+ANTINOUS+: A POEM BY FERNANDO PESSOA LISBON 1918 +ANTINOUS+ A POEM +ANTINOUS+ A POEM BY FERNANDO PESSOA LISBONMONTEIRO & CO. 190, Rua do Ouro, 192 1918 Printed by «Sociedade Typographica Editora»--100, R. D'Alegria--Lisbon +ANTINOUS+ It rained outside right into Hadrian's soul. The boy lay deadOn the low couch, on whose denuded whole, To Hadrian's eyes, that at their seeing bled, The shadowy light of Death's eclipse was shed. The boy lay dead and the day seemed a nightOutside. The rain fell like a sick affrightOf Nature at her work in killing him. Through the mind's galleries of their past delightThe very light of memory was dim. O hands that clasped erewhile Hadrian's warm hands, That now found them but cold!O hair bound erstwhile with the pressing bands!O eyes too diffidently bold!O bare female male-body likeA god that dawns into humanity!O lips whose opening redness erst could strikeLust's seats with a soiled art's variety!O fingers skilled in things not to be named!O tongue which, counter-tongued, the throbbed brows flamed!O glory of a wrong lust pillowed onRaged conciousness's spilled suspension!These things are things that now must be no more. The rain is silent, and the EmperorSinks by the couch. His grief is like a rage, For the gods take away the life they giveAnd spoil the beauty they made live. He weeps and knows that every future ageIs staring at him out of the to-be. His love is on a universal stage. A thousand unborn eyes weep with his misery. Antinous is dead, is dead forever, Is dead forever and the loves lament. Venus herself, that was Adonis' lover, Seeing him again, having lived, dead again, Lends her great skyey grief now to be blentWith Hadrian's pain. Now is Apollo sad because the stealerOf his white body is forever cold. In vain shall kisses on that nippled pointCovering his heart-beats' silent place imploreHis life again to ope his eyes and feel herPresence along his veins this fortress holdOf love. Now no caressing hands anointWith growing joy that body's lusting lore. The rain falls, and he lies like one who hathForgotten all the gestures of his loveAnd lies awake waiting their hot return. But all his vices' art is now with Death:He lies with her, whose sex cannot him move, Whose hand, were't not cold, still ne'er his could burn. Lilies were on his cheeks and roses too. His eyes were sad in joy sometimes. He saidOft in his close abandonments, that wooLove to be more love than love can be, «KissMy eyelids till my closed eyes seem to guessThe kiss they feel laid in my heart's breast-bed. » O Hadrian, what shall now thy cold life be?What boots it to be emperor over all?His absence o'er thy visible emperyThrows a dim pall. Now are thy nights widowed of love and kisses, Now are thy days robbed of the night's awaiting, Now are thy lips purposeless and thy blissesNo longer of the size of thy life, matingThy empire with thy love's bold tendernesses. Now are thy doors closed upon beauty and joy. Throw ashes on thy head!Lo, lift thine eyes and see the lovely boy!Naked he lies upon that memoried bed;By thine own hand he lies uncovered. There was he wont thy dangling sense to cloy, And uncloy with more cloying, and annoyWith newer uncloying till thy senses bled. His hand and mouth knew gamuts musicalOf vices thy worn spine was hurt to follow. Sometimes it seemed to thee that all was hollowIn sense in each new straining of sucked lust. Then still new crimes of fancy would he callTo thy shaken flesh, and thou wouldst tremble and fallBack on thy cushions with thy mind's sense hushed. «Beautiful was my love, yet melancholy. He had that art, of love's arts most unholy, Of being lithely sad among lust's rages. Now the Nile gave him up, the eternal Nile. Under his wet locks Death's blue paleness wagesNow war upon our pity with sad smile». Even as he thinks, the lust that is no moreThan a memory of lust revives and takesHis senses by the hand, and his flesh quakesTill all becomes again what 'twas before. The dead body on the bed gets up and livesAlong his every nerve ripped up and twanged, And a love-o'er-wise and invisible handAt every body-entrance to his lustUtters caresses which flit off, yet justRemain enough to bleed his last nerve's strand, O sweet and cruel Parthian fugitives! He rises, mad, and looks upon his lover, That now can love nothing but what none know. Then his cold lips run all the body over--His lips that scarce remember their warmth, nowSo blent with feeling the death they behold;And so ice-senseless are his lips that, lo!, He scarce tastes death from the dead body's cold, But it seems both are dead or living bothAnd love is still the Presence and the Mover. Then his lips cease on the other lips' cold sloth. But there the wanting breath reminds his lipsThat between him and his boy-love the mistThat comes out of the gods has crept. The tipsOf his fingers, still idly tickling, listTo some flesh-response to their purple mood. But their love-orison is not understood. The god is dead whose cult was to be kissed! He lifts his hand up to where heaven should beAnd cries on the mute gods to know his pain. Lo, list!, o divine watchers of our gleeAnd sorrow!, list!, he will yield up his reign. He will live in the deserts and be parchedOn the hot sands, he will be beggar and slave;But give again the boy to be arm-reached!Forego that space ye meant to be his grave! Take all the female beauties of the earth!Take all afar and rend them if ye will!But, by sweet Ganymede, that Jove found worthAnd above Hebe did elect to fillHis cup at his high festivals, and spillHis fairer vice wherefrom comes newer birth--, The clod of female embraces resolveTo dust, o father of the gods!, but spareThis boy and his white body and golden hair. Maybe thy newer Ganymede thou mˇeanstThat he should be, and out of jealous careFrom Hadrian's arms to thine his beauty steal'st. He was a kitten playing with lust, playingWith his own and with Hadrian's, sometimes oneAnd sometimes two, now splitting, now one grown, Now leaving lust, now lust's high lusts delaying, Now eyeing lust not wide, but from askanceJumping round on lust's half-unexpectance;Then softly gripping, then with fury holding, Now playfully playing, now seriously, now lyingBy the side of lust looking at it, now spyingWhich way to take lust in his lust's withholding. Thus did the hours slide from their tangled handsAnd from their mixed limbs the moments slip. Now were his arms dead leaves, now iron bands, Now were his lips cups, now the things that sip, Now were his eyes too closed, and now too open, Now were his ways such as none thought might happen, Now were his arts a feather and now a whip. That love they lived as a religionOffered to gods that do to presence bend. Sometimes he was adorned and made to donHalf-costumes, now a posing nudityThat imitates some god's eternityOf body statue-known to craving men. Now was he Venus, risen from the seas;And now was he Apollo, white and golden;Now as Jove sate he in mock-judgment overThe presence at his feet of his slaved lover;Now was he an acted rite, by one beholden, In ever-repositioned mysteries. Now he is something anyone can be. O white negation of the thing it is!O golden-haired moon-cold loveliness!Too cold! too cold! and love as cold as he. Love wanders through the memories of his viceAs through a labyrinth, in sad madness glad, And now calls on his name and bids him rise, And now is smiling at his imaged comingThat is i'th'heart like faces in the gloaming--Mere shining shadows of the forms they had. The rain again like a vague pain aroseAnd put the sense of wetness in the air. Suddenly did the Emperor supposeHe saw this room and all in it from far. He saw the couch, the boy and his own frameCast down against the couch, and he becameA clearer presence to himself, and saidThese words unuttered, save to his soul's dread: «I shall build thee a statue that will beTo the astonished future evidenceOf my love and thy beauty and the senseThat beauty giveth of infinity, Though death with subtle uncovering hands removeThe apparel of life and empire from our love, Yet its nude statue-soul of lust made spiritAll future times, whether they will't or not, Shall, like a curse-seeming god's boon earth-brought, Inevitably inherit. «Ay, this thy statue shall I build, and setUpon the pinnacle of being-thine. Let TimeBy its subtle dim crimeEat it from life, or with men's violence fretTo pieces out of unity and presence. Ay, let that be! Our love shall stand so greatIn thy statue of us, like a god's fate, Our love's incarnate and discarnate essence, That, like a trumpet reaching over seasAnd going from continent to continent, Our love shall speak its joy and woe, death-blent, Over infinities and eternities! «The memory of our love shall bridge the ages. It shall loom white out of the past and beEternal, like a Grecian victory, In every heart the future shall give ragesOf not being our love's contemporary. «Yet oh that this were needed not, and thouWert the red flower perfuming my life, The garland on the brows of my delight, The living flame on altars of my soul!Would all this were a thing thou mightest nowSmile at from under thy death-mocking lidsAnd wonder that I should so put a strifeTwixt me and gods for thy lost presence bright;Were there nought in this but my empty doleAnd thy awakening smile half to condoleWith what my dreaming pain to hope forbids». Thus went he, like a lover who is waiting, From place to place in his dim doubting mind. Now was his hope a great bulk of will fatingIts wish to being, now felt he he was blindIn some point of his seen wish undefined. When love meets death we know not what to feel. When death foils love we know not what to know. Now did his doubt hope, now did his hope doubt. Now what his wish dreamed the dream's sense did floutAnd to a sullen emptiness congeal. Then again the gods fanned love's darkening glow. «Thy death has given me a newer lust--A flesh-lust raging for eternity. On my imperial will I put my trustThat the high gods, that made me emperor be, Will not annul from a more real lifeMy wish that thou shouldst live for e'er and standA fleshly presence on their better land, More beautiful and as beautiful, for thereNo things impossible our wishes marNor pain our hearts with change and time and strife. «Love, love, my love! thou art already a god. This thought of mine, which I a wish believe, Is no wish, but a sight, to me allowedBy the great gods, that love love and can giveTo mortal hearts, under the shape of wishes--Of wishes strong, having imperial reaches--A vision of the real things beyondOur life-imprisoned life, our sense-bound sense. Ay, what I will thee to be thou art nowAlready. Already on Olympic groundThou walkest and art perfect, yet art thou, For thou needst no excess of thee to donTo perfect be, being perfection. «My heart is singing like a morning bird. A great hope from the gods comes down to meAnd bids my heart to subtler sense be stirredAnd think not that strange evil of theeThat to think thee mortal would be. «My love, my love! My god-love! Let me kissOn thy cold lips thy hot lips now immortal, Greeting thee at Death's portal's happiness, For to the gods Death's portal is Life's portal. «Thus is the memory of thee a godAlready, already a statue made of me--Of that part of me that, like a great sea, Girds in me a great red empire more broadThan all the lands and peoples that are inMy power's reach. Thus art thou myself madeIn that great stretch Olympic that betraysThe true-wholed gods present in river and gladeAnd hours eternal in its different days. «So strong my love is that it is thyself, Thy body as it was ere death was it, Towering above the silence infiniteThat girds round life and its unduring pelf. Even as thou wert in life, thy corporal shadeIs in the presence of the gods. My lovePermits not that its carnal being fadeOr one whit false to fleshly presence prove. Creeds may arise and pass, and passions change, Other ways may be born out of Time's dream, But this our love, made but thy body, 'll rangeOn deathless meads from happy stream to stream. «Were there no Olympus for thee, my loveWould make thee one, where thou sole god mightst prove, And I thy sole adorer, glad to beThy sole adorer through infinity. That were a divine universe enoughFor love and me and what to me thou art. To have thee is a thing made of gods' stuffAnd to look on thee eternity's best part. «O love, my love! Awake with my strong willOf loving to Olympus and be thereThe latest god, whose honey-coloured hairTakes divine eyes! As thou wert on earth, stillIn heaven bodifully be and roam, A prisoner of that happiness of home, With elder gods, while I on earth do makeA statue for thy deathlessness' seen sake. «That deathless statue of thee I shall buildWill be no stone thing, but my great regretBy which our love's eternity is willed. My sorrow shall make thee its god, and setThy naked presence on the parapetThat looks over the seas of future times. Some shall say all our love was vice and crimes. Others against our names, as stones, shall whetThe knife of their glad hate of beauty, and makeOur name a pillory, a scaffold and a stakeWhereon to burn our brothers yet unborn. Yet shall our presence, like eternal morn, Ever return at Beauty's hour, and shineOut of the East of Love, and be the shrineOf future gods that nothing human scorn. «My love for thee is part of what thou wertAnd shall be part of what thy statue will be. Our double presence unified in theeShall make to beat many a future heart. Ay, were't a statue to be broken and missed, Yet its stone-perfect memoryWould, still more perfect, on Time's shoulders borne, Overlook the great MornFrom an eternal East. «Thy statue is of thyself and of me. Our dual presence has its unityIn that perfection of body, which my love, In loving it, did out of mortal lifeRaise into godness, set above the strifeOf times and changing passions far above. «The end of days, when Jove is born again, And Ganymede again pour at his feast, Shall see our dual soul from death releasedAnd recreated unto love, joy, pain, Life--all the beauty and the vice and lust, All the diviner side of flesh, flesh-staged. And, if our very memory wore to dust, By the giant race of the end of ages mustOur dual presence once again be raised. » It rained still. But slow-treading night came inClosing the weary eyelids of each sense. The very consciousness of self and soulGrew, like a landscape through dim raining, dim. Theˇ Emperor lay still, so still that nowHe half forgot where now he lay, or whenceThe sorrow that was still salt on his lips. All had been something very far, a scrollRolled up. The things he felt were like the rimThat haloes round the moon when the night weeps. His head was bowed into his arms, and theyOn the low couch, foreign to his sense, lay. His closed eyes seemed open to him and seeingThe naked floor, dark, cold, sad and unmeaning. His hurting breath was all his sense could know. Out of the falling darkness the wind roseAnd fell. A voice swooned in the courts below. And the Emperor slept. The gods came nowAnd bore something away, no sense knows how, On unseen arms of power and repose. LISBON, 1915.