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Three Cantos (Ur-Cantos)

Catullus villa

A Draft of XXX Cantos 1-30

rsz ship4 for c1

Eleven New Cantos 31-41

rsz guido cavalcanti

Fifth Decad of Cantos 42-51

monte dei paschi title page

Cantos LII-LXXI 52-71

confucius adams 2

The Italian Cantos 72-73

rsz marinetti

The Pisan Cantos 74-84

rsz pisa cage

Rock Drill. Cantos 85-95

rock drill1

 

Thrones. Cantos 96-109

coke3

Drafts and Fragments

DL001167

 

XXVIII

 

  1. And God the Father Eternal (Boja d’un Dio!) 

  2. Having made all things he cd. 

  3. think of, felt yet 

  4. That something was lacking, and thought 

  5. Still more, and reflected that 

  6. The Romagnolo was lacking, and 

  7. Stamped with his foot in the mud and 

  8. Up comes the Romagnolo: 

  9.                 “Gard, yeh bloudy ’angman! It’s me”. 

  10. Aso iqua me.   All Esimo Dottor Aldo Walluschnig

  11. Who with the force of his intellect 

  12. With art and assiduous care 

  13. Has snatched from death by a most perilous operation 

  14. The classical Caesarean cut 

  15. Marotti, Virginia, in Senni of San Giorgio 

  16. At the same time saving her son. 

  17. May there move to his laud the applause of all men 

  18. And the gratitude of the family. 

  19.               S. Giorgio, 23d May. A.D. 1925. 

  20. Item: There are people that can swimme in the sea 

  21. Havens and rivers naked 

  22. Having bowes and shafts, 

  23. Coveting to draw nigh yr. shippe which if they find not 

  24. Well watched and warded they wil assault 

  25. Desirous of the bodies of men which they covet for meate, 

  26. If you resist them 

  27.           They dive and wil flee. 

  28. And Mr Lourpee sat on the floor of the pension dining-room 

  29. Or perhaps it was in the alcove 

  30. And about him lay a great mass of pastells, 

  31. That is, stubbs and broken pencils of pastell, 

  32. In pale indeterminate colours. 

  33. And he admired the Sage of Concord

  34.         “Too broad ever to make up his mind”.

  35. And the mind of Lourpee at fifty 

  36. Directed him into a room with a certain vagueness 

  37. As if he wd. 

  38. neither come in nor stay out 

  39. As if he wd.

  40. go neither to the left nor the right 

  41. And his painting reflected this habit. 

  42. And Mrs Kreffle’s mind was made up, 

  43. Perhaps by the pressure of circumstance, 

  44. She described her splendid apartment 

  45. In Paris and left without paying her bill 

  46. And in fact she wrote later from Sevilla 

  47. And requested a shawl, and received it 

  48. From the Senora at 300 pesetas cost to the latter 

  49. (Also without remitting) which 

  50. May have explained the lassitude of her daughter; 

  51. And the best paid dramatic critic 

  52. Arrived from Manhattan 

  53. And was lodged in a bordello (promptly) 

  54. Having trusted “his people”

  55. Who trusted a Dutch correspondent, 

  56. And when they had been devoured by fleas 

  57. (Critic and family) 

  58. They endeavoured to break the dutchman’s month’s contract, 

  59. And the ladies from West Virginia 

  60. Preserved the natal aroma, 

  61. And in the railway feeding-room in Chiasso

  62. She sat as if waiting/or the train for Topeka 

  63. — That was the year of the strikes —

  64. When we came up toward Chiasso

  65. By the last on the narrow-gauge, 

  66. Then by tramway from Como

  67. Leaving the lady who loved bullfights 

  68. With her eight trunks and her captured hidalgo,

  69. And a dutchman was there who was going 

  70. To take the boat at Trieste, 

  71. Sure, he was going to take it; 

  72. Would he go round by Vienna?    He would not. 

  73. Absence of trains wdnt. stop him. 

  74. So we left him at last in Chiasso 

  75. Along with the old woman from Kansas, 

  76. Solid Kansas, her daughter had married that Swiss 

  77. Who kept the buffet in Chiasso. 

  78. Did it shake her?    It did not shake her. 

  79. She sat there in the waiting room, solid Kansas, 

  80. Stiff as a cigar-store indian from the Bowery

  81. Such as one saw in “the nineties”,

  82. First sod of bleeding Kansas 

  83. That had produced this ligneous solidness; 

  84. If thou wilt go to Chiasso wilt find that indestructable female 

  85. As if waiting for the train to Topeka

  86. In the buffet of that station on the bench that

  87. Follows the wall, to the right side as you enter. 

  88. And Clara Leonora wd. come puffing so that one 

  89. Cd. hear her when she reached the foot of the stairs, 

  90. Squared, chunky, with her crooked steel spectacles 

  91. And her splutter and her face full of teeth 

  92. And old Rennert wd. sigh heavily 

  93. And look over the top of his lenses and 

  94. She wd. arrive after due interval with a pinwheel 

  95. Concerning Grillparzer or — pratzer 

  96. Or whatever follow the Grill —, and il Gran Maestro 

  97. Mr Liszt had come to the home of her parents 

  98. And taken her on his prevalent knee and 

  99. She held that a sonnet was a sonnet 

  100. And ought never be destroyed

  101. And had taken a number of courses 

  102. And continued with hope of degrees and 

  103. Ended in a Baptist learnery 

  104.                Somewhere near the Rio Grande. 

  105. And they wanted more from their women, 

  106. Wanted ’em jacked up a little 

  107. And sent over for teachers (Ceylon) 

  108. So Loica went out and died there 

  109. After her time in the post-Ibsen movement. 

  110. And one day in Smith’s room 

  111. Or may be it was that 1908 medico’s 

  112. Put the gob in the fire-place 

  113. Ole Byers and Feigenbaum and Joe Bromley, 

  114. Joe hittin’ the gob at 25 feet 

  115. Every time, ping on the metal 

  116.                 (Az ole man Comley wd. say: Boys! ... 

  117.                 Never cherr terbakker! Hrwwkke tth! 

  118.                 Never cherr terbakker!, 

  119. “Missionaries,” said Joe, “I was out back of Jaffa, 

  120. I dressed in the costume, used to like the cafés, 

  121. All of us settin’ there on the ground,

  122. Pokes his head in the doorway:   “Iz there any,”

  123. He says, “Gar’

  124. Damn 

  125. Man here 

  126. Thet kan speak ENGLISH?”

  127.               Nobody said anything fer a while 

  128. And then I said:   “Hu er’ you?”

  129. “I’m er misshernary I am”

  130. He sez, “chucked off a naval boat in Shanghaï. 

  131. I worked at it three months, nothin’ to live on.”

  132. Beat his way overland. 

  133. I never saw the twenty I lent him.”

  134. Great moral secret service, plan, Tribune is told 

  135. limit number to thirty thousand, 

  136. only highest type will be included, 

  137. propaganda within ranks of the veterans, 

  138. to keep within bounds when they come into 

  139. contact with personal liberty ... with the french authorities ... 

  140. that includes the Paris police ... 

  141. Strengthen franco-american amity.

  142. NARCOTIC CHARGE: Frank Robert Iriquois 

  143. gave his home Oklahoma City ... Expelled July 24 th. 

  144. Je suis ... 

  145. (Across the bare planks of a diningroom in the Pyrenees

  146.              ... plus fort que ... 

  147.                                           ... le Boud-hah!”

  148. (No contradiction) 

  149. “Je suis ... 

  150.                     ... plus fort que le ... 

  151.                                                          ... Christ! 

  152. (No contradiction) 

  153. “J’aurais ... 

  154.                       aboli ... 

  155.                                      le poids!”

  156. (Silence, somewhat unconvinced.) 

  157. And in his waste house, detritus, 

  158. As it were the cast buttons of splendours, 

  159. The harbour of Martinique, drawn every house, and in detail. 

  160. Green shutters on half the houses,

  161. Half the thing still unpainted. 

  162.                                                       “... sont

  163. “l’in .. fan ... terie KOH- 

  164.                                             lon- 

  165.                                                      i-ale”

  166. voce tinnula

  167. “Ce sont les vieux Marsouins!”

  168. He made it, feitz Marcebrus, the words and the music, 

  169. Uniform out for Peace Day

  170. And that lie about the Tibetan temple 

  171. (happens by the way to be true, 

  172. they do carry you up on their shoulders) but 

  173. Bad for his medical practice. 

  174. “Retreat?” said Dr Wymans, “It was marrvelous ... 

  175. Gallipoli ... 

  176. Secret.    Turks knew nothing about it. 

  177. Uh! Helped me to get my wounded aboard.”

  178. And that man sweat blood to put through that railway, 

  179. And what he ever got out of it? 

  180. And one day he drove down to the whorehouse 

  181. Cause all the farmers had consented 

  182.                 and granted the right of way, 

  183. But the pornoboskos wdn’t. have it at any price

  184. And said he’d shoot the surveyors, 

  185. But he didn’t shoot ole pop in the buckboard, 

  186. He giv him the right of way. 

  187. And they thought they had him flummox’d, 

  188. Nobody’d sell any rails; 

  189. Till he went up to the north of New York state 

  190. And found some there on the ground 

  191. And he had ’em pried loose and shipped ’em 

  192. And had ’em laid here through the forest.

  193. Thing is to find something simple 

  194. As for example Pa Stadtvolk

  195. Hooks to hang gutters on roofs, 

  196. A spike and half-circle, patented ’em and then made ’em; 

  197. Worth a good million, not a book in the place; 

  198. Got a horse about twenty years after, seen him 

  199.                             Of a Saturday afternoon 

  200. When they’d taken down an old fence, 

  201. Ole Pa out there knockin the nails out

  202. (To save ’em). I hear he smoked good cigars. 

  203. And when the Prince Oltrepassimo died, saccone,

  204. That follow the coffins, 

  205. He lay there on the floor of the chapel 

  206. On a great piece of patterned brocade 

  207. And the walls solid gold about him 

  208. And there was a hole in one of his socks 

  209. And the place open that day to the public, 

  210. Kids running in from the street 

  211. And a cat sat there licking himself 

  212. And then stepped over the Principe, 

  213. Discobolus upstairs and the main door 

  214. Not opened since ’70 

  215. When the Pope shut himself into the Vatican 

  216. And they had scales on the table 

  217. To weigh out the food on fast days; 

  218. And he lay there with his hood back 

  219. And the hole in one of his socks. 

  220. “Buk!” said the Second Baronet, “eh ... 

  221. “Thass a funny lookin’ buk” said the Baronet 

  222. Looking at Bayle, folio, 4 vols. in gilt leather, “Ah ... 

  223. “Wu ... Wu ... wot you goin’ eh to do with ah ... 

  224. “... ah read-it?”

  225.                         Sic loquitur eques

  226. And lest it pass with the day’s news

  227. Thrown out with the daily paper, 

  228. Neither official pet

  229. Nor Levine with the lucky button 

  230. Went on into darkness, 

  231. Saw naught above but close dark, 

  232. Weight of ice on the fuselage 

  233. Borne into the tempest, black cloud wrapping their wings, 

  234. The night hollow beneath them 

  235. And fell with dawn into ocean 

  236. But for the night saw neither sky nor ocean 

  237. And found ship ... why?... how?... by the Azores. 

  238. And she was a bathing beauty, Miss Arkansas or Texas

  239. And the man (of course) quasi anonymous 

  240. Neither a placard for non-smokers or non-alcohol 

  241. Nor for the code of Peoria

  242. Or one-eyed Hinchcliffe and Elsie

  243. Blackeyed bitch that married dear Dennis

  244. That flew out into nothingness 

  245. And her father was the son of one too 

  246. That got the annulment.