The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ was once

      In among the listening lilies a silent tread

      Bite the fruit to taste the stone

      Throughout the Gobi seed awaits

      The rain to stalk

      Famine starting at the head

      He only has to say one word

      Roses grow from an empty bowl

      In our shuttered streets

      The cars roam

      Don’t need a home

      Or volume control

      Wandering sizeless with the unaimed dead

      We hear his voice cry ‘Paradise!’

      On the Golden Coast the cymbals

      Start to sound

      Salvation starting at the head

       Tortures

      There’s no answer from the old exchange

      I want to push inside you

      The sensations you find in yourself

      May just be within my range

      Grimly sitting round a table

      Fifteen men with life at stake

      They may torture themselves but those tortures

      Will not make them awake

      The cards were somehow different

      The board I had not seen before

      Their iron maiden gleamed dimly cherry-red with sex

      Down in the basement I reached Low Point X

      Last year they stopped their playing

      Phone just ceased to buzz

      But if you find them there tomorrow

      Better start in there praying

      Reincarnation where the cobwebs

      Are comes daily from your keep

      We may torture ourselves but those tortures

      Cannot break our sleep

       Poor A!

      (Gurdjieff’s Mocking Song)

      Poor A! Poor A! Now there’s a clever man!

      He only wants to talk and he is happy!

      I could have pulled his trousers off

      Un-noticed, silly chappie!

      Poor A! Poor A! What sort of man is it

      Who only wants to talk and he’s okay?

      I tell you everyone’s like that –

      They fill the world today.

      I might say poor old A is rather better

      Then some wild talkniks I have met, a

      Chap who in his way knows what is what –

      On military onions he knows quite a lot.

      In a superficial public way he tries to find out Why:

      And he’d hate to think he ever told a lie.

      Poor A! Poor A! He is no longer young!

      He said so much I think and was uncouth

      To guard against an awful chance

      To listen to the truth –

      He led himself a merry dance –

      He hid his head in circumstance –

      To fight against the truth!

      Disciples: Poor us! Poor us! We really felt his tongue!

      He drank Khagetia and chattered without ruth

      To guard against his only chance

      To hear G give out truth –

      He led us all a merry dance –

      He leads himself a dreary prance –

      To smite against the truth!

      To fight against the truth!

       The Unaimed Deadman Theme

      Foreign familiar filthy fastidious forgotten forbidden

      Suicide’s revelation its sunnyside hidden

      Death’s black-and-white checker is down on the table

      Fugitive fustian funebral infinite formidable

      Far down the runway the black sheds are standing

      My love talks to me with a delicate air

      I am the victim the assassin the wounder

      Her face looks no larger as I stand close than

      It simultaneously does in my telescope sights

      But pleasant is walking where elmtrees paint shadow

      If I fire I might as well hit me

      I walked with her once where her elms brought their shadows

      The dogrose dies now while the invalid car

      Barks vainly and I the assassin the wounder

      On the runways the markings are no longer valid

      Hieroglyphs of a system now long obsolete

      No this button first love yes that’s the idea

      If I fire I might as well hit me

      Foreign familiar filthy fastidious forbidden forgotten

      I sprinted a dozen times over where rotten

      Things grew and she cried for a sweet-flavoured minute

      Fugitive fustian funebral formidable infinite

       Lament Of The Representatives Of The СКАЧАТЬ