Sterility

Mr Skogen ought to pass on his intelligence to little Scogens and Dennis to little Dennises.

The bull turned his head to see what was happening regarded the drumming stick for several seconds Then turned back again satisfied, it seemed that nothing was happening Sterility was odious unnatural A sin against life Life, life And still more life The ribs of the placid bull resounded Standing with his back against the farmyard pump A little apart Dennis examined the group Gambo Passionate and vivacious Was its center The others stood round listening Henry Wimbush Calm and polite Beneath his gray bowler Mary With parted lips And eyes That shone with the indignation Of a convinced birth controller Ann looked on through half shut eyes Smiling And beside her Stood Mr Skogen Bolt upright In an attitude of metallic rigidity That contrasted strangely With that fluid grace of hers Which even in stillness Suggested a soft movement Gambo ceased talking And Mary Flushed and outraged Opened her mouth To refute him But she was too slow Before she could utter a word Mr Skogen's fluty voice Had pronounced the opening phrases Of a discourse There was no hope Of getting so much As a word in edgeways Mary had perforce To resign herself Even your eloquence My dear Gambo He was saying Even your eloquence Must prove inadequate To reconvert the world To a belief in the delights Of mere multiplication With the gramophone The cinema And the automatic pistol The goddess of applied science Has presented the world With another gift More precious even than these The means of dissociating life From propagation Eros For those who wish it Is now An entirely free god His deplorable associations With Lucina May be broken At will In the course of the next few centuries Who knows The world may see A more complete severance I look forward to it Optimistically Where the great Erasmus Darwin And Miss Anna Seward Swan of Litchfield Experimented And For all their scientific ardour Failed Our descendants Will experiment And succeed An impersonal generation Will take the place Of nature's hideous system In vast state incubators Rows upon rows Of gravid bottles Will supply the world With the population it requires The family system Will disappear Society Sapped at its very base Will have to find New foundations And eros Beautifully and irresponsibly Free Will flit Like a gay butterfly From flower to flower Through a sunlit world It sounds lovely Said anne The distant future Always does Mary's china blue Eyes More serious And more astonished Than ever Were fixed On mr skogan Bottles She said Do you really think So Bottles End of chapter five Recording by expatriate In bangor maine Chapter six Mr barbecue smith Arrived in time For tea On saturday afternoon He was a Short and corpulent man With a very large Head and no neck In his Earlier middle age He had been Distressed By this absence Of neck But was comforted By reading In balzac's Louis lambert That All the world's Great men Have Been marked By This same peculiarity And for a simple And obvious reason Greatness is Nothing more Nor less Than the harmonious Functioning of the faculties Of the head and heart The shorter the Neck The more closely These two organs Approach One Another Argau It was Convincing Mr Barbecue Smith Belonged to the Old school Of journalists He sported a Leonine head With a grayish Black mane Of oddly Unappetizing Hair Brushed Back from abroad But low Forehead And somehow He always Seemed slightly Ever so Slightly soiled In younger days He had gaily Called himself A bohemian He did so No longer He was a Teacher Now A kind of Prophet Some of his books of comfort and spiritual teaching were in their hundred and twentieth thousand.

Priscilla received him with every mark of esteem.

He had never been to Crome before.