T. S. Eliot the Poems, Volume 2

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T. S. Eliot the Poems, Volume 2 Page 32

by T. S. Eliot


  On 3 Dec 1959, Alie Rehnquist of Bonnier Litterära Magasin, Stockholm, wrote to John Hayward enclosing “a small piece of light-verse purporting to be written by Mr Eliot”, beginning “Old king Bolo’s big black queen | who’s bum was big as a soup tureen”.

  A. David Moody wrote that in autumn 1988, together with the leaves at the Beinecke, he saw “a small black hard-covered notebook, containing a fair copy of the full King Bolo or Colombo epic, written in a very neat small hand, together with a considerable number of other similar verses. I should think that it was this fair copy, rather than the miscellaneous drafts and fragments, which EP [Pound] referred to as ‘his earlier EPOS on King Bolo.’ In 1994 Donald Gallup told me the notebook was no longer in the Beinecke Pound archive”, Ezra Pound: Poet I: The Young Genius (2007) 471.

  The present composite text of The Columbiad is given without variants, but examples can be seen by comparing st. 30 with st. 46, and comparing st. 19–20 with the versions later sent to Bonamy Dobrée (15 Aug 1927), shown above (and in Letters 3).

  The Columbiad

  Let a tucket be sounded on the hautboys. Enter the king and queen.

  (st. 1)

  Columbo he lived over in Spain

  Where doctors are not many

  The only doctor in his town

  Was a bastard jew named Benny

  To Benny then Columbo went

  With countenance so placid

  And Benny filled Columbo’s prick

  With Muriatic Acid.

  (st. 2)

  One day the king queen of Spain

  They gave a royal banquet

  Columbo having passed away

  Was brought in on a blanket

  The queen she took an oyster fork

  And pricked Columbo’s navel

  Columbo hoisted up his ass

  And shat upon the table.

  (st. 3)

  Columbo and his merry men

  They set sail from Genoa

  Queen Isabella was aboard

  That famous Spanish whore.

  (st. 4)

  Columbo and his mariners

  They were a merry chorus

  One Sunday evening after tea

  They went to storm a whore house.

  As they were scrambling up the steps

  Molto vivace > Twas then Columbo his got

  A great big whore from the seventh story window

  She floored him with a pisspot.

  (st. 5)

  The cabin boy they had aboard

  His name was Orlandino

  A child of upright character

  But his language was obscene-o.

  “Fuck Spiders” was his chief remark

  In accents mild and dulcet —

  They asked him what there was for lunch

  And he simply answered “Bullshit.”

  (st. 6)

  King Bolo’s swarthy bodyguard

  Were called the Jersey Lilies

  A bold and hardy set of blacks

  Undaunted by syphilis.

  They wore the national uniform

  Of a garland of verbenas

  And a pair of great big hairy balls

  And a big black knotty penis.

  (st. 7)

  King Bolo’s swarthy bodyguard

  They numbered three and thirty

  An innocent and playful lot

  But most disgusting dirty.

  st. 5 “Fuck Spiders” was his chief remark: “syphilitic spider”, He said: this universe is very clever 6 (see note).

  st. 6 swarthy · · · hardy: the two versions in Valerie’s Own Book both read “royal · · · bestial”. The first of them was published in The Faber Book of Blue Verse. Jersey Lilies: Lillie Langtry, actress and mistress of Edward VII, was known as Jersey Lily (having been born on the island). bold: March Hare read “wild” in error. Undaunted by syphilis: Henry Ware Eliot (TSE’s father) to Thomas Lamb Eliot (TSE’s uncle), 7 Mar 1914: “I hope that a cure for Syphilis will never be discovered. It is God’s punishment for nastiness. Take it away and there will be more nastiness, and it will be necessary to emasculate our children to keep them clean.” hairy balls: Valerie’s Own Book 79 reads “testacles”.

  5

  And Bolo lay down in the shade

  His royal breast uncovering

  They mounted in a banyan tree

  And shat upon their sovereign.

  (st. 8)

  One day Columbo and his men

  They took and went ashore

  Columbo sniffed around the air

  And muttered “I smell whore”

  And ere they’d taken twenty steps

  Among the Cuban jungles

  They found King Bolo his queen

  A-sitting on their bungholes.

  (st.9)

  She put the gunner to the bad

  The first mate, cook, and bo’sun,

  But when she saw Columbos balls

  She jumped into the ocean—

  (st. 10)

  One Sunday morning out at sea

  The vessel passed Gibraltar

  Columbo sat upon the poop§

  A-reading in the psalter.

  st. 7 And Bolo lay: March Hare reads “King Bolo lay”, but just as “lay” was written over “sat”, so “And” was written over “King”. They mounted in a banyan tree | And shat upon their sovereign: Swift: the Yahoos “leaped up into the Tree, from whence they began to discharge their Excrements on my Head”, Gulliver’s Travels bk. IV, ch. I. TSE: “Under the · · · banyan”, Sweeney Agonistes: Fragment of an Agon 63.

  st. 8 bungholes: recurrent in Urquhart’s Rabelais. TSE on Tudor translations: “If comparison could be made at all, I should single out, after the Bible, Florio’s Montaigne, Holland’s translation of another work of Plutarch, the Moralia, and Sir Thomas Urquhart’s Rabelais, The Tudor Translators (1929).

  st. 9 She put the gunner to the bad: (emending March Hare). Partridge “bad, go to the”: “To be ruined; become depraved · · · From ca. 1860”. Chambers “bad: have someone to the bad”: “[1900s] to put someone at a disadvantage”.

  st. 10 poop: OED n1: “The aftermost part of a ship” (for Shakespeare’s usage, see note to The Waste Land [III] 279). OED n2 2: “slang (orig. children’s). An act of breaking wind or of defecation; faeces.” Partridge dates this, as a verb, “(? late) C.19–20”

  The bosuns wife came up on deck

  With a bucket full of cowshit

  Columbo grabbed her round the neck

  And raped her on the bowsprit.

  (st. 11)

  Now when they were three weeks at sea

  Columbo he grew rooty

  He took his cock in both his hands

  And swore it was a beauty.

  The cabin boy appeared on deck

  And scampered up the mast-o

  Columbo grasped him by the balls

  And buggered him in the ass-o.

  (st. 12)

  One day Columbo and the queen

  They fell into a quarrel

  Columbo showed his disrespect

  By farting in a barrel.

  The queen she called him horse’s ass

  And “dirty Spanish loafer”

  They terminated the affair

  By fucking on the sofa.

  (st. 13)

  Before another day had passed

  Columbo he fell sick-o

  He filled the pump with argyrol

  And rammed it up his prick-o.

  And when they touched Cadiz he cried

  (And let down both his anchors):

  “We’ll see if there’s a doctor here

  Can cure the whistling chancres.”

  st. 13 argyrol: antiseptic introduced in the US 1901 and used particularly to treat gonorrhea. Cadiz · · · chancres: Byron on escaping cannibalism on board: “he saved himself · · · his saving clause, | Was a small present made to him at Cadiz, | By general subscription of the ladies”, Don Juan II lxxxi. The voyages of Chr
istopher Columbus, two of which set out from Cadiz, are believed to have brought syphilis to Europe in the 1490s. whistling: OED “whistle” 11: “To smell unpleasantly or strongly. slang. rare”, citing only Auden and Isherwood, The Dog Beneath the Skin II v: “Cor! I don’t ’alf whistle!” (Perhaps the derivation also of “Now whistleprick! Columbo cried”.)

  (st. 14)

  Columbo and his merry men

  They went to storm a castle

  A bullet came along the road

  And up Columbo’s asshole.

  Columbo grew so angry then

  He nearly shit his breeches.

  “Come on my merry men,” he cried

  “We’ll kill the sons of bitches.”

  (st. 15)

  “Avast my men” Columbo cried

  In accents mild and dulcet

  “The cargo that we have aboard

  Is forty tons of bullshit.”

  The merry men set up a cheer

  On hearing this reparty.

  And the band struck up “The Whore House Ball”

  In accents deep and farty.

  (st. 16)

  On Sunday morning after prayers

  They took their recreation

  The crew assembled on the deck

  And practiced masturbation.

  Columbo being full of rum

  He fell down in a stupor.

  They turned his asshole S.S.W.

  And he cried “I’ll die a pooper!”

  st. 15 In accents mild: Carroll: “His accents mild took up the tale”, Through the Looking-Glass ch. VIII, the White Knight’s song. The Whore House Ball: “And come to the Whore House Ball!”, refrain of Ballade pour la grosse Lulu. “at the undertakers’ ball”, Opera 17. “Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball · · · saving themselves to be right | For the Jellicle Moon and the Jellicle Ball”, The Song of the Jellicles 4, 35–36.

  st. 16 practiced masturbation: to Hayward, 2 Apr 1936: “I presume that your reference to the organ is an allusion to that Gilbertian character, Master Bates, who practised every evening upon that intrument.” die a pooper: more usually, a pauper. Martin Tupper: “we count him happy who did not die a pauper”, The Crock of Gold ch. I. Variant readings of the last line were “And he let a noble pooper” and “And he fired off a pooper.”

  (st. 17)

  Among the heroes of the fleet

  Was a pimp named Buck McManus

  Who had the entertaining trick

  Of whistling through his anus.

  (st. 18)

  One day King Bolo from the shore

  Began to cheer and chortle.

  He cried “I see Columbo’s ass

  A shitting through a porthole.”

  His big black queen set up a shout

  And all his swarthy vassals

  And the band struck up the national hymn

  Of “Hairy Balls and Ass-Holes”.

  (st. 19)

  The flagship of Columbo’s Fleet

  Was named the “Virgin Mary”

  An able vessel fully manned

  With sailors short and hairy.

  The other ships came on behind

  The “Holy Ghost” and “Jesus”

  And people on the shore remarked

  An odour as of cheeses.

  (st. 20)

  The cook who served them pork and beans

  Was known as Careless Cora.

  A dame of pure Australian blood

  With a tincture of Angora.

  She wore a sweater short and red

  Which closely did her shape fit

  And the hair that lay along her back

  Was yellow like ripe ape shit.

  (st. 21)

  One day the king queen of Spain

  They gave a royal dinner

  To Chris Columbo of Genoa

  That famous old prickskinner.

  They sat around the groaning board

  On cushions, (trimmed with tassels)

  the queen served up a steaming dish

  Of buttered-hot-apes’-assholes.

  (st. 22)

  One day the chaplain came aboard

  With a bunch of big verbenas.

  Columbo sat upon the hatch

  A rubbing of his penis.

  The bosuns wife sat on the rail

  A eating jam and crackers.

  The mate was in the bathtub and

  The cook was in the backhouse.

  (st. 23)

  Columbo thought that he would take

  A safeguard and precaution.

  So to a medium he went

  For telling of his fortune.

  The medium was so very wise

  It really was a miracle.

  She gaze went into a trance and cried

  “I see your balls are spherical.”

  (st. 24)

  The cabin boy they had aboard

  His name was Orlandino,

  A child of manners most refined

  Though his language was obscene-o.

  His prick was 13 inches long

  And wound around with marlin.

  Columbo sketched his character

  When he called him “Whorehouse Darling.”

  st. 22 The bosuns wife · · · bathtub: “The queen was in the parlour, | Eating bread and honey, | The maid was in the garden”, Sing a song of sixpence, nursery rhyme, with many obscene variations (Richard Luckett, personal communication). backhouse: U.S. a privy (Webster 1847). The rhyme “crackers · · · backhouse” may exploit the propensity to reduce the suffix as in malt-house (where OED gives both pronunciations). Similarly with “bitters · · · shit-house”, st. 30.

  st. 23 The medium was so very wise · · · She: “Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante · · · Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe”, The Waste Land [I] 43–45.

  (st. 25)

  One day Columbo slapped his thigh

  And said “I feel like frigging!”

  He chased the chaplain round the deck

  And up among the rigging.

  The chaplain he that good old man

  Had no one to protect him.

  Columbo grasped him by the balls

  And buggered him (in the rectum).

  (st. 26)

  Now whistleprick! Columbo cried

  Regard the tranquil waters:

  The sea is calm, the sea is still,

  Lets go and fuck a tortoise.

  The beast was caught, the beast was fucked,

  And christened (name of Jumbo);

  And the merry men set up a cheer

  For their captain, bold Columbo.

  (st. 27)

  King Bolo and his big black queen

  Those two prodigious bastards,

  They swarmed aboard Columbo’s ship

  In a rattling fire of assturds—

  They sat around upon the deck

  On cushions trimmed with tassels

  And the first word that the monarch spake

  Was “Let us talk of assholes”.

  (st. 28)

  The hottest sailor in the fleet

  Was Bill from Barcelona.

  For coons his passion was so marked

  That they called him Desdemona.

  st. 27 swarmed aboard · · · In a rattling fire of assturds: “With a frightful burst of fireworks the Chinks they swarmed aboard”, Growltiger’s Last Stand 42. This stanxo’s “swarmed” is an emendation of “came”, which is the reading of the version on leaf E (v).

  st. 27–28 And the first word that the monarch spake | Was “Let us talk of assholes”. | | The hottest sailor in the fleet: Lewis Carroll: “To talk of many things: | Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax— | Of cabbages—and kings— | And why the sea is boiling hot”, The Walrus and the Carpenter.

  Though coarsened by experience

  His soul was not embittered.

  He looked the whole world in the face—

  A fucked up blueballed shittard.

  (st. 29)

&nb
sp; Now when the KING and QUEEN of Spain

  Were filling up their glasses

  In burst Columbo his crew

  Of brawny horses asses.

  He introduced the queen all round

  To all his royal navy

  And punctuated his address

  By spitting in the gravy.

  (st. 30)

  Now bugger my ear! the bosun said

  Now where does all my rum go?

  My reason leads me to suspect

  That great big bitch Columbo.

  Columbo sat upon the hatch

  Consuming orange bitters

  He took the bosun by the drawers

  And rammed him down the shit-house.

  (st. 31)

  King Bolo’s big black bastard queen

  She was extremely lecherous.

  She kissed the chaplain on the ear

  In fashion most impetuous.

  The chaplain he that good old man

  Was reading out of Pascal.

  He skipped so quickly round the mast

  He buggered himself (in the asshole).

 

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