The Lost Lunar Baedeker Read online

  In the indifferent flame of the taper

  Synthetic symbol of LIFE

  In this factitious chamber of DEATH

  The woman

  As usual

  Is smiling as bravely

  As it is given to her to be brave

  While the brandy cherries

  In winking glasses

  Are decomposing

  Harmoniously

  With the flesh of spectators

  And at a given spot

  There is one

  Who

  Having the concentric lighting focussed precisely upon her

  Prophetically blossoms in perfect putrefaction

  Yet there are cabs outside the door.

  III. 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 camellia

  And one an iridescent boa

  For there are two of them

  Passing

  And the solicitous mouth of one is straight

  The other curved to a static smile

  They see the dolls

  And for a moment their eyes relax

  To a flicker of elements unconditionally primeval

  And now averted

  Seek each other’s surreptitiously

  To know if the other has seen

  While mine are inextricably entangled with the pattern of the carpet

  As eyes are apt to be

  In their shame

  Having surprised a gesture that is ultimately intimate

  All the virgin eyes in the world are made of glass.

  Sketch of a Man on a Platform

  Man of absolute physical equilibrium

  You stand so straight on your legs

  Every plank or clod you plant your feet on

  Becomes roots for those limbs

  Among the men you accrete to yourself

  You are more heavy

  And more light

  Force being most equitably disposed

  Is easiest to lift from the ground

  So at the same time

  Your movements

  Unassailable

  Savor of the airy-fairy of the ballet

  The essence of a Mademoiselle Genée

  Winks in the to-and-fro of your cuff-links

  Your projectile nose

  Has meddled in the more serious business

  Of the battle-field

  With the same incautious aloofness

  Of intense occupation

  That it snuffles the trail of the female

  And the comfortable

  Passing odors of love

  Your genius

  So much less in your brain

  Than in your body

  Reinforcing the hitherto negligible

  Qualities

  Of life

  Deals so exclusively with

  The vital

  That it is equally happy expressing itself

  Through the activity of pushing

  THINGS

  In the opposite direction

  To that which they are lethargically willing to go

  As in the amative language

  Of the eyes

  Fundamentally unreliable

  You leave others their initial strength

  Concentrating

  On stretching the theoretic elastic of your conceptions

  Till the extent is adequate

  To the hooking on

  Of any— or all

  Forms of creative idiosyncracy

  While the occasional snap

  Of actual production

  Stings the face of the public.

  Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots

  Latin Borghese

  Houses hold virgins

  The door’s on the chain

  ‘Plumb streets with hearts’

  ‘Bore curtains with eyes’

  Virgins without dots*

  Stare beyond probability

  See the men pass

  Their hats are not ours

  We take a walk

  They are going somewhere

  And they may look everywhere

  Men’s eyes look into things

  Our eyes look out

  A great deal of ourselves

  We offer to the mirror

  Something less to the confessional

  The rest to Time

  There is so much Time

  Everything is full of it

  Such a long time

  Virgins may whisper

  ‘Transparent nightdresses made all of lace’

  Virgins may squeak

  ‘My dear I should faint’

  Flutter..… flutter.… flutter.…

  .…‘And then the man—’

  Wasting our giggles

  For we have no dots

  We have been taught

  Love is a god

  White with soft wings

  Nobody shouts

  Virgins for sale

  Yet where are our coins

  For buying a purchaser

  Love is a god

  Marriage expensive

  A secret well kept

  Makes the noise of the world

  Nature’s arms spread wide

  Making room for us

  Room for all of us

  Somebody who was never

  a virgin

  Has bolted the door

  Put curtains at our windows

  See the men pass

  They are going somewhere

  Fleshes like weeds

  Sprout in the light

  So much flesh in the world

  Wanders at will

  Some behind curtains

  Throbs to the night

  Bait to the stars

  Spread it with gold

  And you carry it home

  Against your shirt front

  To a shaded light

  With the door locked

  Against virgins who

  Might scratch

  Babies in Hospital

  I.

  Small Elena

  Of shrunken limbs

  And ample sex

  Who

  Having filched

  The atrophied

  Woman-smile of your mother

  Scatter it

  On the eating unseen

  Tuberculous

  Inaudible hands

  On the counter-pane

  It might have been

  Impossible

  Fingers should be so long

  Being so tiny

  But Nature

  Needing no microscope

  In her laboratory

  Found it just as easy

  Marshalling imperceptible

  Hosts

  To bone of your arm

  Among overlapping of lint

  Attaining a dignity

  Unworthy of your years

  Two and a half!

  II.

  Hail to you

  Bad little boy

  Lying

  In bound beauty

  Of only a broken leg

  And thank you

  For throwing

  Your bricks on the floor

  For the third time

  And the smack
r />   You gave me

  For the thermometer

  Delightfully male

  Already gallant

  You smooth the mackintosh

  For Elena to sit on beside you

  Her fragility

  Being irresistibly for you

  You are very wise

  Precocious coquette

  Who never learnt to talk

  To look at him

  Before

  Your semi-imbecile

  Eyes shut

  It is not given to each of us

  To be desired.

  III.

  Tend

  Do not touch

  Apparent flowers

  Of festering secret

  And the fly-by-nights

  Such little things

  I cannot be your mother

  There are already

  So many ignorances

  I am not guilty of.

  Giovanni Franchi

  The threewomen who all walked

  In the same dress

  And it had falling ferns on it

  Skipped parallel

  To the progress

  Of Giovanni Franchi

  Giovanni Franchi’s wrists flicked

  Flickeringly as he flacked them

  His wrists explained things

  Infectiously by way of his adolescence

  His adolescence was all there was of him

  Whatever was left was rather awkward

  His adolescence tuned to the tops of trees

  Descended to the fallacious nobility

  Of his first pair of trousers

  They were tubular flapped friezily

  The colour of coppered mustard

  What matter

  Were they not the first

  No others could ever be the first again

  The ferns on the flounces of the threewomen

  Began fading as she thought of it

  Tea-table problems for insane asylums

  Are démodé

  Démodé

  Allow us to rely on our instincts

  The threewomen was composed of three instincts

  Each sniffing divergently directed draughts

  The first instinct first again may

  renascent gods save us from the enigmatic

  penetralia of Firstness

  Was to be faithful to a man first

  The second to be loyal to herself first

  She would have to find which self first

  The third which might as well have been first

  Was to find out how many toes the

  philosopher Giovanni Bapini had first

  Giovanni Franchi hooligan-faced and latin-born

  You imagine what he looked like

  Looked it as nearly as he could as the

  philosopher looked

  His articulations were excellent

  Still where Giovanni Bapini was cymophanous

  Giovanni Franchi was merely pale

  His acolytian sincerity

  The sensitive down among his freckles

  Fell in with the patriotic souls of flags

  Red white and green flags filliping piazzas

  When the “National Idea” arrived on the Milan Express

  He scuttled winsomely

  To its distribution from a puffer

  For the declaration of War

  Continually cutting off an angle from Paszkowski’s

  Through plate-glass swingings

  To look as busy bodily

  As the philosopher’s brain was

  As Giovanni Bapini importuned mobs

  From monumental gums

  To the sparky detritus

  From the hurried cigarette

  Of his disciple

  Whose papa and mama kept a trattoria

  Audaciously squatting right opposite the Pitti Palace

  The Pitti Palace however stolid could hardly help noticing

  Being an aristocrat it went on looking

  As plainly piled up as ever

  The Pitti Palace has never been known to mention the trattoria

  Or mention Giovanni Franchi

  Sitting in it

  At a book

  It could not see from that distance

  Giovanni watching the munchers supporting his parents

  With an eye

  On assuring himself

  Of their sufficient impression

  By erudition

  He was so young

  That explains so much

  No book ever explained what to be young is

  But they look so much more important for that

  Giovanni was in continuous exstacy

  Induced by the imposing look of them

  When Giovanni Bapini spoke of them

  He could not tell

  How completely more precious

  Would be such knowledge

  As how many toes the philosopher Giovanni Bapini had

  Now the threewomen

  For pity’s sake

  Let us think of her as she to save time

  Seeing the minor Giovanni

  Sitting at the major Giovanni’s feet

  Made sure he must be counting his toes

  All to the contrary he was picking the philosopher’s brains

  Happy in the security that when he had done

  He would still be youthful enough to sort out his own

  He listened at the elder’s lips

  That taught him of earthquakes and women

  Of women ———————

  His manners were abominable

  He would kill a woman

  Quite inconspicuously it is true

  And neglect to attend her funeral

  I mean the older man

  And what he told

  Giovanni Franchi

  About those pernicious persons

  Was so extremely good for him

  It entirely spoilt his first love-affair

  To such an extent it never came off

  We have read of

  Trattoria meaning eating-house

  Piazzas or squares

  The Pitti Palace enormous

  And Paszkowski’s for beer

  All are in Firenze

  Firenze is Florence

  Some think it is a woman with flowers in her hair

  But NO it is a city with stones on the streets

  Giovanni Bapini often said

  Everybody in Firenze knows me

  And everybody did

  Excepting—— That is she didn’t

  She never knew what he was

  Or how he was himself

  Yet she uniquely was the one

  To speculate upon the number of his toes

  The days growing longer

  Fulfilling her of curiosity

  She made a moth’s-net

  Of metaphor and miracles

  And on the incandescent breath of civilizations

  She chased by moon-and-morn light

  Philosopher’s toes

  As virginal as had he never worn them

  Clear of ‘white marks mean money’

  All quicks and cores

  They fluttered to her fantasy

  Fell into her lap

  While she gathered her ferny flounces about them

  They inappropriately passed

  But Giovanni Franchi was there

  He almost winked it at her

  That he was there

  His eyes were intrepid with phantom secrets

  The Philosopher had flung to him

  And as she tripped by him

  She guessed these all

  All but the number of those toes

  She made diurnal pilgrimage

  To the trattoria

  To eat

  Trout that might have been trained for circuses

  If minarets grew in miniature whirlpools

  And mayonnaise that helped her to forget

  That what is underneath need never mat
ter

  She put all minor riddles out of her

  Such as

  What was the under-cover of Franchi’s book

  Telling to the plaid pattern of the table-cloth

  Too shy to interrogate

  She sent ambassadors

  To the disciple

  They returned

  Oh rats

  Quite manifest that Giovanni Franchi

  Some semieffigy

  Damned by scholiums

  Knew no more how many toes——

  Than Giovanni Bapini knew himself

  At the Door of the House

  A thousand women’s eyes

  Riveted to the unrealisable

  Scatter the wash-stand of the card-teller

  Defiled marble of Carrara

  On which she spreads

  Color-picture maps of destiny

  In the corner

  of an inconducive bed-room

  “Impassioned

  Doubly impassioned

  Sad

  You see these three cards

  But here is the double Victory

  And there is an elderly lady

  Ill in whom you are concerned

  This is the Devil

  And these two skeletons

  Are mortifications

  You are going to make a journey

  At evening about love

  Here is the Man of the Heart

  Turning his shoulders to a lady

  Covered with tears about matrimony

  At the door of your house

  There is a letter about an affair

  And a bed and a table

  And this ace of spades turned upside-down

  ‘With respect’

  Means that some man

  Has well you know

  Intentions little honorable

  Here you are covered with tears

  For a deception

  The Man of the Heart

  Is in thoughtfulness for a letter

  He will make a journey at evening

  And really lady

  I should say

  It will not be long before you see him

  For there he is at the door of the house

  And look

  Here are you

  And here is he

  In life and thought

  At the door of the house”

  Muddled among the aniline brightness of the Tauro cards

  The wheels with wings

  The rows on rows of goblets

  Passionate magenta blossoms

  Hermits —bring luck—

  Moons Prison-fortresses

  Cudgels

  A man cut in half

  Means a deception

  And the nude woman

  Stands for the world

  Those eyes

  Of Petronilla Lucia Letizia

  Felicita

  Filomena Amalia

  Orsola Geltrude Caterina Delfina

  Zita Bibiana Tarsilla

  Eufemia,

  Looking for the little love-tale

  That never came true

  At the door of the house

  The Effectual Marriage

  or

  THE INSIPID NARRATIVE

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