by James Joyce
And so he will and so he will.
Der Wind stand auf, liess los einen Schrei,
Pfiff mit den Fingern schrill dabei.
Wirbelte durres Laub durch den Wald
Und hammerte Aste mit Riesengewalt.
Zum Tod, heult, zum Tod und Mord!
Und meint es ernst : ein Wind, ein Wort.
Vinden staar op med en vild Huru,
Han piber paa fingerne og nu
Sparker bladenes flyvende flok.
Traeerne troer han er Ragnarok
Skovens liv og blod vil han draebe og drikke.
Hvad der bliver at goere, det ved ieg ikke.
Les Verts de Jacques
Le vent d’un saut lance son cri,
Se siffle sur les doigts et puis
Trépigne les feuilles d’automne,
Craque les branches qu’il assomme.
Je tuerai, crie-t-il, holà!
Et vous verrez s’il le fera!
Surgit Boreas digitorum
Fistulam, faciens et clamor em.
Pes pugno certat par (oremus!)
Foliis quatit omne nemus.
Caedam, ait, caedam, caedam!
Nos ne habeat il le praedam.
Balza in piè Fra Vento egrida.
Tre dita in bocca fischia la sfida.
Tira calci, pesta botte:
Ridda di foglie e frasche rotte.
Ammazzero, ei urla, O gente!
E domeneddio costui non mente diuraddio
As I was going to Joyce Saint James’
As I was going to Joyce Saint James’
I met with seven extravagant dames;
Every dame had a bee in her bonnet,
With bats from the belfry roosting upon it.
And Ah, I said, poor Joyce Saint James,
What can he do with these terrible dames?
Poor Saint James Joyce.
Pour la Rime Seulement
A Pierre de Lanux
dit Valéry Larbaud
prête moi un dux
qui peut conduire l’assault
mes pioux piou sont fondus
et meurent de malaise
sois ton petit tondu
pour la gloire d’Ares
Lanux de la Pierre
à Beaulard fit réplique
foute-moi la guerre
avec tes soldiques
car pour l’Italie
presto fais tes malles
tire ta bonne partie
avec quelques balles
à ces mots Leryval
file en obobus
et comme le vieux Hannibal
perce le blocus
à peine atterre sa mine
qu’on crie à la foire
un sous la Mursoline
pour l’arrats de gloire
A Portrait of the Artist as an Ancient Mariner
I met with an ancient scribelleer
As I scoured the pirates’ sea
His sailes were alullt at nought coma null
Not raise the wind could he.
The bann of Bull, the sign of Sam
Burned crimson on his brow.
And I rocked at the rig of his bricabrac brig
With K.O. 11 on his prow
Shakefears & Coy danced poor old joy
And some of their steps were corkers
As they shook the last shekels like phantom freckels
His pearls that had poisom porkers
The gnome Norbert read rich bills of fare
The ghosts of his deep debauches
But there was no bibber to slip that scribber
The price of a box of matches
For all cried, Schuft! He has lost the Luft
That made his U.boat go
And what a weird leer wore that scribelleer
As his wan eye winked with woe.
He dreamed of the goldest sands uprolled
By the silviest Beach of Beaches
And to watch it dwindle gave him Kugelkopfschwindel
Till his eyeboules bust their stitches
His hold shipped seas with a drunkard’s ease
And its deadweight grew and grew
While the witless wag still waived his flag
Jemmyrend’s white and partir’s blue.
His tongue stuck out with a dragon’s drouth
For a sluice of schweppes and brandy
And but for the glows on his roseate nose
Youd have staked your goat he was Gandhi.
For the Yanks and Japs had made off with his traps
So that stripped to the stern he clung
While, increase of a cross, an Albatross
Abaft his nape was hung.
Pennipomes Twoguineaseach
Sing a song of shillings
A guinea cannot buy,
Thirteen tiny pomikins
Bobbing in a pie.
The printer’s pie was published
And the pomes began to sing
And wasn’t Herbert Hughesius
As happy as a king!
There’s a genial young poetriarch Euge
There’s a genial young poetriarch Euge
Who hollers with heartiness huge:
Let sick souls sob for solace
So the jeunes joy with Jolas!
Book your berths! Après mot, le déluge.
Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And lay low like Low All of a crumple
By the butt of the Magazine’s Wall?
Epilogue to Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts’
Dear quick, whose conscience buried deep
The grim old grouser has been salving,
Permit one spectre more to peep.
I am the ghost of Captain Alving.
Silenced and smothered by my past
Like the lewd knight in dirty linen
I struggle forth to swell the cast
And air a long-suppressed opinion.
For muddling weddings into wakes
No fool could vie with Parson Manders.
I, though a dab at ducks and drakes,
Let gooseys serve or sauce their ganders.
My spouse bore me a blighted boy,
Our slavey pupped a bouncing bitch.
Paternity, thy name is joy
When the wise sire knows which is which.
Both swear I am that selfsame man
By whom their infants were begotten.
Explain, fate, if you care and can
Why one is sound and one is rotten.
Olaf may plod his stony path
And live as chastely as Susanna
Yet pick up in some Turkish bath
His quantum est of Pox Romana.
While Haakon hikes up primrose way,
Spreeing and gleeing as he goes,
To smirk upon his latter day
Without a pimple on his nose.
I gave it up I am afraid
But if I loafed and found it fun
Remember how a coyclad maid
Knows how to take it out of one.
The more I dither on and drink
My midnight bowl of spirit punch
The firmlier I feel and think
Friend Manders came too oft to lunch.
Since scuttling ship Vikings like me
Reck not to whom the blame is laid,
Y.M.C.A., V.D., T.B.
Or Harbourmaster of Port-Said.
Blame all and none and take to task
The harlot’s lure, the swain’s desire.
Heal by all means but hardly ask
Did this man sin or did his sire.
The shack’s ablaze. That canting scamp,
The carpenter, has dished the parson.
Now had they kept their powder damp
Like me there would have been no arson.
Nay more, were I not all I was,
Weak, wanton, waster out and
out,
There would have been no world’s applause
And damn all to write home about.
Goodbye, Zurich, I must leave you
Goodbye, Zurich, I must leave you,
Though it breaks my heart to shreds
Tat then attat.
Something tells me I am needed
In Paree to hump the beds.
Bump! I hear the trunks a tumbling
And I’m frantic for the fray.
Farewell, dolce far niente!
Goodbye, Zurichesee!
Le bon repos
Le bon repos
Des Espagneux
Et les roseaux
d’Annecy
Leurrent notre âme
Et nous nous pâmons
Pour une Paname
Loin d’ici
Tirons nos grègues
Faisons nos mègues
Prenons le trègue
Et filons là!
Too hot to go on . . .
Aiutami dunque, O Musa, nitidissima Calligraphia
Aiutami dunque, O Musa, nitidissima Calligraphia
Forbisci la forma e lo stil e frena lo stilo ribelle!
Mesci il limpide suon e distilla il liquido senso
E sulla rena riarsa, deh!, scuoti lungo il ramo!
Come-all-ye
Come all you lairds and ladies and listen to my lay!
I’ll tell of my adventures upon last Thanksgiving Day
I was picked by Madame Jolas to adorn the barbecue
So the chickenchoker patched me till I looked as good as new.
I drove out, all tarred and feathered, from the Grand Palais Potin
But I met with foul disaster in the Place Saint Augustin.
My charioteer collided - with the shock I did explode
And the force of my emotions shot my liver on the road.
Up steps a dapper sergeant with his pencil and his book.
Our names and our convictions down in Leber’s code he took.
Then I hailed another driver and resumed my swanee way.
They couldn’t find my liver but I hadn’t time to stay.
When we reached the gates of Paris cries the boss at the Octroi:
Holy Poule, what’s this I’m seeing? Can it be Grandmother Loye?
When Caesar got the bird she was the dindy of the flock
But she must have boxed a round or two with some old turkey cock.
I ruffled up my plumage and proclaimed with eagle’s pride:
You jackdaw, these are truffles and not blues on my backside.
Mind, said he, that one’s a chestnut. There’s my bill and here’s my thanks
And now please search through your stuffing and fork out that fifty francs.
At last I reached the banquet-hall - and what a sight to see!
I felt myself transported back among the Osmanli.
I poured myself a bubbly flask and raised the golden horn
With three cheers for good old Turkey and the roost where I was born.
I shook claws with all the hammers and bowed to blonde and brune,
The mistress made a signal and the mujik called the tune.
Madamina read a message from the Big Noise of her State
After which we crowed in unison: That Turco’s talking straight!
We settled down to feed and, if you want to know my mind,
I thought that I could gobble but they left me picked behind,
They crammed their crops till cockshout when like ostriches they ran
To hunt my missing liver round the Place Saint Augustin.
Still I’ll lift my glass to Gallia and augur that we may
Untroubled in her dovecot dwell till next Thanksgiving Day
So let every Gallic gander pass the sauceboat to his goose —
And let’s all play happy homing though our liver’s on the loose.
There’s a maevusmarked maggot called Murphy
There’s a maevusmarked maggot called Murphy
Who would fain be thought thunder-and-turfy.
When he’s out to be chic he
Sticks on his gum dicky
And worms off for a breeze by the surfy.
The Poetry
Joyce, 1931
LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
Et Tu, Healy
O fons Bandusiae
Are you not weary of ardent ways
I only ask you to give me your fair hands
La scintille de l’allumette
A voice that sings
Scalding tears shall not avail
Yea, for this love of mine
We will leave the village behind
Gladly above
After the tribulation of dark strife
Told sublimely in the language
Love that I can give you, lady
Wind thine arms round me
Where none murmureth
Lord, thou knowest my misery
Thunders and sweeps along
Though there is no resurrection from the past
And I have sat amid the turbulent crowd
Gorse-flower makes but sorry dining
That I am feeble, that my feet
The grieving soul. But no grief is thine
Let us fling to the winds all moping and madness
Hands that soothe my burning eyes
Now a whisper... now a gale
O, queen, do on thy cloak
Requiem eternam dona ei, Domine
Of thy dark life, without a love, without a friend
I intone the high anthem
Some are comely and some are sour
Flower to flower knits
In the soft nightfall
Discarded, broken in two
The Holy Office
Gas from a Burner
Alas, how sad the lover’s lot
O, it is cold and still - alas!
She is at peace where she is sleeping
I said: I will go down to where
Though we are leaving youth behind
Come out to where youth is met
Chamber Music
Tilly
Watching the Needleboats at San Sabba
A Flower Given to My Daughter
She Weeps over Rahoon
Tutto è sciolto
On the Beach at Fontana
Simples
Flood
Nightpiece
Alone
A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight
Bahnhofstrasse
A Prayer
Ecce Puer
G. O’Donnell
There was an old lady named Gregory
There was a young priest named Delaney
There is a weird poet called Russell
A holy Hegelian Kettle
John Eglinton, my Jo, John
Have you heard of the admiral
There once was a Celtic librarian
Dear, I am asking a favour
O, there are two brothers, the Fays
The Sorrow of Love
C’era una volta, una bella bambina
The flower I gave rejected lies
There is a young gallant named Sax
There’s a monarch who knows no repose
Lament for the Yeomen
There’s a donor of lavish largesse
There is a clean climber called Sykes
There once was a lounger named Stephen
Now let awhile my messmates be
There once was an author named Wells
Solomon
D. L. G.
A Goldschmidt swam in a Kriegsverein
Dooleysprudence
There’s an anthropoid consul called Bennett
New Tipperary
To Budgeon, raughty tinker
A bard once in lakelapt Sirmione
The Right Heart in the Wrong Place
The Right Man in the Wrong Place
O, Mr Poe
Bis Dat Qui Cito Dat
&
nbsp; And I shall have no peace
Who is Sylvia, what is she
The press and the public misled me
Jimmy Joyce, Jimmy Joyce, where have you been
Fréderic’s Duck
I never thought a fountain pen
Rosy Brook he bought a book
I saw at Miss Beach’s when midday was shining
Bran! Bran! the baker’s ban!
P. J. T.
Post Ulixem Scriptum
The clinic was a patched one
Is it dreadfully necessary
Rouen is the rainiest place getting
There’s a coughmixture scopolamine
Troppa Grazia, Sant’ Antonio!
For he’s a jolly queer fellow
Scheveningen, 1927
Pour Ulysse IX
Crossing to the Coast
Hue’s Hue?
Buried Alive
Father O’Ford
Buy a book in brown paper
To Mrs H. G. who complained that her visitors kept late hours
Humptydump Dublin squeaks through his norse
Stephen’s Green
Les Verts de Jacques
As I was going to Joyce Saint James’
Pour la Rime Seulement
A Portrait of the Artist as an Ancient Mariner
Pennipomes Twoguineaseach
There’s a genial young poetriarch Euge
Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
Epilogue to Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts’
Goodbye, Zurich, I must leave you
Le bon repos
Aiutami dunque, O Musa, nitidissima Calligraphia
Come-all-ye
There’s a maevusmarked maggot called Murphy
LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
