Canto 80A Ballad of Doom
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
There was an awful awful man
Who all things knew and none
And never met a Saracen
And always drank a bun.
5He said he was a bullywag
And that he did it for fun.
I don’t know what a bullywag is
And I don’t think he was one.
Of nonsense and Omniscience
10He spoke as one who knew
That this was like a temperament
And that was like a hue.
He said there was a phantom sun
That saw a branching sky
15And he who could but never should
Was always God’s best boy.
And he who should but never could
Was not in the savoury jam
That thronged the gates of Paradise
20Jostling the great I am.
He said he saw a smudgy moon
Adown a patterned ridge
And that Beethoven to his ear
Rang like a bluzzing midge
25That bluzzed and bluzzed and bluzzed and bluzzed
Until the eye grew green
With shouting for dear visible things
Where nothing could be seen.
For nothing can be seen, my child,
30And when it’s seen it’s read,
And when red nothing once is seen
The world can go to bed.