Leda Aldous Huxley 10

Leda Aldous Huxley 10

Poor Tom was wounded on the twenty-third;

Did you know that? And just to-day I heard

News from your uncle that his nephew James

Is dead—Matilda’s eldest boy.” “I knew

One of those boys, but I’m so bad at names.

Mine had red hair.” “Oh, now, that must be Hugh.”

 

III.

“Colonel McGillicuddy came to dine

Quietly here, a night or two ago.

He’s on the Staff and very much in the know

About all sorts of things. His special line

Is Tanks. He says we’ve got a new design

Of super-Tank, with big guns, that can go

(I think he said) at thirty miles or so

An hour. That ought to make them whine

 

For peace. He also said, if I remember,

That the war couldn’t last beyond September,

Because the Germans’ trucks were wearing out

And couldn’t be replaced. I only hope

It’s true. You know your uncle has no doubt

That the whole thing was plotted by the Pope . . .”

 

“. . . Good-bye, dear John. We _have_ had a nice talk.

You must soon come again. Good-bye, good-bye. . . .”

 

He tottered forth, full of the melancholy

That comes of surfeit, and began to walk

Slowly towards Oxford Street. The brazen sky

Burned overhead. Beneath his feet the stones

Were a grey incandescence, and his bones

Melted within him, and his bowels yearned.

 

 

 

 

VI

THE crowd, the crowd—oh, he could almost cry

To see those myriad faces hurrying by,

And each a strong tower rooted in the past

On dark unknown foundations, each made fast

With locks nobody knew the secret of,

No key could open: save that perhaps love

Might push the bars half back and just peep in—

And see strange sights, it may be. But for him

They were locked donjons, every window bright

With beckoning mystery; and then, Good Night!

The lamp was out, they were passed, they were gone

For ever . . . ever. And one might have been

The hero or the friend long sought, and one

Was the loveliest face his eyes had ever seen,

(Vanished as soon) and he went lonely on.

 

Then in a sudden fearful vision he saw

The whole world spread before him—a vast sphere

Of seething atoms moving to one law:

“Be individual. Approach, draw near,

Yes, even touch: but never join, never be

Other than your own selves eternally.”

And there are tangents, tangents of thought that aim

Out through the gaps between the patterned stars

At some fantastic dream without a name

That like the moon shining through prison bars,

Visits the mind with madness. So they fly,

Those soaring tangents, till the first jet tires,

Failing, faltering half-way up the sky,

And breaks—poor slender fountain that aspires

Against the whole strength of the heavy earth

Within whose womb, darkly, it took birth.

 

Oh, how remote he walked along the street,

Jostling with other lumps of human meat!

 

He was so tired. The café doors invite.

Caverned within them, still lingers the night

In shadowy coolness, soothing the seared sight.

He sat there smoking, soulless and wholly crass,

Sunk to the eyes in the warm sodden morass

Of his own guts, wearily, wearily

Ruminating visions of mortality—

Memento Moris from the pink alcove,

Nightmare oppressiveness of profane love.

Cesspool within, and without him he could see

Nothing but mounds of flesh and harlotry.

Like a half-pricked bubble pendulous in space,

The buttered leatheriness of a Jew’s face

Looms through cigar-smoke; red and ghastly white,

Death’s-head women fascinate the sight.

It was the nightmare of a corpse. Dead, dead . . .

Oh, to wake up, to live again! he fled

From that foul place and from himself.

 

 

 

 

VII

TWIN domes of the Alhambra,

Veiled tenderness of the sky above the Square:

He sat him down in the gardens, under the trees,

And in the dust, with the point of his umbrella,

Drew pictures of the crosses we have to bear.

 

The poor may starve, the sick have horrible pains—

But there are pale eyes even in the London planes.

 

Men may make war and money, mischief and love—

But about us are colours and the sky above.

 

Yes, here, where the golden domes ring clear,

And the planes patiently, hopefully renew

Their green refrain from year to year

To the dim spring burden of London’s husky blue,

Here he could see the folly of it. How?

Confine a boundless possible within

The prison of an ineluctable Now?

Go slave to pain, woo forth original sin

Out of her lair—and all by a foolish Act?

Madness! But now, Wordsworth of Leicester Square,

He’d learnt his lesson, learnt by the mere fact

Of the place existing, so finely unaware

Of syphilis and the restless in and out

Of public lavatories, and evening shout

Of winners and disasters, races and war.

 

Troubles come thick enough. Why call for more

By suiting action to the divine Word?

His spleen was chronic, true; but he preferred

Its subtle agony to the brute force

That tugged the barbs of deep-anchored remorse.

The sunlight wrapped folds of soft golden silk

About him, and the air was warm as milk

Against his skin. Long sitting still had made

Cramped soreness such a pleasure, he was afraid

To shift his tortured limbs, lest he should mar

Life’s evenness. London’s noise from afar

Smoothed out its harshness to soothe his thoughts asleep,

Sound that made silence much more calm and deep.

The domes of gold, the leaves, emerald bright,

Were intense, piercing arrows of delight.

He did not think; thought was a shallow thing

To his deep sense of life, of mere being.

He looked at his hand, lying there on his knee,

The blue veins branching, the tendons cunningly

Dancing like jacks in a piano if he shook

A knot-boned finger. Only to look and look,

Till he knew it, each hair and every pore—

It seemed enough: what need of anything more?

Thought, a blind alley; action, which at best

Is cudgelling water that goes back to rest

As soon as you give over your violences.

No, wisdom culls the flowers of the five senses,

Savouring the secret sweetness they afford:

Instead of which he had a Medical Board

Next week, and they would pass him fit. Good Lord!

 

Well, let all pass.

But one must outdo fate,

Wear clothes more modish than the fashion, run

Faster than time, not merely stand and wait;

Do in a flash what cannot be undone

Through ten eternities. Predestinate?

So would God be—that is, if there were one:

General epidemic which spoils nobody’s fun.

Action, action! Quickly rise and do

The most irreparable things; beget,

In one brief consummation of the will,

Remorse, reaction, wretchedness, regret.

Action! This was no time for sitting still.

 

He crushed his hat down over his eyes

And walked with a stamp to symbolise

Action, action—left, right, left;

Planting his feet with a slabby beat,

Taking strange Procrustean steps,

Lengthened, shortened to avoid

Touching the lines between the stones—

A thing which makes God so annoyed.

 

Action, action! First of all

He spent three pounds he couldn’t afford

In buying a book he didn’t want,

For the mere sake of having been

Irrevocably extravagant.

Then feeling very bold, he pressed

The bell of a chance house; it might

Disclose some New Arabian Night

Behind its grimy husk, who knows?

The seconds passed; all was dead.

Arrogantly he rang once more.

His heart thumped on sheer silence; but at last

There was a shuffling; something behind the door

Became approaching panic, and he fled.