The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

Автор

Brian Aldiss

Год написания книги

2019

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We may torture ourselves but those tortures

Cannot break our sleep

Poor A!

(Gurdjieff’s Mocking Song)

Poor A! Poor A! Now there’s a clever man!

He only wants to talk and he is happy!

I could have pulled his trousers off

Un-noticed, silly chappie!

Poor A! Poor A! What sort of man is it

Who only wants to talk and he’s okay?

I tell you everyone’s like that –

They fill the world today.

I might say poor old A is rather better

Then some wild talkniks I have met, a

Chap who in his way knows what is what –

On military onions he knows quite a lot.

In a superficial public way he tries to find out Why:

And he’d hate to think he ever told a lie.

Poor A! Poor A! He is no longer young!

He said so much I think and was uncouth

To guard against an awful chance

To listen to the truth –

He led himself a merry dance –

He hid his head in circumstance –

To fight against the truth!

Disciples: Poor us! Poor us! We really felt his tongue!

He drank Khagetia and chattered without ruth

To guard against his only chance

To hear G give out truth –

He led us all a merry dance –

He leads himself a dreary prance –

To smite against the truth!

To fight against the truth!

The Unaimed Deadman Theme

Foreign familiar filthy fastidious forgotten forbidden

Suicide’s revelation its sunnyside hidden

Death’s black-and-white checker is down on the table

Fugitive fustian funebral infinite formidable

Far down the runway the black sheds are standing

My love talks to me with a delicate air

I am the victim the assassin the wounder

Her face looks no larger as I stand close than

It simultaneously does in my telescope sights

But pleasant is walking where elmtrees paint shadow

If I fire I might as well hit me

I walked with her once where her elms brought their shadows

The dogrose dies now while the invalid car

Barks vainly and I the assassin the wounder

On the runways the markings are no longer valid

Hieroglyphs of a system now long obsolete