The Ghost of the Cock

(A play for radio)

The music to be played is the Scherzo of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, to begin at the play’s beginning and continue in pauses between acts; at the end, Scherzo of his Seventh, the ‘cock-crow’ movement. Each creature’s speech is always (save in one instance) to be preceded by his natural cry. And the tone of his voice as he speaks is to be somewhat inflected by that call: e.g. the Cock’s voice will be that of an elderly man, a little quavering but firm and active; the steer will have a deep bass voice; the kookaburra’s voice will be a clown’s, rapid-speaking, breaking occasionally; and so forth.

Throughout the play distant explosions should be heard, well-muffled but audible.

ACT ONE

TOBIAS.
Michael, the earth, slung in infinity,
Opens as always, hazily, stealthily,
There is danger without, danger is hugged within:
Meteorite, fission of nuclear sin.
We have passed through a gas of petty quavering calls
Lapping against the four collapsing walls
Of time—old radio-signals from dead hands—
And still, in the sheets of vapour, these silver lands
Disport themselves, wake up before our eyes,
Mummified coastlines wriggle into size
As if the dead and living Mercator
Were praising silver shore by silver shore.

MICHAEL.
Tobias, are they giving praise,
The two survivors whom we
Shall ferry to eternity?
One man, one woman. This world
Has been poisoned a hundred days
Since the last gaunt explosion hurled
Skyward its clammy shroud.
The two are alone in a cloud
Of whispering gamma rays.
The two are shivering with cold.

TOBIAS.
Michael, we are on earth and stand aground:
And round about us works the sullen sound
Of old explosions. All the distorted dead
Lie here clutching their guns or blackened bread.
This must be my labour: to kiss, to weep, to cover,
Even past midnight to sit weeping over—

MICHAEL.
Tobias, the two are moving,
One man, one woman. Traces
Of pain are ground into their faces.
They stumble together, giving
Love, but no longer aware
(The shaking insensible pair)
If this be living,
If this be loving.

TOBIAS.
It is my labour: the balm, the draughts, the graces
To open the impasse upon their dying faces.

MICHAEL.
But Tobias, what now is coming
Out of those few trees
In the wind’s strumming?
It is frail and soluble
To the grey anaemic lees
Of light, as an actual ghost.
Light shudders through it—still
There’s a psalmody, a boast
In its rambling cries—

THE COCK.
An hour before the alarm clock harried man
Out of his chrysalis, an hour before the larvae
Knew their dawn and squirmed obeisance, I was lecturing
The dark cells of the sky, the dumb ovaries, chromosomes,
On that embryonic transformation swimming
Away from the creeping gaining body of the sun.
My eyes were shrewd, my soaring climactic oratory
Chronicled the floatings, the couplings, the quickenings.
All earth was in uproar—

TOBIAS.
And the fishlike colour
Drifted, flickered through old stars fixed in dolour:
Dawn and dawn came to me where I knelt
Before the dead man, ever again I felt
The marvel, again ate the sacred food.
He lay, I knelt, and light for both was blood.

MICHAEL.
Bird, tell us of the two,
The man, the woman. Lead
Us to them; it is true
That we come with alms for their need,
That we come with tears for their pain,
We are water, we are grain.

THE COCK.
The two are now approaching us. Only wait,
I have hungry friends to show to you: some of us
Must linger, waiting for judgment, on this planet.
The man and the woman may see us but cannot speak,
Our joy is in sight of them, and now of you.

MICHAEL.
This steer, or ghost of a steer:
The dissolving bulk, the great
Shoulder, and the shadowy foot;
But the veined shape of the ear
Pricked, the mouth opening—

THE STEER.
There is a quiet paddock,
And the green sweet grass glimmers within it. Legends
Of browsing cattle lumber across the ceiling,
Clouds put down their heads and pull at sweetness,
Twisting, crunching it till the sweet-smelling juices
Fill their huge bellies. Sometimes they lower themselves
Upon the horizon, sweat trickling down their sides,
Or a head is raised a moment and thunder mutters mildly.

TOBIAS.
I have known wild grass about me, and the calls
Of oxen quarrying through eroded walls:
All was a quest in sight and sound, a token
As if he, dead beneath my hands, had spoken.

MICHAEL.
The man, the woman, have you seen
Them moving on waste or green?

THE STEER.
The two have come close to me: Years ago there were children,
All movement, all joy in my sweet reveries,
Cropping the grass I stared at them now and then.
The two will be coming closer: they are as grass,
As all my old dreams of plenty upon this planet.

MICHAEL.
And now there comes an old horse:
Again light pierces the hide,
He moves without any force
Or echo; but there is pride
As if the glittering source
Of Being hung like a mane
Upon neck and withers. Rain
Is falling—

THE BRUMBY.
Rain, and the scrub—I am a brumby,
Stunted, speedy. The tree grew dumb and wild,
No bit, no halter, and I travelled as if
My roots were in earth—say, rather, in the very sky;
For I was the tree travelling, whipped up by the wind
Through stationary star and cloud, backward, forward.
So my croppings were not of the dank bale
But of white comets whirling, energies, electrons.

TOBIAS.
Life is the nucleus, the crumb of bread
Close to the lips of all that they call dead.

MICHAEL.
Rain clammy upon their hair,
One man, one woman. Let us know
Where they are and how they fare
In this toxic air.
God send us snow!

THE BRUMBY.
I have passed them. No call, no word uttered,
But a certain peace. Yes, they are approaching us.

MICHAEL.
But the snowfall, the great fleece!
This creature was known to Christ,
Lost, found, blest.
This sheep is all of a mist;
But the sober gentle eyes—

THE SHEEP.
Life is the bleating and the rubbing of shoulders.
Every force, even the prodigal muscles of the atom,
Binds us together. In togetherness is all freedom,
The pushing, the shoving. Something has been decreed,
The earth is a tiny paddock; but you will see
At times a great wave of true order; we shall move,
A hundred of us, as one. It is hardly known
Among my brethren, the nature and origin
Of this giant flowing, this law, this nationhood
Without nations; we shall all resume again
The give-and-take, the distortions, private ambitions,
Until food beckons or a man is crucified.
But life is the ugly flock, the dun, the grey—

TOBIAS.
As waves of purpose invade the anonymous
Mouthlines and hands of him who is and was...

MICHAEL.
Have you seen your counterparts,
The one man, the one woman? Time
Locks even our hearts
To this ghost-world whose frame
Is bound to an ancient shock.
And thudding and thudding of the clock.

THE SHEEP.
They respond to a call unheard, and now I know them
Coming closer and closer. They will soon be with you.

MICHAEL.
This wolf now, this dingo, eaten
By the same bloodless glow,
Small, wiry, weatherbeaten.
I cannot know
If he be evil, ominous,
Until he cries out to us.

THE DINGO.
This moon. The full body and belly of her rays
Are the sensual enlarged, refined, analysed
Till every sense is swallowed down, objectified.
This is true charity. The passions, the appetites,
Have wasted themselves against her immaculate order,
Her drowned white face is love—yes, it is love.
Before my castles, the high rocky places
—Oh the proud flotillas of blue and silver!—
I have sung with her. A curious climbing scale,
More than twelve notes. Her immense yellow eye
Has become my eye. I am without emotion,
I am all emotion. Go dreaming of ultimate joy:
Your dream is of her, of me. Together on certain nights
We have known an entire creation, a nomad swagman
Nonplussed, standing, thinking, crossing himself.

TOBIAS.
That same yellow eye, remote, near as the All,
Has consoled me preparing the dead for burial.

MICHAEL.
But the one man, the one woman,
Alone, tormented, human,
Have they turned from you in fear
Or can you summon them here?

THE DINGO.
We never knew one another, save as life
Is only in the knowing. I have passed them,
There was no terror, they are close at hand.

MICHAEL.
Now this unwieldy bird
Shaking with laughter. Such mirth
Was surely never heard
Before on this earth.

THE KOOKABURRA.
Be certain of this, dig, the bent of our land
Is to laugh while you squat and to laugh while you stand.
Look at the nightingale wheedling and whining
Where anaemic young poets and squatters sit dining:
Better go merrily belting the hell
Out of the boys in the country hotel.
A shilling an hour and you haul and you trudge:
Giggle to think of a bloody good bludge.

TOBIAS.
He smiled in the temple, laughed with God, and after
God has taken him, I am embalming laughter.

MICHAEL.
The man and the woman, bird,
Have you seen, answered, heard?

THE KOOKABURRA.
Nothing to me, colt, they come and they go.
They’re about here, I guess, but are walking damned slow.
But I noticed with her as with my own daughter
That the dresses get steadily shorter and shorter:
Way down past the breastline, way up at the knees,
Or nothing at all in a pretty stiff breeze.

TOBIAS.
They have come! Scratchings of vandals upon the cheek,
The breathing like a fly’s in a web. No, they cannot speak.
And these are the living flesh, and these the ghosts?
So I was taught by all the angelic hosts.
—Lovers, I am here to tell you all’s forgiven,
But come with us and rest with Christ in Heaven...

(A long pause)
THE COCK (in great fear).
They are going from us.

THE STEER.
They are going from us.

THE BRUMBY.
They are going from us.

THE SHEEP.
They are going from us.

THE DINGO.
They are going from us.

THE KOOKABURRA.
They are going from us.

ACT TWO

THE COCK.
They have taken them, and in one hour all will be gone.
Fellow-creatures, we are ghosts. And the ghost is the slave:
He is muzzled between being and judgment. Eyes of the haunted,
Their fear—no, just their flesh—are his only food
In the immense concentration camp of not-being.
God is leaving us. What shall we be?

ALL.
What shall we be?

THE COCK.
But the angel and the prophet are gentlest beings:
We know that since Man’s first sin we are held to silence
Lest our ravings rock the earth. We know our sufferings,
Our images of man—let us tell in all truth our stories,
Our lives and deaths. Yes, they are gentlest beings,
Doubtless they will go back, leaving the two with us.
Friends, will you try this?

ALL.
Yes, friend, we shall try.

THE COCK.
Look, they are coming this way, Tobias and Michael,
And the man and the woman who have not yet spoken.

(Pause)
THE COCK.
Hear us before you take the two to God,
Some truths of our lives together, they our rulers.

MICHAEL.
To raise them higher still
Tell us these beauties, truths,
Give us the golden myths
Of the human will.

THE COCK.
Intimations of dawnlight; again I call,
But to the shuttered room there comes little of light,
And with that little comes the Shape, the vortex of strength,
Imponderable law. I am given a little food,
But not in such quantity as to make me sluggish;
For speed and the naked blind death-wish of the fighting-cock,
These are the law of the Shape. So I must kill,
So inevitably I am bound and wrapped in death.
Still I will call. He dandles in front of me
The mock bird of painted wadding, fixes to my feet
The razor-sharp spurs of his twitching hopeless thought.
Still I cry out. And at last in the stinking cock-pit
I shall kill that cry, I shall kill myself.

Or come
To the tiny suburban house, the dwarf garden,
And see me in the patched fruitcase fronted with wire.
I sing—and again the song is death:
Never a longing, never a vision, but all time—
No room to lift my wings to ward it away.
He who must take all time upon his shoulders,
Is of earth, is of death—
TOBIAS (very anxious).
But the steer has gazed at crowds
Of earthly things among the very clouds—

THE STEER.
Lean across this fence and watch me. Undersized, teetering
With tiny mindless steps. Look into my eyes
Upon which the dozen flies settle and suck all day:
I have no reflexes for the quick shaking of the head.
They are glazed and vacuous, these eyes of mine
From ruminating upon that elderly inborn terror—
Not terror now, but the all. They were glazed at my branding,
The secret genes of centuries have in them all premonition
Of the dark time to come. Life is crazily short,
Soon comes the ashamed slouching journey of thirst
Or the dizzying gait and thunder of the cattle truck,
Soon comes the delirious speed along the race
And the poleaxe whistling in towards these eyes—

TOBIAS.
The brumby, the brumby, out of man’s hands and free
Was travelling, as he told us, like a tree—

THE BRUMBY.
It is an early bombing raid. The fat biplane
Like a great wasp in love with its mission of awe
Drones prayers, shrills prayers. The town is crumbling slowly,
Bombs, small as grenades, are tumbling like incense:
All is a gesture towards some faceless god:
Buildings kneel, flames wave their hands mildly in blessing,
There are formal shrieks, calls, whinneyings of praise:
We are all delirious before the god; and the studied
Coma of stampede, seen from on high, is a lovely thing,
Rhythmical, profound, primordial as thunder.
Choiring angels with stockwhips indoctrinate the laggard
Who dreams of weekday grass or hobbles under the stigma,
The leg broken. We are all on pilgrimage.

(A loud explosion)
TOBIAS.
The beloved sheep, symbol for God and man,
Will he not speak for us, lift this hideous ban?

THE SHEEP.
Only the trembling and shaking after hired hands
Have shorn me—only the sagging days and nights,
The air always a fist gripping my nostrils,
The choking, the drenching. This is the shepherd and his sheep.

TOBIAS.
But the wolf, the dingo, subtle, speedy, brave,
The moon and the hymn before the rocky cave—

THE DINGO.
No, days and nights of terror. Corroboree of the chanting bullet.
My body, fluid, agile, the long thin limbs
Were woven by terror and hunger. Food is the moon
In eclipse, or by night or day the tiny crescent
In the sky, like a bone the ravenous ants have quitted:
It must serve for me and my young. Sucking that bone, that moon,
I shall know silence flashing, the jaws of the gin-trap
(Obsessed it would seem by a hunger devouring as my own)
Close upon the haunch. The shock, the sickness, the agony,
The hours. This is death, the bone begged for, the moon;
And these are the jaws working and flashing: men.

TOBIAS (gasping).
But laughter is the answer. Laughter is each moment
Of innocence—kittens, puppies, children—
The hard-won meal—I said almost the prayer.
Laughter is almost atonement. Something in God
And in His creation is always laughing and laughing.
Let the kookaburra tell us the full story.

THE KOOKABURRA (no call).
He’s conquered the earth, sport, he’s conquered the earth,
He’s misshapen and twisted and ugly from birth,
His face a hot dial without rest or repose,
And he calls it his beak, that effeminate nose.
Hatred’s his key—he may call it ambition,
Adventure—so long as he keeps his position.
Forever, in face of the sly sneer of death,
He must conquer, be master, or never draw breath.
His love is his hate with emasculate lies,
To possess, to do better, to trample the prize.
I have noticed that all the men under the sun,
From poet to policeman to killer, are one.
For the fowls of the air, he will slaughter them, sing
Of their melody and their empirical wing,
Dreaming in their eyes an answering mist
As in Towser’s, well-trained, the confirmed masochist.
The creatures who serve him and those who do not
Know how final his hatred and suffer the lot.
His wife’s an old hen, and his horse at the plough
Is the loafer. His foe is a regular cow,
His sheep is plain silly; the dingo, the fellow
Who outwits him by cunning, and speed, is just yellow.
Well, it’s time for a good one. The five-year-old girl
Saw two doggies nextdoor—they were taking a twirl—
And said, ‘Ma, why do dogs stand all over each other?
Do they all have, like me, a stand-over brother?’
And nothing at all said her clever old Ma
But told all the neighbours and they said ha ha.

(A long ugly peal of kookaburra’s laughter. Pause)
MICHAEL (shocked).
Hated by every creature,
Killer of its God,
This is the mortal nature.
May the Word and the rod
Consign to Hell and torture
These two, the man, the woman.
Hell was made for the human.

TOBIAS.
Bury the dead. We have toiled and prayed in hate,
Hatred has been the meat upon the plate,
Hatred in synagogue, hatred in bridal bed,
Hatred the hands that grind the corn for bread,
Hatred the fighter streaking across the sky,
Hatred the unmanned lightnings. We must die.
Hatred the elders, hatred the little child,
Hatred the Crucifixion. We are defiled
And therefore every living thing’s a hating.
Hatred among the Chosen, watching, waiting,
Hatred among the heathen. And the dead
Is silent, wordless, motionless—but the dead
Is silent, is pure, some word upon his head
Is written ... but my hands and mouth are hate,
I shall not pray, I must not celebrate
His passing out of hatred: he is still:
O lonely God betrayed, by Thy wise will
Bring death to me. Again I shall not sleep,
But now no ointments, and I cannot weep.
If I in my hatred sit without thought or word,
Seeing nothing, letting nothing be heard,
Taking no food, naked, nor cloaked nor shod,
May I not be as these dead, O living God?
May I not in some sort have propitiated
Thy wrath on account of all that we have hated?

ACT THREE

(A babble of mingled calls of all creatures)

THE COCK.
The angel, the prophet, the man, the woman are moving
About in silence over all parts of the globe.
None of them is speaking nor has spoken a word,
And soon they return to this island, and soon go forever.
The man, the woman, are lost to all creation,
They are lost to us all forever.

ALL.
They are lost to us all forever.

THE COCK.
And see now they are almost with us, the pale four.
Creatures, allow me but once more to speak,
To hope, to beg for us all. See, they are here.

ALL.
We shall never trust you again.

THE COCK.
But think of the world without them, old fossils, greyness:
It is a spectral world: the ghost of granite,
A fossil harbouring fossils. Remember daybreaks,
My gift of youth to the granite...

ALL.
Speak for us again.

(Pause)
THE COCK.
The song of the morning weaves among chimneypots,
The tadpole fossicks in pure water for oxygen,
The amphibious frog choirs two elements,
The camouflaged mantis creeps along the grapevine,
And the song solidifies, transposes into air and water
Its modal forms. The thin piping of the cock,
Timeless dance of the tadpole, bass of the frog,
Shuffle of the mantis—these are trivial things
But they have formalized life. Life was the stick,
The stone, the shape, the dream: life is the song, the dance.
The bomber, the stick, the stone have dominated,
The shape, the dream are still tedious, geriatric.
Oh through the air poisoned, the empty cities, the dead,
Let the Singer pass! One tear, one frightened chuckle,
One creeping pain—but only and always the Singer!
The bomber, the stick, the stone threaten countless mutations
To the dance: there’s the skull (the stone), the skeleton (the stick);
And the final wave of silence, the not-being
(This is the bomber, the shape, the dream) this may well be Hell!
Oh carry the man and woman to Heaven; leave us
Waiting; for a very eternity of torture
Is greater than not-being, is part of pattern and Will.
Only that the dance persist and we persist.
We have been, we have suffered, we are waiting:
And the giant structure of man, of good and evil,
Oh may he not have betrayed us, may he have buried
His head and breast in earth, so as to have risen
Into the arms of the Singer, the great Tree!
His triumph is always our triumph. Tobias, Michael,
We have sung in sunlight and moonlight, between sunlight and moonlight,
We have given all—do not mock us—spare the two;
For every word, miniscule, every tiny image of life
Issues from the Singer, is destined to the Singer.

(Pause)
MICHAEL.
I have seen an outburst of sun
And answering shade.
Flattened cities one by one
Have risen, all is paid.
Be joyful, be afraid.

ALL CREATURES.
We are joyful, We are afraid.

TOBIAS.
The dead have drunk their fill, the dead are risen,
Flower, bird, beast are judged and share the Vision:
Bird and beast are floating there like ships
In the great harbour of the Apocalypse.

THE KOOKABURRA.
Not a bad joke, cob, and plenty of cause
For aeons together in laughter, applause.

(He calls again.)

THE END