The Commination

A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)

by Alec Derwent Hope

He that is filthy let him be filthy still.

Rev. 22.11

Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four

Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends

Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind

Now send me foes worth cursing, or send more

– Since means should be proportionate to ends;

For mine are few and of the piddling kind:

Drivellers, snivellers, writers of bad verse,

Backbiting bitches, snipers from a pew,

Small turds from the great arse of self-esteem;

On such as these I would not waste my curse.

God send me soon the enemy or two

Fit for the wrath of God, of whom I dream:

Some Caliban of Culture, some absurd

Messiah of the Paranoiac State,

Some Educator wallowing in his slime,

Some Prophet of the Uncreating Word

Monsters a man might reasonably hate,

Masters of Progress, Leaders of our Time;

But chiefly the Suborners: Common Tout

And Punk, the Advertiser, him I mean

And his smooth hatchet-man, the Technocrat.

Them let my malediction single out,

These modern Dives with their talking screen

Who lick the sores of Lazarus and grow fat,

Licensed to pimp, solicit and procure

Here in my house, to foul my feast, to bawl

Their wares while I am talking with my friend,

To pour into my ears a public sewer

Of all the Strumpet Muses sell and all

That prostituted science has to vend.

In this great Sodom of a world, which turns

The treasure of the Intellect to dust

And every gift to some perverted use,

What wonder if the human spirit learns

Recourses of despair or of disgust,

Abortion, suicide and self-abuse.

But let me laugh, Lord; let me crack and strain

The belly of this derision till it burst;

For I have seen too much, have lived too long

A citizen of Sodom to refrain,

And in the stye of Science, from the first,

Have watched the pearls of Circe drop on dung.

Let me not curse my children, nor in rage

Mock at the just, the helpless and the poor,

Foot-fast in Sodom’s rat-trap; make me bold

To turn on the Despoilers all their age

Invents: damnations never felt before

And hells more horrible than hot and cold.

And, since in Heaven creatures purified

Rational, free, perfected in their kinds

Contemplate God and see Him face to face

In Hell, for sure, spirits transmogrified,

Paralysed wills and parasitic minds

Mirror their own corruption and disgrace.

Now let this curse fall on my enemies

My enemies, Lord, but all mankind’s as well

Prophets and panders of their golden calf;

Let Justice fit them all in their degrees;

Let them, still living, know that state of hell,

And let me see them perish, Lord, and laugh.

Let them be glued to television screens

Till their minds fester and the trash they see

Worm their dry hearts away to crackling shells;

Let ends be so revenged upon their means

That all that once was human grows to be

A flaccid mass of phototropic cells;

Let the dog love his vomit still, the swine

Squelch in the slough; and let their only speech

Be Babel; let the specious lies they bred

Taste on their tongues like intellectual wine

Let sung commercials surfeit them, till each

Goggles with nausea in his nauseous bed.

And, lest with them I learn to gibber and gloat,

Lead me, for Sodom is my city still,

To seek those hills in which the heart finds ease;

Give Lot his leave; let Noah build his boat,

And me and mine, when each has laughed his fill,

View thy damnation and depart in peace.