The Star and the Garter II

From "The Star and the Garter" Appendix no. II
"Collected Works" iii p. 17f

Khephra, thou Beetle-Headed God!
        Who travellest in thy strenght above
    The Heaven of Nu, with splendour shod
        Of Thoth, and girt about with Love!
    O Sun at midnight! in the Bark
        The cynocephali a proclaim
    Thy effulgent deity, and mark
        The adorations of thy name
    In seemly stations one by one,
        As thou encirclest blinder poles
    Than Khem b or Ammon c showed the sun
        In one-eyed sight of secret goals.
    So I adore, and sing: for I
        this magic monocle avow,
    Distorted from Divinity
        And wrought in subtler fashion now.
    An invocation shrined and sealed
        Be this! The many hear me not,
    Though I be vocal. Thou revealed.
        I scorn the eye, uphold the - what
    Gods call the lotus poppy-hued,
        Brave wound of weeping Isis! d - eye
    Of Demiourgos, a understood
        Of none, O Lily, ladily
    Laden with lays of Buddhist bard,
        Maiden with ways and bays of mirth,
    And music - is the saying hard?
        Shall "cryptic Coptic" b block the birth
    Of holy ecstasy? Forbid,
        Ye Gods, forbid! Posed block, you fail
    Of bulging heart by drooping lid.
        Can you not serve as finger-nail?
    Ay! God of scissors! barber God!
        My earlier mystery did you learn?
    Unshoe the aching pseudopod! c
          Mysterious donkey, chew or churn d
    Your human-kindness-milk to butter!
        I gave you gratis God's advice
    (Since God's responsible) to - mutter
        In gutter, pay you tithe e to vice
    Since virtue kicks you down its stairs.
        So thus I clothed it in strange word
    To catch you thinking unawares.
        Think? Do you think? Then, thinks a bird.
        Read your Descartes a! Nietzsche's b demurred? c
    To you who give yourself such airs,
    This riddle cannot offer snares!
"Love's mass is holier than wine and wafer,
Thou couldst not beetles be: the be cock-chafer!" d
    Hence my address, this swoodier Swood e
         To Khephra, hence the ambiguous speech,
    The alluring analogue, the good
        The loftiest heaven Art hopes to reach,
    The highest goal of man as man;
        The sly Paraprosdokian. f
    You could not love! You could not serve
        The scouring of Love's scullery! g You
    Isos Theoisin h? Ha, you swerve
        Back to that subtler meaning! few
    Can guess that miracle of reserve,
        That sacrament of mathematics,
    That threescore glee i, that three times three,
        That added scream of hydrostatics! a
    Not I, for one! Be assured, to fail
        With me no arrière-pensée b lends.
    Fall the penny, head or tail,
        I care not - all the less my friends!
    Faultlessly faulty! Regular
        In ice or fire, `tis nullness counts.
        So, spring of those Parnassian founts,
    A thousand garters heralded
        Thy flawless solitary star:
    A million garters shall bestead c
        The poet's turn, when, lone and far,
    All are dismissed: Some man, low brute,
    Cry: "Shame, O star that would not shoot,
        And yet went out!" But I, my dear,
    (Good-bye!) get neither shriek nor groan:
        Kiss, curse, cat's hiss, I shall not hear,
    My dear, for I shall be alone.

[OP]

     a cynocephali: Fabulous dog-headed men; in zoology the dog-faced baboon. The word in the singular: "cynocephalus."

     b Khem: Old Egyptian name for Egypt.

     c Ammon: (modern spelling "Amun"): The primeval and supreme God of the Egyptian pantheon. The man-god of the two times seven, the leader of the Theban triad, also a fertility god with a huge phallus. Had many forms and offices throughout Egyptian history.

     d Isis: the mother goddess of Egypt. Child of Nut along with Osiris (her husband an brother) Set (the evil one) and Nephtys (her sister). Mother of the Child Horus. As the "weeping Isis" she bemoans her dead brother, Osiris, killed by Set.

     a Demiourgos: from the Greek: "craftsman", in Platonic and some Christian traditions: "The Creator of the World."

     b Coptic: the short-hand, cursive, version of the old Egyptian hieroglyphs, much used at the end of the great Egyptian period.

     c pseudopod: perhaps the poetic word meant to convey the idea of a false foot: "pseudo": something false, and "pod" a foot or a leg in the original meaning of the word, having a lot of other connotations today, of which none suits like the idea of "the false foot being unshoed".

     d churn: here the meaning perhaps: "to agitate," "to shake with violence" for example as done while "churning" milk to butter.

     e tithe: the ten% of earnings religious people pay to their church.

     a Descartes: French philosopher, inventor of coordinate axis and thoughts such as: "I think thus I am!"

     b Nietzsche: German philosopher. Aristocratic Nihilist. "The World is Deep!"

     c demurred: to demur means to protest against something.

     d The beetle might be the scarab, the cock-chafer (modern spelling: cock­chafer) is a like kind of beetle belonging to the same branch (torbist), though not the scareb.

     e swoodier Swood: as for now this expression has defied our explanation/understanding.

     f Paraprosdokian: "Well get yar dic.. - free things often don't come in completes - work for it, Friend"

     g The scouring of Love's scullery: to rinse and clean the room where love does its washing.

     h The original text has this name in Greek letters, it means: "the same gods."

     i glee: "happiness," "good spirits," and the like.

     a hydrostatics: i.e., the science of the balance between liquids.

     b arrière-pensée: the French way of saying "hidden thought," "hidden motive."

     c bestead: "tread into the stead of," "substitute."

[OP]