' the great brazen rhetorician serpent'
from Robert Lowell Notebook c. 1970
source Vereen M Bell Vanderbilt Uni.
Introit
I had put away my black biro to begin
packing presents, then news of a total
systemic collapse came out. A Labour
Chancellor is moving a decimal point
in context of a totally corrupt Ministry.
Government : Resign Or Die
One hundred and thirty two mill.
pounds added to National Debt
April to November, not nil :
this be rank, arrant high treason
worthy of axe execution.
Yet still, in condemned Camden, you
allow bulk traitors galore screw
Albion, and wander lazy
all day, piggy, over-hazy
and entirely worthless, brute
in their demeanour, wearing loot.
Grinning inanely, they expect,
not even people, yet to thrive.
This Government cannot survive.
late on December 21st after RL
International Fraudsters
Starmer and his challengers :
knowingly creating more Debt
you know you can never repay
to continue buying the vote
of those not working anyway.
What a crowd, financial monsters.
Banana Republic
Fat, black midgets shuffle below
my window, unaware of Lowell
in what was The Artists' Borough.
They walk, an abomination
and they go warping Albion
for crooks in charge of the nation.
Arrival In Albion for Cobra
Expect to be taught discipline
for a start, and exercise to thin
with no eating meat off the shin
bone, and rationed telephone.
Can they learn to be Anglophone.
At A Guess (Not Prescriptive)
With a collapse of stern civil
order (already apparent)
Mr Bond will want restoration
thereof, to buy any more Gilts
(even Apartheid, in London)
with a tough Administration,
in part Home Military-Met
and the staggeringly corrupt,
dense Cabinet, put in Prison
Camp. Effective democracy,
cracking down on The Benefits'
Binge, and deporting illegals,
could with an Anglo-Indian
vote base only, stage a return.
Banned after Juvenal
Purposelessly wandering around :
empty hourly time sheet found.
Every day : justify to God.
East End : obey the Home Guard Squad.
Lowell Cauchemar
Media blast of America
with the learned poet unheard,
and the terror of being third
the vehicle extravaganza.
All written on December 22nd.
Causes
Snivelling voices on The Third.
Need return of Sir Douglas Hurd.
Heathrow Airport, the vexing third.
The Prime Minister must do bird.
The Road To Salvation
All the country purged of Islam
so we can lip strawberry jam
and rejoice, eating up more ham.
The ending of a certain scam
and kept empty, the Muslim pram
with a repeating in Belgium.
December 23rd
Prosecution v Camden Council
Charge : building homes for The Devil.
Charge : housed mangy monster evil.
Charge : failing to educate civil.
Charge : failing to teach the angel.
Charge : the monstrosity of Rhyl.
Charge : Planning abominable.
Charge : Malfeasance, Camden Council.
Camden : view from Parliament Hill.
On The Deportation Order
You do not get to a country,
slang it off, expect charity.
Yet you bred yet more, uppity,
our land not a sanctuary.
You never tried to pay your way
so we are calling it a day.
You did not sing Jerusalem
so go ; nor, Spem In Alium.
You, choke, are a threat to Nato
bleeding funding like billyo.
Shift to The Kingdom of The Damned
no doubt earlier than you planned.
You can be happy, kept wine-dry
banking desert, with nothing to try.
both written Christmas Eve 2025
Lowell Pedigree
Came over on the Mayflower
with rooting in Worcestershire.
In a way, an English poet ;
absurd for Oxford to reject.
Teach the Roman Mass in Latin,
rather than delve Anglo-Saxon
in an educational fraud.
The course : England with New England.
Most interesting Lowell offshoot :
the oeuvre of Derek Walcott.
The Credo a foundation text,
with modern English coming next.
Recitation : the citizen
test, or else you must leave the den.
written on Christmas Day 2025 soon after
hearing The Credo sung with full Choir as
central to The High Church Mass in Latin
Late Pax Romana
In The City, the Church early
The Credo sung for a century
pre the Saxon catastrophe.
Salvation came from Normandy.
Common Prayer (Oxford)
Gift : The Book of Common Prayer
' from his affectionate Grand . Father
R.S.G.S.' in red leather
bound, the titling indented gold
with C.R.R.T on cover.
For Morning Prayer, titles bold
Latin ; but not The Apostles Creed
which is terrible to behold.
Clearing WKTD
The Commander will mark the zone
then, on a tank, use megaphone
to boom : will Hindu and Christian
vacate the enclave, to be safe
so we can coral The Muslim.
Our sweep will be total, to dim
life from them all, even the waif
then deport for execution.
The Sack of Constantinople
Cathedral, a tale to tell.
December 26th
Tax Payer Complaint after Auden
Why should I work hard to support
people who are not people, short
of discipline, language, savage
in their meandering ravage ?
They have no respect for virtue,
should be shot if they breed anew.
Breeding Cataclysm
What went wrong in Nigeria ?
Airstrikes need to take out Allah
with a hundred million dead,
a target to help the bike shed.
Finalement, Pascal
Fruitfully investigating
qualifying and probing
confronting the terrifying
as we face a total ending.
(As if in 450 A.D.)
December 27th finito
Extinction Albion (Sonnet)
More utter than 1940,
in threatening civility
further, in perpetuity.
Every white extremity
is needed, to fight enemy
not least the Home Secretary
due prison in infinity,
she spiking Christianity
with Tottenham idiocy.
I, Norman aristocracy
veined ; in Ralph, Home Guard duty
we now denied eternity.
The loungers face severity,
due flogging, and no sympathy.
Islam
Terrorist organisation.
All believers deserve prison
or, better, extinction.
They so much prefer division.
For Mount Anvil
If you build, airstrikes will be bold
to crack the incubator mould.
To China, nothing can be sold.
Home Guard Founding (1940)
Co- with General Ironside
Ralph ran X Division, to build
every Pillbox in a field.
At Archangel, both were on side.
Distorting Albion
BBC, failing to broadcast
public and formal poetry
in the accents of Sandhurst,
preferring the left-wing patsy
and fakers like S. Armitage
of Liverpudlian garbage.
I live on the tree-lined River
Fleet, en route to Blackfriar.
Credo Begat Credo
Or, Creed begat Creed, from a Greek
(it is thought) to Latin, and brought
thrice, indeed, to a beleaguered
Albion savaged by pagan
behaving. Do we need a fourth,
to save an island of the dead.
Great, the textual variant.
There is nothing for the meek.
Variant Pointing
Credo in Deum, to Credo
in unum Deum, Patrem omn-
ipotentem and three hundred
years before Allah, solo,
Islam the kingdom of the dead.
Creatorem caeli et terrae >
factorem caeli et terrae.
(For Albion, a total ban
perhaps from a Thuringian.)
Credo in Spiritum Sanctum,
sanctam Ecclesiam Catholicam..
in fact from The Apostles' Creed ;
The Nicene, more wavering screed.
Deum venum de Deo vero,
Sunday The 28th
For Camden Town Hall to function
there must be daily Cross unction.
The Tragedy of Byzantium
can lead to protracted hum.
Interregnum Repeat
I nearly had an Italian
mother, my father did lament.
Prior his time in Trieste,
yet further south, spying a Villa
in 1944, found girl
cowering, hiding in the basement
and they fell in love, he British
Military Intelligence.
The affair ran on into peace,
told me did favour ample breast.
Over A Good Claret
Dick confessed to me he did wish
had married his Italian dish,
so to speak, loving flesh and fish.
BMI Agent (Camden) not MI5
Taking a Military view
there is nothing good to chew.
Wide spacing in Kentish Town West
favour much shooting at our best.
WKTD a Stalingrad
in type ; fields of fire, bad.
All written during December 28th
BMI Father Verdict
Right now : the British Cabinet
all deserve arrest for treason,
just as did KGB Wilson.
Such a problem of accent,
of course, and similarly fat :
where, bound will they find reason ?
Or a Nikita, martinet
her trap floor for execution
sipping a vodka martini
at each drop, dunk, girly-giggly.
After it was over, drunk, she
will clasp her assistant, bendy
and shriek : did they not look silly ?
before zipping down into net.
December 28th/January 1st
Lowell Biography (the 1950s)
Should have taken up Yoga, kept
off the hard stuff, the cigarette
but in Life Studies the dry text
not him, but of a persona
and he hated Amerikana
and found refuge in Iowa.
May 1978 Car Crash
Why did I nearly die, three days
after my father ? Stopped Police
in a vast Rover surveyed my
wrecked sports car, the driver's door
smashed in on the A41,
mid afternoon, back from Watford
and said : you ought to be dead, mate !
and then, incredibly, roared off.
Perpetrator, one Rosenthal
sold tombstones ; he too had roared off.
(I was turning right, at junction
and he, smelt, sped into my door.)
The Clearances
Birmingham and Leicester be purged.
Everyone dead is justified :
we must purify our heartland.
To survive, throw them overboard.
The Country is on a war footing :
we cannot have traitors footling.
Or far too much noisy tooting
to a background of crack shooting.
Empty houses, a cheap footing
for bright white kids going rooting.
Dining Table Instruction
My father did like to observe
that the German soldier, to serve
was good at obeying orders
en masse and they wanted starters
to move without question, local
commanding thought to be feeble.
Whereas the British were better
at spot seizure, not the letter
from on high, standing to obey
like a German with nought to say.
He admired their discipline,
castigated their precision.
I learnt that a fear of Putin
was British infantry in green.
December 29th finis
Position Of Chancellor
Your job is to cut costs to the bone
rather than keep piling them on.
Margaret would give a sermon,
slam those who leave the heating on
after slurping egg and bacon.
Detest those eating smoked salmon,
or those who live feasting on Gammon
which, in Old North French, a fashion.
December 30th
Still Yet To Arrive
Well, more time to write on the train
and do mental gym in the rain.
Drafting, can be read without strain,
though, and there is discipline in Maine.
Online editing, surprise gain
and being cool for public pain.
December 30th / January 1st
Haverstock Hill Horror
Your Negroes, terror of Tesco
so badly behaved ; keep off street.
Should be a bus for them to meet.
Need two hours of Drill a day.
Horrified, at end of patience.
Military Intelligence.
Lord Gowrie (late 1966)
" Gowrie sometimes dined with Lowell,
the Kennedys (Jackie, Bobby) ".
" Bobby was funny about Cal. "
G. Chair, Agenda Poetry.
When I met him, he went pale
after The Cookson Funeral
when I was introduced to him.
(Something to do with Berlin ; M.)
Notebook (RL 1967-1968)
Artistry for a state of flux,
nearly cinema verite'
and all the balls are in the air
rarely settling into Redux.
December 30th
Joyless Eve
The tawdry tone of the nation
is not something you can ration.
Crooks in power, out of fashion.
The Fall Of Rome 2
On The Roman Palace front lawn
children of the barbarian
run riot, not long after dawn.
Consumerama
The now poisoned panorama
replete with the Roman Sauna,
in a return of the Uber.
From High Ponds
Did they fish in The River Fleet,
ante fame in The Dunciad
and dirt arriving in Fleet Street.
New Year's Eve
Everything is there to grieve
with all sense of proportion gone
as at Verdica, which all leave.
Augustan, To Armitage
Judging by your Cemetery
dither, unread The Elegy
by Gray. You, formless, chop bleary.
Camden Dead
broken subject to a Muslim Coup
in league with a dervish P.M.
The Army will rule a curfew.
December 31st near midnight
Nota Bene '26
I did once wonder if Lord G.
had been sent the same way as me
under Berlin, East Germany.
The route was under the radar
for America, deadly Russia.
I risked death, caught after capture.
and the Russians did kidnap, impromptu.
Finale To CT Hall
90 per cent of your people
of no military value
untrained, not even as gumshoe.
All must bow to a Church steeple.
Lowell Finale
An admirer of General
Franco ; and from bad car exhaust
would understand The Holocaust
after too many a bagel.
The Abominations
Coding for Camden School Children
in the main, unless from a Den
that taught respecting the better
a normal, saluting Maria.
Reading Vereen M. Bell
Lowell's worlds ran out of control
from him, becoming almost whole
but without a Catholic soul.
The water was cold by the mole.
January 1st 2026 some brief versicles
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