ANIMALS THE ASS The long-drawn bray of the ass In the Sicilian |
  ANIMALS THE ASS The long-drawn bray of the ass In the Sicilian twilight-- All mares are dead! All mares are dead! Oh-h! Oh-h-h! Oh-h-h-h-h--h!! I can't bear it, I can't bear it, I can't! Oh, I can't! Oh-- There's one left! There's one left! One! There's one ... left.... So ending on a grunt of agonised relief. This is the authentic Arabic interpretation of the braying of the ass. And Arabs should know. And yet, as his brass-resonant howling yell resounds through the Sicilian twilight I am not sure-- His big, furry head, His big, regretful eyes, His diminished, drooping hindquarters, His small toes. Such a dear! Such an ass! With such a knot inside him! He regrets something that he remembers. That's obvious. The Steppes of Tartary, And the wind in his teeth for a bit, And noli me tangere . Ah then, when he tore the wind with his teeth, And trod wolves underfoot, And over-rode his mares as if he were savagely leaping an obstacle, to set his teeth in the sun.... Somehow, alas, he fell in love, And was sold into slavery. He fell into the rut of love, Poor ass, like man, always in a rut, The pair of them alike in that. All his soul in his gallant member And his head gone heavy with the knowledge of desire And humiliation. The ass was the first of all animals to fall finally into love, From obstacle-leaping pride, Mare obstacle, Into love, mare-goal, and the knowledge of love. Hence Jesus rode him in the Triumphant Entry. Hence his beautiful eyes. Hence his ponderous head, brooding over desire, and downfall, Jesus, and a pack-saddle, Hence he uncovers his big ass-teeth and howls in that agony that is half-insatiable desire and half-unquenchable humiliation. Hence the black cross on his shoulders. The Arabs were only half right, though they hinted the whole; Everlasting lament in everlasting desire. See him standing with his head down, near the Porta Cappuccini, Asinello, Somaro; With the half-veiled, beautiful eyes, and the pensive face not asleep, Motionless, like a bit of rock. Has he seen the Gorgon's head, and turned to stone? Alas, Love did it. Now he's a jackass, a pack-ass, a donkey, somaro, burro, with a boss piling loads on his back. Tied by the nose at the Porta Cappuccini. And tied in a knot, inside, dead-licked between two desires: To overleap like a male all mares as obstacles In a leap at the sun; And to leap in one last heart-bursting leap like a male at the goal of a mare, And there end. Well, you can't have it both roads. Hee! Hee! Ehee! Ehow! Ehaw!! Oh! Oh! Oh-h-h!! The wave of agony bursts in the stone that he was, Bares his long ass's teeth, flattens his long ass's ears, straightens his donkey neck, And howls his pandemonium on the indignant air. Yes, it's a quandary. Jesus rode on him, the first burden on the first beast of burden. Love on a submissive ass. So the tale began. But the ass never forgets. The horse, being nothing but a nag, will forget. And men, being mostly geldings and knacker-boned hacks, have almost all forgot. But the ass is a primal creature, and never forgets. The Steppes of Tartary, And Jesus on a meek ass-colt: mares: Mary escaping to Egypt: Joseph's cudgel. Hee! Hee! Ehee! Ehow-ow-!-ow!-aw!-aw!-aw! All mares are dead! Or else I am dead! One of us, or the pair of us, I don't know--ow!--ow! Which! Not sure--ure--ure Quite which! Which! Taormina. HE-GOAT See his black nose snubbed back, pressed over like a whale's blow-holes, As if his nostrils were going to curve back to the root of his tail. As he charges slow among the herd And rows among the females like a ship pertinaciously, Heavy with a rancid cargo, through the lesser ships-- Old father Sniffing forever ahead of him, at the rear of the goats, that they lift the little door, And rowing on, unarrived, no matter how often he enter: Like a big ship pushing her bowsprit over the little ships Then swerving and steering afresh And never, never arriving at journey's end, at the rear of the female ships. Yellow eyes incomprehensible with thin slits
and shadow was the same as before.
They were foiled, the myriad whispering dark-faced cotton-wrapped people.
They had come to see royalty,
To bow before royalty, in the land of elephants, bow deep, bow deep.
Bow deep, for it’s good as a draught of cool water to bow very, very low to the royal.
And all there was to bow to, a weary, diffident boy whose motto is Ich dien.
I serve! I serve! in all the weary iron of his mien—’Tis I who serve!
Drudge to the public.
I wish they had given the three feathers to me;
That I had been he in the pavilion, as in a pepper-box aloft and alone
To stand and hold feathers, three feathers above the world,
And say to them: Dient Ihr! Dient!
Omnes, vos omnes, servite.
Serve me, I am meet to be served.
Being royal of the gods.
And to the elephants:
First great beasts of the earth
A prince has come back to you,
Blood-mountains.
Crook the knee and be glad.
Kandy.
KANGAROO In the northern hemisphere
Life seems to leap at the air, or skim under the wind
Like stags on rocky ground, or pawing horses, or springy scut-tailed rabbits.
Or else rush horizontal to charge at the sky’s horizon,
Like bulls or bisons or wild pigs.
Or slip like water slippery towards its ends,
As foxes, stoats, and wolves, and prairie dogs.
Only mice, and moles, and rats, and badgers, and beavers, and perhaps bears
Seem belly-plumbed to the earth’s mid-navel.
Or frogs that when they leap come flop, and flop to the centre of the earth.
But the yellow antipodal Kangaroo, when she sits up,
Who can unseat her, like a liquid drop that is heavy, and just touches earth.
The downward drip.
The down-urge.
So much denser than cold-blooded frogs.
Delicate mother Kangaroo
Sitting up there rabbit-wise, but huge, plumb-weighted,
And lifting her beautiful slender face, oh! so much more gently and finely lined than a rabbit’s, or than a hare’s,
Lifting her face to nibble at a round white peppermint drop, which she loves, sensitive mother Kangaroo.
Her sensitive, long, pure-bred face.
Her full antipodal eyes, so dark,
So big and quiet and remote, having watched so many empty dawns in silent Australia.
Her little loose hands, and drooping Victorian shoulders.
And then her great weight below the waist, her vast pale belly
With a thin young yellow little paw hanging out, and straggle of a long thin ear, like ribbon,
Like a funny trimming to the middle of her belly, thin little dangle of an immature paw, and one thin ear.
Her belly, her big haunches
And in addition, the great muscular python-stretch of her tail.
There, she shan’t have any more peppermint drops.
So she wistfully, sensitively sniffs the air, and then turns, goes off in slow sad leaps
On the long flat skis of her legs,
Steered and propelled by that steel-strong snake of a tail.
Stops again, half turns, inquisitive to look back.
While something stirs quickly in her belly, and a lean little face comes out, as from a window,
Peaked and a bit dismayed,
Only to disappear again quickly away from the sight of the world, to snuggle down in the warmth,
Leaving the trail of a different paw hanging out.
Still she watches with eternal, cocked wistfulness!
How full her eyes are, like the full, fathomless, shining eyes of an Australian black-boy
Who has been lost so many centuries on the margins of existence!
She watches with insatiable wistfulness.
Untold centuries of watching for something to come,
For a new signal from life, in that silent lost land of the South.
Where nothing bites but insects and snakes and the sun, small life.
Where no bull roared, no cow ever lowed, no stag cried, no leopard screeched, no lion coughed, no dog barked,
But all was silent save for parrots occasionally, in the haunted blue bush.
Wistfully watching, with wonderful liquid eyes.
And all her weight, all her blood, dripping sack-wise down towards the earth’s centre,
And the live little one taking in its paw at the door of her belly.
Leap then, and come down on the line that draws to the earth’s deep, heavy centre.
Sydney
BIBBLES Bibbles
Little black dog in New Mexico,
Little black snub-nosed bitch with a shoved-out jaw
And a wrinkled reproachful look;
Little black female pup, sort of French bull, they say,
With bits of brindle coming through, like rust, to show you’re not pure;
Not pure, Bibbles,
Bubsey, bat-eared dog;
Not black enough!
First live thing I’ve “owned” since the lop-eared rabbits when I was a lad,
And those over-prolific white mice, and Adolf, and Rex whom I didn’t own.
And even now, Bibbles, little Ma’am, it’s you who appropriated me, not I you.
As Benjamin Franklin appropriated Providence to his purposes.
Oh Bibbles, black little bitch
I’d never have let you appropriate me, had I known.
I never dreamed, till now, of the awful time the Lord must have, “owning” humanity,
Especially democratic live-by-love humanity.
Oh Bibbles, oh Pips, oh Pipsey
You little black love-bird!
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