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Home  »  Others for 1919  »  The Black Virginity

Alfred Kreymborg, ed. Others for 1919. 1920.

Mina Loy

The Black Virginity

BABY Priests

On green sward

Yew-closed

Silk beaver

Rhythm of redemption

Fluttering of Breviaries

Fluted black silk cloaks

Hung square from shoulders

Troncated juvenility

Uniform segration

Union in severity

Modulation

Intimidation

Pride of misapprehended preparation

Ebony statues training for immobility

Anæmic jawed

Wise saw to one another

Prettily the little ones

Gesticulate benignly upon one another in the sun buzz—

Finger and thumb circles postulate pulpits

Profiles forsworn to Donatello

Munching tall talk vestral shop

Evangelical snobs

Uneasy dreaming

In hermetically-sealed dormitories

Not of me or you Sister Saraminta

Of no more or less

Than the fit of Pope’s mitres

It is an old religion that put us in our places

Here am I in lilac print

Preposterously no less than the world flesh and devil

Having no more idea what those are

What I am

Than Baby Priests of what “He” is

or they are—

Messianic mites tripping measured latin ring-a-roses

Subjugated adolescence

Retraces loose steps to furling of Breviaries

In broiling shadows

The last with apostolic lurch

Tries for a high hung fruit

And misses

Any way it is inedible

It is always thus

In the Public Garden.

Parallel lines

An old man

Eyeing a white muslin girl’s school

And all this

As pleasant as bewildering

Would not eventually meet

I am for ever bewildered

Old men are often grown greedy—

What nonsense

It is noon

And salvation’s seedlings

Are headed off for the refectory.