His Toy, His Dream, His Rest Read online

  at his age, in these places.

  Scrubbing out his fear,—

  the knowledge that they will take off your hands,

  both hands; as well as your both feet, & likewise

  both eyes,

  might be discouraging to a bloody hero

  Also you stifle, like you can’t draw breath.

  But this is death—

  which in some vain strive many to avoid,

  many. It’s on its way, where you drop at

  who stood up, scrunch down small.

  It wasn’t so much after all to lose, was, Boyd?

  A body.—But, Mr Bones, you needed that.

  Now I put on my tall hat.

  82

  Op. posth. no. 5

  Maskt as honours, insult like behaving

  missiles homes. I bow, & grunt ‘Thank you.

  I’m glad you could come

  so late.’ All loves are gratified. I’m having

  to screw a little thing I have to screw.

  Good nature is over.

  Herewith ill-wishes. From a cozy grave

  rainbow I scornful laughings. Do not do,

  Father, me down.

  Let’s shuck an obligation. O I have

  done. Is the inner-coffin burning blue

  or did Jehovah frown?

  Jehovah. Period. Yahweh. Period. God.

  It is marvellous that views so differay

  (Father is a Jesuit)

  can love so well each other. We was had.

  O visit in my last tomb me. —Perché?

  —Is a nice pit.

  83

  Op. posth. no. 6

  I recall a boil, whereupon as I had to sit,

  just where, and when I had to, for deadlines.

  O I could learn to type standing,

  but isn’t it slim to be slumped off from that,

  problems undignified, fiery dig salt mines?—

  Content on one’s back flat:

  coming no deadline—is all ancient nonsense—

  no typewriters—ha! ha!—no typewriters—

  alas!

  For I have much to open, I know immense

  troubles & wonders to their secret curse.

  Yet when erect on my ass,

  pissed off, I sat two-square, I kept shut his mouth

  and stilled my nimble fingers across keys.

  That is I stood up.

  Now since down I lay, void of love & ruth,

  I’d howl my knowings, only there’s the earth

  overhead. Plop!

  84

  Op. posth. no. 7

  Plop, plop. The lobster toppled in the pot,

  fulfilling, dislike man, his destiny,

  glowing fire-red,

  succulent, and on the whole becoming what

  man wants. I crack my final claw singly,

  wind up the grave, & to bed.

  —Sound good, Mr Bones. I wish I had me some.

  (I spose you got a lessen up your slave.)

  —O no no no.

  Sole I remember; where no lobster swine,—

  pots hot or cold is none. With you I grieve

  lightly, and I have no lesson.

  Bodies are relishy, they say. Here’s mine,

  was. What ever happened to Political Economy,

  leaving me here?

  Is a rare—in my opinion—responsibility.

  The military establishments perpetuate themselves forever.

  Have a bite, for a sign.

  85

  Op. posth. no. 8

  Flak. An eventful thought came to me,

  who squirm in my hole. How will the matter end?

  Who’s king these nights?

  What happened to … day? Are ships abroad?

  I would like to but may not entertain a friend.

  Save me from ghastly frights,

  Triune! My wood or word seems to be rotting.

  I daresay I’m collapsing. Worms are at hand.

  No, all that froze,

  I mean the blood. ‘O get up & go in’

  somewhere once I heard. Nowadays I doze.

  It’s cold here.

  The cold is ultimating. The cold is cold.

  I am—I should be held together by—

  but I am breaking up

  and Henry now has come to a full stop—

  vanisht his vision, if there was, & fold

  him over himself quietly.

  86

  Op. posth. no. 9

  The conclusion is growing … I feel sure, my lord,

  this august court will entertain the plea

  Not Guilty by reason of death.

  I can say no more except that for the record

  I add that all the crimes since all the times he

  died will be due to the breath

  of unknown others, sweating in their guilt

  while my client Henry’s brow of stainless steel

  rests free, as well it may,

  of all such turbulence, whereof not built

  Henry lies clear as any onion-peel

  in any sandwich, say.

  He spiced us: there, my lord, the wicked fault

  lodges: we judged him when we did not know

  and we did judge him wrong,

  lying incapable of crime save salt

  preservative in cases here below

  adduced. Not to prolong

  87

  Op. posth. no. 10

  these hearings endlessly, friends, word is had

  Henry may be returning to our life

  adult & difficult.

  There exist rumours that remote & sad

  and quite beyond the knowledge of his wife

  to the foothills of the cult

  will come in silence this distinguished one

  essaying once again the lower slopes

  in triumph, keeping up our hopes,

  and heading not for the highest we have done

  but enigmatic faces, unsurveyed,

  calm as a forest glade

  for him. I only speak of what I hear

  and I have said too much. He may be there

  or he may groan in hospital

  resuming, as the fates decree, our lot.

  I would not interrupt him in whatever, in what

  he’s bracing him to at all.

  88

  Op. posth. no. 11

  In slack times visit I the violent dead

  and pick their awful brains. Most seem to feel

  nothing is secret more

  to my disdain I find, when we who fled

  cherish the knowings of both worlds, conceal

  more, beat on the floor,

  where Bhain is stagnant, dear of Henry’s friends,

  yellow with cancer, paper-thin, & bent

  even in the hospital bed

  racked with high hope, on whom death lay hands

  in weeks, or Yeats in the London spring half-spent,

  only the grand gift in his head

  going for him, a seated ruin of a man

  courteous to a junior, like one of the boarders,

  or Dylan, with more to say

  now there’s no hurry, and we’re all a clan.

  You’d think off here one would be free from orders.

  I didn’t hear a single word. I obeyed.

  89

  Op. posth. no. 12

  In a blue series towards his sleepy eyes

  they slid like wonder, women tall & small,

  of every shape & size,

  in many languages to lisp ‘We do’

  to Henry almost waking. What is the night at all,

  his closed eyes beckon you.

  In the Marriage of the Dead, a new routine,

  he gasped his crowded vows past lids shut tight

  and a-many rings fumbled on.

  His coffin like Grand Central to the brim

  filled up & emptied with the lapse of light.

  Which one will waken him?


  O she must startle like a fallen gown,

  content with speech like an old sacrament

  in deaf ears lying down,

  blazing through darkness till he feels the cold

  & blindness of his hopeless tenement

  while his black arms unfold.

  90

  Op. posth. no. 13

  In the night-reaches dreamed he of better graces,

  of liberations, and beloved faces,

  such as now ere dawn he sings.

  It would not be easy, accustomed to these things,

  to give up the old world, but he could try;

  let it all rest, have a good cry.

  Let Randall rest, whom your self-torturing

  cannot restore one instant’s good to, rest:

  he’s left us now.

  The panic died and in the panic’s dying

  so did my old friend. I am headed west

  also, also, somehow.

  In the chambers of the end we’ll meet again

  I will say Randall, he’ll say Pussycat

  and all will be as before

  whenas we sought, among the beloved faces,

  eminence and were dissatisfied with that

  and needed more.

  91

  Op. posth. no. 14

  Noises from underground made gibber some,

  others collected & dug Henry up

  saying ‘You are a sight.’

  Chilly, he muttered for a double rum

  waving the mikes away, putting a stop

  to rumours, pushing his fright

  off with the now accumulated taxes

  accustomed in his way to solitude

  and no bills.

  Wives came forward, claiming a new Axis,

  fearful for their insurance, though, now, glued

  to disencumbered Henry’s many ills.

  A fortnight later, sense a single man

  upon the trampled scene at 2 a.m.

  insomnia-plagued, with a shovel

  digging like mad, Lazarus with a plan

  to get his own back, a plan, a stratagem

  no newsman will unravel.

  V

  92

  Room 231: the forth week

  Something black somewhere in the vistas of his heart.

  Tulips from Tates teazed Henry in the mood

  to be a tulip and desire no more

  but water, but light, but air.

  Yet his nerves rattled blackly, unsubdued,

  & suffocation called, dream-whiskey’d pour

  sirening. Rosy there

  too fly my Phil & Ellen roses, pal.

  Flesh-coloured men & women come & punt

  under my windows. I rave

  or grunt against it, from a flowerless land.

  For timeless hours wind most, or not at all. I wind

  my clock before I shave.

  Soon it will fall dark. Soon you’ll see stars

  you fevered after, child, man, & did nothing,—

  compass live to the pencil-torch!

  As still as his cadaver, Henry mars

  this surface of an earth or other, feet south

  eyes bleared west, waking to march.

  93

  General Fatigue stalked in, & a Major-General,

  Captain Fatigue, and at the base of all

  pale Corporal Fatigue,

  and curious microbes came, came viruses:

  and the Court conferred on Henry, and conferred on Henry

  the rare Order of Weak.

  —How come dims one these wholesome elsers oh?

  Old polymaths, old trackers, far from home,

  say how thro’ auburn hair titbits of youth’s grey climb.

  I have heard of rose-cheekt but the rose is here!

  I bell: when pops her phiz in a good crow.

  My beauty is off duty!—

  Henry relives a lady, how down vain,

  spruce in her succinct parts, spruce everywhere.

  They fed like muscles and lunched

  after, between, before. He tracks her, hunched

  (propped on red table elbows) at her telephone,

  white rear bare in the air.

  94

  Ill lay he long, upon this last return,

  unvisited. The doctors put everything in the hospital

  into reluctant Henry

  and the nurses took it out & put it back,

  smiling like fiends, with their eternal ‘we.’

  Henry did a slow burn,

  collapsing his dialogue to their white ears

  & shiny on the flanges. Sanka he drank

  until his memories blurred

  & Valerie was coming, lower he sank

  and lovely. Teddy on his handlebars

  perched, her. One word he heard

  insistent: ‘on.’ He railed a stale abuse

  upon his broad shortcomings, then lay still.

  That middle-sized wild man was ill.

  A hospital is where it all has a use,

  so is a makar. . So is substantial God,

  tuning in from abroad.

  95

  The surly cop lookt out at me in sleep

  insect-like. Guess, who was the insect.

  I’d asked him in my robe

  & hospital gown in the elevator politely

  why someone saw so many police around,

  and without speaking he looked.

  A meathead, and of course he was armed, to creep

  across my nervous system some time ago wrecked.

  I saw the point of Loeb

  at last, to give oneself over to crime wholly,

  baffle, torment, roar laughter, or without sound

  attend while he is cooked

  until with trembling hands hoist I my true

  & legal ax, to get at the brains. I never liked brains—

  it’s the texture & the thought—

  but I will like them now, spooning at you,

  my guardian, slowly, until at length the rains

  lose heart and the sun flames out.

  96

  Under the table, no. That last was stunning,

  that flagon had breasts. Some men grow down cursed.

  Why drink so, two days running?

  two months, O seasons, years, two decades running?

  I answer (smiles) my question on the cuff:

  Man, I been thirsty.

  The brake is incomplete but white costumes

  threaten his rum, his cointreau, gin-&-sherry,

  his bourbon, bugs um all.

  His go-out privilege led to odd red times,

  since even or especially in hospital things get hairy.

  He makes it back without falling.

  He sleep up a short storm.

  He wolf his meals, lamb-warm.

  Their packs bump on their ’-blades, tan canteens swing,

  for them this day my dawn’s old, Saturday’s IT,

  through town toward a Scout hike.

  For him too, up since two, out for a sit

  now in the emptiest freshest park, one sober fling

  before correspondence & breakfast.

  97

  Henry of Donnybrook bred like a pig,

  bred when he was brittle, bred when big,

  how he’s sweating to support them.

  Which birthday of the brighter darker man,

  the Goya of the Globe & Blackfriars, whom—

  our full earth smiled on him

  squeezing his old heart with a daughter loose

  (hostages they áre)—the world’s produced,

  so far, alarms, alarms.

  Fancy the chill & fatigue four hundred years

  award a warm one. All we know is ears.

  My slab lifts up its arms

  in a solicitude entire, too late.

  Of brutal revelry gap your mouth to state:

  Front back & backside go bare!

  Cats’ blackness, booze, blo
ws, grunts, grand groans.

  Yo-bad yōm i-oowaled bo v’ha’l lail awmer h’re gawber!

  —Now, now, poor Bones.

  98

  I met a junior—not so junior—and

  a-many others, who knew ‘him’ or ‘them’

  long ago, slightly,

  whom I know. It was the usual

  cocktail party, only (my schedule being strict)

  beforehand.

  I worked. Well. Then they kept the kids away

  with their own questions, over briefest coffee.

  Then kids drove me to my city.

  I think of the junior: once my advanced élève,

  sweetnatured, slack a little, never perhaps to make,

  in my opinion then, it.

  In my opinion, after a decade, now.

  He publishes. The place was second-rate

  and is throwing up new buildings.

  He’ll be, with luck, there always. —Mr Bones,

  stop that damn dismal. —Why can’t we all the same

  be? —Dr Bones, how?

  99

  Temples

  He does not live here but it is the god.

  A priest tools in atop his motorbike.

  You do not enter.

  He does not enter.

  Us the landscape circles hard abroad,

  sunned, stone. Like calls, too low, to like.

  One submachine-gun cleared the Durga Temple.

  It is very dark here in this groping forth

  Gulp rhubarb for a guilty heart,

  rhubarb for a free, if the world’s sway

  waives customs anywhere that far

  Look on, without pure dismay.

  Unable to account for itself.

  The slave-girl folded her fan & turned on my air-conditioner.

  The lemonade-machine made lemonade.

  I made love, lolled,

  my roundel lowered. I ache less. I purr.

  —Mr Bones, you too advancer with your song,

  muching of which are wrong.

  100

  How this woman came by the courage, how she got

  the courage, Henry bemused himself in a frantic hot

  night of the eight of July,

  where it came from, did once the Lord frown down

  upon her ancient cradle thinking ‘This one

  will do before she die

  for two and seventy years of chipped indignities