ON THE MATTER OF CLEANSING
For David Lloyd
Through the chalk and oils, and other accidental foulness
got into it along so many hands and shops,
this forest is become crowded. So, then, void it out!
The lions stoop in shadow, their skulls
gone all to glass, then rinsed in urine,
or sometimes banded with gold of swines' dung.
Almost blinded with the pounding of the mill,
which acts as scrubbing does in more accustomed washing,
still they hunt whatever slight thing moves,
but as heraldic carnivores arrested now on metal,
and as scandalously bold authorities.
For if it be labour to kindle colour in a grey prism,
for a great engine, and no man then, must it be fit
to voice affairs so great as histories in truth,
bolting out in brilliant tongues as cloth does.
Nor would the cost of this be tolerable,
could it not be performed with engines
standing for mens' sweat, cascading in bright blades
so fast, so plunging as no man can rule.
Pistons and cheap sorcery make possible,
issuing the gleam in high threads no soaps
or other strong lixivia can penetrate,
no harshness, even the most scalding,
can again scour them down of. And, indeed,
as even whitest heat in due course
will ramify down to bear fine branches,
as salt in soaps, settled in fat matter,
not yet tallow or oil turned thick by coction,
this forcing of imagined innocence
unbelievably brings back a calling out
above the level ponds, a crashing out of space.
The oils release the sords out of their ground,
yet hold them after, propped in sight,
as low feculence, having no part
but to be loathed, yet not permitted to be gone.
And the grains of salt, ten thousand strong,
all tiny sharpened knives of them,
cut cut cut cut the astral filth away.
It was the water introduced this biting tide,
it is the water bears the sords away,
dispersing out through ports and coves
so they and it come clean at last
and do quite well elsewhere.
A terrace of stars subtends the present whole,
and it is glittering, but it is brittle.
The fragility of it is that,
though they be composed alike
of innumerable little whorls and turnings,
yet they have in common nothing further
but the aim to be elaborate,
to constitute some threadbare sly fabrication,
which is the triumph of individuals
otherwise good enough.
Now it is easy to conceive,
how pernicious to sun and azure all,
if even one small sharp grit were in the bath,
in which the soundest integral
is violently beaten, as it lies
in self-protection, ply with ply,
time on time again.
At the extreme, think of a grave made up
with blackthorn, or with broken glass.
One assault might altogether ruin
several cushionings, so by repeating
the same mischief many thousand times
in any one passage, as by incalculable
storms of birds, that whole
may, in as many times as are required
for consummation of this cleansing,
probably be beaten all to pieces.
For David Lloyd
Through the chalk and oils, and other accidental foulness
got into it along so many hands and shops,
this forest is become crowded. So, then, void it out!
The lions stoop in shadow, their skulls
gone all to glass, then rinsed in urine,
or sometimes banded with gold of swines' dung.
Almost blinded with the pounding of the mill,
which acts as scrubbing does in more accustomed washing,
still they hunt whatever slight thing moves,
but as heraldic carnivores arrested now on metal,
and as scandalously bold authorities.
For if it be labour to kindle colour in a grey prism,
for a great engine, and no man then, must it be fit
to voice affairs so great as histories in truth,
bolting out in brilliant tongues as cloth does.
Nor would the cost of this be tolerable,
could it not be performed with engines
standing for mens' sweat, cascading in bright blades
so fast, so plunging as no man can rule.
Pistons and cheap sorcery make possible,
issuing the gleam in high threads no soaps
or other strong lixivia can penetrate,
no harshness, even the most scalding,
can again scour them down of. And, indeed,
as even whitest heat in due course
will ramify down to bear fine branches,
as salt in soaps, settled in fat matter,
not yet tallow or oil turned thick by coction,
this forcing of imagined innocence
unbelievably brings back a calling out
above the level ponds, a crashing out of space.
The oils release the sords out of their ground,
yet hold them after, propped in sight,
as low feculence, having no part
but to be loathed, yet not permitted to be gone.
And the grains of salt, ten thousand strong,
all tiny sharpened knives of them,
cut cut cut cut the astral filth away.
It was the water introduced this biting tide,
it is the water bears the sords away,
dispersing out through ports and coves
so they and it come clean at last
and do quite well elsewhere.
A terrace of stars subtends the present whole,
and it is glittering, but it is brittle.
The fragility of it is that,
though they be composed alike
of innumerable little whorls and turnings,
yet they have in common nothing further
but the aim to be elaborate,
to constitute some threadbare sly fabrication,
which is the triumph of individuals
otherwise good enough.
Now it is easy to conceive,
how pernicious to sun and azure all,
if even one small sharp grit were in the bath,
in which the soundest integral
is violently beaten, as it lies
in self-protection, ply with ply,
time on time again.
At the extreme, think of a grave made up
with blackthorn, or with broken glass.
One assault might altogether ruin
several cushionings, so by repeating
the same mischief many thousand times
in any one passage, as by incalculable
storms of birds, that whole
may, in as many times as are required
for consummation of this cleansing,
probably be beaten all to pieces.
