?. Ass-Face
Language:
English
Authorship
Ass-Face drank
The asses' milk of the stars...
the millky spirals as they sank
From heaven's saloons
and golden bars,
Made a gown
For Columbine,
Spirting, down
On sands divine
By the asses' hide of the sea
(With each tide braying free).
And the beavers building Babel
Beneath each tree's thin beard,
Said, "Is it Cain and Abel
fighting again we heard?"
It is Ass-Face, Ass-Face,
Drunk on the milk of the stars,
Who will spoil their houses
of white lace -
Expelled from the golden bars!
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. The wind's bastinado
Language:
English
Authorship
The wind's bastinado
Whipt on the calico
Skin of the Macaroon
And the black Picaroon
Beneath the galloon
Of the midnight sky.
Came the great soldan
In his sedan
Floating his fan-
Saw what the sly
Shadow's cocoon
In the barracoon
Held. Out they fly.
"This melon,
Sir Mammon,
Comes out of Babylon:
By for a patacoon-
Sir, you must buy!"
Said il Magnifico
Pulling a fico -
With a stoccado
And a gambado,
Making a wry
Face: "This corraceous
Round orchidaceous
Laceous porraceous
Fruit is a lie!
It is my friend King Pharoah's head
That nodding blew out of the Pyramid..."
The tree's small corinths
Where hard as jacinths,
For it is winter and cold winds sigh...
No nightingale
In her farthingale
Of bunched leaves let her singing die.
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. When Sir Beelzebub
Language:
English
Authorship
When
Sir
Beelzebub called for his syllabub
in the hotel in Hell
Where Proserpine first fell,
Blue as the gendarmerie were the
waves of the sea,
(Rocking and shocking the bar-maid)
Nobody comes to give him his rum
but the
Rim of the sky hippopotamus-glum
Enhances the chances to bless with
a benison
Alfred Lord Tennyson crossing the
bar laid
With cold vegetation from pale
deputations
Of temperance workers
(all signed in Memoriam)
Hoping with glory to trip up the
Laureate's feet,
(Moving in classical metres)...
Like Balaclava, the lava came down
from the Roof, and the sea's blue
wooden gendarmerie
Took them in charge while
Beelzebub roared for his rum.
...None of them come!
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. Black Mrs. Behemoth
Language:
English
Authorship
In a room of the palace
[ ... ]
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?. A man from a far country
Language:
English
Authorship
Rose and Alice,
Oh, the pretty lassies,
With their mouths like a calice
And their hair a golden palace-
Through my heart like a lovely
wind they blow.
Though I am black and not comely,
Though I am black as the darkest trees,
I have swarms of gold that will fly
like honey-bees,
By the rivers of the sun
I will feed my words
Until they skip like those fleeced lambs
The waterfalls, and the rivers
(horned rams),
Then for all my darkness I shall be
The peacefulness of a lovely tree-
A tree wherein the golden birds
Are singing in the darkest branches, oh!
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. Country dance
Language:
English
Authorship
That hobnailed goblin
[ ... ]
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?. Daphne
Language:
English
Authorship
When green as a river was the barley
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?. En famille
Language:
English
Authorship
In the early springtime after their tea,
Through the young fields of the
springing Bohea,
Jemima, Jocasta, Dina and Deb
Walked with their father
Sir Joshua Jebb -
An admiral red, whose only notion,
(A butterfly poised on a pigtailed ocean)
Is of the peruked sea whose swell
Breaks on the flowerless rocks of Hell.
Under the thin trees,
Deb and Dinah,
Jemima, Jocasta, walked, and finer
Their black hair seemed (flat-sleek to see)
Than the young leaves of the
springing Bohea;
Their cheeks were like
nutmeg-flowers when swells
The rain into foolish silver bells.
They said, "If the door you would
only slam,
Or if, Papa, you would once say "Damn" -
Instead of merely roaring "Avast"
Or boldly invoking the nautical Blast -
We should now stand
in the street of Hell
Watching siesta shutters that fell
With a noise like amber softly sliding;
Our moon-like glances through
these gliding
Would see at her table preened and set
Myrrhina sitting at her toilette
With eyelids closed as soft
as the breeze
That flows from gold flowers
on the incense-trees.
The Admiral said,
"You could never call -
I assure you it would not do at all!
She gets down from table
without saying "Please",
Forgets her prayers and to cross her Ts,
In short, her scandalous reputation
Has shocked the whole of the
Hellish nation;
And every turbaned Chinoiserie,
With whom we should sip
our black Bohea,
Would stretch out her simian
fingers thin
To scratch you, my dears, like a
mandoline;
For Hell is just as properly proper
As Greenwich, or as, Bath, or Joppa!"
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. Old Sir Faulk
Language:
English
Authorship
Old Sir Faulk, tall as a stork
[ ... ]
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?. The last gallop
Language:
English
Authorship
Gone the saturnalia sighing, dying,
Shone the leaves' regalia, maddened
with the flying
Hooves, the glittering leaves seem
Faces in a dim dream,
Satyrine the leaves gleam
At the dreams of dying.
Pierrot's mask is whitened,
Long-nosed frightened;
Rags tragi-comical,
Flags plano-conical,
Tags histrionical,
All histrionical,
Form acronomical
Falls - lies sprawling.
Cannibal, the sun, blared down
upon the shrunken
Heads, the drums of skin, the sin -
The dead men drunken,
Through the canvas slum come
Bunches of taut nerves, dance,
Caper through the slum, prance
Like paper blowing.
Lying in the deep mud under
tumbrils rolling,
The dead men drunken, tossed and
lost, and sprawling
The trumpets calling
From Hell's pits falling
The crowd seas tumble
And Death's drums rumble.
White as a winding sheet,
Masks blowing down the street:
Moscow, Paris London, Vienna-
all are undone.
The drums of death are mumbling,
rumbling, and tumbling ,
Mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling,
The world's floors are quaking,
crumbling and breaking.
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. Long steel grass (Noche Espagnola)
Language:
English
Authorship
Long steel grass -
The white soldiers pass -
The light is braying like an ass.
See
The tall Spanish jade
With hair black as night-shade
Worn as a cockade!
Flee
Her eyes' gasconade
And her gown's parade
(As stiff as a brigade!)
Tee-hee!
The hard and braying light
Is zebra'd black and white
It will take away the slight
And free,
Tinge of the mouth organ sound,
(Oyster-stall notes) oozing round
Her flounces as they sweep the ground.
The
Trumpet and the drum
And the martial cornet come
To make the people dumb -
But we
Won't wait for sly-foot night
(Moonlight, watered milk-white, bright)
To make clear the declaration
Of our Paphian vocation
Beside the castanetted sea,
Where stalks Il Capitaneo
Swaggart braggadocio
Sword and moustacio - He
Is green as a cassada
And his hair is an armada.
To the jade: "Come kiss me harder"
He called across the battlements as she
Heard our voices thin and shrill
As the steely grasses' thrill,
Or the sound of the onycha
When the phoca has the pica
In the palace of the Queen Chinee!
"Long Steel Grass is in fact called Trio for two cats and a Trombone. It is about a couple of cats, do you see, having a love affair." --Edith Sitwell, "Last Years of a Rebel", p. 182.
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. Bank Holiday
Language:
English
Authorship
I
The houses on a seesaw rush
In the giddy sun's hard spectrum, push
The noisy heat's machinery;
Like flags of colored heat they fly.
The wooden ripples of the smiles
Suck down the houses, then at whiles,
Grown suctioned like an octopus,
They throw them up against us,
As we rush by on coloured bars
Of sense, vibrating flower-hued stars,
With lips like velvet drinks and winds
That bring strange Peris to our minds.
II
Seas are roaring like a lion; with their
Wavy flocks Zion,
Noses like a scimitar,
Hair a brassy bar
Come
to
The sun's drum. Though
Light green water's swim their
daughters, lashing
with their eel-sleek-locks
The furred
Heads
Of mermaids that occurred,
Sinking to the cheap beds.
Blurred
Legs, like trunks of tropical
Plants, rise up and, over all.
Green as a conservatory
Is the light..........another story..........
It has grown too late for life!
Put on your gloves and take a drive!
First published in Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany, June 1920, revised same year
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. Aubade - Jane, Jane
Language:
English
Authorship
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Jane, Jane
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again;
Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair,
Jane, Jane, Come down the stair.
Each dull blunt wooden stalactite
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,
Sounding like an overtone
From some lonely world unknown.
But the creaking empty light
Will never harden into sight,
Will never penetrate your brain
With overtoncs like the blunt rain,
The light would show
(if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden,
Cockscomb flowers
that none will pluck,
And wooden flowers
that 'gin to cluck.
In the kitchen you must light
Flames as staring, red and white,
As carrots or as turnips, shining
Where the old dawn light lies whining
Cockscomb hair on the cold wind
Hangs limp,
turns the milk's weak mind...
Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light
creaks down again!
First published in Saturday Westminster Gazette, October 1920
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. Jodelling song
Language:
English
Authorship
by
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)
, "Centaurs and Centauresses", from Rustic Elegies, as part of "Prelude to a Fairy Tale", published 1927, copyright ©
We bear velvet cream
[ ... ]
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?. By the lake
Language:
English
Authorship
Across the thick and the pastel snow
[ ... ]
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?. Four in the morning
Language:
English
Authorship
Cried the navy-blue ghost
of Mr. Belaker
The allegro negro cocktail-shaker:
Why did the cock crow,
Why am I lost
Down the endless road
to Infinity toss'd'?
The tropical leaves
are whispering white as water:
I race the wind in my flight down
the promenade, -
Edging the far-off sand
Is the foam of the sirens'
Metropole and Grand,-
As I raced through the leaves
as white as water
My ghost flowed over a nursemaid,
caught her,
And there I saw the long grass weep,
Where tile guinea-fowl plumaged
houses sleep
And the sweet ring-doves
of curded milk
Watch the Infanta's gown of silk
the ghost-room tall
where the governante
Whispers slyly fading andante
In at the window then looked he,
The navy-blue ghost of Mr. Belaker,
The allegro negro cocktail-shaker,-
And his flattened face like the moon
saw she,-
Rhinoceros-black yet flowing like
the sea.
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. Dame Souris Trotte
Language:
English
Authorship
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Madam Mouse trots,
Gray in the black night!
Madam Mouse trots:
Furred is the light.
The elephant-trunks
Trumpet from the sea....
Gray in the black night
The mouse trots free.
Hoarse as a dog's bark
The heavy leaves are furled....
The cat's in his cradle,
All's well with the World!
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. Something lies beyond the scene
Language:
English
Authorship
Something lies beyond the scene
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?. Small talk
Language:
English
Authorship
I
Upon the noon Cassandra died
The Harpy preened itself outside.
Bank holiday put forth its glamour,
And in the wayside station's clamour
We found the cafe at the rear,
And sat and drank our Pilsener beer.
Words smeared upon our wooden faces
Now paint them into queer grimaces;
The crackling greeneries that spirt
Like firworks, mock our souls inert,
And we seem feathered like a bird
Among the shadows scarcely heard.
Beneath her shade-ribbed
switchback mane
The harpy, breasted like a train,
Was haggling with a farmer's wife;
"Fresh harpy's eggs, no trace of life."
Miss Sitwell, cross and white as chalk,
Was indisposed for the small talk;
Since, peering through a shadowed door,
She saw Cassandra on the floor.
II
Upon the noon
Cassandra died,
Harpy soon
Screeched outside.
Gardener Jupp,
In his shed.
Counted wooden
Carrots red.
Black shades pass,
Dead-stiff there,
On green baize grass -
Drink his beer.
Bumpkin turnip,
Mask limp-locked,
White sun frights
The gardener shocked.
Harpy creaked
Her limbs again:
I think, she squeaked,
It's going to rain!"
First published in Arts and Letters, Spring 1920
Input by Dan Eggleston
?. Tango - Pasodoble
Language:
English
Authorship
When Don Pasquito arrived at the seaside
[ ... ]
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?. Through gilded trellises
Language:
English
Authorship
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Through gilded trellises
Of the heat, Dolores,
Inez, Manuccia,
Isabel, Lucia,
Mock Time that flies.
"Lovely bird, will you stay and sing,
Flirting your sheened wing,-
Peck with your beak, and cling
To our balconies?"
They flirt their fans, flaunting
"O silence enchanting
As music!" Then slanting
Their eyes,
Like gilded or emerald grapes,
They make mantillas, capes,
Hiding their simian shapes.
Sighes
Each lady, "Our spadille
Is done."...Dance the quadrille
from Hell's towers to Seville;
Surprise
Their siesta," Dolores
Said. Through gilded trellises
Of the heat, spangles
Pelt down through the tangles
Of bell flowers; each dangles
Her castanets, shutters
Fall while the heat mutters,
With sounds like a mandoline
Or tinkled tambourine...
Ladies, Time dies!
Input by Dan Eggleston
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