi Mephibosheth Ben Mordecai
Was wont to say,  that the Adepti see
Sa-Ma-Dhi equalized with So-Do-My.
That transcends Short o Face and Longnose both:
This is the deepest den of the Qliphoth.
Match them! the Tree of Life in Eden Bower
Grows balanced perfectly from root to flower.
 This may be why the Reverend Mrs. Grundy
Called him a sodomite the other Sunday.
Good! chuckled Basil, when they had done laughing. If he d worked that out as a boy,
his alleged character might have forced him to its own path.
When I was in Marrakesh, the lynched a poor old man because their mosque had been
defiled in some real and imaginary way (with which he had in any case nothing to do,
having been paralyzed for years). The excuse was, on the soles of his feet the creases
formed the word Allah, so that he always trod upon the name of God! They killed
Burckhardt for that, by the way. A pure invention in both instances. I saw his feet,
and they were just like anybody else s, only dirtier.
Poverty and paralysis were his crimes, I warrant ye, my masters! Anyway, it was a
great joke, and I made a splendid Arabian Tale of it.
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS
67
Read it! was the chorus.
Which he did.
THE MOSQUE BEWITCHED
AN aged sorcerer there dwelt within the town of Marrakesh
The fangs of Hell in life who felt twitching his soul out through the flesh.
Though not originally bad his moral ruin was complete:
His pious parents said he had the devil s claw-marks on his feet.
An outward wart upon the nose spells inward malice in the gizzard.
The path is easy, I suppose, for such an one to play the wizard.
In any case he took the risk, and left off things like soap and eating,
Till he could give the world a bisque, ten spells in thirty, and a beating.
Well at the age of eighty-eight he found himself the One-horse Wire
For the Jehannum Maiden Plate by Satan, out of Lake o fire.
So, calling Iblis of the Jinn (a god among the damnéd Ghebers!)
He offered up a final sin to play a last joke on the neighbours.
The deed was signed in fire and blood; and ere the morn was dewy wet
An hog for the Muezzin upstood, and chanted from the Minaret. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]