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Aquarium

Chapter 21: Oh! what have I to do with Thee?
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About This Book

A sequence of vivid lyric poems juxtaposes urban modernity and sensual escapism, shifting between images of aquaria, industrial streets, cathedrals, cabarets and cultivated gardens. Rich sensory detail and decadent diction evoke crowded factories, neon-lit cafés, and intimate interiors while poems alternate social satire, melancholic reverie and pastoral relief. Several pieces use theatrical vignettes and musical rhythms to render characters and scenes indirectly, while others address sacred space, memory and longing through ornate imagery. The book’s structure groups shorter, imagistic poems into two parts that balance urban manners with curving, often erotic or elegiac, meditations.

Oh! what have I to do with Thee?

OH what have I to do with thee,
Thou pallid, pallid crucifix?
My sins are past all memory,
My soul fit only for the Styx.
Oh what have I to do with thee,
Hanging so limp and stark and cold?
To whom the world in revelry
Looks up ere quickly it grows old.
Oh what have I to do with thee?
The bloody sweat from off thy brow
Bears witness of thy death for me,
Who am so thankless to thee now.
Oh what have I to do with thee,
Thou death-pale Christ still fresh with youth,
Drooping thy head in agony
And anguish for the name of truth?
Oh what have I to do with thee,
Thou pierced by nail and bruised by thong?
Yet spare me in my misery,
For I am weak whilst thou art strong.