CRAB-ANGEL

An atomic sprite
perched on a polished
monster-stallion
reigns over Ringling's revolving
trinity of circus attractions

Something the contour
of a captured crab
waving it's useless pearly claws

From a squat body
pigmy arms
and bow legs
with their baroque calves
curve in a bi-circular attitude
to a ballerina's exstacy

An effigy of Christmas Eves
smile-cast among chrysanthemum curls
it seems a sugar angel
while from a rose flecked ruff of gauze
it's manly legs
stamp on the vast rump of the horse

— 10 —

V

Shuttle-cock and battle-door
A little pink-love
And feathers are strewn

VI

Let Joy go solace-winged
To flutter whom she may concern

VII

Once in a mezzanino
The starry ceiling
Vaulted an unimaginable family
Bird-like abortions
With human throats
And Wisdom's eyes
Who wore lamp-shade red dresses
And woolen hair

One bore a baby
In a padded porte-enfant
Tied with a sarsanet ribbon
To her goose's wings

But for the abominable shadows
I would have lived
Among their fearful furniture

— 25 —

To teach them to tell me their secrets
Before I guessed
— Sweeping the brood clean out

VIII

Midnight empties the street
— — — To the left a boy
—One wing has been washed in the rain
The other will never be clean any more —
Pulling door-bells to remind
Those that are snug
To the right a haloed ascetic
Threading houses
Probes wounds for souls
—The poor can't wash in hot water —
And I don't know which turning to take —

IX

We might have coupled
In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment
Or broken flesh with one another
At the profane communion table
Where wine is spill't on promiscuous lips

We might have given birth to a butterfly
With the daily-news
Printed in blood on its wings

— 26 —

From slit eyes

We sidle up
To Nature
— that irate pornographist

## XIII

The wind stuffs the scum of the white street
Into my lungs and my nostrils
Exhilarated birds
Prolonging flight into the night
Never reaching — — — — — —

## CAFÉ DU NÉANT

Little tapers lighted leaning diagonally
Stuck in coffin tables of the Café du Néant
Leaning to the breath of baited bodies
Like young poplars fringing the Loire

Eyes that are full of love
And eyes that are full of kohl
Projecting light across the fulsome ambiente
Trailing the rest of the animal behind them
Telling of tales without words
And lies of no consequence
One way or another

— 28 —

MAGASINS DU LOUVRE

All the virgin eyes in the world are made of glass

Long lines of boxes
Of dolls
Propped against banisters
Walls and pillars
Huddled on shelves
And composite babies with arms extended
Hang from the ceiling
Beckoning
Smiling
In a profound silence
Which the shop walker left trailing behind him
When he ambled to the further end of the gallery
To annoy the shop-girl

All the virgin eyes in the world are made of glass
They alone have the effrontery to
Stare through the human soul
Seeing nothing
Between parted fringes

One cocotte wears a bowler hat and a sham camelia
And one an iridescent boa
For there are two of them

— 30 —

To the uneventful

I cannot imagine anything
Less disputably respectable
Than prolonged invalidism in Italy
At the beck
Of a British practitioner

Of all permissible pastimes
Attendant upon chastity
The one with which you can most efficiently insult
Life
Is your hobby of collecting death-beds
Blue Nun

So wrap the body in flannel and wool
Of superior quality from the Anglo-American
Until that ineffable moment
When Rigor Mortis
Divests it of its innate impurity

While round the hotel
Wanton Italian matrons
Discuss the better business of bed-linen
To regular puncture of needles

The old lady has a daughter
Who has been spent
In chasing moments from one room to another

— 32 —

Sings

" All the girls are tid'ly did'ly
All the girls are nice
Whether they wear their hair in curls
Or—"

At the back of the thoughts to which I permit crystal-
lization

The conception
Why ?

Brute

The irresponsibility of the male
Leaves woman her superior Inferiority.
He is running up-stairs

I am climbing a distorted mountain of agony
Incidentally with the exhaustion of control
I reach the summit
And gradually subside into anticipation of
Repose
Which never comes.
For another mountain is growing up
Which goaded by the unavoidable
I must traverse
Traversing myself

Something in the delirium of night-hours
Confuses while intensifying sensibility
Blurring spatial contours
So aiding elusion of the circumscribed
That the gurgling of a crucified wild beast

— 42 —

Furnish an adequate apology
For the objective
Agglomeration of activities
Of a life

**LIFE**

A leap with nature
Into the essence
Of unpredicted maternity
Against my thigh
Touch of infinitesimal motion
Scarcely perceptible
Undulation
Warmth moisture
Stir of incipient life
Precipitating into me
The contents of the universe
Mother I am
Identical
With infinite Maternity

Indivisible
Acutely
I am absorbed
Into
The was—is—ever—shall—be
Of cosmic reproductivity

Rises from the subconscious
Impression of a cat
With blind kittens

— 44 —