AQUARIUM

Uniform with this volume.

BUCOLIC COMEDIES. By Edith Sitwell.

AQUARIUM

BY
HAROLD ACTON

DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON

First published in 1923.
All rights reserved.
Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London.

CONTENTS

Thanks are due to the Editors of the Spectator, New Witness, Oxford Chronicle and Eton Candle for permission to reprint certain of these poems.

Part I
CURVES

Aquarium

IF you would view, buy tickets at the door.

Your brain for lucre please! the fishes here

Require some effort on your part, no more,

For comprehension; then the water’s clear

And you will see, dimpling in hyaline

Fish, oval, strange, glitter as rubied wine

In crystal goblets; fish with spotted gills,

Great flower-fish like open daffodils,

Pale fish that float with mellow, morbid eyes,

Dark fish that feed on wings of dragon flies,

Fish fulvid and fugacious, hovering

Amongst the silver cress with carmine wing,

And fish with small reticulated scales

Floundering mazed, with iridescent tails

Diaphanously quivering ...

Mad, necrophilic urchins cleft to trees

Of coral, with a sting as keen as bees

When they would kiss you; fish electrical

And fish with poniards, fierce, inimical,

Red fish that bark like mastiffs at the moon,

Blue limpets, purple jellies, fish that croon

Mauve, melancholy melodies, and fish

To suit your mood, good reader, as you wish!

A Day Will Come ...

THE ultimate experiment performed

To reach the planes of Mars and Jupiter

Without discomfort. First-class passengers

With restaurants and Adam sitting rooms,

Bathing and barbers, bars American

Could while away the slowly-dripping time.

Blast-furnaces and gasometers, yards

Of bulky timber-joists and refuse-heaps,

Pitch, cataclysmic mounds of dross and slag,

Deep yawning pits, the seething pores of Hell,

Slim towers of factories, vertiginous,

Soul-traps to vitiate and brutalize,

To mould men bitter and recalcitrant ...

The foul miasma of this atmosphere

Confabulate in retching multitudes.

In tension rapt, awaiting holocausts;

Mephitic and fuliginous, the sky—

Where green and yellow lights like demon’s eyes

Blink through the murk; ideas as microbes flock

Half-garrotted; they struggle: “Air, more air!”

Spasmodic; then neurotically grasp

A semi-groan before the strangulation.

The hooters blare

through air ...

And women sigh

near by,

For husbands thrash;

they lash

Gnarled, purple stripes.

Oh Cripes!

To bear a child

is mild

Compared to it,

a pit

Of Hell is sweet,

the heat

Is soothing, calm

as balm.

For what is home?

a tomb,

And men but wive

to thrive;

In hope they live

to give

Despair or worse,

to curse

The squalid life

of wife

With travail fraught,

distraught.

The hooters blare

through air ...

Obese black columns oscillate the streets.

The hands troop out into the twilit hour

Like billion-herded emmets, dinosaurs

That crawl with crude disaster in their souls.

There; poised above, a lemon-rind of moon

Recalls a youth of twitterings, desires

For nacreous, warm flesh. Oh God! that life

Should filter so through factory machines.

The ancient recrudescence; slowly-healed

Wounds all unripped in agony again.

Some lips are taut in bloodless nudity:

Are they enhungered for the limbs of dead?

No; they have savoured lust till they were lax

Of mind and body, with no palate for it

For smooth, white thighs and hot, fierce mouths they feel

Naught else than heavy-lidded lassitude.

All of a sudden voices rend the streets;

“Comrades, away! The spring is calling, haste

Ere we tear moon and stars from out the sky!”

The echoes give them courage, and the town

Becomes an archipelago of cries.

Men hop and run as little children run

Pink-naked on a curling yellow beach.

The women gaze from doorsteps, gorgon-eyed

And wonder what strange madness troubles them.

Sir Simon Moss, reclining in a chair,

With stout cigar held firm by regular

Well-ordered tusks of tooth, can hear the noise.

Another war? to reap more profits in

Exceeded mortal fortune. Nay; there blazed

Some sorry plague. Perhaps the rabies gript ’em.

Thus he pursues his reading of The Times.

Shrill voices fade, as stars in polychrome

Fade on the cold, grey atmosphere of dawn.

“Comrades, away! the smack of wind is sweet”

Faint as the whisper of dim violins.

“Comrades, away ...” faint as the autumn leaves

(Burnt paper crackling gently on the breeze).

And houses humped like elephants asleep,

Insolent hulks out-sprawled on many miles,

That muffled women’s sobs; for anxiously

They feared the sons would follow in their wake.

And the sons followed; far away, the hills

Exhaled a ripe, new life where no machines

Might pound away the frailly-cobwebbed air.

To casual mossy stones and thistle weeds

The city crumbled; now its walls lie bare

As lidless eyes for crows to peck at them.

And in the sloe-gin heat of summer days

The sky’s enamel is not quite Limoges

But almost; here and there a tiny scratch

Of soaring bird, some swallow on the wing

Does irritate the surface. Sheer below,

Fierce-biting on the edges, rise the trees;

Their taper-blossoms opulently lit

As girandoles that smoulder silently

Blue dust of incense; kohl-eyed evening

Sponges the face with dripping fragrances.

The vines and olives terraced on the hills

Melt on the dean horizon blurringly,

Where clouds descend in deluge, liquid-gold.

The flies fling flashes on cerulean meres

Where steely bream and roach with rosy fins

Goggle amongst the shrubberies of cress

Half-dizzied by their vacant harmonies.

The fruit of the wild gourd or hellebore

Has tranced die sense of man; die moonlight leaks

In silver puddles on the carpet-lawns.

Dry thud of hooves; the satyrs have returned!

Cathedral Interior

THE pear-shaped saffron candle-flames

Leap in the velvet-bosomed dark,

The priest speaks gently of God’s claims

To wistful folk with coughs that bark.

Here all is hushed and rabbit-still,

The bull-necked columns, numb with gout

Of countless ages by God’s will

Cast crêpe-like shadows long and stout.

Two narrow slits of coloured glass

Are pierced by spears of mellow light,

The only light allowed to pass

Into this consecrated night.

Behind a candelabra droops

A crucifix of burnished gold,

A ray of dancing sunbeams swoops

Across the cobwebbed arches old.

Here may the sick, the bleeding one

Nurture his wounds and calm his fears.

Here when their joy in life is done

Poor, crumbling men gulp salty tears.

And knotted fingers counting beads,

And prayers half-whispered never cease.

Man slumbers; only heaven heeds,

Here in this hollow womb of peace.

Young Sailor

DRUNK with the whiffs of steak in passage-ways,

With many a genial bar and kindly scene

Of sickly shrimps illumined by the rays

Of rose acetylene,

He wandered through the streets with empty maw;

And winter nights are raw.

And through a steaming window he could see

A saw-dust restaurant; a woman there

Was seated on an ancient lecher’s knee

With hat askew and hair

In blondine-tendrils falling Flora-wise

Over her blinking eyes.

Her lips like currants glistened and her arms

Sticky with strange narcotics, downy-white.

The elder pinched them, sucking in their charms

With pudgy fingers tight,

And of a sudden pealed behind her scarf

A clear, metallic laugh.

The youth outside relit his cigarette—

In silence longed for love articulate,

But he could watch no longer, for the sweat

Trickled a-down his pate

And stung his eyes; and what could be attained

When wages all were drained?

Nights

I. Mimi at the Cabaret Vert

MIMI la Brunette, each crimson evening

sways her silver serpent arms,

peals in half falsetto notes,

at the Cabaret Vert

And with greedy eyes the coarse-lipped men internally undress her.

But I sit crumpled by a marble-breasted table,

the curacoa is vitriol to my chapped, dry lips.

I see through Mimi—I see through her tragedies

and I see through the subtle cosmetics

of her tired face.

(She bore a still-born bastard once,

the man she loves, a black-eyed corporal

has shell-shock and nigh throttled her in bed).

And Mimi la Brunette, each crimson evening

peals in half falsetto notes,

sways her silver serpent arms

at the Cabaret Vert.

II. Malaguenas

BODY erect and arm defiantly curved,

she flings small steps to the clack of her castanets,

which snap their rhythm at one, more musical

than the slight scrape of the plectrum on mandoline strings.

She turns and yet so slowly, so haughtily ...

I wonder if she is an Empress masquerading

in this dim-lighted, ill-reputed café.

Click and the rhythm swims to Pedro’s head,

whose features contain the lineaments of appreciation.

Clack and the rhythm swims to Sancha’s head.

Whom then shall she favour with a rose?

Perhaps she will give no look, but flicker

flicker for a moment the darkness of her eyelids

and freeze the heart in Pedro’s body beating.

The rhythm ceases; Pedro is not the favoured one.

A gleam of dagger and muffled fall of a body.

Confetti

LET us sprinkle in the air

Colours, colours everywhere.

Peacock’s eyes in April showers

Plucked in silver-sandalled hours,

Wings of fireflies iridescent,

Jets of drift-wood incandescent.

Let us hurl them to the skies

Ere the pallid dawn arise.

Minion jewel-plumaged birds,

Specks and flecks in dappled herds,

Tangle in your moonlit hair

Whilst you’re smiling unaware.

In the paper fluttering

Pipe-like voices seem to sing,

Little flutes of heron bone,

Tremulously soft in tone

As by eerie wizards played,

Make one wonder, half afraid.

Empty trickle of the breeze

Through the perfumed orangeries

Like a tiptoe of a faun,

Come a-heralding the dawn.

Let us sprinkle in the air

Colours, colours everywhere.

Night of Adolescence

STEEL-COLD without; sheer icicles of air

That hang down perpendicular with blades,