THE EVANGELISTIC BEASTS

They are not all beasts. One is a man, for example, and one is a bird. I, Matthew, am a man. “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me”— That is Jesus. But then Jesus was not quite a man. He was the Son of Man Filius Meus, O remorseless logic Out of His own mouth. I, Matthew, being a man Cannot be lifted up, the Paraclete To draw all men unto me, Seeing I am on a par with all men. I, on the other hand, Am drawn to the Uplifted, as all men are drawn, To the Son of Man Filius Meus. Wilt thou lift me up, Son of Man? How my heart beats! I am man. I am man, and therefore my heart beats, and throws the dark blood from side to side All the time I am lifted up. Yes, even during my uplifting. And if it ceased? If it ceased, I should be no longer man As I am, if my heart in uplifting ceased to beat, to toss the dark blood from side to side, causing my myriad secret streams. After the cessation I might be a soul in bliss, an angel, approximating to the Uplifted; But that is another matter; I am Matthew, the man, And I am not that other angelic matter. So I will be lifted up, Saviour, But put me down again in time, Master, Before my heart stops beating, and I become what I am not. Put me down again on the earth, Jesus, on the brown soil Where flowers sprout in the acrid humus, and fade into humus again. Where beasts drop their unlicked young, and pasture, and drop their droppings among the turf. Where the adder darts horizontal. Down on the damp, unceasing ground, where my feet belong And even my heart, Lord, forever, after all uplifting: The crumbling, damp, fresh land, life horizontal and ceaseless. Matthew I am, the man. And I take the wings of the morning, to Thee, Crucified, Glorified. But while flowers club their petals at evening And rabbits make pills among the short grass And long snakes quickly glide into the dark hole in the wall, hearing man approach, I must be put down, Lord, in the afternoon, And at evening I must leave off my wings of the spirit As I leave off my braces And I must resume my nakedness like a fish, sinking down the dark reversion of night Like a fish seeking the bottom, Jesus, ΙΧΘΥΣ Face downwards Veering slowly Down between the steep slopes of darkness, fucus-dark, seaweed-fringed valleys of the waters under the sea Over the edge of the soundless cataract Into the fathomless, bottomless pit Where my soul falls in the last throes of bottomless convulsion, and is fallen Utterly beyond Thee, Dove of the Spirit; Beyond everything, except itself. Nay, Son of Man, I have been lifted up. To Thee I rose like a rocket ending in mid-heaven. But even Thou, Son of Man, canst not quaff out the dregs of terrestrial manhood! They fall back from Thee. They fall back, and like a dripping of quicksilver taking the downward track, Break into drops, burn into drops of blood, and dropping, dropping take wing Membraned, blood-veined wings. On fans of unsuspected tissue, like bats They thread and thrill and flicker ever downward To the dark zenith of Thine antipodes Jesus Uplifted. Bat-winged heart of man Reversed flame Shuddering a strange way down the bottomless pit To the great depths of its reversèd zenith. Afterwards, afterwards Morning comes, and I shake the dews of night from the wings of my spirit And mount like a lark, Beloved. But remember, Saviour, That my heart which like a lark at heaven’s gate singing, hovers morning-bright to Thee, Throws still the dark blood back and forth In the avenues where the bat hangs sleeping, upside-down And to me undeniable, Jesus. Listen, Paraclete. I can no more deny the bat-wings of my fathom-flickering spirit of darkness Than the wings of the Morning and Thee, Thou Glorified. I am Matthew, the Man: It is understood. And Thou art Jesus, Son of Man Drawing all men unto Thee, but bound to release them when the hour strikes. I have been, and I have returned. I have mounted up on the wings of the morning, and I have dredged down to the zenith’s reversal. Which is my way, being man. Gods may stay in mid-heaven, the Son of Man has climbed to the Whitsun zenith, But I, Matthew, being a man Am a traveller back and forth. So be it.

There was a lion in Judah Which whelped, and was Mark. But winged. A lion with wings. At least at Venice. Even as late as Daniele Manin. Why should he have wings? Is he to be a bird also? Or a spirit? Or a winged thought? Or a soaring consciousness? Evidently he is all that The lion of the spirit. Ah, Lamb of God Would a wingless lion lie down before Thee, as this winged lion lies? The lion of the spirit. Once he lay in the mouth of a cave And sunned his whiskers, And lashed his tail slowly, slowly Thinking of voluptuousness Even of blood. But later, in the sun of the afternoon Having tasted all there was to taste, and having slept his fill He fell to frowning, as he lay with his head on his paws And the sun coming in through the narrowest fibril of a slit in his eyes. So, nine-tenths asleep, motionless, bored, and statically angry, He saw in a shaft of light a lamb on a pinnacle, balancing a flag on its paw, And he was thoroughly startled. Going out to investigate He found the lamb beyond him, on the inaccessible pinnacle of light. So he put his paw to his nose, and pondered. “Guard my sheep,” came the silvery voice from the pinnacle, “And I will give thee the wings of the morning.” So the lion of the senses thought it was worth it. Hence he became a curly sheep-dog with dangerous propensities As Carpaccio will tell you: Ramping round, guarding the flock of mankind, Sharpening his teeth on the wolves, Ramping up through the air like a kestrel And lashing his tail above the world And enjoying the sensation of heaven and righteousness and voluptuous wrath. There is a new sweetness in his voluptuously licking his paw Now that it is a weapon of heaven. There is a new ecstasy in his roar of desirous love Now that it sounds self-conscious through the unlimited sky. He is well aware of himself And he cherishes voluptuous delights, and thinks about them And ceases to be a blood-thirsty king of beasts And becomes the faithful sheep-dog of the Shepherd, thinking of his voluptuous pleasures of chasing the sheep to the fold And increasing the flock, and perhaps giving a real nip here and there, a real pinch, but always well meant. And somewhere there is a lioness The she-mate. Whelps play between the paws of the lion The she-mate purrs Their castle is impregnable, their cave, The sun comes in their lair, they are well-off A well-to-do family. Then the proud lion stalks abroad, alone And roars to announce himself to the wolves And also to encourage the red-cross Lamb And also to ensure a goodly increase in the world. Look at him, with his paw on the world At Venice and elsewhere. Going blind at last.

A wall, a bastion, A living forehead with its slow whorl of hair And a bull’s large, sombre, glancing eye And glistening, adhesive muzzle With cavernous nostrils where the winds run hot Snorting defiance Or greedily snuffling behind the cows. Horns The golden horns of power, Power to kill, power to create Such as Moses had, and God, Head-power. Shall great wings flame from his shoulder-sockets Assyrian-wise? It would be no wonder. Knowing the thunder of his heart The massive thunder of his dew-lapped chest Deep and reverberating, It would be no wonder if great wings, like flame, fanned out from the furnace-cracks of his shoulder-sockets. Thud! Thud! Thud! And the roar of black bull’s blood in the mighty passages of his chest. Ah, the dewlap swings pendulous with excess. The great, roaring weight above Like a furnace dripping a molten drip. The urge, the massive, burning ache Of the bull’s breast. The open furnace-doors of his nostrils. For what does he ache, and groan? In his breast a wall? Nay, once it was also a fortress wall, and the weight of a vast battery. But now it is a burning hearthstone only, Massive old altar of his own burnt offering. It was always an altar of burnt offering His own black blood poured out like a sheet of flame over his fecundating herd As he gave himself forth. But also it was a fiery fortress frowning shaggily on the world And announcing battle ready. Since the Lamb bewitched him with that red-struck flag His fortress is dismantled His fires of wrath are banked down His horns turn away from the enemy. He serves the Son of Man. And hear him bellow, after many years, the bull that serves the Son of Man. Moaning, booing, roaring hollow Constrained to pour forth all his fire down the narrow sluice of procreation Through such narrow loins, too narrow. Is he not over-charged by the dammed-up pressure of his own massive black blood Luke, the Bull, the father of substance, the Providence Bull, after two thousand years? Is he not over-full of offering, a vast, vast offer of himself Which must be poured through so small a vent? Too small a vent. Let him remember his horns, then. Seal up his forehead once more to a bastion, Let it know nothing. Let him charge like a mighty catapult on the red-cross flag, let him roar out challenge on the world And throwing himself upon it, throw off the madness of his blood. Let it be war. And so it is war. The bull of the proletariat has got his head down.

John, oh John, Thou honourable bird Sun-peering eagle. Taking a bird’s-eye view Even of Calvary and Resurrection Not to speak of Babylon’s whoredom. High over the mild effulgence of the dove Hung all the time, did we but know it, the all-knowing shadow Of John’s great gold-barred eagle. John knew all about it Even the very beginning. “In the beginning was the Word And the Word was God And the Word was with God.” Having been to school John knew the whole proposition. As for innocent Jesus He was one of Nature’s phenomena, no doubt. Oh that mind-soaring eagle of an Evangelist Staring creation out of countenance And telling it off As an eagle staring down on the Sun! The Logos, the Logos! “In the beginning was the Word.” Is there not a great Mind pre-ordaining? Does not a supreme Intellect ideally procreate the Universe? Is not each soul a vivid thought in the great consciousness stream of God? Put salt on his tail The sly bird of John. Proud intellect, high-soaring Mind Like a king eagle, bird of the most High, sweeping the round of heaven And casting the cycles of creation On two wings, like a pair of compasses; Jesus’ pale and lambent dove, cooing in the lower boughs On sufferance. In the beginning was the Word, of course. And the word was the first offspring of the almighty Johannine mind, Chick of the intellectual eagle. Yet put salt on the tail of the Johannine bird Put salt on its tail John’s eagle. Shoo it down out of the empyrean Of the all-seeing, all-fore-ordaining ideal. Make it roost on bird-spattered, rocky Patmos And let it moult there, among the stones of the bitter sea. For the almighty eagle of the fore-ordaining Mind Is looking rather shabby and island-bound these days: Moulting, and rather naked about the rump, and down in the beak, Rather dirty, on dung-whitened Patmos. From which we are led to assume That the old bird is weary, and almost willing That a new chick should chip the extensive shell Of the mundane egg. The poor old golden eagle of the creative spirit Moulting and moping and waiting, willing at last For the fire to burn it up, feathers and all So that a new conception of the beginning and end Can rise from the ashes. Ah Phœnix, Phœnix John’s Eagle! You are only known to us now as the badge of an insurance Company. Phœnix, Phœnix The nest is in flames Feathers are singeing, Ash flutters flocculent, like down on a blue, wan fledgeling. San Gervasio.