The Alexandria Quartet (146 page)

A
dévot
of the Ophite sect,

With member more or less erect,

Snake-worship is the creed I hold

And shall do till I get too old.

The saucy serpent symbolizes

A hundred Freudian surprises;

With mine, I do the Indian trick

Though it's become a shade too thick

To stand up like an actual rope —

I leave that to the Band of Hope.

Nor can I manage kundalini

And play on it like Paganini…

Mere beanstalk with a tower atop

I'm just like Jack, I cannot stop,

Hand over curious hand I climb

Until I hear the belfries chime

And some companionable she

Asks is there honey still for tea?

Perhaps it would be better just to start rewriting La Rochefoucauld, beginning with some such aphorism as
‘fouir c'est pourrir un peu?

You must put yourself into deep soak, psychologically speaking.

A phrase from Bacon: ‘Prize bulls made fierce by dark keeping.'

Ah, my compatriots! What shall it profit a man to become a utilitarian jujube — to go thrilling off each morning in his electric brougham to the offices of the
Spectator?
How low can you rise?

To become a poet is to take the whole field of human knowledge and human desire for one's province; yes but, this field can only be covered by continual inner abdications.

The more I read of those artists who have reached the bounds of human knowledge — and there is a permissible bound to the humanly knowable — the more it becomes apparent to me that statement becomes simpler as it becomes profounder. Finally it becomes platitude. At this point one begins to understand the religious claim that only initiates can communicate with each other because they use, not concept but symbol. For them all speech based on concept becomes an indiscretion; one can only really exchange what is mutually understood. In this sense every work of art is an indiscretion — but a
calculated
indiscretion.

Death is a metaphor; nobody dies to himself.

There must always be a breath of hope if you are to fully enjoy the quality of our despair; yes, and also remember that where there is faith there is doubt.

Art is as unimportant as banking, unless it comes from a spirit in free play — then it really is banking.

Vision is exorcism.

NOTES IN THE TEXT

* Page 680

THE AFTERNOON SUN

This little room, how well I know it!

Now they've rented this and the next door one

As business premises, the whole house

Has been swallowed up by merchants' offices,

By limited companies and shipping agents …

O how familiar it is, this little room!

Once here, by the door, stood a sofa,

And before it a little Turkish carpet,

Exactly here. Then the shelf with the two

Yellow vases, and on the right of them:

No. Wait. Opposite them (how time passes)

The shabby wardrobe and the little mirror.

And here in the middle the table

Where he always used to sit and write,

And round it the three cane chairs.

How many years … And by the window over there

The bed we made love on so very often.

Somewhere all these old sticks of furniture

Must still be knocking about…

And beside the window, yes, that bed.

The afternoon sun climbed half way up it.

We parted at four o'clock one afternoon,

Just for a week, on just such an afternoon.

I would have never

Believed those seven days could last forever.

free translation from C. P. Cavafy

* Page 681

FAR AWAY

This fugitive memory … I should so much

Like to record it, but it's dwindled …

Hardly a print of it remaining …

It lies so far back, back in my earliest youth,

Before my gifts had kindled.

A skin made of jasmine-petals on a night…

An August evening … but
was
it August?

I can barely reach it now, barely remember …