Canto 82Surrealist Poems - 1
Book 16. Part Seven - Pondicherry Circa 1927 – 1947
Nonsense and “Surrealist” Verse
For really things were now extremely hot.
Then fierily the world cracked Nazily down
And I looked about to find my dressing gown.
5I was awake (I had tumbled on the floor).
A 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;
10The airmale soared to heaven majestically
And 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;
15The porridge was magnificently vile.
These 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.
20[The heart of the surrealist poet should be unfathomable.
The 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-
25known and extraordinary words are not indispensible in
its 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.]