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And the trees
about me,
Let them be dry and leafless; let the
rocks
Groan with continual surges; and behind me
Make all a desolation. Look, look, wenches!
Paint me a cavernous waste shore
Cast in the
unstilted Cyclades,
Paint me the bold anfractuous
rocks
Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.
Display me Aeolus above
Reviewing the insurgent gales
Which tangle Ariadne's hair
And swell with haste the
perjured sails.
Morning stirs the feet and hands
(Nausicaa and Polypheme),
Gesture of orang-outang
Rises from the sheets in steam.
This withered
root of knots of hair
Slitted below and gashed with
eyes,
This oval O cropped out with teeth:
The
sickle motion from the thighs
Jackknifes upward
at the knees
Then straightens out from heel to hip
Pushing the framework of the bed
And clawing at the
pillow slip.
Sweeney addressed full length to
shave
Broadbottomed, pink from nape to base,
Knows
the female temperament
And wipes the suds around his
face.
(The lengthened shadow of a man
Is
history, said Emerson
Who had not seen the silhouette
Of Sweeney straddled in the sun).
Tests the
razor on his leg
Waiting until the shriek subsides.
The epileptic on the bed
Curves backward, clutching
at her sides.
The ladies of the corridor
Find
themselves involved, disgraced,
Call witness to their
principles
And deprecate the lack of taste
Observing that hysteria
Might easily be
misunderstood;
Mrs. Turner intimates
It does the
house no sort of good.
But Doris, towelled from
the bath,
Enters padding on broad feet,
Bringing
sal volatile
And a glass of brandy neat.
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