From the cloistered halls of knowledge where phantastic lights are shed
By a thousand twisted mirrors, and the dead entomb their dead,
Let us walk into the city where men's wounds are raw and red.
Three gifts only Life, the strumpet, holds for coward and for brave,
Only three, no more — the belly and the phallus and the grave!
When the slow disease of time writes on our face its horrid scrawl,
These be good gifts, these be real, let what will the rest befall,
Both the first gift and the second — but the last is best of all.
Faith and hope and friends desert us ere the cerecloth's folds are drawn;
These remain while life remains and one remains when all are gone.
Who am I to judge the pander? Who are you to damn the thief?
We are all but storm-tossed sailors stranded on the selfsame reef.
Strip us of our fine-cut garments, smite us with some primal grief,
Then behold us writhing naked, chain-bound to our carcass, slave
To the belly and the phallus and (more kind than God) the grave.
Why desire the stars in heaven, why ask more when we have these?
Beast and bird shall be our comrades, we as they may live in ease.
Not for us God's angel choir and His cosmic silences!
Say not that we, too, are gods, since no god is strong to save
From the hunger of the belly and the phallus and the grave.
Saints and sinners all are brothers, none is happy while a trace,
Of divine and half-forgotten distant music makes the race
Dream of freedom in the trap that holds the good man and the base.
Like the worm that eats our substance, longing eats our hearts: we crave
For a life beyond the belly and the phallus and the grave.
Let us nurse no vain delusion! Feast on love and wine and meat,
While girls' breasts blush into rosebuds and the touch of flesh is sweet,
For the earth, our buxom mother, loves the sound of dancing feet!
Though God cursed us with a glimmer of His consciousness He gave
Still the belly and the phallus and life's final thrill — the grave!
And Who knows but the Almighty in His heart may envy us?
If a little draught of knowledge makes man's life so dolorous,
Then the crown of His omniscience is a crown of thorns, and thus
Time that ends not broods on heaven, a gigantic incubus.
We at least, through evolution climbing upward from the cave,
We have the belly and the phallus and God's kindest gift, the grave.
By a thousand twisted mirrors, and the dead entomb their dead,
Let us walk into the city where men's wounds are raw and red.
Three gifts only Life, the strumpet, holds for coward and for brave,
Only three, no more — the belly and the phallus and the grave!
When the slow disease of time writes on our face its horrid scrawl,
These be good gifts, these be real, let what will the rest befall,
Both the first gift and the second — but the last is best of all.
Faith and hope and friends desert us ere the cerecloth's folds are drawn;
These remain while life remains and one remains when all are gone.
Who am I to judge the pander? Who are you to damn the thief?
We are all but storm-tossed sailors stranded on the selfsame reef.
Strip us of our fine-cut garments, smite us with some primal grief,
Then behold us writhing naked, chain-bound to our carcass, slave
To the belly and the phallus and (more kind than God) the grave.
Why desire the stars in heaven, why ask more when we have these?
Beast and bird shall be our comrades, we as they may live in ease.
Not for us God's angel choir and His cosmic silences!
Say not that we, too, are gods, since no god is strong to save
From the hunger of the belly and the phallus and the grave.
Saints and sinners all are brothers, none is happy while a trace,
Of divine and half-forgotten distant music makes the race
Dream of freedom in the trap that holds the good man and the base.
Like the worm that eats our substance, longing eats our hearts: we crave
For a life beyond the belly and the phallus and the grave.
Let us nurse no vain delusion! Feast on love and wine and meat,
While girls' breasts blush into rosebuds and the touch of flesh is sweet,
For the earth, our buxom mother, loves the sound of dancing feet!
Though God cursed us with a glimmer of His consciousness He gave
Still the belly and the phallus and life's final thrill — the grave!
And Who knows but the Almighty in His heart may envy us?
If a little draught of knowledge makes man's life so dolorous,
Then the crown of His omniscience is a crown of thorns, and thus
Time that ends not broods on heaven, a gigantic incubus.
We at least, through evolution climbing upward from the cave,
We have the belly and the phallus and God's kindest gift, the grave.