The Anathemata
Keel, Ram, Stauros (continued)
Listen: when it’s adieu to y’r3
Miletus ladies
when it’s farewell to you
Lady of Thebesa
when we founder
when we embrace the sea-stript dead
wher’l they be?
away with the coverage
on a proper Siren’s cruise.
That’s how they work it
in Pluto’s Thalassocracies.
Where ’ld be their bleedin’ miracle
that is Graecia
but for us ones
as cargoes-up
the thousand ships?
Caulk it, m’ anarchs
he’s fixed you
with his ichthyoid eye.
[page 173]
Aye, the old ichthys!
David Jones notes
3 Pronounce as ‘ard-yer t’yer’. My Greek seamen speak cockney.
additional notes
a Lady of Thebes: Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. But also Aphrodite Pandemos, the love that unites all people, the personification of order and civic unity.
comments
The Marxist singing crewmen ridicule the risks of the owners. The drowning of the crewmen would mean, for them, farewell to the sexually loose ‘Miletus ladies’ and the goddess Aphrodite; whereas for the owners the insurance would finance an erotic cruise (though Sirens lead sailors to their death, too). The proletarian song ends when they see the captain glaring at them.