Written by
Delmore Schwartz |
Nothing is given which is not taken.
Little or nothing is taken which is not freely desired,
freely, truly and fully.
"You would not seek me if you had not found me": this is
true of all that is supremely desired and admired...
"An enigma is an animal," said the hurried, harried
schoolboy:
And a horse divided against itself cannot stand;
And a moron is a man who believes in having too many
wives: what harm is there in that?
O the endless fecundity of poetry is equaled
By its endless inexhaustible freshness, as in the discovery
of America and of poetry.
Hence it is clear that the truth is not strait and narrow but infinite:
All roads lead to Rome and to poetry
and to poem, sweet poem
and from, away and towards are the same typography.
Hence the poet must be, in a way, stupid and naive and a
little child;
Unless ye be as a little child ye cannot enter the kingdom
of poetry.
Hence the poet must be able to become a tiger like Blake; a
carousel like Rilke.
Hence he must be all things to be free, for all impersonations
a doormat and a monument
to all situations possible or actual
The cuckold, the cuckoo, the conqueror, and the coxcomb.
It is to him in the zoo that the zoo cries out and the hyena:
"Hello, take off your hat, king of the beasts, and be seated,
Mr. Bones."
And hence the poet must seek to be essentially anonymous.
He must die a little death each morning.
He must swallow his toad and study his vomit
as Baudelaire studied la charogne of Jeanne Duval.
The poet must be or become both Keats and Renoir and
Keats as Renoir.
Mozart as Figaro and Edgar Allan Poe as Ophelia, stoned
out of her mind
drowning in the river called forever river and ever...
Keats as Mimi, Camille, and an aging gourmet.
He must also refuse the favors of the unattainable lady
(As Baudelaire refused Madame Sabatier when the fair
blonde summoned him,
For Jeanne Duval was enough and more than enough,
although she cuckolded him
With errand boys, servants, waiters; reality was Jeanne Duval.
Had he permitted Madame Sabatier to teach the poet a greater whiteness,
His devotion and conception of the divinity of Beauty
would have suffered an absolute diminution.)
The poet must be both Casanova and St. Anthony,
He must be Adonis, Nero, Hippolytus, Heathcliff, and
Phaedre,
Genghis Kahn, Genghis Cohen, and Gordon Martini
Dandy Ghandi and St. Francis,
Professor Tenure, and Dizzy the dean and Disraeli of Death.
He would have worn the horns of existence upon his head,
He would have perceived them regarding the looking-glass,
He would have needed them the way a moose needs a hatrack;
Above his heavy head and in his loaded eyes, black and scorched,
He would have seen the meaning of the hat-rack, above the glass
Looking in the dark foyer.
For the poet must become nothing but poetry,
He must be nothing but a poem when he is writing
Until he is absent-minded as the dead are
Forgetful as the nymphs of Lethe and a lobotomy...
("the fat weed that rots on Lethe wharf").
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Written by
Robert William Service |
I watched one day a parrot grey - 'twas in a barber shop.
"Cuckold!" he cried, until I sighed: "You feathered devil, stop!"
Then balefully he looked at me, and slid along his perch,
With sneering eye that seemed to pry me very soul to search.
So fierce, so bold, so grim, so cold, so agate was his stare:
And then that bird I thought I heard this sentiment declare: -
"As it appears, a hundred years a parrot may survive,
When you are gone I'll sit upon this perch and be alive.
In this same spot I'll drop my crot, and crack my sunflower seeds,
And cackle loud when in a shroud you rot beneath the weeds.
I'll carry on when carrion you lie beneath the yew;
With claw and beak my grub I'll seek when grubs are seeking you."
"Foul fowl! said I, "don't prophesy, I'll jolly well contrive
That when I rot in bone-yard lot you cease to be alive."
So I bespoke that barber bloke: "Joe, here's a five pound note.
It's crisp and new, and yours if you will slice that parrot's throat."
"In part," says he, "I must agree, for poor I be in pelf,
With right good will I'll take your bill, but - cut his throat yourself."
So it occurred I took that bird to my ancestral hall,
And there he sat and sniggered at the portraits on the wall.
I sought to cut his wind-pipe but he gave me such a peck,
So cross was I, I swore I'd try to wring his blasted neck;
When shrill he cried: "It's parrotcide what you propose to do;
For every time you make a rhyme you're just a parrot too."
Said I: "It's true. I bow to you. Poor parrots are we all."
And now I sense with reverence the wisdom of his poll.
For every time I want a rhyme he seems to find the word;
In any doubt he helps me out - a most amazing bird.
This line that lies before your eyes he helped me to indite;
I sling the ink but often think it's he who ought to write.
It's he who should in mystic mood concoct poetic screeds,
And I who ought to drop my crot and crackle sunflower seeds.
A parrot nears a hundred years (or so the legend goes),
So were I he this century I might see to its close.
Then I might swing within my ring while revolutions roar,
And watch a world to ruin hurled - and find it all a bore.
As upside-down I cling and clown, I might with parrot eyes
Blink blandly when excited men are moulding Paradise.
New Christs might die, while grimly I would croak and carry on,
Till gnarled and old I should behold the year TWO THOUSAND dawn.
But what a fate! How I should hate upon my perch to sit,
And nothing do to make anew a world for angels fit.
No, better far, though feeble are my lyric notes and flat,
Be dead and done than anyone who lives a life like that.
Though critic-scarred a humble bard I feel I'd rather be,
Than flap and flit and shriek and spit through all a century.
So feathered friend, until the end you may divide my den,
And make a mess, which (more or less) I clean up now and then.
But I prefer the doom to share of dead and gone compeers,
Than parrot be, and live to see ten times a hundred years.
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Written by
Alexander Pope |
Two or three visits, and two or three bows,
Two or three civil things, two or three vows,
Two or three kisses, with two or three sighs,
Two or three Jesus's - and let me dies-
Two or three squeezes, and two or three towses,
With two or three thousand pound lost at their houses,
Can never fail cuckolding two or three spouses.
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Written by
Ben Jonson |
XXV. ? ON SIR VOLUPTUOUS BEAST. While BEAST instructs his fair and innocent wife, In the past pleasures of his sensual life, Telling the motions of each petticoat, And how his Ganymede mov'd, and how his goat, And now her hourly her own cucquean makes, In varied shapes, which for his lust she takes : What doth he else, but say, Leave to be chaste, Just wife, and, to change me, make woman's haste. [AJ Notes:Ganymede, in Greek mythology, a beautiful shepherd boy with whom Zeus fell in love.Cucquean, n. [Cuckold + queen], a woman whose husband is unfaithful to her.]
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Written by
Craig Raine |
On my desk, a set of labels
or a synopsis of leeks,
blanched by the sun
and trailing their roots
like a watering can.
Beyond and below,
diminished by distance,
a taxi shivers at the lights:
a shining moorhen
with an orange nodule
set over the beak,
taking a passenger
under its wing.
I turn away, confront
the cuckold hatstand
at bay in the corner,
and eavesdrop (bless you!)
on a hay-fever of brakes.
My Caran d'Ache are sharp
as the tips of an iris
and the four-tier file
is spotted with rust:
a study of plaice
by a Japanese master,
ochres exquisitely bled.
Instead of office work,
I fish for complements
and sport a pencil
behind each ear,
a bit of a devil,
or trap the telephone
awkwardly under my chin
like Richard Crookback,
crying, A horse! A horse!
My kingdom for a horse!
but only to myself,
ironically: the tube
is semi-stiff with stallion whangs,
the chairman's Mercedes
has windscreen wipers
like a bird's broken tongue,
and I am perfectly happy
to see your head, quick
round the door like a dryad,
as I pretend to be Ovid
in exile, composing Tristia
and sad for the shining,
the missed, the muscular beach.
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Written by
Robert Burns |
I HAE a wife of my ain,
I’ll partake wi’ naebody;
I’ll take Cuckold frae nane,
I’ll gie Cuckold to naebody.
I hae a penny to spend,
There—thanks to naebody!
I hae naething to lend,
I’ll borrow frae naebody.
I am naebody’s lord,
I’ll be slave to naebody;
I hae a gude braid sword,
I’ll tak dunts frae naebody.
I’ll be merry and free,
I’ll be sad for naebody;
Naebody cares for me,
I care for naebody.
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Written by
Robert Burns |
O WILLIE 1 brew’d a peck o’ maut,
And Rob and Allen cam to see;
Three blyther hearts, that lee-lang night,
Ye wadna found in Christendie.
Chorus.—We are na fou, we’re nae that fou,
But just a drappie in our ee;
The cock may craw, the day may daw
And aye we’ll taste the barley bree.
Here are we met, three merry boys,
Three merry boys I trow are we;
And mony a night we’ve merry been,
And mony mae we hope to be!
We are na fou, &c.
It is the moon, I ken her horn,
That’s blinkin’ in the lift sae hie;
She shines sae bright to wyle us hame,
But, by my sooth, she’ll wait a wee!
We are na fou, &c.
Wha first shall rise to gang awa,
A cuckold, coward loun is he!
Wha first beside his chair shall fa’,
He is the King amang us three.
We are na fou, &c.
Note 1. Willie is Nicol, Allan is Masterton the writing-master. The scene is between Moffat and the head of the Loch of the Lowes. Date, August-September, 1789.—Lang. [back]
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