Sweeney Erect
49 lines✦
nd the trees about me,Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocksGroan with continual surges; and behind meMake all a desolation. Look, look, wenches! Paint me a cavernous waste shoreCast in the unstilted Cyclades,Paint me the bold anfractuous rocksFaced by the snarled and yelping seas. Display me Aeolus aboveReviewing the insurgent galesWhich tangle Ariadne's hairAnd swell with haste the perjured sails. Morning stirs the feet and hands(Nausicaa and Polypheme),Gesture of orang-outangRises from the sheets in steam. This withered root of knots of hairSlitted below and gashed with eyes,This oval O cropped out with teeth:The sickle motion from the thighs Jackknifes upward at the kneesThen straightens out from heel to hipPushing the framework of the bedAnd clawing at the pillow slip. Sweeney addressed full length to shaveBroadbottomed, pink from nape to base,Knows the female temperamentAnd wipes the suds around his face. (The lengthened shadow of a manIs history, said EmersonWho had not seen the silhouetteOf Sweeney straddled in the sun). Tests the razor on his legWaiting until the shriek subsides.The epileptic on the bedCurves backward, clutching at her sides. The ladies of the corridorFind themselves involved, disgraced,Call witness to their principlesAnd deprecate the lack of taste Observing that hysteriaMight easily be misunderstood;Mrs. Turner intimatesIt does the house no sort of good. But Doris, towelled from the bath,Enters padding on broad feet,Bringing sal volatileAnd a glass of brandy neat. A Cooking Egg
✦