Poetry · Joyce’s Ulysses

Joyce’s Ulysses

The Normal Monster

sings in the Green Sahara

The voice and offal

of the image of God

make Celtic noises

in these lyrical hells

Hurricanes

of reasoned musics

reap the uncensored earth

The loquent consciousness

of living things

pours in torrential languages

The elderly colloquists

the Spirit and the Flesh

are out of tongue⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—

The Spirit

is impaled upon the phallus

Phoenix

of Irish fires

lighten the Occident

with Ireland’s wings

flap pandemoniums

of Olympian prose

and satirise

the imperial Rose

of Gaelic perfumes

—⁠ England

the sadistic mother

embraces Erin⁠ ⁠—

Master

of meteoric idiom

present

The word made flesh

and feeding upon itself

with erudite fangs

The sanguine

introspection of the womb

Don Juan

of Judea

upon a pilgrimage

to the Libido

The Press⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—

purring

its lullabyes to sanity

Christ capitalised

scourging

incontrite usurers of destiny

—⁠ in hole and corner temples

And hang

The soul’s advertisements

outside the ecclesiast’s Zoo

A gravid day

spawns

guttural gargoyles

upon the Tower of Babel

Empyrean emporium

where the

rejector⁠ ⁠—⁠ recreator

Joyce

flashes the giant reflector

on the sub rosâ⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—