Fragments Out of the Deluge

V

On an empty sarcophagus / hewn out of alabaster, / A branch of fennel on an / empty sarcophagus ... // Nothing suggests accident / where the beast / Is finishing her rest ... // Smoke of ultramarine and amber / Floats above the fields after / Moonlit rains, from tree unto tree / Distils the radiance of a king ... // You might as well see the new branch of Enkidu; / And that is no new thing either ...

VI

He stood in the midst of them all / and appeared in true form, / He found them drunken, he found none / thirsty among them. // Who would add to your statue, / Or in your village accept you? // He fed them on seed wrapped in wonders; / They deemed it a truth-value system, / Man out of innocence, / And there was none thirsty among them. // They cast him in mould of iron, / And asked him to do a rock-drill — / Man out of innocence — / He drilled with dumb-bells about him. // And they took the key off / And they hid the key of... / That none may enter. // And they took the hot spoils off the battle, / And they shared the hot spoils among them: // Estates, among them; / And they were the chosen, / mongrel breeds, / With slogan in hand, of / won divination ... // And you talk of the people: / There is none thirsty among them.

VII

And from frame of iron, / And in mould of iron ... // For he ate the dead lion, / & was within the corpse — // Which is not the point; / And who says it matters / Which way the kite flows, / Provided the movement is / Around the burning market — // And lilies / Sprouted from rosebeds, / Canalilies, / Like tombstones from pavements; // And to the cross in the void came pilgrims / Came, floating with burnt-out tapers; // Past the village orchard where / Flannagan / Preached the Pope’s message, / To where drowning nuns suspired, / Asking the key-word from stone; / & he said: // To sow the fireseed among grasses, / & lo, to keep it till it burns out ...

VIII

But the sunbird repeats / Over the oilbean shadows: // “A fleet of eagles, / over the oilbean shadows, / Holds the square / under curse of their breath. // Beaks of bronze, wings / of hard-tanned felt, / The eagles flow / over man-mountains, / Steep walls of voices, / horizons; / The eagles furrow / dazzling over the voices / With wings like / combs in the wind’s hair // Out of the solitude, the fleet, / Out of the solitude, _t / Intangible like silk thread of sunlight, / The eagles ride low, / Resplendent ... resplendent; / And small birds sing in shadows, / Wobbling under their bones ...”

IX

And, squatting, / A blind dog howls at his godmother: // Eunice at the passageway, / Singing the moon to sleep over the hills, / Eunice at the passageway ... // Give him no chair, they say, / The dawn’s charioteer, / Riding with the angry stars / Toward the great sunshine.

X

And to us they came — / Malisons, malisons, mair than ten —

And climbed the bombax / And killed the Sunbird. // And they scanned the forest of oilbean, / Its approach; surveyed its high branches ... // And they entered into the forest, / And they passed through the forest of oilbean / And found them, the twin-gods of the forest ... // And the beasts broke — / Malisons, malisons, mair than ten —

And dawn-gust grumbled, / Fanning the grove / Like a horse-tail-man, / Like handmaid of dancers, / Fanning their branches. // Their talons they drew out of their scabbard, / Upon the tree trunks, as if on fire-clay, / Their beaks they sharpened; / And spread like eagles their felt-wings, / And descended upon the twin gods of Irkalla // And the ornaments of him, / And the beads about his tail; / And the carapace of her, / And her shell, they divided.

XI

And the gods lie in state / And the gods lie in state / Without the long-drum. // And the gods lie unsung, / Veiled only with mould, / Behind the shrinehouse. // Gods grow out, / Abandoned; / And so do they ...

XII

But at the window, outside, a shadow: // The sunbird sings again / From the limits of the dream; / The Sunbird sings again / Where the caress does not reach, // of Guernica, / On whose canvas of blood, / The slits of his tongue / ding to glue ... / & the cancelling out is complete.