Overture
IN the nebular effects of cigarette smoke,
The eyes may be closed heavy or drowsing open,
The iris drugged by the wine and the women,
White arms, mouths of carmine, ankles so slender
You might fear that they would snap candy-wise.
In the nebular effects of cigarette smoke,
Through the various hemispheres the eye turns,
One of us is breathing out rhythms
For the gratification of an audience.
Animated in the hum of conversation,
We achieve miracles.
When the veneer is shed and the heart lain bare
We turn men’s thoughts to Heaven or to Hell—
Cathedral Altar or the Brothel couch.
Though it be in the nebular effects of cigarette smoke
And the eyes may be closed heavy or drowsing open,
The ear-drums beat electric-nimble
And the brain is their poor prone prisoner,
When we breathe out our rhythms.
I
String Instruments
Violin (virtuosity)
A phosphorescent butterfly
I creep into the hair
Of those who are aware
That I divinely flutter by.
Or I’m a vinous liquor spirting bright
Shivers of splintered glass into the night,
Or shimmering I skate
Where lovers celebrate
The hour their captive passions, cooped with bars,
Were freed, uncrumpled shirts beneath the stars—
(Pale, weary breaths of paille-de-riz
The corsage of Semiramis).
My notes are aromatic traceries
Wherewith I swing my perfume through the trees
Fiercely exotic; fading on the breeze
Until my respiration fails
And what was ambergris
Melts now to liquorice.
I stagger on the air
With all my plumage bare,
A galleon bereft of sails.
Or I can be as vulgar as a music-hall in Paraguay,
And I can jig and jig away
To cynically flirt
With sentimental dirt;
Veneered as candied peel,
Or gilded fruit, I reel
Into a singing cabaret.
For there in my proximity
They listen to my creed,
(And so I do not need
To preach my own sublimity).
I imitate the flavour of vanille
To give distinguished patronage the chill,
And I can give neuralgia,
Hysterics and nostalgia
To counterfeit the gardens of Seville.
I can creak as any sparrow
Which pricks the curve
Of every nerve
With a throstle sharp and narrow.
And I can be as raucous as
A golden-spotted jaguar
And I can be as glaucous as
The trees in Nicaragua.
Drink in my subtle melodies,
My chartreuse-tinted threnodies....
Violoncello (known more popularly as
the ’cello to rhyme with mellow-yellow)
the ’cello to rhyme with mellow-yellow)
I am the waxen fruit of instruments;
I drone till beads of perspiration break
Upon the foreheads of my audience.
I swell tumultuous; my dullard sounds
Ebb platitudes in doleful indigo.
Voluptuously blatant in my greed,
I am the woman garbed in heliotrope,
Whose bustle panics peacocks in the park.
Some take my mellow notes for rosaries—
So holy, steadfast, pure they seem to be.
(Like dear Prince Albert on a promenade,
Inspired apostle of the simple life,
With all his homely virtues on parade).
And I am music’s Edinburgh rock,
A laxative caressing to the ear,
A sanitary purge unto the sense;
A sentimental background in the life
Of modest daughter and domestic wife.
Chorus of Guitar and Mandoline
I snatch the silence whimpering
(Nocturnal perfumes make me sneeze)
My nostrils twitch; I snap the air,
I twang along the cardboard breeze.
I jump and rattle,
Reel and prattle
In Andalusian orangeries.
Now an elegant fandango,
Now a lithe and lissome tango,
Then I swoop like a flamingo
On a juicy-breasted mango
Hidden in the noisy leafage of the Guadalquivir.
Harp
Drips of dear ineffectual water,
April showers of pallid arsenic evaporating to unsubstantial air,
I once melted the heart of Cuchulain and his warriors
And Tom Moore grew quite sentimental about me in Tara’s halls,
Where my ripply waves of watery sounds
Turned to thin strips of paper on the breeze.
Now I can faint but to transparent moons
And the intensified weariness of stars.
I can whimper the same faded melodies
With their aroma of blurred cinnamon.
But the warriors have tired of listening,
For the Trocaderos call them with their Coon jazz-bands.
Double-Bass
I strut with wicked tiger-eyes
Beware! Beware!
Bubbles of rubied flame arise
When villain gloats or hero dies
’Tis I am there.
When the last-breathed cry is uttered,
When the ghastly raven’s fluttered.
And the scoundrel’s curse is muttered
Beware! beware!
’Tis I am there.
I am a draught from an envenomed winepress
Low-humming ere the thud and thunderstorm—
And then at nightfall I decline, subsiding.
My flames will flicker out into the starlight
And I shall scoop into the dome of darkness
A filmy vault of crystallising silver.
Xylophone
Little bells on golden strings,
Little, glittering, glassy things,
Frail humming-birds with freckled wings....
Marionettes
And Pirouettes
And steel-arpeggio flutterings.
With my music-box precision
I can conjure up a vision
Of nurseries and unicorns
And silver cows with crumpled horns,
Of daisies and forget-me-nots,
Of cherry-jam and coffee-pots,
Perpetual kaleidoscopes
Of jumping-jacks and skipping ropes.
I chatter for eternity,
So help yourself to China tea!
Banjo
Kiddy, Oh ma honey
Are you giddy for a song
Or a run for your money?
For I’ll buzz you one along
For I’m tin and string and wire
And wire and string and tin,
I can tang a tune for hire;
I can thump until I’m thin.
Gee! I’ll strut a juicy fox-trot
(Lilly-oh ma loo, ma loo)
Or a Coon’s banana cakewalk
(Come and kiss me, ducky, do!).
(A vision of red-mouths, outthrust bellies in a leafy
créme-de-menthe tropic.)
Wind Instruments
Trombone
I am the brawny man without a brain
Who yawns a heartfelt music mournfully.
The military orchestra reveres
My manliness. Each Sunday afternoon
I lead in the Gaillard-Apothéose.
For I exude no poignant, fevered sounds
And yet I have my share of sentiment.
The soldier boy who perished by his will
For King and Country’s call, I represent.
I stand for honour, bravery’s my spouse
And that I swear’s no enviable rôle—
My sounds lack pepper often when they seem
To fall in relaxation on a couch,
But hold my player culpable for that;
Confiteor! I know I have defects;
But do not grudge me my solidity!
Hautbois
The descendant of that reed
The shepherds played in Attica,
Drowsing to the indolence of their brown bodies,
I peck the eyes of silence
With the vulture-beak of my primeval harshness.
Yet the high keys of an organ
Are rivals lean to mine,
Sonorous in primitive ingenuities
Which blister the most Wagnerian cynics[1]
With their clear-dropping, honey-comb dripping notes.
For you expect in flurry cohorts
The bees to swarm out “zoo-oom, zoo-oom”
Scything the phosphorescence on this air
Of agate-carved medallions,
Where all are statuettes from Tanagra.
[1] Bother those lick-spittles!
Trumpet
The turbid air is buttered over now
With streaks of marbled stillness, as the prow
Of some deserted galleon; then I,
A pennon floating down the jagged sky,
Dissolve the butter with a single blast
Until the quiet falls, a broken mast
Like giant hail that thrashes on the leads
I paralyse and rip the air to shreds,
I flash my sparks of forest-powdering noise;
The formidable fanfares that I poise,
Ominous heralds of catastrophe,
As grapes of cloudy vintage on a sea
Purple and swollen, lecherous for thirst,
That wait until the thunderclaps, then burst.
When calm is ravished and I make retreat
Still throbs the air, still fevered temples beat....
Cor.
I trumpet orange clear and strong
And then I falter in my song,
My breath falls stertorous when I climb,
My notes are sudden-shivery in the ankles.
Fierce red I turn, but like a blurry prism
Half-red, half-yellow, sinewy I grip
With potent gums onto the banister
Of music.
My notes call often desperate retreats
From battle-fields corpse-rich, still dear, still strong,
More passionate than grief, fevered than hatred,
Still dear, still strong, I wail a-down the breeze—
Which raises a poignant odour of putrefaction.
Percussion
Cymbals
Arrows glitter through the air,
Wherewith, we, plumed of dappled rainbows,
Ravage quiet.
Shrilly shimmering, we whizz, hiss,
Thrash our eruptions volcanic,
Clattering into scythes
Which pierce the lead-of-air.
Our arrogant syncopations become
Bright sunflowers of steel waxing gigantical,
Then, more animated, clash; there....
Have two suns collided?
And tell me has the curtain been pulled down?
Drum
Men go to be murdered like innocent lambs
At the slaughter-house, gentle as beeves or as hams.
Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.
They are singing away, they are singing away,
They are bidding farewell to the realms of the day ...
Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.
And look at all the faces at the windows peering out!
The bonny lads are going to war, “Hurray! hurray!” they shout,
“The bonny boys, Hurray! Hurray!
They look so happy and so gay!”
Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.
Some are going to their funerals: I roll with bloodshot eyes.
Some are going to a land of death and never to arise.
Except to sing a “Glory, Hallelujah” to the King
And dance around his throne of gold and warble in a ring—
Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.
The fields of France will run in little rivers of their blood
And a few, all gashed and gory, will be sprawling in the mud.
Some are going to a land of death, and never to arise,
Some are going to their funerals; I roll with bloodshot eyes—
Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.
And their lithe and youthful bodies will be broken mannequins
That the Doctors will be cutting, and the bandages and pins
Will take the place of cockroaches and rats with pinkish eyes
And the lice that suck the blood of every soldier ere he dies.
Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum.
And I persuade the sceptic that he’s fighting for a cause
“To fight for Right with all his Might” with fang and tooth and claws,
When I’m rolling he forgets the facts and thinks of youth and glory
And forgets that if he does return he’ll tell another story.
Boum, boum—boum, boum, boum! (bis).