XV

2. The saccharescent, lying in glucose,

3. the pompous in cotton wool

4.                 with a stench like the fats at Grasse,

5. the great scabrous arse-hole, sh-tting flies,

6.                 rumbling with imperialism,

7. ultimate urinal, middan, pisswallow without a cloaca,

8. . . . . . . r less rowdy, . . . . . . Episcopus

9.                . . . . . . . . sis,

10.                head down, screwed into the swill,

11. his legs waving and pustular,

12.                a clerical jock strap hanging back over the navel

13. his condom full of black beetles,

14.               tattoo marks round the anus,

15. and a circle of lady golfers about him.

16. the courageous violent

17.                  slashing themselves with knives,

18. the cowardly inciters to violence

19. . . . . . n and . . . . . . . . h eaten by weevils,

20. . . . . . . . ll like a swollen foetus.

21.                  the beast with a hundred legs, USURA

22. and the swill full of respecters,

23.                  bowing to the lords of the place,

24. explaining its advantages,

25.                  and the laudatores temporis acti

26. claiming that the sh-t used to be blacker and richer

27. and the fabians crying for the petrification of putrefaction,

28. for a new dung-flow cut in lozenges,

29. the conservatives chatting,

30.                 distinguished by gaiters of slum-flesh,

31. and the back-scratchers in a great circle,

32.                 complaining of insufficient attention,

33. the search without end, counterclaim for the missing scratch

34. the litigious,

35. a green bile-sweat, the news owners, . . . . s

36.                the anonymous

37. . . . . . . . ffe, broken 
    

38. his head shot like a cannon-ball toward the glass gate,

39. peering through it an instant,

40.                falling back to the trunk, epileptic,

41. et nulla fidentia inter eos,

42.                all with their twitching backs,

43. with daggers, and bottle ends, waiting an

44.                unguarded moment;

    
    
    

45. a stench, stuck in the nostrils;

46. beneath one

47.                 nothing that might not move,

48. mobile earth, a dung hatching obscenities,

49.                 inchoate error,

50. boredom born out of boredom,

51. british weeklies, copies of the . . . . . . . . . . c,

52. a multiple . . . . . . nn,

53. and I said, "How is it done?"

54.                  and my guide:

55. This sort breeds by scission,

56. This is the fourmillionth tumour.

57. In this bolge bores are gathered,

58. Infinite pus flakes, scabs of a lasting pox.

    
    
    

59. skin-flakes, repetitions, erosions,

60. endless rain from the arse-hairs,

61. as the earth moves, the centre

62.           passes over all parts in succession,

63. a continual bum-belch

64.           distributing its productions.

65. Andiamo!

66.                  One's feet sunk,

67. the welsh of mud gripped one, no hand-rail,

68. the bog-suck like a whirl-pool,

69. and he said:

70.                    Close the pores of your feet!

71. And my eyes clung to the horizon,

72.                    oil mixing with soot;

73. and again Plotinus:

74.                    To the door,

75. Keep your eyes on the mirror.

76. Prayed we to the Medusa,

77.               petrifying the soil by the shield,

78. Holding it downward

79.               he hardened the track

80. Inch before us, by inch,

81.               the matter resisting,

82. The heads rose from the shield,

83.               hissing, held downwards.

84. Devouring maggots,

85.               the face only half potent,

86. The serpents' tongues

87.               grazing the swill top,

88. Hammering the souse into hardness,

89.               the narrow rast,

90. Half the width of a sword's edge.

91.               By this through the dern evil,

92. now sinking, now clinging,

93.               Holding the unsinkable shield.

94. Oblivion,

95.               forget how long,

96. sleep, fainting nausea.

97.               "Whether in Naishapur or Babylon"

98. I heard in the dream.

99.                Plotinus gone,

100. And the shield tied under me, woke;

101. The gate swung on its hinges;

102. Panting like a sick dog, staggered,

103. Bathed in alkali, and in acid.

104. 'Hέλιoν τ' 'Hέλιoν

105.               blind with the sunlight,

106. Swollen-eyed, rested,

107.               lids sinking, darkness unconscious.