The Poetry of Sex (2 page)

The elephant, the huge old beast,

    is slow to mate;

he finds a female, they show no haste

    they wait

for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts

    slowly, slowly to rouse

as they loiter along the river-beds

    and drink and browse

and dash in panic through the brake

    of forest with the herd,

and sleep in massive silence, and wake

    together, without a word.

So slowly the great hot elephant hearts

    grow full of desire,

and the great beasts mate in secret at last,

    hiding their fire.

Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts

    so they know at last

how to wait for the loneliest of feasts

    for the full repast.

Young Corydon and Phyllis

Sat in a lovely grove,

Contriving crowns of lilies,

Repeating toys of love,

And something else, but what I dare not name.

But as they were a-playing,

She ogled so the swain,

It saved her plainly saying,

‘Let’s kiss to ease our pain,

And something else, but what I dare not name.’

A thousand times he kissed her,

Laying her on the green;

But as he further pressed her

A pretty leg was seen,

And something else, but what I dare not name.

So many beauties viewing,

His ardour still increased,

And greater joys pursuing,

He wandered o’er her breast,

And something else, but what I dare not name.

A last effort she trying

His passion to withstand,

Cried, but ’twas faintly crying,

‘Pray take away your hand,

And something else, but what I dare not name.’

Young Corydon, grown bolder,

The minutes would improve,

‘This is the time,’ he told her,

‘To show you how I love,

And something else, but what I dare not name.’

The nymph seemed almost dying,

Dissolved in amorous heat,

She kissed, and told him sighing,

‘My dear, your love is great,

And something else, but what I dare not name.’

But Phyllis did recover,

Much sooner than the swain,

She blushing asked her lover,

‘Shall we not kiss again,

And something else, but what I dare not name?’

Tell me no more of minds embracing minds,

And hearts exchang’d for hearts;

That spirits spirits meet, as winds do winds,

And mix their subt’lest parts;

That two unbodied essences may kiss,

And then like Angels, twist and feel one Bliss.

I was that silly thing that once was wrought

To practise this thin love;

I climb’d from sex to soul, from soul to thought;

But thinking there to move,

Headlong I rolled from thought to soul, and then

From soul I lighted at the sex again.

As some strict down-looked men pretend to fast,

Who yet in closets eat;

So lovers who profess they spirits taste,

Feed yet on grosser meat;

I know they boast they souls to souls convey,

Howe’r they meet, the body is the way.

I who am and you who are –

If we are, as we suppose –

None the less are very far

From knowing what each other knows.

Even the curl of that curled leaf

Is not the same for both our eyes,

Much less a hope, much less a grief,

A memory, or a surmise.

Much less the whole that makes the Is

Of any living creature. I

May utter perfect sentences

And so may you, who make reply,

But these toy structures are no more

Than any rule held in the hand,

And what your words, or mine, are for

Is not a thing we understand,

So ask the body. It alone

Knows all you know, and it imparts

Little enough of what is known

To what we call our minds and hearts.

So fumbling bodies try to make

Friendship and love as best they can:

None ever was without mistake

And lies by woman and by man.

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

Sex is like Criccieth. You thought it would be

a tumble of houses into a pure sea

and so it must have been, in eighteen-ten.

The ranks of boarding houses marched up then.

They linger, plastic curtains at their doors,

or, still more oddly, blonde ungainly statues.

The traffic swills along the single street

and floods the ears, until our feet

turn down towards the only shop for chips,

to shuffling queues, until sun slips

behind the Castle, which must be, by luck,

one of the few a Welsh prince ever took.

Or in the café, smoked with fat, you wait.

Will dolphins strike the sea’s skin? They do not.

And yet, a giant sun nobody has told

of long decline, beats the rough sea to gold.

The Castle rears up with its tattered flag,

hand laces hand, away from valleys’ slag.

And through the night, the long sea’s dolphined breath

whispers into your warm ear, ‘Criccieth’.

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?

And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?

And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account,

That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,

But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,

It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him,

The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,

To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,

The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and from the heave of the water,

The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the horse-man in his saddle,

Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,

The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,

The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard,

The young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six horses through the crowd,

The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work,

The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,

The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;

The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,

The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,

The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d neck and the counting;

Such-like I love – I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast with the little child,

Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,

And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,

The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness and breadth of his manners,

These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,

He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,

They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,

They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,

He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face,

He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,

When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,

You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,

To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,

To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?

I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,

All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

This is the female form,

A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,

It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,

I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it,

Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,

Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable,

Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused,

Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,

Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious nice,

Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,

Undulating into the willing and yielding day,

Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

This the nucleus – after the child is born of woman, man is born of woman,

This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest,

You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,

She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,

She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,

She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,

As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness, sanity, beauty,

See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,

He too is all qualities, he is action and power,

The flush of the known universe is in him,

Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,

The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost become him well, pride is for him,

The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,

Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to the test of himself,

Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes soundings at last only here,

(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)

The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,

No matter who it is, it is sacred – is it the meanest one in the laborers’ gang?

Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?

Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you,

Each has his or her place in the procession.

(All is a procession,

The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?

Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no right to a sight?

Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,

For you only, and not for him and her?

A man’s body at auction,

(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)

I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

Gentlemen look on this wonder,

Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,

For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,

For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.

In this head the all-baffling brain,

In it and below it the makings of heroes.

Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve,

They shall be stript that you may see them.

Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,

Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and legs,

And wonders within there yet.

Within there runs blood,

The same old blood! the same red-running blood!

There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings, aspirations,

(Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d in parlors and lecture-rooms?)

This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers in their turns,

In him the start of populous states and rich republics,

Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through the centuries?

(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace back through the centuries?)

A woman’s body at auction,

She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,

She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

Have you ever loved the body of a woman?

Have you ever loved the body of a man?

Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and times all over the earth?

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,

And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,

And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful

than the most beautiful face.

Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool that corrupted her own live body?

For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.