Self-Pity

 

I never saw a wild thing

Sorry for itself

A small bird will drop frozen dead a bough

Without ever having felt sorry for itself

 

 

Give us Gods

 

Give us gods, Oh give them us!

give us gods.

we are so tired of men

and motor-power. –

 

But not gods grey-bearded and dictatorial,

not yet that pale young man afraid of fatherhood

shelving substance on to the woman, Madona mia! Shabby virgin!

Not gusty Jove, with his eye on immortal tarts,

nor even the musical, suave young fellow

wooing boys and beauty.

 

Give us gods

Give us something else –

 

Beyond the great bull bellowed through space, and got his throat cut.

Beyond even that eagle, that phoenix, hanging over the gold egg of all things,

further still, before the curled horns of the ram stepped forth

or the stout swart beetle rolled the globe of dung in which man should hatch,

or even the sly gold serpent fatherly lifted his head off the earth to think —

 

Give us gods before these —

Thou shalt have other gods before these.

 

Where the waters end in marshes

swims the wild swan

sweeps the high goose above the mists

honking in the gloom the honk of procreation from such throats.

 

Mists

where the electron behaves and misbehaves as it will,

where the forces tie themselves up into knots of atoms

and come untied;

 

Mists

of mistiness complicated into knots and clots that barge about

and bump on one another and explode into more mist, or don’t,

mist of energy most scientific –

But give us gods!

 

Look then

where the father of all things swims in a mist of atoms

electrons and energies, quantums and relativities

mists, wreathing mists,

like a wild swam, or a goose, whose honk goes through my bladder

 

And in the dark unscientific I feel the drum-winds of his wings

and the drip of his cold, webbed feet, mud-black

brush over my face as he goes

to seek the women in the dark, our women, our weird women whom he treats

with dreams and thrusts that make them cry in their sleep.

 

Gods, do you ask for gods?

Where there is woman there is swan.

 

Do you think, scientific man, you’ll be father of your own babies?

Don’t imagine it.

There’ll be babies born that are cygnets, O my soul!

young wild swans!

And babies of women will come out young wild geese, O my heart!

The geese that saved Rome, and will lose London.

 

(LAWRENCE, D.H.; Pansies: extraído de http://www.supapimp.dk/vaerktoc.pl?fhandle=lawrence&vhandle=1929 em 05/04/2010)