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Music: Sexual misery is wearing you out. Music: Known as the Philosopher’s Stair for the world-weariness which climbing it inspires. One gets nowhere with it. Paris: St-Sulpice in shrouds. Paris: You’re falling into disrepair, Eiffel Tower this means you! Swathed in gold paint, Enguerrand Quarton whispering come with me under the shadow of this gold leaf. Music: The unless of a certain series. Mathematics: Everyone rolling dice and flinging Fibonacci, going to the opera, counting everything. Fire: The number between four and five. Gold leaf: Wedding dress of the verb to have, it reminds you of of. Music: As the sleep of the just. We pass into it and out again without seeming to move. The false motion of the wave, “frei aber einsam.” Steve Evans: I saw your skull! It was between your thought and your face. Melisse: How I saw her naked in Brooklyn but was not in Brooklyn at the time. Art: That’s the problem with art. Paris: I was in Paris at the time! St-Sulpice in shrouds “like Katharine Hepburn.” Katharine Hepburn: Oh America! But then, writing from Paris in the thirties, it was to you Benjamin compared Adorno’s wife. Ghost citizens of the century, sexual misery is wearing you out. Misreading: You are entering the City of Praise, population two million three hundred thousand . . . Hausmann’s Paris: The daughter of Midas in the moment just after. The first silence of the century then the king weeping. Music: As something to be inside of, as inside thinking one feels thought of, fly in the ointment of the mind! Sign at Jardin des Plantes: GAMES ARE FORBIDDEN IN THE LABYRINTH. Paris: Museum city, gold lettering the windows of the wedding-dress shops in the Jewish Quarter. “Nothing has been changed,” sez Michael, “except for the removal of twenty-seven thousand Jews.” Paris 1968: The antimuseum museum. The Institute for Temporary Design: Scaffolding, traffic jam, barricade, police car on fire, flies in the ointment of the city. Gilles Ivain: In your tiny room behind the clock, your bent sleep, your Mythomania. Gilles Ivain: Our hero, our Anti-Hausmann. To say about Flemish painting: “Money-colored light.” Music: “Boys on the Radio.” Boys of the Marais: In your leather pants and sexual pose, arcaded shadows of the Place des Vosges. Mathematics: And all that motion you supposed was drift, courtyard with the grotesque head of Apollinaire, Norma on the bridge, proved nothing but a triangle fixed by the museum and the opera and St-Sulpice in shrouds. The Louvre: A couple necking in an alcove, in their brief bodies entwined near the Super-Radiance Hall visible as speech. Speech: The bird that bursts from the mouth shall not return. Pop song: We got your pretty girls they’re talking on mobile phones la la la. Enguerrand Quarton: In your dream gold leaf was the sun, salve on the kingdom of the visible. Gold leaf: The mind makes itself a Midas, it cannot hold and not have. Thus: I came to the city of possession. Sleeping: Behind the clock, in the diagon, in your endless summer night, in the city remaking itself like a wave in which people live or are said to live, it comes down to the same thing, an exaggerated sense of things getting done. Paris: The train station’s a museum, opera in the place of the prison. Later. The music lacquered with listen.

It seems like you could, but you can’t go back and pull the roots and runners and replant. It’s all too deep for that. You’ve overprized intention, have mistaken any bent you’re given for control. You thought you chose the bean and chose the soil. You even thought you abandoned one or two gardens. But those things keep growing where we put them— if we put them at all. A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall. Even the one vine that tendrils out alone in time turns on its own impulse, twisting back down its upward course a strong and then a stronger rope, the greenest saddest strongest kind of hope.

Once in late summer, the road already deep in twilight, mixing colors with some straggly wildflowers, I came to a village I did not know was there until I stepped into its narrow street. Admiring the prim, white houses nestled among their veteran, lofty trees, I found myself in a tiny square with a little dawdl- ing fountain and a rickety tower, its owlish clock absentmindedly counting minutes now and then. And in the fountain the face of morning seemed to linger as though searching. The air was fresh, breathing out the fragrances of a recent shower. I luxuriated in my senses, like meeting unexpectedly a pack of friends years and years unthought of, laden with all kinds of gifts. Then as I stopped to knock at the door of a house that had seemed occupied with happy noises, a silence fell on it, the light went out— and was it instant eyes like flakes, ten thousand, thousand flakes, and all unknowing, flurried round me? Wherever I turned I was met by the unmistakable accusation, “Stranger!” I, who had, I thought, begun here and who now required lodgings for the night, was denied and from the start.

Stripped to the waist, hard-muscled, downcast, under the guns of lounging guards, they are clearing a roadside across a palmetto landscape. I notice one blond boy swinging a pick, broad-shouldered.   His skin is smooth, bright, sweaty. His upright body ripples under the rigid fury of his face. His bulging eyes fixed on the ground can see mountains, the destiny of his imagination he can never get to, where he could rest, a lion in the wilderness of his flesh. I see the body with its own career of gestures— its bright roads, its dark roads apart, serene. . . Men must be carved, apparently, like slaughtered steers or pigs to find the marble of their bones innocent, innocent after all as the stones they break, or rain, or the guards in cages of their white voices. Trapped in one chained line, one terrifying combination of arrangements, driven to taste each other's flesh. . . The body sings alone among the earth's arrangements ignorant of crimes or dreams or the curious idea of justice.

Ohdammit sez John I’m in trouble so I sed why John? John sez I got the bill for my insurance and I haven’t got no money to pay it cause I won’t get paid for swoking and bailing Keith Guymon’s hay till next week I done told him that would be just fine when he ast a week ago but LaVerne she went and opened the damn envelope on a chain letter and I aint got no time to write out twenty copies I got to get that hay finished so what am I posta do now? I sez what John? John sez it’s the damn govament sends them things out I know it and it works with the post office and the insurance to keep you in line I sez what John? John sez my brother oncet he got this chain letter back home he didn’t have no time to write out his copies neither it sez he has four days to wrote it before the luck comes good or bad it aint never good I heard of be he forgot back then it was $5,000 this feller got in four days and then later when the govament ruint the money he put on a zero it was $50,000 and then it was $100,000 now it sez he got $420,000 it’s the same guy it was in that letter back then just the numbers changed it’s the way the govament has to let us know how much he’s gone let the money be worth but the next day because he hadn’t wrote out his twenty letters he lost all that money but my brother he was busy too he didn’t do his letters the third day after he had to go kill these pigs for this man but this other feller was gone bring his milkcow down get her bred to my brother’s bull he told him go ahead and do it he sez he’d have his boy walk her down the road it wasn’t far so while my brother was gone his boy brought her down turnt her in the corral he climbt up on the fence to watch it might of been fine except the hogs been rooting up under the barn wall my brother he borrowed this lectric fence he strung it along the side of the barn so the bull mounts up on the milkcow she turns and backs him up against the barn he’s stuckt he gets his back feet tangled in that lectric fence one in front and one back he tries to move and he just tightens up the lectric wire that boy he sez you could hear it zzip zzip zipp that bull he starts to bellering milkcow she don’t know what’s going on so she backs him up tighter against the barn it isn’t no way he can get off he commences to jumping up and down on her and trying to get his feet loost of that lectric wire but he caint it goes zzip he bellers and she backs up more it goes zzip again it was like he was doing a dance like them crazy people do trying to get his legs loost hollering like a sonofabitch so it was hogs there too they heard it and here they come it wasn’t natural and a hog it won’t let nothing that’s not natural stay that way around them it has to get right or go away or die that boy sez they all run up grunted and squolt like hell when that didn’t work this one old mean bitching sow she run right in between them she bit that bull right on his seeds she wanted him to stop acting that way making all that noise jumping up and down like that right now that bull he just went over backwards right up against the barn like he’d been shot in the head knocked the whole goddam end of the barn down fell right on his back the end rafter come down on his chest it torn a piece of skin off his pecker to his seeds wide as your hand they swolt up like basketballs from the hogbite broke ribs they figured but it never did kill him that milkcow she wan’t finished she kept backing up and fell down right on top of him it was only the end of the barn come down the rest stood up that boy he’s ascairt he got daddy’s milkcow up off my brother’s bull he left he sed he seen enough for oncet my brother that night he’s coming home from killing them hogs he never knew none of this happened yet he’s driving see? and he’d lost his picking finger on his left hand in the leaf springs of a wagon when we’s kids so he’s driving left-handed and doing the gears and picking with his right hand it was a moon out so he’d turned off his pickup lights listening to the radio because his battery wasn’t much good he couldn’t do both while he was driving he couldn’t see good as he thot he could he hit this big chuckhole slung him right into the steering wheel he figured it would of broke his nose if he hand’t been picking but his hand took the cushion it only gave him a nosebleed but almost broke his hand where it hit his knuckles was bruised so bad he couldn’t even open and shut his fingers for a week he had to drive the rest of the way home left-handed and lean acrost and shift with that hand too he thot the other one was broke but it wasn’t he got home and the first thing he seen was the end of his barn out that bull standing there inside the barn with his head down low my brother thot he’d butted it down he run in the house to get his gun he was mad he would of kilt that bull but they told him how it happened so he didn’t he went out to look but it wasn’t no way they could get that bull to go back in that yard where them pigs was he wouldn’t go out the barn they him him acrost the butt with a board he’d just stand there he didn’t care no more they went in the house my brother he got out the dishpan and soaked some cold water so he lain his hand in it to get the swollen to go down he wouldn’t tell them how it happened at first but while he was setting there with his hand ducked he remembered that chain letter he jumped up and run to get it sloshed water all over the kitchen floor he was hollering how long’s it been? how long’s it been? they sez it happened this morning it was just his morning he sez whar? they sez when the sow bit the bull on his seeds knocked the barn down he hollers no not that how long’s it been since I got this here chain letter in the mail? they sez oh three days he sez goddam I only got one day left my brother he set up all night writing out his twenty copies he had to tape the pencil to his hand cause it was swole up his fingers wouldn’t bent they sed he even wrote some with his left hand it was so bad you couldn’t read the words he got them all done by sunup the fourth day like it sed and took it to the mailbox he waited all morning on the porch till they remembered it was Memoral Day the mail he wouldn’t come my brother he about had a worm he run out to the mailbox and got them letters he run over to his pickup and clumb in it wouldn’t crunk he’d run the battery down listening to the radio goddam my brother he was mad he busted the side winder with his head when the pickup wouldn’t turn over jumped out and slammed the door so hard it didn’t catch it bounce right back and hit him right on his swole-up hand it hurt so bad he sez he nearly fainted of the pain he knew he had to get them letters in the mail so he walked all the way to town it was more’n ten miles back then it worked nothing else happened they got the end back in the barn without it coming down but they had to shoot the bull finally and eat him because he wouldn’t do nothing just set there and waste away he’d seen enough they guessed it wasn’t no way he’d go back out there with them pigs in the corral since then ever time we seen a envelope in my family it looks like it might be a chain letter we don’t open it till we got time to set down right then and make out them twenty copies like it sez to do but this time LaVerne must of forgot it snuck up on her when I got home it was laying on the table and it wasn’t nothing I could do it was my name on the envelope I know it come from the insurance company it was two years ago the man’s wife from the insurance called she sez to LaVerne then that she wanted her to come to her house she wanted to tell her about selling Amway LaVerne she sez she wasn’t inarrested a week later here comes the insurance bill by god it’s gone up almost double I sez how come you didn’t go? you could of just set and nod now see what happened? but it was too late so I’m gone to have to stay up tonight writing chain letters I done wrote one to send to the insurance so he’ll know I did it and let the govament know I wrote him a note on the bottom and sez I’ll pay the insurance bill as soon as I can but things is tough all over I just hope he’ll understand I’d as soon right now rather not have no luck at all but I am willing to cooperate if that’s what my duty is as a patriotic American citizen

These are the seasons Persephone promised as she turned on her heel— the ones that darken, till green no longer bandages what I feel. Now touches of gold stipple the branches, promising weeks of time to fade through, finding the footprints she left as she turned to climb.

A chair in snow should be like any other object whited & rounded and yet a chair in snow is always sad more than a bed more than a hat or house a chair is shaped for just one thing to hold a soul its quick and few bendable hours perhaps a king not to hold snow not to hold flowers

You see them on porches and on lawns down by the lakeside, usually arranged in pairs implying a couple who might sit there and look out at the water or the big shade trees. The trouble is you never see anyone sitting in these forlorn chairs though at one time it must have seemed a good place to stop and do nothing for a while. Sometimes there is a little table between the chairs where no one is resting a glass or placing a book facedown. It might be none of my business, but it might be a good idea one day for everyone who placed those vacant chairs on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them for the sake of remembering whatever it was they thought deserved to be viewed from two chairs side by side with a table in between. The clouds are high and massive that day. The woman looks up from her book. The man takes a sip of his drink. Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking, the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird then another, cries of joy or warning— it passes the time to wonder which.

The challenge: to start not with theory but with tangible performance You and others, approaching We shall be asked for a way out to be fed to keep warm and dry Starting with experience, magic genuine science More than once we have been lost in a trackless wilderness dwarfed and shadowed by mighty buildings subway trains wild as elephants One goes blindly back to one’s desk These moments come, their dark shadow We glimpsed control and more tragic waste We entered with 40,000,000 warriors with the dignity of cathedrals The lake is upon you. You have two canoes, your tent The child has entered upon this desert You have your axes What, precisely, is your procedure?

for Jack Kerouac IN LIGHT ROOM IN DARK HELL IN UMBER IN CHROME, I sit feeling the swell of the cloud made about by movement of arm leg and tongue. In reflections of gold light. Tints and flashes of gold and amber spearing and glinting. Blur glass…blue Glass, black telephone. Matchflame of violet and flesh seen in the clear bright light. It is not night and night too. In Hell, there are stars outside. And long sounds of cars. Brown shadows on walls in the light of the room. I sit or stand wanting the huge reality of touch and love. In the turned room. Remember the long-ago dream of stuffed animals (owl, fox) in a dark shop. Wanting only the purity of clean colors and new shapes and feelings. I WOULD CRY FOR THEM USELESSLY I have ten years left to worship my youth Billy the Kid, Rimbaud, Jean Harlow IN DARK HELL IN LIGHT ROOM IN UMBER AND CHROME I feel the swell of smoke the drain and flow of motion of exhaustion, the long sounds of cars the brown shadows on the wall. I sit or stand. Caught in the net of glints from corner table to dull plane from knob to floor, angles of flat light, daggers of beams. Staring at love’s face. The telephone in cataleptic light. Marchflames of blue and red seen in the clear grain. I see myself—ourselves—in Hell without radiance. Reflections that we are. The long cars make sounds and brown shadows over the wall. I am real as you are real whom I speak to. I raise my head, see over the edge of my nose. Look up and see that nothing is changed. There is no flash to my eyes. No change to the room. Vita Nuova—No! The dead, dead world. The strain of desire is only a heroic gesture. An agony to be so in pain without release when love is a word or kiss.