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Ulysses 

66 

of

 1305 

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter 

of iambs marching. No, agallop: deline the mare. 

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all 

vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black 

adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see. 

See now. There all the time without you: and ever 

shall be, world without end. 

They came down the steps from Leahy’s terrace 

prudently,  Frauenzimmer: and down the shelving shore 

flabbily, their splayed feet sinking in the silted sand. Like 

me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother. 

Number one swung lourdily her midwife’s bag, the other’s 

gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the 

day. Mrs Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk 

MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street. One of her 

sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from 

nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a 

trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all 

link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why 

mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your 

omphalos. Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. 

Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one. 

Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked 

Eve. She had no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, 

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bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped 

corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to 

everlasting. Womb of sin. 

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. 

By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a 

ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and 

sundered, did the coupler’s will. From before the ages He 

willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex 

eterna stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance 

wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor 

dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long upon 

the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred 

heresiarch’ In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: 

euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled 

upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with 

upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts. 

Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They 

are coming, waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, 

brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan. 

I mustn’t forget his letter for the press. And after? The 

Ship, half twelve. By the way go easy with that money 

like a good young imbecile. 

Yes, I must. 

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Ulysses 

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 1305 

His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara’s or 

not? My consubstantial father’s voice. Did you see 

anything of your artist brother Stephen lately? No? Sure 

he’s not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt 

Sally? Couldn’t he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And 

and and and tell us, Stephen, how is uncle Si? O, weeping 

God, the things I married into! De boys up in de hayloft. 

The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet 

player. Highly respectable gondoliers! And skeweyed 

Walter sirring his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus 

wept: and no wonder, by Christ! 

I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and 

wait. They take me for a dun, peer out from a coign of 

vantage. 

—It’s Stephen, sir. 

—Let him in. Let Stephen in. 

A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me. 

—We thought you were someone else. 

In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and 

blanketed, extends over the hillock of his knees a sturdy 

forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the upper moiety. 

—Morrow, nephew. 

He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of 

costs for the eyes of master Goff and master Shapland 

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Tandy, filing consents and common searches and a writ of 

Duces Tecum. A bogoak frame over his bald head: Wilde’s 

Requiescat. The drone of his misleading whistle brings 

Walter back. 

—Yes, sir? 

—Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is 

she? 

—Bathing Crissie, sir. 

Papa’s little bedpal. Lump of love. 

—No, uncle Richie ... 

—Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. 

Whusky! 

—Uncle Richie, really ... 

—Sit down or by the law Harry I’ll knock you down. 

Walter squints vainly for a chair. 

—He has nothing to sit down on, sir. 

—He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our 

chippendale chair. Would you like a bite of something? 

None of your damned lawdeedaw airs here. The rich of a 

rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better. We 

have nothing in the house but backache pills. 

All’erta! 

He drones bars of Ferrando’s aria di sortita. The grandest 

number, Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen. 

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His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with 

rushes of the air, his fists bigdrumming on his padded 

knees. 

This wind is sweeter. 

Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the 

Clongowes gentry you had an uncle a judge and an uncle 

a general in the army. Come out of them, Stephen. 

Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh’s 

library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim 

Abbas. For whom? The hundredheaded rabble of the 

cathedral close. A hater of his kind ran from them to the 

wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his 

eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval 

equine faces, Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, 

Lanternjaws. Abbas father,— furious dean, what offence 

laid fire to their brains? Paff! Descende, calve, ut ne amplius 

decalveris. A garland of grey hair on his comminated head 

see him me clambering down to the footpace (descende!), 

clutching a monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll! 

A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting about the 

altar’s horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly 

in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the 

fat of kidneys of wheat. 

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