The Project Gutenberg eBook, Jonah, by Aldous Huxley

JONAH

CHRISTMAS
1917

Printed at the Holywell Press, Oxford.

JONAH.

A cream of phospherescent light

Floats on the wash that to and fro

Slides round his feet—enough to show

Many a pendulous stalactite

Of naked mucus, whorls and wreaths

And huge festoons of mottled tripes,

With smaller palpitating pipes

Through which some yeasty liquor seethes.

Seated upon the convex mound

Of one vast kidney, Jonah prays

And sings his canticles and hymns,

Making the hollow vault resound

God’s goodness and mysterious ways,

Till the great fish spouts music as he swims.

BEHEMOTH.

His eyes are little rutilant stones

Sunk in black basalt; scale by scale

Men count the wealth of silver mail

That laps his flesh and iron bones.

And from his navel, deep and wide

As an old Cyclops’ drinking-bowl,

Spring those stout nerves of twisted hide

That are his life and strength and soul.

Basking his belly, fast asleep

He sprawls on the warm shingle bank;

And the bold Ethiops come and creep

Along his polished heaving flank,

And in his navel brew their wine

And drink vast strength and grow divine.

MINOAN PORCELAIN.

Her eyes of bright unwinking glaze

All imperturbable do not

Even make pretences to regard

The jutting absence of her stays

Where many a Tyrian gallipot

Excites desire with spilth of nard.

The bistred rims above the fard

Of cheeks as red as bergamot

Attest that no shamefaced delays

Will clog fulfilment nor retard

Full payment of the Cyprian’s praise

Down to the last remorseful jot.

Hail! priestess of we know not what

Strange cult of Mycenean days.

ZOO CELESTE.

Au coin le plus obscur du jardin des déesses

Dort le Singe Idéal, dont les immenses fesses

Etalent de l’Azur les éblouissements.

Une Négresse allaite un troupeau d’éléphants,

Mignons d’Olympe, dont la trompe au pâles lèvres

S’enivre d’un lait noir et qui donne les fièvres

Puis, abreuvés ils vont, balançant sur le dos

Le haut machicoulis fantasque des châteaux

D’ivoire et de jadis, broûter dans la prairie.

Des baleines de cuir, rêvant sur l’eau fleurie,

Font jaillir le cristal tournoyant de leur trombe,

Qui monte vers le ciel, se lasse, puis retombe

Avec un clapotis sonore de tambour

Sur les lotus gonflés de parfums et d’amour

Comme les chairs en feu de l’Anadyomène.

Voici, sur l’or de la plage qui se promène

Béhémot: et dans l’air voici le Roc géant,

Qui pond de temps à autre au giron du néant

De nouveaux univers complets, chacun garni

D’un petit Tout-Puissant qui se croit infini.

SONNET A L’INGENUE.

Tout en martyrisant les divines mandores

Du mensonge sacré des mots, je songe, ôsi

Nonchalamment belle! à ta voix de colibri:

Avec ta triste voix de colibri tu dores

Toute imbécillité qu’exhale les landores

Dans leurs meurtres de sens à jamais aboli;

Inconsciente, tu perces le coeur ravi,

Où je ne puis qu’à peine ouvrir un peu les stores.

Péniblement de mes bouquins moisis j’évoque

L’esprit mystique et frais de la Sainte Alacocque;

Mais sans verve pour moi saigne le Sacré Coeur.

Tu parles, et ta voix de petite ingénue

Imite un Séraphin, cul nu sur une nue,

Louant Dieu de son psaume infiniment moqueur.

DIX-HUITIEME SIECLE.

Temple d’Amours passés, ton style rococo

Rappelle tristement le rire d’un gai âge.

Sur ton autel discret les belles de Watteau

Vouaient leur vierge offrande, onzième pucelage.

Derrière tes volets, les beaux après-midis,

Elles out dénoué leur friponne ceinture,

Avec ménagement goûtant le paradis

Pour peur de violer leur chaste chevelure.

Mais, Temple, maintenant te voilà négligé;

Car aucun pied furtif ne sonne sur tes dalles,

Et dans l’Alcôve froid, restes de volupté,

Poussent lubriquement de gros amorphophalles.

HOMMAGE A JULES LAFORGUE.

Que je t’aime, mon cher Laforgue,

Frère qui connais les nostalgies

Qu’engendrent les sanglots des violons;

Et puis, dans la rue, les pâmoisons

Crépusculaires des orgues—des orgues

D’une par trop lointaine Barbarie.—

O ciel, tu les as senties

Percer ton coeur de Bon Breton!

Tu avais la solitude dans l’âme:

Orphelin par ton génie,

Tu n’as jamais trouvé la femme

Qui pourrait être l’Unique Amie.

Parmi les parfums et les frou-frous,

Malgré toi ta chair est restée pure,

Et tu en as devenu presque fou;

Tu pensais, tu étais un Hors-Nature.

Hélas, il faut que l’on vivote

Selon la Nature et le père Aristote;

Mais c’était une bien autre loi

Que nous suivions, toi et moi.

Vois-tu, mon pauvre Jules,

Nous nous sommes faits assez ridicules.

SENTENTIOUS SONG.

God’s in his Heaven:—He never issues

(Wise man!) to visit this world of ours.

Unchecked the cancer gnaws our tissues,

Stops to lick chops and then again devours.

They find who most delight to roam

’Mid castles of remotest Spain

There’s luckily no place like home,

And so they start upon their travels again.

Beauty for some provides escape,

Who gain a happiness in eyeing

The gorgeous buttocks of the ape

Or autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.

Some swoon before the uplifted Host,

Or gazing on their navels find

Both Father, Son and Holy Ghost

In that small Ark of Ecstasy confined.

And some to better worlds than this

Mount up on wings as frail and misty

As passion’s all-too-transient kiss,

(Though afterwards—oh, omne animal triste!)

But I, too rational by half

To live but where I bodily am,

Can only do my best to laugh,

Can only sip my misery dram by dram.

While happier mortals take to drink,

A dolorous dipsomaniac,

Fuddled with grief I sit and think,

Looking upon the bile when it is black.

Chorus, in unison.

Then brim the bowl with atrabilious liquor!

We’ll pledge our Empire vast across the flood;

For Blood, as all men know, than Water’s thicker,

But water’s wider, thank the Lord, than Blood.

THE OXFORD VOLUNTEERS.

The volunteers in vomit-colour

Go forth to shoot the Lamb of God.

Their leaden faces redden to a blazing comet-colour

And they sweat as they plod.

Parson and Poet Laureate,

Professor, Grocer, Don—

This one as fat as Ehud, that (poor dear!) would grow the more he ate,

Yet more a skeleton.

Some have piles and some have goitres,

Most of them have Bright’s disease,

Uric acid has made them flaccid and one gouty hero loiters,

Anchylosed in toes and knees.

’Tis Duty drags their aching carrion

Through the rain and through the mud.

England calls! From Windsor walls sounds the once Coburgian clarion,

Screaming: Empire, Home and Blood!

THE CONTEMPLATIVE SOUL.

Fathoms from sight and hearing,

Where seas are blind and deaf.

My soul like a fish goes steering

Her fabulous gargoyle nef:

Her nef of silver and mouldering

Mother-of-pearl with eyes

Of bulging coral smouldering

Down dim green galleries.

To climb the brightening ladder

Of layer on layer of the sea

She dare not; her swimming-bladder

Would burst in the ecstasy

Of sunlight and windy motion,

White moons and the sky’s red gates.

Still in the depth of ocean

She sits and contemplates.

THE BETROTHAL OF PRIAPUS.

Dark water: the moonless side of the trees:

The Dog-Star sweating in the roses: Mind

Heat-curdled to sheer flesh. For ease

And the sake of coolness, having dined,

I loose a button, wrench a stud.

We belch to the tune of drunk Moselle.

What a noise in the temples—hammering blood.

Shall we sit down? Are we altogether well?

‘How weedily the river exhales!’

‘Like the smell of caterpillar’s dung.’

‘You too collected?’ ‘When I was young,

But used no camphor; Moth prevails

Over moths, you take me.’ Sounding close,

But God knows where, two landrails scrape

Nails on combs. Her hair is loose,

One tendril astray upon the nape

Of a neck which star-revealed is white

Like an open-eyed tobacco-flower—

Frail thurible that fills the night

With the subtle intoxicating power

Of summer perfume. And you too—

Your scent intoxicates; the smell

Of clothes, of hair, the essence of you.

But for the ferments of Moselle.

I’ld swoon in the languor of your perfume,

In the drowsed delicious contemplation

Of a neck seen palely through the gloom.

Another hideous eructation.—

And I wake, distressingly aware

That there are uglier things in life

Than perfumed stars and women’s hair.—

Action, then, action! will you be my wife?

FAREWELL TO THE MUSES.

My typewriter has been writing crookedly

For a very considerable time;

It is so hard to write in metre and rhyme

With a typewriter that writes crookedly.

Lines should look clean and decent to the eye,

And mine have ceased to do so; and so that is why

I am ceasing to be a poet....

Because my typewriter writes so exacerbatingly,

So distressingly crookedly.