Yuku free message boards

This comes from Canto IV of Raymond Roussel's New Impressions of Africa, translated by Andrew Hugill The whole thing goes on and on and around and around for about a million years so this is only a small snippet:

... fever
Makes a fire which goes out, either when the patient dies
Or when, the fever at its peak and looking dangerous,
One's shining eyes and deep blisters,
- Fever makes even adults grow, it's a well-known fact -
Gradually transform into blooming convalesence,
And ravenous hunger drives one to eat like a hundred men,
With a tongue which is once more good and red;
The fire which patiently diminishes a candle
Goes out; - like the hammer that falls when one sells
A building at an auction; - as under a gust of wind,
When a king is saved from a burning building,
A fire which the heir who would benefit from his death
Started secretly to see who was on his side;
- As when noisily leaving a distant pistol
Held by a champion whose shots are always accurate,
A well-aimed bullet splits a lock of hair or a fly;
- As when a reader in bed (his back higher than his ears,
Forehead in hands, fascination keeping him awake,)
Devours some poignant passage
In which an unmarried mother (who everybody thinks is well-behaved
As long as her affair remains a secret)
Who (ready to join with hers his plenteous destiny)
Is loved by a high-level financier ...

He comes so close to overdoing it but doesn['t - he escapes, he sounds rapturous. I can picture the clouds.

I'm seeing the clouds as soft, saggy bags, like spider cocoons, and the poet standing on a hill staring up at them with his mouth open. A sunny day. Dandelions.

I've got chunks of time and a Google-ready trigger finger - allow me -

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !


The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."

(Does anyone out there have a copy of Wole Soyinka's Shuttle From the Crypt? Thre's a poem in there about Joseph and Potiphar's wife that I'd love to see again. I can remember a small part which goes something vaguely like this -

"We
All whose dreams of fire dissolve (resolve?) in light
Wait upon the old ancestor of truth
And to interpret dreams." )

Part of 'The Kangaroo,' by Barron Field, because it makes me laugh:

Kanagaroo, Kangaroo!
Thou Spirit of Australia,
That redeems from utter failure,
From perfect desolation,
And warrants the creation
Of this fifth part of the Earth,
Which would seem an after-birth,
Not conceiv'd in the Beginning
(For GOD bless'd His work at first,
And saw that it was good),
But emerg'd at the first sinning,
When the ground was therefore curst; --
And hence this barren wood!


...


She had made the squirrel fragile;
She had made the bounding hart;
But a third so strong and agile
Was beyond ev'n Nature's art;
So she join'd the former two
In thee, Kangaroo!
To describe thee, it is hard:
Converse of the camélopard,
Which beginneth camel-wise,
But endeth of the panther size,
Thy fore half, it would appear,
Had belong'd to some "small deer,"
Such as liveth in a tree;
By thy hinder, thou should'st be
A large animal of chace,
Bounding o'er the forest's space; --
Join'd by some divine mistake,
None but Nature's hand can make --
Nature, in her wisdom's play,
On Creation's holiday.


...


When sooty swans are once more rare,
And duck-moles the Museum's care,
Be still the glory of this land,
Happiest Work of finest Hand!