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Ulysses 

87 

of

 1305 

ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a 

white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. 

The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple 

out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems 

hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, 

that’s right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I 

see, east, back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly, frozen in 

stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my words 

dark. Darkness is in our souls do you not think? Flutier. 

Our souls, shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet 

more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more. 

She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. 

Now where the blue hell am I bringing her beyond the 

veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable 

visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges 

Figgis’ window on Monday looking in for one of the 

alphabet books you were going to write. Keen glance you 

gave her. Wrist through the braided jesse of her sunshade. 

She lives in Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws, a lady 

of letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. 

Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders and 

yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about 

apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits? 

---

Ulysses 

88 

of

 1305 

Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely 

here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known 

to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch 

me. 

He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, 

cramming the scribbled note and pencil into a pock his 

hat. His hat down on his eyes. That is Kevin Egan’s 

movement I made, nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et 

vidit Deus. Et erant valde bona. Alo! Bonjour. Welcome as 

the flowers in May. Under its leaf he watched through 

peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun. I am caught in 

this burning scene. Pan’s hour, the faunal noon. Among 

gumheavy serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the 

tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far. 

And no more turn aside and brood. 

His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s 

castoffs,  nebeneinander. He counted the creases of rucked 

leather wherein another’s foot had nested warm. The foot 

that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I dislove. But you 

were delighted when Esther Osvalt’s shoe went on you: 

girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a 

brother soul: Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name. 

---

Ulysses 

89 

of

 1305 

His arm: Cranly’s arm. He now will leave me. And the 

blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all. 

In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed 

full, covering greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, 

flowing. My ashplant will float away. I shall wait. No, they 

will pass on, passing, chafing against the low rocks, 

swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a 

fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. 

Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, 

rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in 

barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, 

widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling. 

Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds 

lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their 

petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy 

silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded 

and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they 

sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, 

waiting, awaiting the fullness of their times, diebus ac 

noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end gathered; 

vainly then released, forthflowing, wending back: loom of 

the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a 

naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil of 

waters. 

---

Ulysses 

90 

of

 1305 

Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. 

At one, he said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin 

bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of 

fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the 

undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. 

There he is. Hook it quick. Pull. Sunk though he be 

beneath the watery floor. We have him. Easy now. 

Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of 

minnows, fat of a spongy titbit, flash through the slits of 

his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man becomes fish 

becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. 

Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a 

urinous offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale 

he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his 

leprous nosehole snoring to the sun. 

A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest 

of all deaths known to man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de 

paris: beware of imitations. Just you give it a fair trial. We 

enjoyed ourselves immensely. 

Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds 

anywhere, are there? Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, 

proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer, dico, qui nescit 

occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal 

shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself. 

---