Appendix Poems in Greek and in French Greek Epigram Lorsque rien n'existait Sur les grands sommets blancs Note on the Texts Index of Titles Index of First Lines

Nonsense and "Surrealist" Verse

A Ballad of Doom

There was an awful awful man

Who all things knew and none

And never met a Saracen

And always drank a bun.

He said he was a bullywag

And that he did it for fun.

I don't know what a bullywag is

And I don't think he was one.

Of nonsense and Omniscience

He spoke as one who knew

That this was like a temperament

And that was like a hue.

He said there was a phantom sun

That saw a branching sky

And he who could but never should

Was always God's best boy.

And he who should but never could

Was not in the savoury jam

That thronged the gates of Paradise

Jostling the great I am.

He said he saw a smudgy moon

A down a patterned ridge

And that Beethoven to his ear

Rang like a bluzzing midge

That bluzzed and bluzzed and bluzzed and bluzzed

Until the eye grew green

With shouting for dear visible things

Where nothing could be seen.

For nothing can be seen, my child,

And when it's seen it's read,

And when red nothing once is seen

The world can go to bed.

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Surrealist

I heard a foghorn shouting at a sheep,

And oh the sweet sound made me laugh and weep

But ah, the sheep was on the hither shore

Of the little less and the ever-never more.

I sprang on its back; it jumped into the sea.

I was near to the edges of eternity.

Then suddenly the foghorn blared again.

There was no sheep — it had perished of ear pain.

I took a boat and steered to the Afar

Hoping to colonise the polar star.

But in the boat there was a dangerous goose

Whom some eternal idiot had let loose.

To this wild animal I said not "Bo!"

But it was not because I did not know.

Full soon I was on shore with dreadful squeals

And the fierce biped cackling at my heels.

Alarmed I ran into a lion's den

And after me ran three thousand armoured men.

The lion bolted through his own back door

And set up a morose dissatisfied roar.

At this my courage rose; I grew quite brave

And shoved myself into a tiger's cave.

The tiger snarled; I thought it best instead

To don my pyjamas and go to bed.

But the tiger had a strained objecting face,

So I turned my eyes away from his grimace.

At night the beast began my back to claw

And growled out that I was his brother-in-law.

I rose and thought it best to go away

To a doctor's house: besides 'twas nearly day.

The doctor shook his head and cried "For a back

Pepper and salt are the remedy, alack."

But I objected to his condiments

And thought the doctor had but little sense.

Then I returned to my own little cot

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For really things were now extremely hot.

Then fierily the world cracked Nazily down

And I looked about to find my dressing gown.

I was awake (I had tumbled on the floor).

A shark was hammering at my front-door.

Surrealist Poems

I heard the coockcouck jabbering on the lea

And saw the spokesman sprinting on the spud;

The airmale soared to heaven majestically

And dropped down with a strange miraculous thud.

I could not break the bosom of the blue;

I went for a walk and waltzed with woe awhile.

The cat surprised me with a single mew;

The porridge was magnificently vile.

These things are symbols if you understand,

But who can understand when poets resolve

To nothing mean. The beautiful beast is banned;

The problem grows too difficult to solve.

[The heart of the surrealist poet should be unfathomable. The problem is how to mean nothing, yet seem to mean anything or everything. His poetry should be at once about nothing at all and about all things in particular; nonsensically profound and irrationally beautiful. Unknown and extraordinary words are not indispensable in its texture but can have a place, if sparingly and mystically used. One who can do these things and others of a congenital character is a surrealist poet: Willy Whistler.]

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The Crossing of the Moro

My way is over the Moro river,

Amid projectiles and sad smiles.

Wind bottles in a ghastly jam

Explode before you can say damn.

But the jam is over and we have passed:

Alas, felicity can never last!

I see an aeroplane on high,

I hear it sob and sigh.

Fate happier has been yours, my lad,

For you are dead and I am mad.

Kiss not the corpse but shove it in.

Ah let the booby trap be.

There is a moan upon the moving sea.

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