Pansies (Lawrence)/Give Us Gods

​

GIVE US GODS
Give us gods, Oh give them us!Give us gods.We are so tired of menand motor-power.—
But not god grey-bearded and dictatorial,nor yet that pale young man afraid of fatherhood ​shelving substance on to the woman, Madonna mia! shabby virgin!nor gusty Jove, with his eye on immortal tarts,nor even the musical, suave young fellowwooing boys and beauty.
Give us godsgive us something else—
Beyond the great bull that bellowed through space, and got his throat cut.Beyond even that eagle, that phœnix, hanging over the gold egg of all things,further still, before the curled horns of the ram stepped forthor the stout swart beetle rolled the globe of dung in which man should hatch,or even the sly gold serpent fatherly lifted his head off the earth to think—
Give us gods before these—Thou shalt have other gods before these.
Where the waters end in marshesswims the wild swan ​sweeps the high goose above the mistshonking in the gloom the honk of procreation from such throats.
Mistswhere the electron behaves and misbehaves as it will,where the forces tie themselves up into knots of atomsand come untied;mistsof mistiness complicated into knots and clots that barge aboutand bump on one another and explode into more mist, or don't,mist of energy most scientific—But give us gods!
Look thenwhere the father of all things swims in a mist of atomselectrons and energies, quantums and relativitiesmists, wreathing mists,like a wild swan, or a goose, whose honk goes through my bladder.
And in the dark unscientific I feel the drum-winds of his wingsand the drip of his cold, webbed feet, mud-black ​brush over my face as he goesto seek the women in the dark, our women, our weird women whom he treadswith dreams and thrusts that make them cry in their sleep.
Gods, do you ask for gods?Where there is woman there is swan.
Do you think, scientific man, you'll be father of your own babies?Don't imagine it.There'll be babies born that are cygnets, O my soul!young wild swans!And babies of women will come out young wild geese, O my heart!the geese that saved Rome, and will lose London.

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.