Peris is Livery: libérez l'abat-jour
English Rose
- Early English everlasting
- quadrate Rose
- paradox-Imperial
- trimmed with some travestied flesh
- tinted with bloodless duties dewed
- with Lipton's teas
- and grimed with crack-packed
- herd-housing
- petalling
- the prim gilt
- penetralia
- of a luster-scioned
- core-crown
-
- Rose of arrested impulses
- self-pruned
- of the primordial attributes
- a tepid heart inhibiting
- with tactful terrorism
- the Blossom Populous
- to mystic incest with its ancestry
- establishing
- by the divine right of self-assertion
- the post-conceptual
- virginity of Nature
-
- wiping
- its pink paralysis
- A World-Blush
- glowing from
- a never-setting-sun
- Conservative Rose
- storage
- of British Empire-made pot-pourri
- of dry dead men making a sweetened smell
- among a shrivelled collectivity
-
- Which august dust
- stirred by
- the trouser-striped prongs of statesmanship
- (whenever politic)
- rises upon the puff of press alarum
- and whirling itself
- deliriously around the unseen
- Bolshevik subsides
- in ashy circularity
- "a wreath" upon the unknown
- soldier's grave
-
- And Jehovah strikes --
- through the fetish
- of the island hedged --
- Exodus
- who on his holiday
- (induced
- by the insidious pink
- of Albion's ideal)
- is looking for a rose
-
- And the rose
- rises
- from the green
- of a green lane
- rosily-stubborn
- and robustly round
-
- Under a pink print
- sunbonnet
- the village maid
- scowls at the heathen
-
- Albion
- in female form
- salutes the alien Exodus
-
- staring so hard --
- warms his nostalgia
- on her belligerent innocence
-
- The maidenhead
- drooping her lid
- and pouting her breast
-
- forewarns
- his amity
-
- Amorphous meeting
- in the month of May
-
- This Hebrew
- culled by Cupid on a thorn
- of the rose
- lays siege
- to the thick hedgerows
- where she blows
- on Christian Sundays
-
- She
- simpering in her
- ideological pink
- He
- loaded with Mosaic
- passions that amass
- like money
-
- implores her to take pity upon him
- and come and be a "Lady in the City"
-
- Maiden emotions
- breed
- on leaves of novels
- where anatomical man
- has no notion
- of offering other than the bended knee
- to femininity
-
- and purity
- passes in pleasant ways
- as the cows graze
-
- For in those days
- when Exodus courted the rose
- literature was supposed to elevate us
-
- So the maid with puffy
- bosom where Jerusalem
- dreams to ease
- his head of calculations
- in the Zero of ecstasy
- and a little huffy
- bristles with chastity
-
- For this is the last Judgment
- when Jehovah
- roars "Open your mouth!
- and I will tell you what you have been reading"
-
- Exodus had been reading
- Proverbs
- making sharp distinction
- between the harlot
- and the Hausfrau arraying
- her offspring in scarlet
- approving
- such as garner good advice like grain
- and such as know enough
- to come in from the rain
-
- The would-be
- secessionist from Israel's etiquette
- (shielding pliant Jewesses from shame
- less glances
- and the giving
- of just percentages
- to matrimonial intermediaries)
- is spiritually intrigued
- by the Anglo-Saxon phenomenon
- of Virginity
- delightfully
- on its own defensive!
-
- This pouting
- pearl beyond price
- flouts
- the male pretentions
- to its impervious surface
-
- Alice the gentile
- Exodus the Jew
- after a few
- feverish tiffs
- and reparations
- chiefly conveyed in exclamations --
- a means of expression
- modified by lack of experience --
- unite their variance
- in marriage
-
- Exodus
- Oriental
- mad to melt
- with something softer than himself
- clasps with soothing pledges
- his wild rose of the hedges
-
- While she
- expecting
- the presented knee
- of chivalry
- repels
- the sub-umbilical mystery
- of his husbandry
- hysterically
-
- His passionate-anticipation
- of warming in his arms
- his rose to a maturer coloration
- which was all of aspiration
- the grating upon civilization
- of his sensitive organism
- had left him
-
- splinters upon an adamsite
- opposition
- of nerves like stalactites
-
- This dying chastity
- had rendered up no soul yet they pursued their conjugal
- dilemmas as is usual
- with people
- who know not what they do
- but know that what they do
- is not illegal
-
- Deep in the névrose
- night he
- peruses his body
- divested of its upholstery
- firmly insensitive
- in mimicry
- of its hypothetical model --
- a petal
- of the English rose
- an abstracted Ada
- in myopic contemplation
- of the incontemplatable
- compound rosette
- of peerless negations
-
- That like other Gods
- has never appeared
- leaving itself to be inferred
- Whereof
- it is not seemly
- that the one petal
- shall apprehend
- of the other petals
- their conformity
-
- For of this Rose
- wherever it blows
- it is certain that an impenetrable pink curtain
- hangs between it and itself
- and in metaphysical vagrance
- it passes beyond the ken
- of men unless
- possessed
- of exorbitant incomes
- And Then --
- merely indicating its presence
- by an exotic fragrance