Parturition
I am the
centre
Of a
circle of pain
Exceeding
its boundaries in every direction
The
business of the bland sun
Has no
affair with me
In my
congested cosmos of agony
From
which there is no escape
On
infinitely prolonged nerve-vibrations
Or in
contraction
To the
pinpoint nucleus of being
Locate
an irritation without
It
is
within
Within
It is
without
The
sensitized area
Is
identical with the extensity
Of
intension
I am the
false quantity
In the
harmony of physiological potentiality
To which
Gaining
self-control
I should
be consonant
In time
Pain is
no stronger than the resisting force
Pain
calls up in me
The
struggle is equal
The open
window is full of a voice
A
fashionable portrait painter
Running
upstairs to a woman’s apartment
Sings
“All the girls are tid’ly did’ly
All the girls are nice
Whether they wear their hair in curls
Or —”
At the
back of the thoughts to which I permit crystallization
The
conception Brute
Why?
The irresponsibility of the male
Leaves
woman her superior Inferiority.
He is
running upstairs
I am
climbing a distorted mountain of agony
Incidentally
with the exhaustion of control
I reach
the summit
And
gradually subside into anticipation of
Repose
Which
never comes.
For
another mountain is growing up
Which goaded by the unavoidable
I must
traverse
Traversing
myself
Something
in the delirium of night hours
Confuses
while intensifying sensibility
Blurring
spatial contours
So
aiding elusion of the circumscribed
That the
gurgling of a crucified wild beast
Comes
from so far away
And the
foam on the stretched muscles of a mouth
Is no
part of myself
There is
a climax in sensibility
When
pain surpassing itself
Becomes
exotic
And the
ego succeeds in unifying the positive and negative poles of sensation
Uniting
the opposing and resisting forces
In
lascivious revelation
Relaxation
Negation
of myself as a unit
Vacuum interlude
I should
have been emptied of life
Giving
life
For
consciousness in crises races
Through
the subliminal deposits of evolutionary processes
Have I
not
Somewhere
Scrutinized
A dead
white feathered moth
Laying
eggs?
A moment
Being
realization
Can
Vitalized
by cosmic initiation
Furnish
an adequate apology
For the
objective
Agglomeration
of activities
Of a
life
LIFE
A leap
with nature
Into the
essence
Of
unpredicted Maternity
Against
my thigh
Tough of
infinitesimal motion
Scarcely
perceptible
Undulation
Warmth moisture
Stir of
incipient life
Precipitating
into me
The
contents of the universe
Mother I
am
Identical
With
infinite Maternity
Indivisible
Acutely
I am absorbed
Into
The
was—is—ever—shall—be
Of
cosmic reproductivity
Rises
from the subconscious
Impression
of a cat
With
blind kittens
Among
her legs
Same
undulating life-stir
I am
that cat
Rises
from the sub-conscious
Impression
of small animal carcass
Covered
with blue bottles
—Epicurean—
And
through the insects
Waves
that same undulation of living
Death
Life
I am
knowing
All
about
Unfolding
The next
morning
Each
woman-of-the-people
Tiptoeing
the red pile of the carpet
Doing
hushed service
Each
woman-of-the-people
Wearing
a halo
A
ludicrous little halo
Of which
she is sublimely unaware
I once
heard in a church
—Man and
woman God made them—
Thank God.
Moreover,
the Moon
Face of
the skies
preside
over our
wonder.
Fluorescent
truant
of heaven
draw us
under.
Silver,
circular corpse
your
decease
infects
us with unendurable ease,
touching
nerve-terminals
to
thermal icicles
Coercive
as coma, frail as bloom
innuendoes
of your inverse dawn
suffuse
the self;
our
every corpuscle become an elf.
The
Black Virginity
Baby
Priests
On green
sward
Yew-closed
Silk
beaver
Rhythm
of redemption
Fluttering
of Breviaries
Fluted
black silk cloaks
Hung
square from shoulders
Troncated
juvenility
Uniform
segration
Union in
severity
Modulation
Intimidation
Pride of
misapprehended preparation
Ebony
statues training for immobility
Anæmic
jawed
Wise saw
to one another
Prettily
the little ones
Gesticulate
benignly upon one another in the sun buzz—
Finger
and thumb circles postulate pulpits
Profiles
forsworn to Donatello
Munching
tall talk vestral shop
Evangelical
snobs
Uneasy
dreaming
In
hermetically-sealed dormitories
Not of
me or you Sister Saraminta
Of no
more or less
Than the
fit of Pope's mitres
It is an
old religion that put us in our places
Here am
I in lilac print
Preposterously
no less than the world flesh and devil
Having
no more idea what those are
What I
am
Than
Baby Priests of what "He" is
or they
are—
Messianic
mites tripping measured latin ring-a-roses
Subjugated
adolescence
Retraces
loose steps to furling of Breviaries
In
broiling shadows
The last
with apostolic lurch
Tries
for a high hung fruit
And
misses
Any way
it is inedible
It is
always thus
In the
Public Garden.
Parallel
lines
An old
man
Eyeing a
white muslin girl's school
And all
this
As
pleasant as bewildering
Would
not eventually meet
I am for
ever bewildered
Old men
are often grown greedy—
What
nonsense
It is
noon
And
salvation's seedlings
Are
headed off for the refectory.
The Dead
We have
flowed out of ourselves
Beginning
on the outside
That
shrivvable skin
Where
you leave off
Of
infinite elastic
Walking
the ceiling
Our
eyelashes polish stars
Curled
close in the youngest corpuscle
Of a
descendant
We spit
up our passions in our grand-dams
Fixing
the extension of your reactions
Our
shadow lengthens
In your
fear
You are
so old
Born in
our immortality
Stuck
fast as Life
In one
impalpable
Omniprevalent
Dimension
We are
turned inside out
Your
cities lie digesting in our stomachs
Street
lights footle in our ocular darkness
Having
swallowed your irate hungers
Satisfied
before bread-breaking
To your
dissolution
We
splinter into Wholes
Stirring
the remorses of your tomorrow
Among
the refuse of your unborn centuries
In our
busy ashbins
Stink
the melodies
Of your
So
easily reducible
Adolescences
Our tissue
is of that which escapes you
Birth-Breaths
and orgasms
The
shattering tremor of the static
The
far-shore of an instant
The
unsurpassable openness of the circle
Legerdemain
of God
Only in
the segregated angles of Lunatic Asylums
Do those
who have strained to exceeding themselves
Break on
our edgeless contours
The
mouthed echoes of what
Has
exuded to our companionship
Is
horrible to the ear
Of the
half that is left inside them.
Apology
of Genius
Ostracized
as we are with God—
The watchers of the civilized wastes
reverse their signals on our track
Lepers of the moon
all magically diseased
we come among you
innocent
of our luminous sores
unknowing
how perturbing lights
our spirit
on the passion of Man
until you turn on us your smooth
fool’s faces
like buttocks bared in aboriginal
mockeries
We are the sacerdotal clowns
who feed upon the wind and stars
and pulverous pastures of poverty
Our wills are formed
by curious disciplines
beyond your laws
You may give birth to us
or marry u
the changes of your flesh
are not our destiny—
The cuirass of the soul
still shines—
And we are unaware
if you confuse
such brief
corrosion with possession
In the raw caverns of the Increate
we forge the dusk of Chaos
to that imperious jewellery of the
Universe
—the Beautiful—
While to your eyes
A delicate crop
of criminal mystic immortels
stands to the censor’s scythe.
Human
Cylinders
The
human cylinders
Revolving
in the enervating dusk
That
wraps each closer in the mystery
Of
singularity
Among
the litter of a sunless afternoon
Having
eaten without tasting
Talked
without communion
And at
least two of us
Loved a
very little
Without
seeking
To know
if our two miseries
In the
lucid rush-together of automatons
Could
form one opulent wellbeing
Simplifications
of men
In the
enervating dusk
Your
indistinctness
Serves
me the core of the kernel of you
When in
the frenzied reaching out of intellect to intellect
Leaning
brow to brow communicative
Over the
abyss of the potential
Concordance
of respiration
Shames
Absence
of corresponding between the verbal sensory
And
reciprocity
Of
conception
And
expression
Where
each extrudes beyond the tangible
One thin
pale trail of speculation
From
among us we have sent out
Into the
enervating dusk
One
little whining beast
Whose longing
Is to
slink back to antediluvian burrow
And one
elastic tentacle of intuition
To
quiver among the stars
The
impartiality of the absolute
Routs the polemic
Or which
of us
Would
not
Receiving
the holy-ghost
Catch
it and caging
Lose it
Or in
the problematic
Destroy
the Universe
With a
solution
Three Moments in Paris
1. One
O'Clock at Night
Though
you have never possessed me
I have
belonged to you since the beginning of time
And
sleepily I sit on your chair beside you
Leaning
against your shoulder
And your
careless arm across my back gesticulates
As your
indisputable male voice roars
Through
my brain and my body
Arguing
"Dynamic Decomposition"
Of which
I understand nothing
Sleepily
And the
only less male voice of your brother pugilist of the intellect
Booms as it seems to me so sleepy
Across
an interval of a thousand miles
An
interim of a thousand years
But you
who make more noise than any man in the world when you clear your throat
Deafening wake me
And I
catch the thread of the argument
Immediately
assuming my personal mental attitude
And
cease to be a woman
Beautiful
halfhour of being a mere woman
The
animal woman
Understanding
nothing of man
But
mastery and the security of imparted
physical heat
Indifferent
to cerebral gymnastics
Or
regarding them as the self-indulgent play of children
Or the
thunder of alien gods
But you
wake me up
Anyhow who am I that I should criticize your
theories of "Plastic Velocity"
"Let
us go home she is tired and wants to go to bed."
2. Cafe
du Neant
Little
tapers lighted leaning diagonally
Stuck in
coffin tables of the Cafe du Neant
Leaning
to the breath of baited bodies
Like
young poplars fringing the Loire
Eyes that
are full of love
And eyes
that are full of kohl
Projecting
light across the fulsome ambiente
Trailing
the rest of the animal behind them
Telling
of tales without words
And lies
of no consequence
One way
or another
The
young lovers hermetically buttoned up in black
To black
cravat
To the
blue powder edge dusting the yellow throat
What
color could have been your bodies
When
last you put them away
Nostalgic
youth
Holding
your mistress's pricked finger
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.
3.
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 on 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.
Letters
of the Unliving
The
present implies presence
thus
unauthorized
by the present
these
letters are left authorless—
have
lost all origin
since
the inscribing hand
lost
life.
The
harshness of the past
croaks,
from
creased leaves
covered
with unwritten writing
since
death’s erasure
of the
writer—
erased
the lover
Well-chosen
and so ill-relinquished
the
husband heartsease—
acme of
communion—
made
euphonious
our
esoteric universe.
Ego’s
oasis now’s
the sole
companion.
My body
and my reason
you left
to the drought of your dying:
the
longing and the lack
of a
racked creature
shouting
to an
unanswering hiatus
‘reunite
us!’
till
slyly
patience
creeps up on passion
and the
elation of youth
dwindles
out of season.
Agony
ends in
an equal grave
with
ecstasy.
An
uneasy mist
rises
from this calligraphy of recollection
documenting
a terror of dementia.
This
package of ago
creaks
with the horror of echo.
The
bloom of love
decoyed
to decay
by the finger
of
Hazard the swindler—
deathly
handler who leaves
no
post-mortem mask
but a
callous earth.
Posing
the extreme enigma
in my
Bewilderness
can your
face excelling Adonis
have
ceased to be
or ever
have had existence?
With you
no longer the addresser
there is
no addressee
to dally
with defunct reality.
Can one
who still has being
be
inexistent?
I am
become
dumb
in
answer
to your
dead language of amor.
Diminuendo
of
life’s imposture
implies no
possible retrial
by my
present self—
my
cloud-corpse
beshadowing
your shroud.
The one
I was with you:
inhumed
in chasms.
No
creator
reconstrues
scar-tissue
to shine
as birth-star.
But to
my sub-cerebral surprise
at last
on blase sorrow
dawns an
iota of disgust
for
life’s intemperance:
‘As once
you were’
Withhold
your ghostly reference
to the
sweet once were we.
Leave me
my final
illiteracy
of
memory’s languor—
my
preference
to drift
in lenient coma
an older
Ophelia
on
Lethe.
An Old
Woman
The past
has come apart
events
are vagueing
the
future is a seedless pod
the
present pain.
Not even
pain has that precision
with
which it struck youth.
Years
like moths
erode
internal organs
hanging
or falling
in a
spoiled closet.
Does you
mirror bedevil you?
Or is
the impossible
possible
to senility?
How
could the erstwhile
agile
and slim self—-
that
narrow silhouette—-
come to
contain
this
huge incognito—-
this bulbous
stranger—-
only to
be exorcised by death?
Dilation
has entirely dominated
your
long reality.
Further
reading :
Mina Loy
. The Poetry Foundation
Listening
to Loy: Ageing, Modernism & Unexpected Final Words. By Jade French.
Women Are Boring , April 12 , 2018.
The
Vanishing Pugilist and the Poet. By Emma
Garman. Lapham’s Quarterly August 30, 2017.
The marriage
of twentieth-century avant-gardists Arthur Cravan and Mina Loy was blissfully
happy—until his mysterious disappearance.
Interview
with Carolyn Burke, who wrote a
biography of Mina Loy , Becoming Modern:
The Life of Mina Loy, 1996. Jacket magazine, October 1998.
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