Read The Lost Lunar Baedeker Online
Authors: Mina Loy
The Lost Lunar Baedeker (8 page)
                           How low men die
                           How women loveâ
                           The rituals of Dempsey and Carpentier
PERLUN
         asks “Do these flappers of the millionaires
                             think I'm a doll for anyone to pat?”
a lyric elixir of death
    embalms
    the spindle spirits of your hour glass loves
                                        on moon spun nights
sets
    icicled canopy
    for corpses of poesy
    with roses and northern lights
    Where frozen nightingales in ilix aisles
                                            sing burial rites
Ostracized as we are with Godâ
          The watchers of the civilized wastes
          reverse their signals on our track
Â
          Lepers of the moon
          all magically diseased
          we come among you
          innocent
          of our luminous sores
          unknowing
          how perturbing lights
          our spirit
          on the passion of Man
          until you turn on us your smooth fools' faces
          like buttocks bared in aboriginal mockeries
          We are the sacerdotal clowns
          who feed upon the wind and stars
          and pulverous pastures of poverty
          Our wills are formed
          by curious disciplines
          beyond your laws
          You may give birth to us
          or marry us
          the chances of your flesh
          are not our destinyâ
          The cuirass of the soul
          still shinesâ
          And we are unaware
          if you confuse
          such brief
          corrosion with possession
          In the raw caverns of the Increate
          we forge the dusk of Chaos
          to that imperious jewellery of the Universe
                 âthe Beautifulâ
          While to your eyes
                      A delicate crop
          of criminal mystic immortelles
          stands to the censor's scythe.
         The toy
         become the aesthetic archetype
As if
         some patient peasant God
         had rubbed and rubbed
         the Alpha and Omega
         of Form
         into a lump of metal
         A naked orientation
         unwinged   unplumed
            âthe ultimate rhythm
         has lopped the extremities
         of crest and claw
         from
         the nucleus of flight
         The absolute act
         of art
         conformed
         to continent sculpture
         âbare as the brow of Osirisâ
         this breast of revelation
         an incandescent curve
         licked by chromatic flames
         in labyrinths of reflections
         This gong
         of polished hyperaesthesia
         shrills with brass
         as the aggressive light
         strikes
         its significance
         The immaculate
         conception
         of the inaudible bird
         occurs
         in gorgeous reticence  .  .  .
A silver Lucifer
serves
cocaine in cornucopia
To some somnambulists
of adolescent thighs
draped
in satirical draperies
Peris in livery
prepare
Lethe
for posthumous parvenues
Delirious Avenues
lit
with the chandelier souls
of infusoria
from Pharoah's tombstones
lead
to mercurial doomsdays
Odious oasis
in furrowed phosphorousâ â â
the eye-white sky-light
white-light district
of lunar lusts
â â â Stellectric signs
“Wing shows on Starway”
“Zodiac carrousel”
Cyclones
of ecstatic dust
and ashes whirl
crusaders
from hallucinatory citadels
of shattered glass
into evacuate craters
A flock of dreams
browse on Necropolis
From the shores
of oval oceans
in the oxidized Orient
Onyx-eyed Odalisques
and ornithologists
observe
the flight
of Eros obsolete
And “Immortality”
mildewsâ¦
in the museums of the moon
“Nocturnal cyclops”
“Crystal concubine”
â â â â â â â
Pocked with personification
the fossil virgin of the skies
waxes and wanesâ â â â
The dam Bellona
littered
her eyeless offspring
Kreigsopfer
upon the pavements of Vienna
Sparkling precipitate
the spectral day
involves
the visionless obstacle
this slow blind face
pushing
its virginal nonentity
against the light
Pure purposeless eremite
of centripetal sentience
Upon the carnose horologe of the ego
the vibrant tendon index moves not
since the black lightning desecrated
the retinal altar
Void and extinct
this planet of the soul
strains from the craving throat
in static flight upslanting
A downy youth's snout
nozzling the sun
drowned in dumbfounded instinct
Listen!
illuminati of the coloured earth
How this expressionless “thing”
blows out damnation and concussive dark
Upon a mouth-organ
             An atomic sprite
perched on a polished
             monster-stallion
reigns over Ringling's      revolving
trinity   of circus attractions
Something the contour
of a captured crab
waving its useless pearly claws
From a squat body
pigmy arms
and bow legs
with their baroque calves
curve in a bi-circular attitude
to a ballerina's exstacy
An effigy of Christmas Eves
smile-cast among chrysanthemum curls
it seems a sugar angel
while from a rose flecked ruff of gauze
its manly legs
stamp   on the vast rump of the horse
An iridescent speck
dripped from a rainbow
onto an ebony cloud
Crab-Angel      I christen you
minnikin of masquerade sex
Helen of Lilliput?
Hercules in a powder puff?
SONG
“Had you been born
in regions of the Unicorn
To balance on his ivory horn
perhaps â â â”
“Per Bacco!      'Tis an idiot dwarf
hooked to a wire to make him jump”
Automaton bare-back rider
the circus-master
jerks
your invisible pendulence
from an over-head pulley
to your illusory
leaps in up-a-loft
signs
the horse
racing the orchestra
in rushing show
throw
his whimsy wire-hung dominator
to dart
through circus skies of arc-lit dust
Crab-Angel      like a swimming star
clutching the tail-end of the Chimera
An aerial acrobat
floats on the coiling lightning
of the whirligig
lifts
to the elated symmetry of Flight â â â
A startled rose
whirls in the chaos of the hoofs
The jeering jangling
jazz
crashes to silence
The dwarfâ
subsides like an ironic sigh
to the soft earth
and ploughs
his bow-legged way
laboriously      towards the exit
waving a yellow farewell with his perruque
            The Normal Monster
            sings in the Green Sahara
            The voice and offal
            of the image of God
            make Celtic noises
            in these lyrical hells
            Hurricanes
            of reasoned musics
            reap the uncensored earth
            The loquent consciousness
            of living things
            pours in torrential languages
            The elderly colloquists
            the Spirit and the Flesh
            are out of tongue â â â
            The Spirit
            is impaled upon the phallus
            PhÅnix
            of Irish fires
            lighten the Occident
            with Ireland's wings
            flap pandemoniums
            of Olympian prose
            and satirize
            the imperial Rose
            of Gaelic perfumes
            âEngland
            the sadistic mother
            embraces Erinâ
Master
of meteoric idiom
present
            The word made flesh
            and feeding upon itself
            with erudite fangs
            The sanguine
            introspection of the womb
            Don Juan
            of Judea
            upon a pilgrimage
            to the Libido
            The Press â â â
            purring
            its lullabyes to sanity
            Christ capitalised
            scourging
            incontrite usurers of destiny
            âin hole and corner temples
And hang
            the soul's advertisements
            outside the ecclesiast's Zoo
            A gravid day
            spawns
            guttural gargoyles
            upon the Tower of Babel
            Empyrean emporium
            where the
            rejectorârecreator
                    Joyce
            flashes the giant reflector
            on the sub rosa â â â
“The Starry Sky”
OF
W
YNDHAM
L
EWIS
who raised
these rocks of human mist
pyramidical survivors
in the cyclorama of space
In the
austere theatre of the Infinite
              the ghosts of the stars
perform the “Presence”
Their celibate shadows
fall
upon the aged radiance
of suns and moons
â The nerves of Heaven
      flinching
      from the antennæ
      of the intellect
â the rays
      that pierce
      the nocturnal heart
The airy eyes of angels
the sublime
experiment in pointillism
faded away
The celestial conservatories
blooming with light
are all blown out
Enviable immigrants
into the pure dimension
immune    serene
devourers of the morning stars of Job
Jehovah's seven days
err in your silent entrails
of geometric Chimeras
The Nirvanic snows
driftâ â â
to sky worn images
Greece has thrown        white shadows
sown
their eyeballs with oblivion
A flock of stone
Gods
perched upon pedestals
A populace
