Ulysses
SIMON: Think of your mother’s people!
STEPHEN: Dance of death.
(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey’s bell, horse, nag, steer,
piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in
cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe
through and through. Baraabum! On nags hogs bellhorses
Gadarene swine Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled
nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram
filling bawling gum he’s a champion. Fuseblue peer from
barrel rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind cod-
doubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes. Then
in last switchback lumbering up and down bump mashtub
sort of viceroy and reine relish for tublumber bumpshire rose.
Baraabum!)
(The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room
whirls back. Eyes closed he totters. Red rails fly spacewards.
Stars all around suns turn roundabout. Bright midges dance
on walls. He stops dead.)
STEPHEN: Ho!
(Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor,
in leper grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a
torn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with grave-
mould. Her hair is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled
hollow eyesockets on Stephen and opens her toothless mouth
uttering a silent word. A choir of virgins and confessors sing
voicelessly.)
THE CHOIR:Liliata rutilantium te confessorum ...