Basil Bunting:
ATTIS: OR SOMETHING MISSING
(1931)Dea magna, dea Cybele, dea domina Dindymi, procul a mea tuus sit furor omnis, era, domo: alios age incitatos, alios age rabidos.
[Note: Parodies of Lucretius and Cino da Pistoia can do no damage and intend no disrespect.]
I Out of puff (That hand's dismissed shadow There are no colours, words only, 'Longranked larches succeed larches, spokes of a Landscape salvaged from Mother of eunuchs. Praise the green earth. Chance has appointed her From her brooks sweat. Hers corn and fruit. |
II (Variations on a theme by Milton) I thought I saw my late wife (a very respectable woman) Centrifugal tutus! Sarabands! Long loved and The gorgon's method: And O Purveyor Gods awake and fierce Polymnia |
III * Pastorale arioso What mournful stave, what bellow shakes the grove? 'Pines, my sisters, I, your sister, Pines, my sisters, I, your sister, Pines, my sisters, I, your sister, Dindyma! Dindyma! (Oh Sis! Shall we be whole in Elysium? To whom Cybele: oracle.' Attis his embleme: * See Part III. in: An "Objectivists"Anthology. Edited by Louis Zukofsky. (To, Publishers, 1932), pp. 33-35 |
(from: Confucius to Cummings. An Anthology of Poetry. Edited by Ezra Pound and Marcella Spann [New Directions: New York, 1964], pp. 313-316.)
GIN THE GOODWIFE STINT
(1930)
The ploughland has gone to bent Gin the goodwife stint The Duke can get his rent |
|
[gin: if; C.P.R.: In 1920 it was still possible for an emigrant pledged to agricultural labor to cross from England to Canada on a Canadian Pacific railway boat for two pounds.] |
THE COMPLAINT OF THE MORPETHSHIRE FARMER
(1930)
On the up-platform at Morpeth station Must ye bide, my good stone house, To see the bracken choke the clod Where are ye, my seven score sheep? The fold beneath the rowan |
And thou! Thou's idled all the spring, Canada's a cold land. Canada's a bare land Sheep and cattle are poor men's food, A liner lying in the Clyde |
[kye: cattle; coulter: plowshare; cowpit: overturned; hind: farm laborer] |
** The stylistic reform, or the change in language, was a means not an end. After the war of 1914-199 there was definitely an extension of subject matter. This anthology cannot analyze the results, it is a lead up, but the poetry of the last forty years definitely breeds a discontent with a great deal that had been accepted in 1900. Of the poets who appeared in the 1920’s it has been asserted that Cummings and Bunting show a deeper concern with basic human problems in relation to the state of the times, Cummings with irony, Bunting in more glum sobriety. We have chosen two of Bunting’s poems that are easiest to grasp, but they lead up to such passages as:
"The sea is his and he
made it."--Who
made Holland and whose is it?
Man is not an end-product,
maggot asserts.
There are unforgettable lines in his "Villon."
THE WELL OF LYCOPOLIS (1935)[Note: Gibbon mentions its effect in a footnote. The long quotations from Villon and Dante will of course be recognized. Americans may care to be informed that as a native of Paphos Venus was until recently entitled to a British passport. Her quotation from Sophie Tucker will not escape the attention of those who remember the first world war, and need not engage that of those who dont. The remarks of the brass head occur in the no longer sufficiently well-known story of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, of which I think Messrs Laurel and Hardy could make use. Some may remember that the only one of the rivers of Paradise to which we have access on earth, namely Zamzam, is reported to be brackish.] cujus potu signa |
I Advis m'est que j'oy regretter Slinking by the jug-and-bottle I had them all on a string at one time, But none of their Bacchic impertinence, 'Blotched belly, slack buttock and breast, |
II May my libation of flat beer stood overnight 'Let's be cosy, Daphnis investigated Neither (aequora pontis) |
III Infamous poetry, abject love, but stare in the tank, see At my time of life it is easier not to see, Abject poetry, infamous love, |
IV Ed anche vo' che tu per certo credi Stuck in the mud they are saying: 'We were sad Join the Royal Air Force Surrendered in March. Or maybe muttering inaudibly beneath the quagmire, |