Socrates’ Cock
Confesses his body The gripful of daggers. And confesses his skin – the bedaubed, begauded Eagle-dancer. His heart – The soul-stuffed despot. His stomach – The corpse-eating god. And his hard life-lust – the blind Swan of insemination. And his hard brain – the sacred assassin. On a flame-horned mountain-stone, in the sun’s disc, He heaps them all up, for the judgement. So there his atoms are annealed, as in X-rays, Of their blood-aberration – His mudded body, lord of middens, like an ore, To rainbowed clinker and beatitude.
Socrates’ Cock - meaning Summary
Judgement Through Bodily Transformation
The poem presents Socrates' cock as a figure of radical self-exposure and judgement. It separates the body into violent, animal-like forces: appetite, sexuality, intellect, and the body itself. These elements are gathered on a symbolic mountain for purification. The ending imagines matter transformed from degraded "mud" into radiant clinker, suggesting that confronting bodily impulses may lead to a harsh kind of spiritual renewal.
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