The Annotated "Ulysses"/Page 049
And no more turn aside and brood.
His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s castoffs nebeneinander.
He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another’s foot had nested
warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I dislove. But you
were delighted when Esther Osvalt’s shoe went on you : girl I knew in Paris.
Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother soul : Wilde’s love that dare not
speak its name. He now will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All
or not at all.
In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering green-
goldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away. I shall
wait. No, they will pass on, passing chafing against the low rocks, swirling,
passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen : a fourworded wavespeech :
seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing
horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops : flop, slop, slap : bounded in barrels.
And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foam-
pool, flower unfurling.
Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and
sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying
and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day : night by night : lifted, flooded
and let fall. Lord, they are weary : and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose
heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their
times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end gathered : vainly
then released, forth flowing, wending back : loom of the moon. Weary too in
sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she
draws a toil of waters.
Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one he said.
Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of
rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the
undertow, bobbing landward, a pace a pace a porpoise. There he is. Hook
it quick. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We have him. Easy now.
Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a
spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes
man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead
breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead.
Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green
grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.
A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths
Annotations
[edit]"And no more turn aside and brood"
Quotation from W. B. Yeats' poem "Who goes with Fergus?" (Cf. "Telemachus" episode, Page 009)