Review edited by Wyndham Lewis & Ezra Pound, London, 1914 + 1915.
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>> Here the Manifesto (pdf), « vorticism » by Ezra Pound, Blast 1914.
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……..SALUTATION THE THIRD
Let us deride the smugness of « The Times » :
GUFFAW !
So much for the gagged reviewers,
It will pay them when the worms are wriggling in their vitals ;
These are they who objected the newness,
Here are their tomb-stones.
They supported the gag and the ring :
A little BLACK BOX contains them.
So shall you be also,
You slut-bellied obstructionist,
You sworn foe to free speech and good letters,
You fungus, you continuous gangrene.
Come, let us on with the new deal,
Let us be done with pandars and jobbery,
Let us spit upon those who pat the big-bellies for profit,
Let us go out in the air a bit.
Or perhaps I will die at thirty ?
Perhaps you will have the pleasure of defiling my pauper’s grave ;
I wish you joy, I proffer you all my assistance.
It has been your habit for long
to do away with good writers.
You either drive them mad, or else you blink at their suicides,
Or else you condone their drugs,
and talk of insanity and genius,
But I will not go mad to please you,
I will not flatter you with an early death,
Oh, no, I will stick it out,
Feel your hates wriggling about my feet
As a pleasant tickle,
to be observed with derision,
Though many move with suspicion,
Afraid to say they hate you ;
The taste of my boot ?
Here is the taste of my boot,
Caress it,
lick off the blacking.
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……..MONUMENTUM AERE, ETC.
You say that I take a good deal upon myself ;
That I strut in the robes of assumption.
In a few years no one will remember the buffo,
No one will remember the trivial parts of me,
The comic detail will be absent.
As for you, you will rot in the earth,
And it is doubtful if even your manure will be rich enough
To keep grass
Over your grave.
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……..COME MY CANTILATIONS
Come my cantilations,
Let us dump our hatreds into one bunch and be done with them,
Hot sun, clear water, fresh wind,
Let me be free of pavements,
Let me be free of the printers.
Let come beautiful people
Wearing raw silk of good colour,
Let come the graceful speakers,
Let come the ready of wit,
Let come the gay of manner, the insolent and the exulting.
We speak of burnished lakes,
Of dry air, as clear as metal.
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……..BEFORE SLEEP
…I.
The lateral vibrations caress me,
They leap and caress me,
They work pathetically in my favour,
They seek my financial good.
She of the spear stands present.
The gods of the underworld attend me, O Annubis,
These are they of thy company.
With a pathetic solicitude they attend me ;
Undulent,
Their realm is the lateral courses.
…II.
Light !
I am up to follow thee, Pallas.
Up and out of their caresses.
You were gone up as a rocket,
Bending your passages from right to left and from left to right
In the flat projection of a spiral.
The gods of drugged sleep attend me,
Wishing me well ;
I am up to follow thee, Pallas.
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……..POST MORTEM CONSPECTU
A brown, fat babe sitting in the lotus,
And you were glad and laughing
With a laughter not of this world.
It is good to splash in the water
And laughter is the end of all things.
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……..FRATRES MINORES
With minds still hovering above their testicles
Certain poets here and in France
Still sigh over established and natural fact
Long since fully discussed by Ovid.
They howl. They complain in delicate and exhausted metres
That the twitching of three abdominal nerves
Is incapable of producing a lasting Nirvana.
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// end of Ezra Pound’s poems from BLAST.
