Poetry · Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose (2/3)

Ada Gives Birth to Ova

Her face

screwed to the mimic-salacious

grotesquerie of a pain

larger than her intellect

— — — — They pull

A clotty bulk of bifurcate fat

out of her loins

to lie

for a period while performing hands

pour lactoid liquids through

and then mop up beneath it

their golden residue

A breathing baby

mystero-chemico Nemesis

of obscure attractions

(The incontinent

exudes into involuntary

retention

Uncouth conception of the incalculable)

The isolate consciousness

projected from back of time and space

pacing its padded cell

The soul

apprenticed to the butcher business

offers organic wares

to sensibility

A dim inheritor

of this undeniable flesh

The destinies

Genii

of traditional

Israel and of Albion

push on its ominous pillow

its racial birth-rights

(Curses for baby

from its godmothers)

— — — — —

Till the least godmother

pipes — — — in her fairy way

“Perhaps you know my name

— — Survival?

Curse till the cows come home

Behold my gift

The Jewish brain!”

So is the mystic absolute

the rose

that grows

from the red flowing

from the flank of Christ

thorned with the computations

of the old

Jehovah’s gender

Where Jesus of Nazareth

becomes one-piece

with Judas Iscariot

in this composite

Anglo-Israelite

Out of a fatted frown

this spirit pokes its eyes

its star tipped handy-pandies

darting on the air

Solemn and unsurprised

and clumsily

lapped by insensitive maternity

it lies

waving its brand new feet

and feeds

its mongrel heart on Benger’s food

for infants

Enter Esau Penfold

I

Feeling his need for such a book as this

I wrote the “Infant Aesthete” for

my little Esau

— — — — —

Patricia Penfold’s preface Fresh

from the publishers

the “author’s

copy” circulating at the small

and informal reception

for wiseacres and waisted-women

“To view” Esau and his authoress

in their accurate draperies for Lady Bliss

’s classical costume ball

The boy one bare arm

thrust through a gossamer

toga of Tyrian rose

is holding out an orb

—There is a portrait of him in that pose

labelled “Esau holding an orb”

The guests spreading their gleaming

faces forward to convey

that they

remember nothing since the Garden of Eden

the garish innocence

of adult guilt

in the presence of children

One takes the little Esau on his knee

to listen to his watch

and absentmindedly

discourses on the differential calculus

while an African explorer

explains how easily

he might catch lions if he wished

“It only needs kindness and a turn of the wrist”

The matrons

shaking their bustles

with a slight impatience

that one so singled out as he

by British culture

might gain competitively

on their own offspring

decide to “put themselves”

upon the order list

for “Infant Aesthetes”

The fire flicks from the

fifteenth-century

andirons and the ruby eyes

of Buddha

On treasures of Tibet

the “trousered” draperies

of a wood faced Virgin from the Netherlands

The golden wings

of Florentine angels

and a piece of Ming

“Everything” as the five year old Esau

suavely smiles

to a professor of anthropology

“to delight the heart of a child”

In the Penfold residence

on Ridover Square

II

In Kilburn terrace

if you know where that is? — —

Exodus’ child

is propped upon a chair

of chestnut cretonne

printed with maroon

acanthus leaves and big buff water-lillies

and told to “hush”

while thrust

into her baby-pelisse

of ruby plush

under an oleograph

of “The Cat’s Fancy Ball” — —

hung on a sky-blue wall

Ova Begins to Take Notice

A faggot of instincts

that within the year

rises

the caryatid of an idea

Two elongations of its will

arm⁠—crave

the curious glare

virile

behind unravelable wire

The staring baby

stumbles to the fire

Her consciousness

sluggish to raucous surfaces

of necessities

quickens

to colour⁠—thrusts

of the quintessent light

—⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠until a woman’s

ineludable claws of dominion

lift her above the Elysian

fields of flame

in a receding

prison

of muscular authority

an agency

for displacing

the finer aspects of the objective

in her sight

and turning to shame

the nucleus

—⁠ ⁠in infantile impotence⁠ ⁠—

of Primeval Right

The suctional soul

clings to the vari⁠—pinct universe

With its reverse

of increate shadow

into which all

elating shows

recede or roll

A crimson ball

bouncing

to her spontaneous psalms

of happiness

rolls

into non⁠ ⁠—⁠ being

under the aera⁠ ⁠—⁠ ivy’s

diaper of rain⁠ ⁠—⁠ pocked dust

She must

make her a rose

out of red thread

but red

ness is inadequate

to the becoming of a rose

— The⁠ —⁠ red⁠ —⁠ reel⁠ —⁠ rolls⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—

The prismatic sun⁠ ⁠—⁠ show

of father’s physic bottles

pierced by the light of day

extinguishes!

as she is carried away

Her entity

she projects

into these sudden colours

for self identification

is lost in recurrent annihilation

with an old desperate unsurprise

Her emotions rise

from no beginning

They are worn

with racial patience

So she is patient

with the temperate under⁠ ⁠—

tones of hostile bodies

that stand still

and those

that move

in fretful thunder⁠ ⁠—

—⁠ functions of their

irate Importances

become defined⁠ ⁠—

Nurse’s

draperies are resigned

The mother

draws near unnaturally

as if to assert her dignity

after some

outrage

that seems to rustle

among her draperies

drawn across her thighs

to bunch over her bustle

Jostled

between revolving

armoured towers

carrying

high up on the top

two little spy holes

eyeing⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—

and arms like signals

flapping and cuffing

the heavy upholstered

stuffing

of these

two women’s netherbodies

The child

whose wordless

thoughts

grow like visionary plants

finds

nothing objective new

and only words

mysterious

Sometimes a new word comes to her

she looks before her

and watches

for its materialization

“Iarrhea”

Two years of her initiation

to light and darkness⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—

and another

baby lies

in the young mother’s

arms of indignation

And it is carefully attended to

but all this passing to⁠ ⁠—

and⁠—fro of hands

does not weave

brightness about the baby

hands that use

the same things too often

and nothing bright

comes of their use

Over the new⁠—born

in the bassinet

the armoured towers

are bending

in iron busks

of curved corsets

consulting⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—

And in her ear

a half inaudible⁠—an

iridescent hush

forms “iarrhea”

“It is

quite green” She hears

The cerebral

mush convolving in her skull

an obsessional

colour⁠—fetish

veers

to the souvenir

of the delirious ball

deleted

in the ivied

dust

lets fall

an optic⁠—ray

upon the cat’s⁠—eyes horse⁠—shoe

pinned to a bended bust

And instantly

this fragmentary

simultaneity

of ideas

embodies

the word

A

lucent

iris

shifts

its

irradiate

interstice

glooms and relumes

on an orb of verdigris

An unreal

globe terrestial

of olive⁠—jewel

dilates⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—

—⁠ ⁠—⁠ evaporates

into the Increate

And as it vanishes

she crawls into the macabre

shadowiness

upon the floor

under the white valances

of the furnitures

to look for it

She is pulled out by her leg

Opposed Aesthetics

As the arrested artists

of the masses

whose child faces

turned upon Beauty

the puny light

of their immobile recognition

made moon⁠—flowers out of muck

and things desired

out of their tenuous soul⁠—stuff

Until the Ruling Bluff

demanded a hell⁠—full

of labour

for half a belly⁠—full

So did the mongrel⁠—girl

of Noman’s land

coerce the shy

Spirit of Beauty

from excrements and physic⁠—

While Esau of Ridover Square

absorbs the erudite idea

that Beauty is nowhere

except posthumously to itself

in the antique

And trains

the common manifestations

of creation

to flatten

before his eyes

to one vast monopattern

Marriage Boxes

Oh God

That men and women

having undertaken to vanquish one another

should be allowed

to shut themselves up in hot boxes and breed

Spirits of prey

ceaselessly

on the watch in their cruel privacy

Seizing upon occasion

for crippling the personal

to test the law of the craftiest for survival

with that innate will to emerge victorious

present in every human enterprise

until at last the vanquished mate dies

of modification

The days

of the Penfolds and the Exodi

in their respective roles

drip into years

with that perilous

multiplication of petty shocks

so much advertised

against

by the American manufacturers

of india⁠—rubber soles

To the Penfolds

Culture has thrown

its bone

of contention

for the passions to chew on

—so that they shall not howl and bite⁠—

Each one is in the right

according to a different school of accepted philosophy

and eventually

they subside into the pre⁠—polemical silence

of creation

Under the virginia creeper

creeping over

the Exodus’

home

the shocks of intimate impact

of the instinctive

murderer and pamperer

of Jesus

rattle its sockets

Exodus has nothing but his pockets

to impress

his rabid rose of the hedges

while for her redress

she can flaunt the whole of England in his foreign face

It would please us

to look upon this face of Exodus

for it is exceeding beautiful

but this means nothing to the undutiful

woman she being exceeding⁠—

ly short sighted

All forms are the same nought to her

only she had gathered from her literature

that men ought to be fair

and as all women

who have not got the world to choose from

marry in an hallucinatory

conviction

that the best man they can get

will yet

redye his soul in the matrimonial

vats of constant suasion

to the requisite tint⁠—

She suffered a savage irritation

that this jew

should not invest himself automatically

with her prejudices of a superior

insulation

at the merest hint⁠—

Psychic Larva

The head

of the child of Exodus

—reaches

to the level of an abdominal

moroseness

—The moronic womb

from which

we gather our involuntary flesh

hovers

antagonistically

over the child at mother’s knee

And erodes her

with psychic-larva

from an eruptional impotence

of offense⁠—

—rolling upon her

To the mother

the blood⁠—relationship

is a terrific indictment of the flesh

under cover

of clothing and furnishing

“somebody” has sinned

and their sin

—a living witness of the flesh

swarms with inquisitive eyes

resenting

the lasting

presence of a vile origin

There is no liberation

from this inversion

of instinct

making subliminal depredations

on Ova’s brain

She is overshadowed

by the mother’s aura

of sub⁠—carnal anger

restringent to the pores

of her skin⁠—

which opening

like leaves for rain

crave for caressings

soft as wings

Lacking dictionaries

of inner consciousness⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—

unmentionable stigmata

is stamped

by the parent’s solar⁠—plexus

in disequilibrium

on the offspring’s

intuition

Christ’s Regrettable Reticence

Ova is at the mercy

of the enigmatical behaviour

around her

only One behaves

unlike all others

the gentle Jesus

whose unseen behaviour

like a mouse or a fairy

in lurking discretion

is the wary

perfection

of a shy saviour

“Oh why wouldn’t the Gentle

come out

—into the open

and just show them?”

Yet she loves the Gentle

“Perhaps if he knew there

was a dear little girl here

who wouldn’t hurt him

—⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—if he came out?”

For a pale

pitiful housemaid

who bowed

healingly

between

her and the loud

maternity⁠—

Has told her

of⁠—Gentle Jesus

our excuse⁠—⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—

He dipped his hand in the sauce⁠—tureen

and allowed his disciples to do the same

And that for every infantile

indiscretion

there is absolution

in Christ’s name

And she

is credulous

as all hungry

imaginations in Man

swallow the parsimonious

presentations put before them

Enter Colossus

About this time

in an Alpine

summer resort The male fruit

of a Celtic couple

is baptized

Colossus

And the first time

that ever he sits up

devouring his pap

It is as if a pillar of iron

erects him

in place of a spine

And the first time

he opens his eyes

wittingly⁠—

’Tis like an eagle

soaring on the sun

and the first time

he communes within himself

he decides

All words are lies

His gracious little lady⁠—bird

of a mamma

dresses him in velvet suits

of gentian blue

determined she will do

her best to keep him

a little gentleman

like his ancestors

even

if he does not live in

London

Her idea of rearing a son

is showing him to everyone

in the drawing⁠—room

for them to praise him

which idea is rather distorted

by the little one

throwing the tea⁠—pot

at Mme Follilot

because her top-knot

displeases him so

And who

would care to call at

any house on finding the young master in the hall

pissing into our reverend pastor’s hat?

He like so many of us

has his own sense of fun

and when his governess offers him a bun

“Bring me a bifsteek de femme

— — and under done!”

These women run

in all directions

when he appears

This palpable

evidence of his mother’s

unfortunately

having given birth to a criminal

— — — —

Postures of a monster

coincident

with the Christian

introspection

of Ova