HARD WIRING A
​Nothing can eliminate the hard-wiring, the instinct of the little hairless ape to be ruled by fear, to surrender to a larger baboon beating its chest: the primate pecking order.  The ape brain does not require speech and reason, only obedience and submission.
 
But the little hairless is also a heart and a mind, the little hairless ape is free to over-ride the hard-wiring; it is also human.  It can be set free to be human.  Being human can be protected and upheld.  The little hairless ape can make reason mainstream in its societies, as did the Ancient Greeks.  The little hairless ape can be insufficiently terrorized and continue to function independently, deem the dicta of the head monkey irrational ravings, deem criminal and vile the simply homely custom of the head monkey of torturing or murdering any who challenge it, insist on equality of rights, insist it has an equal right to its own views and an equal right to utter them; demand the head monkey deploy language and reason, not merely its club, and give rational justification for its conduct. 
 
Or of course it can be outlawed, defined as insanity or evil.  Thus Stalinism, thus Catholicism, thus Islam, All three fundamentally equally foetid death-cults of obedience enthusiastically injected into mainstream England with the intent of course of poisoning it by the so-called Labour Party.
 
Thus such gems as free speech and reason being the tools of colonialism and imperialism.  Darlings, apes with clubs in a superior person in a tightly structured hierarchical society do not need to enshrine free speech in a first amendment.  That reason may be heard.  Islamophobia is another jewel, the  underlying premiss of which is that nothing in Islam and no individual Muslim can possibly merit criticism, derision, opprobrium and therefore such criticism, derision, opprobrium as there be must in fact be directed at race. Particularly good value is the babbling of the hierarchical primate brain which is insistence that ‘you only feel able to say that about me because I’m [insert minority of choice].  If I think you’re a cunt I say you’re a cunt, whoever the hell you are.  That one’s especially good when babbled by Muslims, you wouldn’t say that to white Christians.  Well, actually the free world did, and that is rather the point that the free world told the Vatican to get fucked.
 
Thus the pitiful, little brutes at UCH, who think having gained a tiny amount of  status, means they’re head moneys now, everyone has to obey them, pathetic pitiful little animals, absolutely filthy.  I know it’s a dreadful shock to them, but they have no rights over me, because we are equal in rights.
I imagine the suave, wealth and insane murmur to each other that the entire history of the free world is my usual silly nonsense.  They are of course cowards, woefully sick men, and nothing, nothing except power, nothing without power because they are incapable of reasoning, incapable of speech, because they have no bloody arguments, pathetic little monkeys, aren’t you, , sad pathetic little monkey, all you can do is spread lies, manipulate, crawl around behind closed doors, pull strings, pay off and take payment.  What you cannot do is what this society demands of you, stand alone, argue your case ands stand or fall by it.
 
So of course this society is to be eliminated, Corbyn, Blair, McDonnell, Straw, Abbott, Milburn are united on that at least; Blair of course particularly loves sick animals in red hats..   We are to be governed by fear, by violence, by irrational ravings, and of course by monkey words like blasphemy, apostasy – really, what does it mean, decided to think something other than what you were taught as a kid, big bloody deal – which are to be treated with leaden seriousness.  We may not hold opinions of our own.  We have no equal right to speak.  We must be on our knees not standing upright.
 
Sometimes, deliciously, the nutters have a core point, although they fail to make it.  the nutters at SOAS are demanding Plato be eliminated from the curriculum, being part of the meta-context of the colonist-imperialist nexus or some such crap.  Only SOAS is the School of Oriental and African Studies.  Since Athens was not in Africa or the Orient I was actually surprised to learn they taught Plato at all.  If you wanted to study Athenian philosophy I’d have thought SOAS was about the last institution in the country you would think to attend.  Couldn’t they just say something reasonable like if we wanted to get into Athenian philosophy, we’d have applied somewhere else.  Less enchanting was the drivel at Cambridge about how the whole of, note, the whole of English literature is informed by the colonialist-imperialist perspective.  Well, we can start with all the English literature that existed before there was a colonialist-imperialist perspective, anyone for Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight. We can look at Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Midsummer’s Night Dream.  Pilgrim’s Progress, or how about wandering lonely as a cloud.  Common to all the fucktards is a conviction England has no internal history, no internal population whose chief concerns were the War of the Roses, the Civil War, the massacre at Peterloo, the cost of a loaf, the extent or poor relief, and the semi-perennial theme was it Catholics on top or Protestants.  The  chief preoccupation of the English was fighting each other, either with words or with swords, over rights and liberties, and we can start with Magna Carta in 1215, over religion, the Corn Laws, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the fight for suffrage, conditions in those dark satanic mills.
I
As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.
II
I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:
III
All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed the human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.
IV
Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.
V
And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.
VI
Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.
VII
And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.
VIII
Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.
IX
And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw -
'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'
X
With a pace stately and fast,
Over English land he passed,
Trampling to a mire of blood
The adoring multitude,
XI
And a mighty troop around,
With their trampling shook the ground,
Waving each a bloody sword,
For the service of their Lord.
XII
And with glorious triumph, they
Rode through England proud and gay,
Drunk as with intoxication
Of the wine of desolation.
XIII
O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea,
Passed the Pageant swift and free,
Tearing up, and trampling down;
Till they came to London town.
XIV
And each dweller, panic-stricken,
Felt his heart with terror sicken
Hearing the tempestuous cry
Of the triumph of Anarchy.
XV
For with pomp to meet him came,
Clothed in arms like blood and flame,
The hired murderers, who did sing
'Thou art God, and Law, and King.
XVI
'We have waited, weak and lone
For thy coming, Mighty One!
Our purses are empty, our swords are cold,
Give us glory, and blood, and gold.'
XVII
Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd,
To the earth their pale brows bowed;
Like a bad prayer not over loud
Whispering - 'Thou art Law and God.' -
XVIII
Then all cried with one accord,
'Thou art King, and God and Lord;
Anarchy, to thee we bow,
Be thy name made holy now!'
XIX
And Anarchy, the Skeleton,
Bowed and grinned to every one,
As well as if his education
Had cost ten millions to the nation.
XX
For he knew the Palaces
Of our Kings were rightly his;
His the sceptre, crown and globe,
And the gold-inwoven robe.
XXI
So he sent his slaves before
To seize upon the Bank and Tower,
And was proceeding with intent
To meet his pensioned Parliament
XXII
When one fled past, a maniac maid,
And her name was Hope, she said:
But she looked more like Despair,
And she cried out in the air:
XXIII
'My father Time is weak and gray
With waiting for a better day;
See how idiot-like he stands,
Fumbling with his palsied hands!
XXIV
‘He has had child after child,
And the dust of death is piled
Over every one but me -
Misery, oh, Misery!'
XXV
Then she lay down in the street,
Right before the horses' feet,
Expecting, with a patient eye,
Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy.
XXVI
When between her and her foes
A mist, a light, an image rose,
Small at first, and weak and frail
Like the vapour of a vale:
XXVII
Till as clouds grow on the blast,
Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,
And glare with lightnings as they fly,
And speak in thunder to the sky
XXVIII
It grew - a Shape arrayed in mail
Brighter than the viper's scale,
And upborne on wings whose grain
Was as the light of sunny rain.
XXIX
On its helm, seen far away,
A planet, like the Morning's, lay;
And those plumes its light rained through
Like a shower of crimson dew.
XXX
With step as soft as wind it passed,
O'er the heads of men - so fast
That they knew the presence there,
And looked, - but all was empty air.
XXXI
As flowers beneath May's footstep waken,
As stars from Night's loose hair are shaken,
As waves arise when loud winds call,
Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall.
XXXII
And the prostrate multitude
Looked - and ankle-deep in blood,
Hope, that maiden most serene,
Was walking with a quiet mien:
XXXIII
And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,
Lay dead earth upon the earth;
The Horse of Death tameless as wind
Fled, and with his hoofs did grind
To dust the murderers thronged behind.
XXXIV
A rushing light of clouds and splendour,
A sense awakening and yet tender
Was heard and felt - and at its close
These words of joy and fear arose
XXXV
As if their own indignant Earth
Which gave the sons of England birth
Had felt their blood upon her brow,
And shuddering with a mother's throe
XXXVI
Had turnèd every drop of blood
By which her face had been bedewed
To an accent unwithstood, -
As if her heart had cried aloud:
XXXVII
'Men of England, heirs of Glory,
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one mighty Mother,
Hopes of her, and one another;
XXXVIII
'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.’
 
WHOEVER loves, if he do not propose
The right true end of love, he's one that goes
To sea for nothing but to make him sick.
Love is a bear-whelp born : if we o'er-lick
Our love, and force it new strange shapes to take,
We err, and of a lump a monster make.
Were not a calf a monster, that were grown
Faced like a man, though better than his own ?
Perfection is in unity ; prefer
One woman first, and then one thing in her.
I, when I value gold, may think upon
The ductileness, the application,
The wholesomeness, the ingenuity,
From rust, from soil, from fire ever free ;
But if I love it, 'tis because 'tis made
By our new nature, use, the soul of trade.
    All this in women we might think upon,
—If women had them—and yet love but one.
Can men more injure women than to say
They love them for that, by which they're not they ?
Makes virtue woman ? must I cool my blood
Till I both be, and find one wise and good ?
May barren angels love so.   But if we
Make love to woman, virtue is not she,
As beauty is not, nor wealth.   He that strays thus
From her to hers is more adulterous
Than if he took her maid.   Search every sphere
And firmament, our Cupid is not there.
He's an infernal God, and underground
With Pluto dwells, where gold and fire abound.
Men to such gods their sacrificing coals
Did not on altars lay, but pits and holes.
Although we see celestial bodies move
Above the earth, the earth we till and love.
So we her airs contemplate, words and heart,
And virtues, but we love the centric part.
    Nor is the soul more worthy, or more fit
For love, than this, as infinite as it.
But in attaining this desired place
How much they err, that set out at the face ?
The hair a forest is of ambushes,
Of springes, snares, fetters, and manacles ;
The brow becalms us when 'tis smooth and plain,
And when 'tis wrinkled, shipwrecks us again ;
Smooth, 'tis a paradise, where we would have
Immortal stay, but wrinkled 'tis a grave.
The nose, like to the first meridian, runs
Not 'twixt an east and west, but 'twixt two suns ;
It leaves a cheek, a rosy hemisphere,
On either side, and then directs us where
Upon the islands fortunate we fall,
Not faint Canaries, but ambrosial,
Her swelling lips, to which when we are come,
We anchor there, and think ourselves at home,
For they seem all ; there Sirens' songs and there
Wise Delphic oracles do fill the ear.
There, in a creek where chosen pearls do swell,
The remora, her cleaving tongue, doth dwell.
These and the glorious promontory, her chin,
O'erpast, and the straight Hellespont between
The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts,
Not of two lovers, but two loves, the nests,
Succeeds a boundless sea, but yet thine eye
Some island moles may scattered there descry ;
And sailing towards her India, in that way
Shall at her fair Atlantic navel stay.
Though there the current be the pilot made,
Yet, ere thou be where thou shouldst be embay'd,
Thou shalt upon another forest set,
Where many shipwreck, and no further get.
When thou art there, consider what this chase
Misspent by thy beginning at the face.
    Rather set out below ; practise thy art ;
Some symmetry the foot hath with that part
Which thou dost seek, and is thy map for that,
Lovely enough to stop, but not stay at.
Least subject to disguise and change it is ;
Men say the devil never can change his ;
It is the emblem that hath figured
Firmness ; 'tis the first part that comes to bed.
Civility we see refined ; the kiss,
Which at the face began, transplanted is,
Since to the hand, since to the imperial knee,
Now at the papal foot delights to be.
If kings think that the nearer way, and do
Rise from the foot, lovers may do so too ;
For, as free spheres move faster far than can
Birds, whom the air resists, so may that man
Which goes this empty and ethereal way,
Than if at beauty's elements he stay.
Rich Nature in women wisely made
Two purses, and their mouths aversely laid.
They then which to the lower tribute owe,
That way which that exchequer looks must go ;
He which doth not, his error is as great,
As who by clyster gives the stomach meat.
 
I suppose to stretch a point that’s about a sort of colonizing but I don’t think that’s quite what they had in mind.
 
‘I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.’
 
An awful lot of anyone’s poetry is essentially boy meets girl, but you do have to be able to read to discern that.
 
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
       But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
       Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
 
Then there’s another great slab of literature which is the writer communing with himself about eternal verities
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
                              But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
                        Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.


II
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
                                          Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.


III
Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
    Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.


IV
Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
    Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.


V
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
    The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always--
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.
 
Then there’s the poetry that came out WWI and it wasn’t singing, ‘Rule, Britannia!’
 
What passing-bells2 for these who die as cattle? 
Only the monstrous anger of the guns. 
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle 
Can patter out3 their hasty orisons.4
No mockeries5 now for them; no prayers nor bells; 
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented6 choirs of wailing shells; 
And bugles7 calling for them from sad shires.8
What candles9 may be held to speed them all? 
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes 
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. 
The pallor10 of girls' brows shall be their pall; 
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, 
And each slow dusk11 a drawing-down of blinds.12
 
‘GOOD-MORNING; good-morning!’ the General said
 

When we met him last week on our way to the line.
 

Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
 

And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
 

‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack
         5

As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
    .    .    .    .
 

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
 

 
A