Read Bedouin of the London Evening for Free Online Page B

pier – seas rock to music
    For years, before they break it into matches,
    And all the roughly-handled blue lumber
    Of the storm licks lightning and barks blood
    At lives on their rough crutches made of timber,
    And the soul is larder to Hell’s worm of mud,
    Then in the cabbage-cold underground of brains
    Afraid of life, Eternity already has begun
    When the worm turns Creation into dust
    And the World crawls away from under them.
    But pinched in the thighs of low duties,
    Subject to forces that make Asia drag her anchor,
    Souls that are
great
are in their element
    Despite the feasting canker.

The Solitary’s Bedroom
    Now for the night, liquid or bristling!
    When owls make the ink squeak at my window
    And my bedroom that can bone my body of its will,
    Drinks out my brains on pillows.
    Like a bather caught and skinned by rollers
    I shall toss for an eternity in surf,
    When the air-eating spirit in my nostrils
    Is maddened by its heavy coat of earth!
    Now for your rest, eyes where my passions lay
    Waterlogged in flashing muscles all day
    Well below the waterline and plotted in their acids,
    Salt mortice sets your lids.
    Baked on Hell’s rubbish heap I go on smouldering
    With my spirit at its bread of breath
    Incapable of beating out the flames! And hatches
    Are raised cautiously by all the senses…
    O once you have taken this draught of black air
    You would be glad of infinity to get your bearings!

Rainfield and Argument
    Pass on – to the next child, tranquil rainfield,
    For this is the anthem
    Of oblivion’s white oxygen and bird warbling
    In the abandoned rainfield
    They sing who are disinherited.
    And should the privileged fierce child deny
    That all his rainfield hours
    Belong to the Lord of oxygen and watershowers
    And birds in deep rain resident,
    Flutes of the clear firmament,
    Then let him be dumbfounded by it
as a lie
;
    Rainfields up to the knees
    And hours that are ample and shimmering as seas
    Are breath-taking and worthy
    To be the work of Majesty.
    And let him drown-bathe in the water firmament
    That on webs rings a carillon
    And birds that dress the breeze with wings, and own
    They argue for the Lord of time
    And white and icy oxygen.

Gutter Lord
    I knew the poet’s rag-soft eyelid was the gutter’s fee
                     For the way down to life. I had
                 My lodgings in that quarter of the city
                 Like a cat’s ear full of cankered passages
    Where November wraps the loiterer as spiders do their joints.
    I was apprenticed to the moth bred from my clothes –
                     Gold sail, folded up! for with
                 Her tread, as Prince of footpads I could take
        My own grave unawares; or when my head was baked
    With Jewish magic – stalk the Archangel, Thy
insect
, He
    Whose nest is thatched to ride the juice and fire of storms!
                      I was no merchant who for passport
                 Strokes a pearl. Only those who trade
             Their rag-lid of bright lashes may business
         In the Supernatural with the gutter for address.
    My gutter – how you gleamed! Like dungeon floors which
                             Cobras have lubricated
                 Your time was kept in slimy yawns while you
             Prized up the warm roof of the poor man’s shoe
        And lacquered it with mire, that the grave might find
    A way in to its meat – meanwhile the fool re-adored
                     His face green as a toad
                 Seen in a rippling crack of rain.
             The grave: whose grunt lifts the latch, whose
    Leavings found at night upon my flank were as black bread
    And smoked like Satan’s droppings. O Heaven was greedy
                     At my nostril dark as a violet
             To draw out her own breath from my brute
             Freeze it