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

Ova. Among. The. Neighbours.

(The drama of)

a human consciousness

(played to the inattentive audience

of the Infinite)

gyrates

on the ego⁠—axis

intoxicates

with the cosmic

proposition of being it — —

Till the inconsiderate

competitional brunt

of its similars

informs it

of several millions

“pulling the same stunt”

this consciousness within her

uncurled itself upon the rollers of objective experience

printing impressions

vaguely and variedly

upon Ova

In place of the more formulate education

coming naturally

to the units of a national instigation

— — — — —

New Life

when it inserts itself into continuity

is disciplined

by the family

reflection

of national construction

to a proportionate posture

in the civilized scheme

deriving

definite contours

from tradition

personality

being mostly

a microcosmic

replica

of institutions

Indigenous neighbours

before their hearths

pile up their Gods

—sightless and mindless⁠—

but still the Gods

of an indigenous clay

Something dumb

but doubtless

is being accomplished

by the quotidian inspiration

towards frustration

of all

other clays

of Earth’s conception

And to each

inhabitant of the crudest streets

is allotted the pride

of controlling the tide

of seas that he has never set eyes upon

but hears

are his

Suburban children

of middle⁠—class Britain

ejected from the home

are still connected

with the inseverable

navel⁠—cord of the mother⁠—land

and

need never feel alone

And if this tepid flesh

of uni⁠—conscious islanders

feels no particular passion

towards its propagations

it knows

that each is integral

to that removed yet irremovable

rose

and rejoices in them only symbolically

for if one should not defer

his opinions to his flower

of utter chivalry

he is cut off utterly

“Except ye become as a little child”

the lord was heard when upon earth

to say⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—⁠ —it is inferred⁠—

that he preferred⁠—

an Idiot child from birth

There is no other clime

where nurseries bloom

so luxuriantly so “over time”

as in England

where ardently⁠—

adults

—anxiously

concoct a lunacy

of flippant fallacy

for innocence

And the meticulous

punctualities

of fresh air and milk

mix

with the coloured imbecilities

exalted⁠—

illustrated⁠—

for children’s libraries

O may the hot⁠—house purity⁠—

essence

of English childhood⁠—

prolong itself

into autumnal adolescence⁠ ⁠—

O may the fuddled blue

of the imperial eye

forget⁠—me⁠—not⁠—itself

in distinct conceptions

of functional existence

O may it muddle through

bright with its bland taboo

from the nursery to the cemetery

Amen

Ova Has Governesses

Ova knows none of these

pretty artifices

of happy nurseries

for foisting illusive sops

on the untamable brute

called Life

For her

the irredeemable anaemia

of hour upon hour

devoid

of invitation to vitality

drifts through her arteries

Changed to her Mother’s vagaries

her Nurses and governesses

pinch⁠—faced conservatives

respect Life

they let it alone

lest it discomfort them

before the awful comfort of the grave

save them

They have none of the

elite audacity

to tease its slumberous ferocity

with a felicitous humour

that sets

it at defiance

They never accompany

its growls with clarinettes

She is laid

in London’s under⁠—lap

of unutterable lapidary

—persistance

of pavements into distance

The grey air

stricken with trees

whose vernal hair

is spoiled with soot

The flux of Life she

flows on

of gruesome

inner and outer architecture

and dingy damask

A twilit turbulence

of routine in coma

shot

with stranded rockets

of curative colour

The ghoulish clouds

hide God

who should

have made the world

a musical⁠—box

of coloured glass

growing like gilly⁠—flowers

and Phlox⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—⁠ ⁠—

with butterfly⁠—winged

cherubim

warbling in

low⁠—branched fruit trees

Jews and Ragamuffins of Kilburn

But she goes

shopping in —kill⁠—burn⁠— —

she knows

it⁠—named for its pavement lid of hell⁠—⁠ ⁠—

here dwell

haberdashers

they scare her

with adventures

of dashing rabbit⁠—hares

Gingerly Nurse

lifts her nose

because

in Kilburn are so many Jews

She fears to find them crawling up her socks

but hears

the Jews killed Jesus

and are bound for Hades

with r⁠—⁠o⁠—⁠u⁠—⁠n⁠—⁠d noses

Here where the common children swarm

—who choose

chillblains and chaps

and fluted shoes

and shout “Gaa⁠—⁠aar⁠—⁠rn”

One

wearing

a straggling lambs’⁠—wool tippet

tied in front

with a tag of pink tape

and at the back

her plait

humps itself over it

kneels

in a queer

position

of sideway struggle

Her leg has slipped

between the spear

headed palings growing

a trap

on the crude depth

of an empty area

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ova fears

—⁠ —That she can never

release it

iron is so hard

that even the strongest man in the world

could

never bend it

Ova bears⁠—

horror for this child

caught in a novel hell

of immovable metal

which is eternal

“Hold up your chin”

nurse says “you begin

to walk like a horrid ragamuffin”

The common children

have the best of her

—though dressed in

rags⁠—They feed on muffin

The Surprise

The things the armoured towers

tell

are not quite real

The things they do

never “happen”

only their actions

convince on those occasions

when they blow up

and scatter her reason

Sometimes

a level shaft of sweetness

cleaves

the irate thunder

Miss Bunn

whose face of a china doll

has taken on a

significance

of foolish intelligence

that children love so well

who performs

the duties of a clown

and whose door⁠—bell

is so low down

often invited to come

cajoles

chaos to laughter

seldom heard in this home

and only

in company

as a disguise for thunder

“If you be good girl or boy

as I suppose you be

you will neither laugh nor smile

at the tickling of your knee”

She brings

a surprise basket

full

of Japanese fishes of cotton wool

“We will not tell Miss Bunn”

says father “what we have done

peeping in the basket”

In the evening

the armoured towers are sitting

round the surprise

—They look as if they will not be sitting there long⁠—

They ask it⁠—

“Have you peeped in the basket?”

Ova looking

partakingly at the father

anxious not to do wrong

“No”

“Ho” Snaps the father

“you opened that surprise

under my eyes”

Jumping out of chairs

“Liar”

makes a lot of noise

She is turned into a liar

by father

They push her

out of the front door with their hands

Her head expands

There is nothing

she knows how to expect from these big bodies

who hustle her through demeaning duties

in humiliation

and without animation

A coolness rising

from the rainy gravel

damp⁠—smelling friendliness of the dark

allays her sudden fever

She has left behind her forever

Liar whatever

it is

and Japanese fishes

She decides to travel

A hand upon her shoulder

jolts her

with mocking laughter

bolts her

to smoulder

once more

behind the door

Illumination

Ova is standing

alone in the garden

The high⁠—skies

have come gently upon her

and all their

steadfast light is shining out of her

She is conscious

not through her body but through space

This saint’s⁠—prize

this indissoluble bliss

to be carried like a forgetfullness

into the long nightmare

Contraction

She is contracting

to the enveloping

plasm of uneasiness

in which she is involved with the big bodies

The garden

the child’s

first place of purity

is become defiled

an egg is smashed

a horrible

aborted contour

a yellow murder

in a viscous pool

She knows not Time yet

it lies there

for a thousand years

of return to puzzle

over a defrauded race of chickens

pecking the gravel in unconcern

The Gift

Somewhat above the level

of the entrailed anger

of the mother

the pockets of the Father

invisible⁠—

depth

—interminable

from whence spring riches

and a sullen

economic war

houses and food and fire

proceed from them

and over them

he crows continually

Proximity

to Ova’s skulled mentality

of money which magically

is life

He tells her

he is a good Father

his child must obey him

should he choose to do so

he can bestow

upon her whatever she pray him

Heseems a sovereign

the maximum

of money

A golden octopus

grasping

She is asking

for a sovereign

to buy a circus universe

Laughing

he gives her a shining coin

She is exalted

in spontaneous knowledge of beauty

She confronts the solution of her destiny

and sudden the potentiality

of achievement

through her august parent

“I will buy ‘all this’ my sovereign

The flower seller

is bewildered⁠—

Nurse distrusts

She thrusts

out the open nacreous palm of her hand

that they may understand

“Ga‑aarn —you little fool

who’re you a gittin at?

That’s

a new farthing!”

She comes

to a curb⁠—stone

a woman is sitting upon

beyond

a rampant radiance

Of April jonquil

Gala yellow

Fa⁠—how evil a Father must be

to burst a universe by getting

so fa⁠—r into a sovereign

Press the cerebellum

into phantom

moulds of idealism

and no matter

what ocular

and intellectual contact with phenomena

occur⁠—

Grey matter

is addled forever

Ova accepts Christ

as the sacrificial

prototype

of the laboriously elect

sect

notwithstanding

that the maternal christian

is inflicting

Him upon her

as a spiritual bludgeon

threatening⁠—

And the vaguely disgusting

inquietudes of the flesh surrounding

her she also accepts

as she is bidden

as hidden

immortalities

that ripen

for divine destinies

Religious Instruction

In mixed marriages

it is mostly the custom

for female children

to adhere to the maternal religion

While the Father presides over

the mystical prattle with ironical

commentary from his arm⁠—chair

But by whichever

religious route

to brute

reality

our forebears speed us

(Perfection

being an obligation

shoved on to

the next generation)

There is always a pair

of idle adult

accomplices in duplicity

to impose upon their brood

ideals

erected upon such increate altitudes

that Man

in falling from contemplation

of a more simulacrum

has soused himself (in blood

since Time began)

Jehovah

—exemplar par excellence

of megalomania⁠—

the Whole Old Testament

of butcherly chastisement

to coerce humanity

to an “assumed acceptance”

of an abstract idea

And that Christ

came with his light

of toilless lilies

to say “Fear

not it is I”

And bowed the ocean tossed

—with a poet’s feet

which being dead

are suspended over⁠—head

neat⁠—

ly crossed

in anguish

and wounded with red

varnish

From these

slow⁠—drying bloods of mysticism

mysteriously

the something⁠—soul emerges

miserably

an instinct (of economy)

in every race

for reconstructing debris

has planted a face

in outer darkness

The lonely peering eye

of humanity

looked into the Néant

— —and turned away

X

Ova’s consciousness

impulsive to commit itself to justice

—to arise and walk

its innate straight way

out of the

accidence of circumstance

collects the levitate chattels

of its will

and makes for the

magnetic horizon of liberty

with the soul’s foreverlasting

opposition

to disintegration

So this child of Exodus

with her heritage of emigration

often

“sets out to seek her fortune”

in her turn

trusting to terms of literature

dodging the breeders’ determination

not to return “entities sent on consignment”

by their maker Nature

except in a condition

of moral

effacement

Lest Paul and Peter

never

notice the creatures

ever had had Fathers

and Mothers

They were disgraced in their duty

should such spirits

take an express passage

through the family bodies

to arrive at Eternity

as lovely as they originally

promised

So on whatever day

she chooses “to run away”

the very

street corners of Kilburn

close in upon Ova

to deliver her

into the hands of her procreators

Oracle of civilization

“Thou shalt not live by dreams alone

but by every discomfort

that proceedeth out of

legislation⁠—

The Social Status of Exodus

Out of the hands of God

the aboriginal

muscle-pattern

with its ominously

cruciform completion

in view of propagation

indulged its uniform

imputation

of the image and likeness

of Deity⁠— —

to satiety

and through varying civilizations

experimented in deformations

of contour

while fashion

and fanaticism disputed

with passion

the incompatibility

with his dignity

of exposing man

to the contemplation

of the insignia

of his origin

and continuity

Theological tinkers

and serious thinkers

attacked the problem

of dissubstantiation

— — — — —

Some said

“It were better to cast it off from us utterly”

And some took a plank of wood and set it

about with nails and lay upon it

saying “This will make us forget it”

Spiritual drapers

Popes and fakirs and shakers

decked it

out with oblivion

and let it

appear

to disappear

But to no effect

For men of a happy⁠—go⁠—lucky vulgarity

relegated

this jew⁠—jaw of general invective

to a hole and corner secretive

popularity

And absurd

as it may seem

the “unprintable word”

is impossible to erase from a vocabulary

And there arose another

greater than Jehovah

The Tailor — —

— —the stitches of whose seams

He is unworthy to unloose

Out of the hands of Exodus

the Oxonian

seeming

a sunbeam that has chanced to stray

into a cut⁠—away

(Gentlemen

wear

clothes

with an easy air

of debonair

inevitability)

Clothed and shod

the tailor’s concept of the man made God

(Sartorial peril of the yellow race

looking so out of place)

peoples the sod — —

Under the shears

of the prestidigitator cutter

(who achieves

the unachievable Act of the Apostles)

the cruciform scourge

of conscience

disappears⁠—

in utter

bifurcate dissimulation

leaving

only those inevitable yet more or less circumspect

creasings

in the “latest thing in trouserings”

—or serge

And man

at last assumes his self⁠—respect

And man with his amorphous nature

who defied

the protoform of Who made him

but has not denied

Him

obeyed

the tailor who remade him

and denies him

He is despised

this ostracized

fancier of travestied torsoes

weaver of fig⁠—leaves out of cheviot

who staked the plot

of manhood in his nobler form

The gently born

they turn away

from the tailor

Who knows?

“Man that is born of woman”

Perhaps he chose

an occupation all too feminine

— — — — — —

Neither is this the reason that they give

(Thou shalt not look upon the face of God and live!)