XV
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The saccharescent, lying in glucose,
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the pompous in cotton wool
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with a stench like the fats at Grasse,
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the great scabrous arse-hole, sh-tting flies,
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rumbling with imperialism,
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ultimate urinal, middan, pisswallow without a cloaca,
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. . . . . . r less rowdy, . . . . . . Episcopus
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. . . . . . . . sis,
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head down, screwed into the swill,
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his legs waving and pustular,
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a clerical jock strap hanging back over the navel
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his condom full of black beetles,
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tattoo marks round the anus,
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and a circle of lady golfers about him.
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the courageous violent
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slashing themselves with knives,
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the cowardly inciters to violence
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. . . . . n and . . . . . . . . h eaten by weevils,
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. . . . . . . ll like a swollen foetus.
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the beast with a hundred legs, USURA
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and the swill full of respecters,
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bowing to the lords of the place,
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explaining its advantages,
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and the laudatores temporis acti
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claiming that the sh-t used to be blacker and richer
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and the fabians crying for the petrification of putrefaction,
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for a new dung-flow cut in lozenges,
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the conservatives chatting,
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distinguished by gaiters of slum-flesh,
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and the back-scratchers in a great circle,
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complaining of insufficient attention,
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the search without end, counterclaim for the missing scratch
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the litigious,
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a green bile-sweat, the news owners, . . . . s
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the anonymous
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. . . . . . . ffe, broken
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his head shot like a cannon-ball toward the glass gate,
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peering through it an instant,
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falling back to the trunk, epileptic,
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et nulla fidentia inter eos,
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all with their twitching backs,
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with daggers, and bottle ends, waiting an
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unguarded moment;
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a stench, stuck in the nostrils;
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beneath one
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nothing that might not move,
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mobile earth, a dung hatching obscenities,
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inchoate error,
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boredom born out of boredom,
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british weeklies, copies of the . . . . . . . . . . c,
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a multiple . . . . . . nn,
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and I said, "How is it done?"
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and my guide:
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This sort breeds by scission,
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This is the fourmillionth tumour.
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In this bolge bores are gathered,
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Infinite pus flakes, scabs of a lasting pox.
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skin-flakes, repetitions, erosions,
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endless rain from the arse-hairs,
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as the earth moves, the centre
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passes over all parts in succession,
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a continual bum-belch
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distributing its productions.
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Andiamo!
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One's feet sunk,
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the welsh of mud gripped one, no hand-rail,
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the bog-suck like a whirl-pool,
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and he said:
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Close the pores of your feet!
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And my eyes clung to the horizon,
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oil mixing with soot;
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and again Plotinus:
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To the door,
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Keep your eyes on the mirror.
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Prayed we to the Medusa,
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petrifying the soil by the shield,
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Holding it downward
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he hardened the track
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Inch before us, by inch,
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the matter resisting,
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The heads rose from the shield,
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hissing, held downwards.
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Devouring maggots,
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the face only half potent,
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The serpents' tongues
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grazing the swill top,
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Hammering the souse into hardness,
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the narrow rast,
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Half the width of a sword's edge.
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By this through the dern evil,
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now sinking, now clinging,
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Holding the unsinkable shield.
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Oblivion,
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forget how long,
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sleep, fainting nausea.
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"Whether in Naishapur or Babylon"
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I heard in the dream.
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Plotinus gone,
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And the shield tied under me, woke;
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The gate swung on its hinges;
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Panting like a sick dog, staggered,
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Bathed in alkali, and in acid.
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'Hέλιoν τ' 'Hέλιoν
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blind with the sunlight,
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Swollen-eyed, rested,
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lids sinking, darkness unconscious.