Title: Jonah - Christmas 1917
Author: Huxley, Aldous
Language: English
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JONAH

Christmas
1917


[Illustration]



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.





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