Canto 135Surrealist Poems - 1

Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947

For really things were now extremely hot.

Then fierily the world cracked Nazily down

And I looked about to find my dressing gown.

I was awake (I had tumbled on the floor).

5A shark was hammering at my front-door.

Surrealist Poems

I heard the coockcouck jabbering on the lea

And saw the spokesman sprinting on the spud;

The airmale soared to heaven majestically

10And dropped down with a strange miraculous thud.

I could not break the bosom of the blue;

I went for a walk and waltzed with woe awhile.

The cat surprised me with a single mew;

The porridge was magnificently vile.

15These things are symbols if you understand,

But who can understand when poets resolve

To nothing mean. The beautiful beast is banned;

The problem grows too difficult to solve.

[The heart of the surrealist poet should be unfathomable.

20The problem is how to mean nothing, yet seem to mean

anything or everything. His poetry should be at once

about nothing at all and about all things in particular;

nonsensically profound and irrationally beautiful. Un-

known and extraordinary words are not indispensible in

25its texture but can have a place, if sparingly and mysti-

cally used. One who can do these things and others of a

congenital character is a surrealist poet: Willy Whistler.]