Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence, page 862
Work, work, work,
rattle, rattle, rattle,
sit, sit, sit,
finished, finished, finished —
Ah no, Ah no! before we finally die
or see ourselves as we are, and go mad,
give us back our bodies, for a day, for a single day,
to stamp the earth and feel the wind, like wakeful men again.
Oh, even to know the last wild wincing of despair,
aware at last that our manhood is utterly lost,
give us back our bodies for one day.
What Have They Done to You?
What have they done to you, men of the masses
creeping back and forth to work?
What have they done to you, the saviours of the people?
Oh what have they saved you from?
Alas, they have saved you from yourself,
from your own body, saved you from living your own life.
And given you this jig-jig-jig
tick-tick-ticking of machines,
this life which is no-man’s-life.
Oh a no-man’s-life in a no-man’s-land
this is what they’ve given you
in place of your own life.
The People
Ah the people, the people!
surely they are flesh of my flesh!
When, in the streets of the working quarters,
they stream past, stream past, going to work;
then, when I see the iron hooked in their faces,
their poor, their fearful faces,
then I scream in my soul, for I know I cannot
cut the iron hook out of their faces, that makes them so drawn,
nor cut the invisible wires of steel that pull them
back and forth to work,
back and forth, to work
like fearful and corpse-like fishes hooked and being played
by some malignant fisherman on an unseen, safe shore
where he does not choose to land them yet, hooked fishes of
the factory world.
The Factory Cities
Oh, over the factory cities there seems to hover a doom
so dark, so dark, the mind is lost in it.
Ah, the industrial masses, with the iron hook through their gills,
when the evil angler has played them long enough,
another little run for their money, a few more turns of the reel
fixing the hook more tightly, getting it more firmly in —
Ah, when he begins to draw the line in tight, to land his fish,
the industrial masses - Ah, what will happen, what will happen?
Hark! the strange noise of millions of fish in panic,
in panic, in rebellion, slithering millions of fish
whistling and seething and pulling the angler down into boiling
black death!
Leaves of Grass, Flowers of Grass
Leaves of grass, what about leaves of grass?
Grass blossoms, grass has flowers, flowers of grass,
dusty pollen of grass, tall grass in its midsummer maleness,
hay-seed and tiny grain of grass, graminiferae
not far from the lily, the considerable lily;
even the blue-grass blossoms;
even the bison knew it;
even the stupidest farmer gathers his hay in bloom, in blossom
just before it seeds.
Only the best matters; even the cow knows it;
grass in blossom, blossoming grass, risen to its height and its
natural pride
in its own splendour and its own feathery maleness
the grass, the grass.
Leaves of grass, what are leaves of grass, when at its best grass
blossoms?
Magnificent Democracy
Oh, when the grass flowers, the grass
how aristocratic it is!
Cock’s-foot, fox-tail, fescue and tottering-grass,
see them wave, see them wave, plumes
prouder than the Black Prince,
flowers of grass, fine men.
Oh, I am a democrat
of the grass in blossom,
a blooming aristocrat all round.
LAST POEMS
CONTENTS
THE GREEKS ARE COMING
THE ARGONAUTS
MIDDLE OF THE WORLD
FOR THE HEROES ARE DIPPED IN SCARLET
DEMIURGE
THE WORK OF CREATION
RED GERANIUM AND GODLY MIGNONETTE
BODILESS GOD
THE BODY OF GOD
THE RAINBOW
MAXIMUS
THE MAN OF TYRE
THEY SAY THE SEA IS LOVELESS
WHALES WEEP NOT!
INVOCATION TO THE MOON
BUTTERFLY
BAVARIAN GENTIANS
LUCIFER
THE BREATH OF LIFE
SILENCE
THE HANDS OF GOD
PAX
ABYSMAL IMMORTALITY
ONLY MAN
RETURN OF RETURNS
STOIC
IN THE CITIES
LORD’S PRAYER
MANA OF THE SEA
SALT
THE FOUR
THE BOUNDARY STONE
SPILLING THE SALT
WALK WARILY
MYSTIC
ANAXAGORAS
KISSING AND HORRID STRIFE
WHEN SATAN FELL
DOORS
EVIL IS HOMELESS
WHAT THEN IS EVIL?
THE EVIL WORLD-SOUL
THE WANDERING COSMOS
DEATH IS NOT EVIL, EVIL IS MECHANICAL
STRIFE
THE LATE WAR
MURDER
MURDEROUS WEAPONS
DEPARTURE
THE SHIP OF DEATH
DIFFICULT DEATH
ALL SOULS’ DAY
THE HOUSELESS DEAD
BEWARE THE UNHAPPY DEAD!
AFTER ALL SAINTS’ DAY
SONG OF DEATH
THE END, THE BEGINNING
SLEEP
SLEEP AND WAKING
FATIGUE
FORGET
KNOW-ALL
TABERNACLE
TEMPLES
SHADOWS
CHANGE
PHOENIX
Lawrence with Willard Johnson and Witter Bynner,Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1922
THE GREEKS ARE COMING
LITTLE islands out at sea, on the horizon
keep suddenly showing a whiteness, a flash and a furl, a hail
of something coming, ships a-sail from over the rim of the sea.
And every time, it is ships, it is ships
it is ships of Cnossos coming, out of the morning and the sea,
it is Aegean ships, and men with archaic pointed beards
coming out of the Eastern end.
But it is far-off foam.
And an ocean liner, going east, like a small beetle walking the edge
is leaving a long thread of dark smoke
like a bad smell.
THE ARGONAUTS
THEY are not dead, they are not dead!
Now that the sun, like a lion, licks his paws
and goes slowly down the hill:
now that the moon, who remembers, and only cares
that we should be lovely in the flesh, with bright, crescent feet,
pauses near the crest of the hill, climbing slowly, like a queen
looking down on the lion as he retreats.
Now the sea is the Argonauts’ sea, and in the dawn
Odysseus calls the commands, as he steers past those foamy islands
wait, wait, don’t bring the coffee yet, nor the pain grille.
The dawn is not off the sea, and Odysseus’ ships
have not yet passed the islands, I must watch them still.
MIDDLE OF THE WORLD
THIS sea will never die, neither will it ever grow old
nor cease to be blue, nor in the dawn
cease to lift up its hills
and let the slim black ship of Dionysos come sailing in
with grape-vines up the mast, and dolphins leaping.
What do I care if the smoking ships
of the P. & O. and the Orient Line and all the other stinkers
cross like clock-work the Minoan distance!
They only cross, the distance never changes.
And now that the moon who gives men glistening bodies
is in her exaltation, and can look down on the sun
I see descending from the ships at dawn
slim naked men from Gnossos, smiling the archaic smile
of those that will without fail come back again,
and kindling little fires upon the shores
and crouching, and speaking the music of lost languages.
And the Minoan Gods, and the Gods of Tiryns
are heard softly laughing and chatting, as ever;
and Dionysos, young, and a stranger
leans listening on the gate, in all respect.
FOR THE HEROES ARE DIPPED IN SCARLET
BEFORE Plato told the great lie of ideals
men slimly went like fishes, and didn’t care.
They had long hair, like Samson,
and clean as arrows they sped at the mark
when the bow-cord twanged.
They knew it was no use knowing
their own nothingness:
for they were not nothing.
So now they come back! Hark!
Hark! the low and shattering laughter of bearded men
with the slim waists of warriors, and the long feet
of moon-lit dancers.
Oh, and their faces scarlet, like the dolphin’s blood!
Lo! the loveliest is red all over, rippling vermilion
as he ripples upwards!
laughing in his black beard!
They are dancing! they return, as they went, dancing!
For the thing that is done without the glowing as of vermilion,
were best not done at all.
How glistening red they are!
DEMIURGE
THEY say that reality exists only in the spirit
that corporal existence is a kind of death
that pure being is bodiless
that the idea of the form precedes the form substantial.
But what nonsense it is!
as if any Mind could have imagined a lobster
dozing the under-deeps, then reaching out a savage and iron claw!
Even the mind of God can only imagine
those things that have become themselves:
bodies and presences, here and now, creatures with a foothold
in creation
even if it is only a lobster on tiptoe.
Religion knows better than philosophy
Religion knows that Jesus never was Jesus
till he was born from a womb, and ate soup and bread
and grew up, and became, in the wonder of creation, Jesus,
with a body and with needs, and a lovely spirit.
THE WORK OF CREATION
THE mystery of creation is the divine urge of creation,
but it is a great strange urge, it is not a Mind.
Even an artist knows that his work was never in his mind,
he could never have thought it before it happened.
A strange ache possessed him, and he entered the struggle,
and out of the struggle with his material, in the spell of the urge
his work took place, it came to pass, it stood up and saluted
his mind.
God is a great urge, wonderful, mysterious, magnificent
but he knows nothing beforehand.
His urge takes shape in flesh, and lo!
it is creation! God looks himself on it in wonder, for the first time.
Lo! there is a creature, formed! How strange!
Let me think about it! Let me form an idea!
RED GERANIUM AND GODLY MIGNONETTE
IMAGINE that any mind ever thought a red geranium!
As if the redness of a red geranium could be anything but a
sensual experience
and as if sensual experience could take place before there were
any senses.
We know that even God could not imagine the redness of a
red geranium
nor the smell of mignonette
when geraniums were not, and mignonette neither.
And even when they were, even God would have to have a nose
to smell at the mignonette.
You can’t imagine the Holy Ghost sniffing at cherry-pie heliotrope.
Or the Most High, during the coal age, cudgelling his mighty brains
even if he had any brains: straining his mighty mind
to think, among the moss and mud of lizards and mastodons
to think out, in the abstract, when all was twilit green and muddy:
“ Now there shall be tum-tiddly-um, and tum-tiddly um,
hey-presto! scarlet geranium! “
We know it couldn’t be done.
But imagine, among the mud and the mastodons
god sighing and yearning with tremendous creative yearning,
in that dark green mess
oh, for some other beauty, some other beauty
that blossomed at last, red geranium, and mignonette.
BODILESS GOD
EVERYTHING that has beauty has a body, and is a body;
everything that has being has being in the flesh:
and dreams are only drawn from the bodies that are.
And God?
Unless God has a body, how can he have a voice
and emotions, and desires, and strength, glory or honour?
For God, even the rarest God, is supposed to love us
and wish us to be this that and the other.
And he is supposed to be mighty and glorious.
THE BODY OF GOD
GOD is the great urge that has not yet found a body
but urges towards incarnation with the great creative urge.
And becomes at last a clove carnation: lo! that is god!
and becomes at last Helen, or Ninon: any lovely and generous woman
at her best and her most beautiful, being god, made manifest,
any clear and fearless man being god, very god.
There is no god
apart from poppies and the flying fish,
men singing songs, and women brushing their hair in the sun.
The lovely things are god that has come to pass, like Jesus came.
The rest, the undiscoverable, is the demiurge.
THE RAINBOW
EVEN the rainbow has a body
made of the drizzling rain
and is an architecture of glistening atoms
built up, built up
yet you can’t lay your hand on it,
nay, nor even your mind.
MAXIMUS
GOD is older than the sun and moon
and the eye cannot behold him
nor voice describe him.
But a naked man, a stranger, leaned on the gate
with his cloak over his arm, waiting to be asked in.
So I called him: Gome in, if you will! —
He came in slowly, and sat down by the hearth.
I said to him: And what is your name? —
He looked at me without answer, but such a loveliness
entered me, I smiled to myself, saying: He is God!
So he said: Hermes!
God is older than the sun and moon
and the eye cannot behold him
nor the voice describe him:
and still, this is the God Hermes, sitting by my hearth.
THE MAN OF TYRE
THE man of Tyre went down to the sea
pondering, for he was a Greek, that God is one and all alone
and ever more shall be so.
And a woman who had been washing clothes in the pool of rock
where a stream came down to the gravel of the sea and sank in,
who had spread white washing on the gravel banked above the bay,
who had lain her shift on the shore, on the shingle slope,
who had waded to the pale green sea of evening, out to a shoal,
pouring sea-water over herself
now turned, and came slowly back, with her back to the evening sky.
Oh lovely, lovely with the dark hair piled up, as she went deeper,
deeper down the channel, then rose shallower, shallower,
with the full thighs slowly lifting of the wader wading shore- wards
and the shoulders pallid with light from the silent sky behind
both breasts dim and mysterious, with the glamorous kindness
of twilight between them
and the dim notch of black maidenhair like an indicator,
giving a message to the man —
So in the cane-brake he clasped his hands in delight
that could only be god-given, and murmured:
Lo! God is one god! But here in the twilight
godly and lovely comes Aphrodite out of the sea
towards me!
THEY SAY THE SEA IS LOVELESS
THEY say the sea is loveless, that in the sea
love cannot live, but only bare, salt splinters
of loveless life.
But from the sea
the dolphins leap round Dionysos’ ship
whose masts have purple vines,
and up they come with the purple dark of rainbows
and flip! they go! with the nose-dive of sheer delight;
and the sea is making love to Dionysos
in the bouncing of these small and happy whales.
