Tale of Modernity
1
Shakespeare knew Lust by day,
With raw unsleeping eye.
And he cried, ‘All but Truth I see,
Therefore Truth is, for Lust alone I see.’
By night Lust most on other men
Its swollen pictures shone.
And the sun brought shame, and they arose
Their hearts night-stained, but faces lustless.
They in the sun to themselves seemed well.
The sun in guise of Truth gave pardon.
Hypocrisy of seeming well
Blamed the sore visions on bed and night.
But Shakespeare knew Lust by day,
By day he saw his night, and he cried,
‘O sexual sun, back into my loins,
Be night also, as you are.’
2
Shakespeare distinguished: earth the obscure,
The sun the bold, the moon the hidden—
The sun speechless, earth a muttering,
The moon a whispering, white, smothered.
Bishop Modernity, to his spent flock cried,
‘She is illusion, let her fade.’
And she, illusion and not illusion,
A sapphire being fell to earth, time-struck.
In colour live and liquid and earth-pale,
Never so near she, never so distant.
Never had time been futured so,
All reckoning on one fast page.
Time was a place where earth had been.
The whole past met there, she with it.
Truth seemed love grown cool as a brow,
And young as the moon, grown girl to self.
3
Bishop Modernity plucked out his heart.
No agony could prove him Christ,
No lust could speak him honest Shakespeare.
A greedy frost filled where had been a heart.
And that disdainful age his flock,
Resolved against the dream-delight
Of soft succession another world to that,
Like woman slipping quiet into monk-thoughts,
Went in triumph of mind from the chapel,
Proud interior of voided breast,
To Heaven out, or Hell, or any name
That carnal sanctity bestows.
Home they went to heartless memories of wives
And appetites of whoredoms stilled
In lustful shaking off lust,
Of knowledge-gall, love's maddening part.
4
Bishop Modernity in the fatal chapel watched
And end-of-time intoned as the Red Mass
Of man's drinking of the blood of man:
In quenched immunity he looked on her
Who from the fallen moon scattered the altar
With thin rays of challenged presence—
The sun put out here, and the lamps of time
Smoking black consternation to new desire.
Then did that devilish chase begin:
Bishop Modernity's heart plucked out
In old desire flew round against and toward her—
And he but shackled mind, to pulpit locked.
Which stirred up Shakespeare from listening tomb,
Who broke the lie and seized the maid, crying,
‘Thou Bishop Double-Nothing, chase thy soul—
Till then she's ghost with me thy ghostly whole!’
Shakespeare knew Lust by day,
With raw unsleeping eye.
And he cried, ‘All but Truth I see,
Therefore Truth is, for Lust alone I see.’
By night Lust most on other men
Its swollen pictures shone.
And the sun brought shame, and they arose
Their hearts night-stained, but faces lustless.
They in the sun to themselves seemed well.
The sun in guise of Truth gave pardon.
Hypocrisy of seeming well
Blamed the sore visions on bed and night.
But Shakespeare knew Lust by day,
By day he saw his night, and he cried,
‘O sexual sun, back into my loins,
Be night also, as you are.’
2
Shakespeare distinguished: earth the obscure,
The sun the bold, the moon the hidden—
The sun speechless, earth a muttering,
The moon a whispering, white, smothered.
Bishop Modernity, to his spent flock cried,
‘She is illusion, let her fade.’
And she, illusion and not illusion,
A sapphire being fell to earth, time-struck.
In colour live and liquid and earth-pale,
Never so near she, never so distant.
Never had time been futured so,
All reckoning on one fast page.
Time was a place where earth had been.
The whole past met there, she with it.
Truth seemed love grown cool as a brow,
And young as the moon, grown girl to self.
3
Bishop Modernity plucked out his heart.
No agony could prove him Christ,
No lust could speak him honest Shakespeare.
A greedy frost filled where had been a heart.
And that disdainful age his flock,
Resolved against the dream-delight
Of soft succession another world to that,
Like woman slipping quiet into monk-thoughts,
Went in triumph of mind from the chapel,
Proud interior of voided breast,
To Heaven out, or Hell, or any name
That carnal sanctity bestows.
Home they went to heartless memories of wives
And appetites of whoredoms stilled
In lustful shaking off lust,
Of knowledge-gall, love's maddening part.
4
Bishop Modernity in the fatal chapel watched
And end-of-time intoned as the Red Mass
Of man's drinking of the blood of man:
In quenched immunity he looked on her
Who from the fallen moon scattered the altar
With thin rays of challenged presence—
The sun put out here, and the lamps of time
Smoking black consternation to new desire.
Then did that devilish chase begin:
Bishop Modernity's heart plucked out
In old desire flew round against and toward her—
And he but shackled mind, to pulpit locked.
Which stirred up Shakespeare from listening tomb,
Who broke the lie and seized the maid, crying,
‘Thou Bishop Double-Nothing, chase thy soul—
Till then she's ghost with me thy ghostly whole!’
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