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+ANTINOUS+: A POEM
FERNANDO PESSOA
LISBON
+ANTINOUS+
A POEM
+ANTINOUS+
A POEM
FERNANDO PESSOA
LISBON MONTEIRO & CO. 190, Rua do Ouro, 192
Printed by <
+ANTINOUS+
It rained outside right into Hadrian's soul.
The boy lay dead On the low couch, on whose denuded whole, To Hadrian's eyes, that at their seeing bled, The shadowy light of Death's eclipse was shed.
The boy lay dead and the day seemed a night Outside. The rain fell like a sick affright Of Nature at her work in killing him. Through the mind's galleries of their past delight The very light of memory was dim.
O hands that clasped erewhile Hadrian's warm hands, That now found them but cold! O hair bound erstwhile with the pressing bands! O eyes too diffidently bold! O bare female male-body like A god that dawns into humanity! O lips whose opening redness erst could strike Lust's seats with a soiled art's variety! O fingers skilled in things not to be named! O tongue which, counter-tongued, the throbbed brows flamed! O glory of a wrong lust pillowed on Raged conciousness's spilled suspension! These things are things that now must be no more. The rain is silent, and the Emperor Sinks by the couch. His grief is like a rage, For the gods take away the life they give And spoil the beauty they made live. He weeps and knows that every future age Is staring at him out of the to-be. His love is on a universal stage. A thousand unborn eyes weep with his misery.
Antinous is dead, is dead forever, Is dead forever and the loves lament. Venus herself, that was Adonis' lover, Seeing him again, having lived, dead again, Lends her great skyey grief now to be blent With Hadrian's pain.
Now is Apollo sad because the stealer Of his white body is forever cold. In vain shall kisses on that nippled point Covering his heart-beats' silent place implore His life again to ope his eyes and feel her Presence along his veins this fortress hold Of love. Now no caressing hands anoint With growing joy that body's lusting lore.
The rain falls, and he lies like one who hath Forgotten all the gestures of his love And lies awake waiting their hot return. But all his vices' art is now with Death: He lies with her, whose sex cannot him move, Whose hand, were't not cold, still ne'er his could burn. Lilies were on his cheeks and roses too. His eyes were sad in joy sometimes. He said Oft in his close abandonments, that woo Love to be more love than love can be, <
O Hadrian, what shall now thy cold life be? What boots it to be emperor over all? His absence o'er thy visible empery Throws a dim pall. Now are thy nights widowed of love and kisses, Now are thy days robbed of the night's awaiting, Now are thy lips purposeless and thy blisses No longer of the size of thy life, mating Thy empire with thy love's bold tendernesses.
His hand and mouth knew gamuts musical Of vices thy worn spine was hurt to follow. Sometimes it seemed to thee that all was hollow In sense in each new straining of sucked lust. Then still new crimes of fancy would he call To thy shaken flesh, and thou wouldst tremble and fall Back on thy cushions with thy mind's sense hushed.
<
Even as he thinks, the lust that is no more Than a memory of lust revives and takes His senses by the hand, and his flesh quakes Till all becomes again what 'twas before. The dead body on the bed gets up and lives Along his every nerve ripped up and twanged, And a love-o'er-wise and invisible hand At every body-entrance to his lust Utters caresses which flit off, yet just Remain enough to bleed his last nerve's strand, O sweet and cruel Parthian fugitives!
He rises, mad, and looks upon his lover, That now can love nothing but what none know. Then his cold lips run all the body over-- His lips that scarce remember their warmth, now So blent with feeling the death they behold; And so ice-senseless are his lips that, lo!, He scarce tastes death from the dead body's cold, But it seems both are dead or living both And love is still the Presence and the Mover. Then his lips cease on the other lips' cold sloth.
But there the wanting breath reminds his lips That between him and his boy-love the mist That comes out of the gods has crept. The tips Of his fingers, still idly tickling, list To some flesh-response to their purple mood. But their love-orison is not understood. The god is dead whose cult was to be kissed!
He lifts his hand up to where heaven should be And cries on the mute gods to know his pain. Lo, list!, o divine watchers of our glee And sorrow!, list!, he will yield up his reign. He will live in the deserts and be parched On the hot sands, he will be beggar and slave; But give again the boy to be arm-reached! Forego that space ye meant to be his grave!
Take all the female beauties of the earth! Take all afar and rend them if ye will! But, by sweet Ganymede, that Jove found worth And above Hebe did elect to fill His cup at his high festivals, and spill His fairer vice wherefrom comes newer birth--, The clod of female embraces resolve To dust, o father of the gods!, but spare This boy and his white body and golden hair. Maybe thy newer Ganymede thou m?eanst That he should be, and out of jealous care From Hadrian's arms to thine his beauty steal'st.
Thus did the hours slide from their tangled hands And from their mixed limbs the moments slip. Now were his arms dead leaves, now iron bands, Now were his lips cups, now the things that sip, Now were his eyes too closed, and now too open, Now were his ways such as none thought might happen, Now were his arts a feather and now a whip.
That love they lived as a religion Offered to gods that do to presence bend. Sometimes he was adorned and made to don Half-costumes, now a posing nudity That imitates some god's eternity Of body statue-known to craving men. Now was he Venus, risen from the seas; And now was he Apollo, white and golden; Now as Jove sate he in mock-judgment over The presence at his feet of his slaved lover; Now was he an acted rite, by one beholden, In ever-repositioned mysteries.
Now he is something anyone can be. O white negation of the thing it is! O golden-haired moon-cold loveliness! Too cold! too cold! and love as cold as he. Love wanders through the memories of his vice As through a labyrinth, in sad madness glad, And now calls on his name and bids him rise, And now is smiling at his imaged coming That is i'th'heart like faces in the gloaming-- Mere shining shadows of the forms they had.
The rain again like a vague pain arose And put the sense of wetness in the air. Suddenly did the Emperor suppose He saw this room and all in it from far. He saw the couch, the boy and his own frame Cast down against the couch, and he became A clearer presence to himself, and said These words unuttered, save to his soul's dread:
<
< < Thus went he, like a lover who is waiting, From place to place in his dim doubting mind. Now was his hope a great bulk of will fating Its wish to being, now felt he he was blind In some point of his seen wish undefined. When love meets death we know not what to feel. When death foils love we know not what to know. Now did his doubt hope, now did his hope doubt. Now what his wish dreamed the dream's sense did flout And to a sullen emptiness congeal. Then again the gods fanned love's darkening glow. < < < < < < < < < It rained still. But slow-treading night came in Closing the weary eyelids of each sense. The very consciousness of self and soul Grew, like a landscape through dim raining, dim. The? Emperor lay still, so still that now He half forgot where now he lay, or whence The sorrow that was still salt on his lips. All had been something very far, a scroll Rolled up. The things he felt were like the rim That haloes round the moon when the night weeps. His head was bowed into his arms, and they On the low couch, foreign to his sense, lay. His closed eyes seemed open to him and seeing The naked floor, dark, cold, sad and unmeaning. His hurting breath was all his sense could know. Out of the falling darkness the wind rose And fell. A voice swooned in the courts below. And the Emperor slept. The gods came now And bore something away, no sense knows how, On unseen arms of power and repose. LISBON, 1915.
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