A WALL, a bastion,
A living forehead with its slow
whorl of hair
And a
bull’s large, sombre, glancing eye
And glistening, adhesive muzzle
With cavernous nostrils where
the winds run hot
Snorting defiance
Or
greedily snuffling behind the cows.
Horns
The golden horns of power,
Power to kill, power to
create
Such as Moses
had, and God,
Head-power.
Shall great wings flame from his
shoulder-sockets
Assyrian-wise?
It
would be no wonder.
Knowing the thunder of his
heart
The massive
thunder of his dew-lapped chest
Deep and reverberating,
It would be no wonder if great
wings, like flame, fanned
out from the furnace-cracks of his
shoulder-sockets.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
And the roar of black bull’s
blood in the mighty passages of
his
chest.
Ah, the dewlap swings pendulous with
excess.
The great,
roaring weight above
Like a furnace dripping a molten drip.
The urge, the massive, burning
ache
Of the bull’s
breast.
The open
furnace-doors of his nostrils.
For what does he ache, and groan?
In his breast a wall?
Nay, once it was also a fortress
wall, and the weight of a
vast
battery.
But now it
is a burning hearthstone only,
Massive old altar of his own burnt
offering.
It was always an altar of burnt
offering
His own
black blood poured out like a sheet of flame over
his
fecundating herd
As
he gave himself forth.
But also it was a fiery fortress
frowning shaggily on the world
And announcing battle
ready.
Since the Lamb bewitched him with
that red-struck flag
His fortress is dismantled
His fires of wrath are banked down
His horns turn away from the
enemy.
He serves the Son of Man.
And hear him bellow, after many
years, the bull that serves
the Son of
Man.
Moaning,
booing, roaring hollow
Constrained to pour forth all his fire down the
narrow sluice
of procreation
Through such narrow loins, too
narrow.
Is he not over-charged by the
dammed-up pressure of his
own massive black
blood
Luke, the
Bull, the father of substance, the Providence Bull,
after
two thousand years?
Is he not over-full of offering, a vast, vast offer of
himself
Which must
be poured through so small a vent?
Too small a vent.
Let him remember his horns,
then.
Seal up his
forehead once more to a bastion,
Let it know nothing.
Let him charge like a mighty
catapult on the red-cross flag,
let him roar out
challenge on the world
And throwing himself upon it, throw off the
madness of his
blood.
Let it be war.
And so it is war.
The bull of the proletariat has
got his head down.