“Tournez, Tournez, Bon Chevaux De Bois”

By Edith Sitwell 1887–1964 Edith Sitwell

Turn, turn again,

Ape’s blood in each vein!

The people that pass

Seem castles of glass,

The old and the good

Giraffes of the blue wood,

The soldier, the nurse,

Wooden-face and a curse,

Are shadowed with plumage

Like birds, by the gloomage.

Blond hair like a clown’s

The music floats—drowns

The creaking of ropes,

The breaking of hopes,

The wheezing, the old,

Like harmoniums scold;

Go to Babylon, Rome,

The brain-cells called home,

The grave, new Jerusalem—

Wrinkled Methusalem!

From our floating hair

Derived the first fair

And queer inspiration

Of music, the nation

Of bright-plumed trees

And harpy-shrill breeze . . .

* * * *

Turn, turn again,

Ape’s blood in each vein!

from Coterie, 1919

Biography

In the introduction to The Canticle of the Rose British poet Dame Edith Sitwell wrote: "At the time I began to write, a change in the direction, imagery and rhythms in poetry had become necessary, owing to the rhythmical flaccidity, the verbal deadness, the dead and expected patterns, of some of the poetry immediately preceding us." Her early work was often experimental, creating melody, using striking conceits, new rhythms, and . . .

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