162 City poems

5 THE TRANSLUCENT MECHANICS Combed thru the piers the wind Moves in the clever city Not in the doors but the hinges Finds the secret of motion As tho the hollow ships moved in their voices,   murmurs Flaws In the wind Fear        fear At the lumber mastheads And fetched a message out of the sea again Say angel                say powers Obscurely   ‘things And the self’ Prosody Sings In the stones to entrust To a poetry of statement At close quarters A living mind ‘and that one’s own’ what then             what spirit Of the bent seas Archangel of the tide brimming in the moon-streak comes in whose absence earth crumbles 6 Silver as The needle’s eye Of the horizon in the noise Of their entrance row on row the waves Move landward        conviction’s Net of branches In the horde of events the sacred swarm avalanche Masked in the sunset Needle after needle more numerous than planets Or the liquid waves In the tide rips We believe       we believe Beyond the cable car streets And the picture window Lives the glittering crumbling night Of obstructions and the stark structures That carry wires over the mountain One writes in the presence of something Moving close to fear I dare pity no one Let the rafters pity The air in the room Under the rafters Pity In the continual sound Are chords Not yet struck Which will be struck Nevertheless yes 7 O withering seas Of the doorstep and local winds unveil The face of art Carpenter, plunge and drip in the sea Art’s face We know that face More blinding than the sea    a haunted house    a limited Consensus unwinding Its powers Toward the thread’s end In the record of great blows   shocks Ravishment   devastation   the wood splintered The keyboard gone in the rank grass swept her hand Over the strings and the thing rang out Over the rocks and the ocean Not my poem   Mr Steinway’s Poem   Not mine   A ‘marvelous’ object Is not the marvel of things twisting the new Mouth   forcing the new Tongue   But it rang 8 THE TASTE Old ships are preserved For their queer silence of obedient seas Their cutwaters floating in the still water With their cozy black iron work And Swedish seamen dead    the cabins Hold the spaces of their deaths And the hammered nails of necessity Carried thru the oceans Where the moon rises grandly In the grandeur of cause We have a taste for bedrock Beneath this spectacle To gawk at Something is wrong with the antiques, a black fluid Has covered them, a black splintering Under the eyes of young wives People talk wildly, we are beginning to talk wildly, the wind At every summit Our overcoats trip us Running for the bus Our arms stretched out In a wind from what were sand dunes 9 THE IMPOSSIBLE POEM Climbing the peak of Tamalpais the loose Gravel underfoot And the city shining with the tremendous wrinkles In the hills and the winding of the bay Behind it, it faces the bent ocean Streetcars Rocked thru the city and the winds Combed their clumsy sides In clumsy times Sierras withering Behind the storefronts And sanity the roadside weed Dreams of sports and sportsmanship In the lucid towns paralyzed Under the truck tires Shall we relinquish Sanity to redeem Fragments and fragmentary Histories in the towns and the temperate streets Too shallow still to drown in or to mourn The courageous and precarious children 10 BUT SO AS BY FIRE The darkness of trees Guards this life Of the thin ground That covers the rock ledge Among the lanes and magic Of the Eastern woods The beauty of silence And broken boughs And the homes of small animals The green leaves Of young plants Above the dark green moss In the sweet smell of rot The pools and the trickle of freshwater First life,   rotting life Hidden starry life it is not yet A mirror Like our lives We have gone As far as is possible Whose lives reflect light Like mirrors One had not thought To be afraid Not of shadow but of light Summon one’s powers

You watch the night like a material Slowly being crammed into a tube of rooms; It showers into gunshot, pepper, dew, As if a hand had squeezed it at one end, Is blank as innocence when daylight comes Projecting sunlit patches on the wall That fade. Too much is going on, too much Of life, you say, for you to live alone On top of an old tenement, on a train That might start off sometime, but never does. Your view is gone. Turn around, and boom!, A park appears between two fixed ideas Whose narrow aperture of sky in time Will house the slums of 1989 . . . Now New York is feigning its gray dark London winter. Invisible uptown Is out there somewhere, raining on its own. Palmed in the dusty pane, a circle bares A scene that seems reprinted from the past: A man with a dog is walking very fast Along a path among the stunted trees Of the little square below. He disappears.

When it is cold it stinks, and not till then. The seasonable or more rabid heats Of love and summer in some other cities Unseal the all too human: not in his. When it is cold it stinks, but not before; Smells to high heaven then most creaturely When it is cold. It stinks, but not before His freezing eye has done its best to maim, To amputate limbs, livelihood and name, Abstracting life beyond all likelihood. When it is cold it stinks, and not till then Can it be fragrant. On canal and street, Colder and colder, Murphy to Molloy, The weather hardens round the Idiot Boy, The gleeful hero of the long retreat. When he is cold he stinks, but not before, This living corpse. The existential weather Smells out in these abortive minims, men Who barely living therefore altogether Live till they die; and sweetly smell till then.

This poem was found written on a paper bag by Richard Brautigan in a laundromat in San Francisco. The author is unknown. By accident, you put Your money in my Machine (#4) By accident, I put My money in another Machine (#6) On purpose, I put Your clothes in the Empty machine full Of water and no Clothes It was lonely.

Sankt Georg, what was it, questionable, doubtful, shady, twilit, a something area, something  Jan said, and he was born in Hamburg, and went to school here, so he would know. A little isthmus between the Alster with its freshwater sailors and the railway station, always a reliable drag on things anywhere in Europe (the transients, the drugs, the preset collisions between the foolish young and the unscrupulous old), though this one piped classical music — 
not anymore — to the forecourt, where taxi drivers got out and walked their Mercs around in neutral because they were hours without a fare and were saving diesel (which was all very well in summer), and the immediate, somehow always slightly grubby or compromised view of three theatres, two museums, and le Carré’s bunker hotel, but, hey, it was classy while it lasted, and you could get to Milan or Moscow if you had to. Then the Polizeibezirk of underage Puppenstrich about the time B. came here from the country, still often the only girl not on the game, among whores and winos and people “with an immigration background” looking grim and wearing subfusc and doing the messages, as we once said. Then gays — is there a pink euro, like a pink pound, and the Pink Pistols and gray wolves? — intrepid advance guard of gentrification. So up the rents, send in the heavies, firebomb the buildings, locals out, make improvements, and up the rents again, same everywhere. A natty pellucid pissoir in the Hanser Platz that it would take Paris to pull off, drunks round the monument (“reel around the fountain”), hardy trees and hardier women, little roosters, little rosters in the apartment block for cleaning the common parts, little brass squares set in the ground for individual fascist outrages, with the victims’ names, the massy church at the end of the street — St. George’s, the AIDS church, the rainbow flag, the incendiary community paper called the Dragon. Sudden sad flurries of flowers, the curt pairs of dates, a grown-out bleached person with one leg. The main drag changed utterly, meaning as usual stylistic diktat from elsewhere and the birth of an interchangeably frippish hideousness. Three hat shops, an empty tea bar (tax write-off? money laundry?) boasting sixteen varieties of macaroons, endless places to stop (if you even wanted to stop) on the narrow pavement between the heedless cars and the nosy passersby, expensive ready-cooked food shops with names like Mom’s, gone the hardware store that stocked everything and was staffed by people who advised you where to find it for even less, out of business, or moved away to less promising parts. The photo shops, the record store, bookshop. All gone. And behind that, the Steindamm, our belly and balls, twinned with Kabul, or Mombasa, or Abuja. Telephone shops if you wanted to call anywhere with a red, green, and black flag (launch pad of Ali Ağca and his crew of martyrs), casinos, thorny or hairy vegetables, fetish stores, Alphonso mangoes from Pakistan, video brothels, limitless mint and parsley and cilantro, hourly hotels, cracked olives and fresh cheese, old girls with three words of German, newly baked flatbread. The birds strike up between three and four (it’s the Northern light), while at lit intersections they never stop. Twilit, doubtful, shady, something. Questionable.

Someone decapitated all Birds of Paradise along Ocean Avenue; strollers and shoes trample the discarded beaks. She keeps walking. At noon a hallway speaker booms Code Blue Code Blue one minute before her grandson is born. In the evening, a nurse hands him to her: clean, swaddled, murmuring: the fullness of his being spears her. Why didn’t I pick them up? she wonders, arms tightening around the infant, whispers I still carry you! to her son when he comes to take his child.

for Allen Ginsberg Having returned at last and being carefully seated On the floor—somebody else's floor, as usual— Far away across that ocean which looked Through Newport windows years ago—somebody else's livingroom— Another messed-up weedy garden Tall floppy improbably red flowers All the leaves turned over in the rain Ridged furry scrotum veins Hedges glisten tile roof tin roof telephone pole Decoratively tormented black pine Slowly repeating its careful program Endlessly regretting but here is original done once Not to be reproduced nor electronically remembered Loosen up.    Festoon. An enormous drop of pure water suddenly there Right in the center of preceding page Nothing can be done about that. The line was ruined. OK. Belt hair. A bend is funnier. Bar Kochba. Do something About it. Like animal factory mayhem. The master said, "You shouldn't have put Yourself into such a position In the first place." Nevertheless, It all looks different, right to left. Another master said, "Well, You can always take more, you know." The wind went by just now South Dakota. Who's responsible for this Absurd revival of the Byzantine Empire, Sioux Falls-Mitchell-Yankton area? Further anomalies of this order will receive Such punishment as a Court Martial may direct Or the discretion of the Company Commander Failure to conform with these regulations Shall be punished by Court Martial TAKE ALL YOU WANT BUT EAT ALL YOU TAKE The following named Enlisted Men are transf RESTRICTED, SPECIAL ORDER #21 this HQ dd 8 Feb 1946 contained 6 Pars.C E N S O R E D 3. Fol EM, White, MCO indicated, ASRS indicated, AF2AF, are reld fr asgmt and dy this HQ and trfd in gr to 37th AAFBU, Dorje Field, Lhasa, TIBET and WP at such time as will enable them to arrive therat not later than 20 Feb 1946 rptg to CO for dy C E N S O R E D Or such punishment as a Court Martial may direct I used to travel that way. Always take a little more. This is called "A controlled habit." (Don't look at me, I never said a murmuring word.) Didn't you say, "polished water?" I normally wouldn't say so. Wasp in the bookshelf rejects Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, The Goliard Poets, A Vedic Reader, Lama Govinda, Medival French Verses & Romances, Long Discourses of the Buddha, and The Principal Upanishads. Window glass reads more entertainingly But soon that too is left for the foxtail grass Camellia hedge, the dull mid-morning sun followed by accidental descent into goofball drift unintentionally but such is the cost of knowledge recollections of Jack in Berkeley Nembies & grass & wine Geraniums, ripe apricots, & plums Clio's green and slanting eyes Gentle smile of pointed face How much love I owe to her and to all women My mother tried to warn me, "Let your sister ride the bike a while; Don't be so damned selfish!" How can Victorian American lady Explain to her son that his cock Doesn't belong exclusively to himself But also to certain future women? It's a matter of some reassurance That we are physically indistinguishable from other men. When introspection shows us That we have different degrees of intelligence Varying capacities for knowing morality We lose something of our complacency Rooty-toot Rooty-toot We're the boys From the Institute I wondered recently what school was being lampooned In this impudent snatch of gradeschool melody Recollection of obscene & early childhood. If Socrates and Plato and Diotima And all the rest of the folks at that party Had simply eaten lots of food and wine and dope And spent the entire weekend in bed together Perhaps Western Civilization Wouldn't have been such a failure? Rooty-toot, Plato's Original Institute Much of the morning sweeping consists of clearing away Bodies of several hundred insects who followed my lightglobes And perished here. After 49 days each one of them will be reborn Each in a different shape in a different world Each according to the quality of his actions In all his past existences. What a system. Hi-de-ho. Rooty-toot-toot. Normally I wouldn't say no. Rooty-toot is what any bugle, horn or trumpet Is thought of as "saying," the sound of a fart. Years later I found the trumpeting devils in the Inferno M U S H All dropped untidy into the bottom of my skull A warped red plastic phonograph record (the labels says Emperor Concerto) floats on top, inaudible; Nevertheless, light comes through it in a pleasant way Precisely the color of raspberry licorice whips. It got bent in the mail, too near the steampipes... The music is in there someplace, squeezed into plastic At enormous expense of knowledge, "FIRE IN THE BORGO" luke-warm mush, then cold milk poured over it chills and transforms the entire arrangement gradually tending towards an ineradicable (nonbiodegradable) plastic resembling "Bakelite," shiny brown It shatters if you drop it hard Changed again! Turned 180 degrees in an Unexpected direction Bent Beethoven,Burnt Njal I have lived All these years until this moment Without understanding there's absolutely nothing Which I can do well (RING BELL THREE TIMES) N O T H I N G "Har-de-har." What do you mean, "Har-de-har"? Nothing, just "Har-de-har." I might have said, "Hi-de-ho." "O Mighty Nothing!"       (How does the Wicked Earl begin?) "Then all proceeded from the great united..." (what?) "And from thy frutiful emptiness's hand Snatch'd Men, Beasts, Birds, Fire (Water), Air and Land" John Wilmot Earl of Rochester. The parenthesized water is presented to us On good authority by the Editor, Vivian De Sola Pinto. I found my mother's name Written there three hundred years ago. "I don't know whether we can or not. Hee-hee! Let's try!" W A L K   L I G H T! I don't know anything about it There are two long-bearded apprehensive gremlins One beside each of my ears. The left-hand one Very gently whispers, "Hello?" and Listens for a reply from the other side. He repeats, "Hello?" very softly. "Are you Still there?" And the right-hand one listening And nodding, his own ear turned towards that furry dark Pink and lavender cave. Presently he replies (Also very softly) "Hello!" Across the blank echoing empty dark between. I think I'll go take a bath. Well, come on, who is it, if it isn't for gremlins— Some other of those revolting British creations for children Subject of PhD theses in American universities Big eyes, charm, lots of fur all over Stage-set by Arthur Rackham I'm really going to take a bath now. I split wood (gift of the landlord) while water Plooshes into iron pot. Make fire underneath. Bless these elements! Their nature and use Connect me to this place (The Capital) its history Temple bell rings (No Self. No Permanence.) Fiery waters all around The iron bathtub is history, its name,goemon-buro A Goemon bath, he was a highway robber, caught at last And cooked to death in a pot of boiling oil On the bank of the Kamo River. Unveiling and Elevation of the Wienie (RING GONG THREE TIMES) Kyoto October 2, 1969 a graceful poem In fond & grateful memory of Mr W. S. All Happinesse Outline of Hieizan almost invisible behind the hedge (Not my hedge but the one at Daitokuji Hojo) Kamo River uniform white lines pouring down Solidly moulded over stone barrage Foam across great fitted paving blocks (The Dalles!) Its man-made bed rowdy-dow beyond the foam thick purple From dye-vats along Takano River Green shaved patch on dark moutainside    DAIMONJI which we saw as a pattern of fire from Arashiyama Bridge paper lanterns floating in the River Oi Souls returning to the flowery shore, the Wind's Angelic Face Puffing, happy Wallace Stevens Birthday Heavenly Baroque paradise where he sails Far New Haven's Other Shore Cherubic winds flap his coronation robes Dash silver on his golden harp and starry brow An extravagant Handelian heaven Lavender wings of peacock feather eyes All Memling enamel (Mr Yeats a little jealous) Harps of "omnipotent power" ("OHO, OMNIPOTENT POW-ER OHO! OH JOY DIVINE!" Gregory Corso imitating Peter Ustinov Nero-movie) Too busy to see anyone in New York A few French paintings, shoeshine New tweed English pants two pounds real Camembert cheese Who is there to see in New York anyway Everybody's moved to Balinas (I dreamed last night of Margot Doss) And so home again, among roses "Arcades of Philadelphia The Past" a piece of Idaho scenic agate A crystal ball "Of Hartford in a Purple Light" And supper on "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" Where you never lived but always heaven Along with Stéphane Mallarmé and all the marble swans. I keep thinking about all the really great ones (To paraphrase Mr Spender) I think Like anybody living in a foreign country Of home and money... There's probably Some sensible human way of living in America Without being rich or drunk or taking dope all the time FRED, IS THAT MUSIC? DO I SHAKE OR WEEP? 3:X:69 Thomas Wolfe's Birthday "he'd say ok and we'd start in and every time I'd presently find myself going involuntarily ulk, ulk, ulk, which seemed to inspire him to even wilder extravagances," FRED IS THAT MUSIC? DO I FAKE OR LEAP? To my horror & chagrin I see that I've suppressed Lots of goody in the process of copying from ms to typewriter; Mike warned me years ago, "You should always Make them reproduce your handwritten pages." ( O V E R L A P ) overleaf clover I said rowdy-dow (picture of leaves) poo. beyond the foam thick purple. Takano River dye-vats there's not a way in the world I can explain to you you just have to get in and start doing it yourself green shaved patch right half of the big DAIMONJI "Every place is the same Because I felt the same, remembering everything We boated for hours on the Lake of Constance Went swimming in the Blue Grotto, ate sheep's eyes And chicken guts in Crete. The blue tiles of Isfahan Were better or worse than the blue tiles around the late Mr__,his swimming pool at San Simeon." And the man from Intourist at Tbilisi who so much Resembled him: "Everything being the same everything is naturally different" Here in the Shinshindo Coffee Shop again that blonde young lady who just disappeared into— and so swiftly reappeared out of—the benjo was not that funny girl who used to write for Newsweek but may as well have been— right this minute asleep in London, Sydney or Tashkent three new little trees just beyond north end of goldfish pond. I peer among the branches in search of the blonde who now sits inside I am in arbor outside the number of goldfish seven or nine One is color of polished metal that girl's hair is a paler shade (streetcar fills the window 1 1/2 seconds) the hard chairs and benches here, big tables probably not like the ones in Reed College library. Fits of psychic imperialism I attach tags, carve initials, pee on fireplugs outlining my territory is that blonde still there sort of ecru-colored minidress, thin cloth, heavy coat thick pale hair, untidy braid half undone behind small pointy nose, chin recedes a little there's no point in returning until I find out why did I have to come all the way back here endless belt of punch-cards travels through the neighbor's loom repetition of a pattern from a long time back here's one who eats a hardboiled egg, rolls, hot milk and a picture magazine. His friend's weak eyes read a little book German metaphysics translated into literary Japanese vague to vague two giant galaxies passing through into and beyond each other, a radio receiver on a planet several thousand light years off might well tune in on a stupendous music, FOOOREENG! &c (Karl-Heinz Stockausen) chancre star when you get to the end, stop Bill Whosis drunk & yelling in front of Sanjo Station End of the Tokaido Road Kamogawa sluicing fast under Sanjo Bridge The wooden posts and railings shown by Hokusai guard the asphalt concrete way "Why don't you walk?" a way of living in America doesn't really invite a narrow pen point plink under they penthouse lid they eye they milky forehead, Yaquina Bay, Yachats, Neptune Park (Tillie the Whale flashes past just north or south of Yachats?) I can imagine living there as my grandmother did gathering wild blackberries driving out towards Gresham for a mess of green corn time for melons, grapes & Chinook salmon at The Dalles, dig mud clams at Netarts Bay Family all over the place, friends from the old Kilpatrick Hotel, bring blackberry jam fresh string beans and salmon She wanted her hotel in winter good steam heat, parties and dances The Lonesome Club, Cotillion Ballroom Earliest spring flowers and pussywillows Green slime and moss and mud evergreen and fern smell of woman, beyond enormous plate-glass windows The Studebaker black sedan. All this lost again, galmed up for fair where's the minute particulars? what was I thinking of? I keep thinking of those really great ones like Confucius: "What am I supposed to do, become rich & famous?" People keep introducing me to the famous English Poet We have been introduced to each other once every ten years For a very long time. He has no reason to remember meeting Me, since the conversation is limited to "how do you do?" And he's considerably taller than I am. I think all the time I can't forgive him For jamming that "nk" sound against the initial "C" Nor for the blackmail word, "truly" I can't stop thinking about ... I keep thinking all the time about those Absolutely splendid (that isn't so sharp, either) Well, somewhere there's an exact & absolutely wild poetical equivalent to Mr X's most often quoted line, & if he had found it & used it I should have swooned with awe & pleasure when I was first introduced to him, & afterwards we might have been able to talk together? Fred, is that music? Do I shake or weep? Did you fall or was you pushed? Did I run and was I tired Years gone by, twelve years agone I must have had about me then some final faded blink of beauty Fred asked me to marry him, he would be 21 fairly soon I never had a greater compliment. It's too bad we were sexually incompatible He's the only one who ever asked me. No matter how odd the fancy I remember him Happily at the entrance to old age I haven't been a total failure after all. Paul Gauguin went someplace there was light enough to see And it made him a painter. (?) N. Hawthorne to Italy H. Melville to the Southern Sea, beyond the neighborhood of Christian gentlefolk Fred, is that music that I fake or leap? Lion-faced Paul Gauguin fingers and toes Cock and nose all sloughing gradually away Leprosy melted him, northern snowman Disadvantages of a lovely climate "White men go to pieces in the Tropics" I can't stop thinking about those who really knew What they were doing, Paul Gauguin, John Wieners, LeRoi Jones I keep thinking of those great ones who never fled the music Fred and his roommate with bottled hair All of them yarded off to Viet Nam Translated into Rugged American Fighting Men Defending the Free World against Godless Atheistic Communism ("I am a U.S. Marine. I like to fuck and I like to fight: What's it going to be?") Which makes it impossible to like the Illiad Sadist faggotry too much like Parris Island The Green Berets and the cops back home Somebody else's castration fantasies acted out In an ideal climate but why should the world be different Why should it continue in its present nasty way? and it changes every nanosecond, lovely, dreadful, smashed dismembered and devoured by prajna Events like the Indo-China War Final quivers and tremblings Neural flashes in freshly killed men (movie of Bonnie & Clyde) The longer I think about it The more I doubt that there is such a thing as Western Civilization. A puritan commercial culture Was transplanted from Europe to U.S.A. in the 17th Century American Indians were a civilized people. I remember when L.A. had an ideal climate "Everybody wants complete privacy in the Hollywood Hills for $35 a month," the real estate lady told C.L.T. She wore this big Marianne Moore garden party hat rocky face petrified lap-dog. "You don't want to live over there, Honey, there's Dark Clouds in that neighborhood." C. & Shirley escaped to Europe and New Mexico Bottom of my waterglass, pentagonal crystal The light changes passing through, bent by glass into color and we are a rainbow, no matter how we love or hate it We are beautiful red and black and yellow and brown and white Maybe a few Swedes or Finns are green in the winter time If they get cold enough. How can we not be miraculously Beautiful colors which betray our true nature which is love And wisdom, compassion and enlightenment, "Six times three is eighteen" In Takagamine tiny old lady turns towards a Jizo shrine Across the street, A short prayer, umbrella in one hand, the other held up Before her (gassho) and then bowed very slowly (She really meant it) first head and neck, and then The waist, very slowly down and back again. Jizo-samma certainly must have felt obliged To attend immediately and in person to that lady's Children and departed relatives. Being Jizo-samma He has exactly time and energy and compassion enough To do exactly that, right now. can this be straight description of observation without intending to embarrass or attack anybody, without waving my arms and yelling does Mr Gauguin's palette go towards a muddiness even the tropical pictures are faintly greyed fluorescent lights in gallery (Kyoto Municipal Museum) varnish going bad or the pigments themselves breaking down? look again fishpond looks clean fish are newly polished Frog-child's baby sister has come to ride her tricycle orange teddy-bear strapped to her back the same way her mother carries her The papa comes to pound a large flat shoe on fishpond rim fish whirl round in fits, then he scatters crumbs on water goldfish feed There is a wonderful kind of writing Which is never written    NOW About this moment. It's always done later And redone until it is perfect. Praying mantis moored to top of a flower stalk Grooms itself like a canary Preens Two tailfeathers I wonder whether Wordsworth was subject to fits Of feeblemindedness or simply had a low opinion Of his readers? Bigger mantis upside-down on glass door. Who else has a face like that: hammerhead shark another cannibal Strong mothball smell emanates form English poetry & prose After the death of Wm Blake...or a little before It is detectable in Keats, Shelley, Byron...mothballs And flannel. Smell of Established Church. Industrialism And Empire building: same Whiggery rules us now I've got to go sort out my guts. "What have you been doing these days?" Just sorting out my guts. disentangling and Re-coiling them neatly back in place The same operation must be performed Upon the telephone cord, every now and again Je m'en vais à le Toji, in memory of Kobo Daishi Fleamarket day. I greet you from the very top of the page an single branch of stovewood smolders under the bathtub, the brand of Meleager still high but able to cook, eat, write, make bath, SWEAT they ring the bell again I hope all sentient beings attain complete perfect final enlightenment which is exactly who I am or not all my greasy fingers coffee-break time down at the Emergency Factory early in the war, before we all got uniform shot but now you are trying to confuse me about having my eyes shut My name is Chauncey M. Depew and it is November 11, 1910 What do you think of that, hey? STOP IT, I SAY, STOP THIS TRUMPERY OF MOCKERY mockery trumpery pink chenille fuzz elephant baby mockery trumpery trumpery mockery mongery            freeny-monger?                     fundle Our main difficulty: fear and distrust of freedom We think it must be carefully measured Weighed and doled out in discreet quantities To responsible persons of good character and high Social standing; people with lots of money which is evidence Of their reliability and moral quality Liberty in other hands is "license" Difficulties compounded by idea of "consent" And theory of "delegated powers." Hire specialists to run everything. But the powers they derive from us Relieve these governors of all responsibility Somehow become vast personal wealth— Fortunes which must be protected from "license" and "the violence of the mob" We find our freedom diminished (KING LEAR) Delegation a license for the abuse of power say, just what are you trying to prove, anyway? What do I care about proving anything Only bust chains & shackles that we may slip anchor Haul-ass away to the making of Paradise Where now are only fraudulent states, paint-factories Lies and stinks and wars One kid put it clear as may be: "I want America to be magic electrical Tibet" Or Kozanji, for example, a little NW of the Capital Absolutely defenseless, abbot's house on pointed mountain Top, delicate walls Multitudes of people drifting through it Footless ghosts, no fingers, empty parkas The billows of smoke of burnt and burning leaves The silence, unbroken purity existing in the world Cuts down impatience Leaf jewels rage and brilliant silence Cold flames: Fudo-Myo-o Carved fire, sculptured flame world net wall Momentary bird-heads eyes beaks all swirl crimson ray Beams yellow streaked. He isn't in the fire he's made of it The light cool zap-energy sword the gentle hat of lotus flower Big square feet on solid rock Takao-yama As I looked at them they must see me, flaming All absurd, film of mistaken proprieties Culture of dim Oregon farmhouse to burn to dispose of Instantly If what is real can be created or destroyed Clouds move above maples Change colors we walk beneath Colored spaces mean something else— Where in all this tight and elegant disorder . . . . . . Walk on down Kiyotaki River canyon from Jingoji Missed the trail, found confluence of Kiyotaki and Hozu rivers Smooth grey-green cliffs of single rock Heavy green water, no way back to the Capital Except by boat, voyage in raging maple colors Over dragon rocks of dream. Late extravagant lunch, Arashiyama, Hurricane Ridge I just reread a little of The Prelude To which I could only reply, “You poor fish.” GOD KNOWS THE SPARROW FELL: GOD SHOVED HIM. Let’s go visit the tomb of Emperor Murakami Look at autumn leaves but there light rain starts falling I had hoped to visit big rock on the hillside, also But came back home I want my umbrella I want my lunch RAIN serious, wet rain discovered the tomb of KOKO TENNO Between the parkway and the trolley track due south of noodle shop RAY OF FILIAL DUTY who ordered the Ninnaji to be And the next emperor was first abbot there: UDA TENNO His Muroji Palace Here come the maidens dancing That song they are singing that song which you shall Be listening is call “The Song of the Panicled Millet” In the Chinese classical node In America we’ve been fighting each other 100 years We pretend we’re unimaginably rich But we are poor and afraid of the poor who must become The Army to defend us against right and wrong All automatic and impersonal The Law is The Government Shall take all your money and kill you Being completely free and entirely, impartially just Edgar Allan Poe saw the walls of Plato’s Cave Slowly moving inwards to crush us Who licks up the juice that runs out at the bottom? The real shame of America is the lack of an anticlerical Movement or party. All parties try to compound With invisible State Protestant Church that theoretically Doesn’t exist. Rubes who think of themselves as Members in good standing are bilked and robbed. I got to buy me them eggs. 30 MORE SHOPPING DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS! “again and again the flames of his inordinate Passion licked my naked flesh again.” 29 MORE SHOPPING DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS! “rolled right over until I was over the top of him did you ever hear of such a thing I said Wilbur what on earth are you trying to do and he was wiggling and shaking and squeezing and panting and saying all them things over again like he was going crazy until I didn’t know whether to send for the doctor or the fire department but he stopped all of sudden you know how they do and that nasty stuff all over everything I tell you if I had it to do over again I’d never get married and Wilbur is my third husband” 28 MORE SHOPPING DAYS BEFORE THE FEAST OF THE NATIVITY "then he turns right around and wants to do it again well I said listen you old goat I've got to get some rest I've got to go shopping tomorrow whether you go to work or not" 27 MORE SHOPPING DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS Fred, is that music? Ah, no, my foolish darling It is only the roaring of the aged chilling blood Sluggishly perambulating your brittle veins you forgot Your bloodpressure pills again, too busy to go out They brought you three dead sandwiches upon a tray And coffee, tepid black forbidden coffee On a tray and you lost your temper on the telephone And now it echoes in your hollow empty wooden head I’m not afraid of you. You’re nothing but an incubus. TWENTY-SIX GREATER AND LARGER SHOPPING DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS So you’re a poet, hey? Well if you’re a poet Tell me a poem. Come on, tell me one. Are you a published poet? Do you know Nick Crome? One fine day AG was mad at me and said, “You’re going to be a little old man who smells of kerosene and sits in the public library every day reading Pliny” Awoke at quarter-past three A.M. strange wooden clack sound Later find fallen mud-plaster chunk in tokonoma Puddle of pee with one long black hair in the corner of benjo floor Gloomy gold morning ten A.M. ingest giant lump of bhang With strawberry jam from Bulgaria (friendly socialist country) Hot coffee. Things will seem better half an hour from now, OK? Shut up. What’s the use of having a cold if nobody cares. Why not simply do something else. An absolute mystery: how to stop and begin differently. “Don’t be a ninny, Dr. Culpepper, all surgery is radical Hand me that there Gigli-saw. Yes, yes, it all Connects, have no fear, we can take a tuck in the membrane If necessary. Try to develop a little more dexterity— Have you tried practicing the piano or the guitar? Us brain surgeons got to how a little culture. Quit banging my elbow, nurse.” Fifty years fighting the Bolsheviki To maintain a 500% profit on every waffle-iron and locomotive At 499% times are growing difficult, we must try to retrench At 497^% lay off some of the newer employees the market looks “Bearish” at 496%  SELL OUT while there’s still a chance. In order to boost profits back to 498% A “presence” appears in Cambodia When did the dumb-bunny bomb first hit U.S.A.? How come everybody appreciated it so much? THE BAD NEWS INCUBUS SERVICE “I’m going to get well right away. I’m going to be just fine,” the old man said; Then his eyes rolled up and his breath stop And there he lay dead as a flounder. Lost again yesterday walking towards Arashiyama Inconveniently: lunchtime. Several villages, Tomb of the Emperor Uda, deserted superhighway to Western Hills I thought of asking somebody, “This the road to China?” I really knew where I was, I’d been to those mountains The empty freeway bored and frightened me Broken highway to a pretty place where I bought expensive noodles Well, it opened up a space, I could see the distance, for a change Breathe. Did I miss nine trillion cars, want them to be On this road with me? At home, the vegetable supply A Dutch still-life set on reversed lid of nabe Half a red carrot half a giant radish half a head of hokusai A completely monumental potato China will sail across big Zen soup to me THE BAD NEWS INCUBUS SERVICE They peer down through my ceiling “Poor old man he’s too fat to live much longer” Which part of this bothers me most— Insincerity, indifference or the fraudulent ceiling? Voices out of the air the bleak and windy white skull attic Flat white for lots of light Hollow wooden head son of a bitch, Homer Matson used to say I keep trying to remember that this is my life now What I’ve got, what I actively chose Pine tree stone lanterns outside the mason’s house imperial tomb Camellia hedge monkey-slide tree And the responsibility for learning two languages (which I evade) and dim insistences of two others in the background Sanskrit and Tibetan.       awk! WHY DID I LAUGH TO-NIGHT? NO VOICE. At the foot of the stonewall Fukuoji Jinsha Somebody took leave of her shoes; There they are. Red. Strangely enough I find that I’m all right Nothing's really wrong with me, there’s food Payday will be Thursday the pleasure of looking at A tiny mountain of low-grade amethyst Almost the color of gas flame cooking buckwheat noodles (kerosene is on the way) The cold weather is neither monster nor prodigy I seem to survive it (Vitamin C) in spite of paranoia (Vitamin B-complex shortages?). In winter the air is cold as it is hot in summer But I never can understand the idea All too soon I must leave these beauties And come away to heaven’s boring towers of golden flapping Snowy wings and halo bright star crown No more to see your sexy frown and freckles (“I can’t find my mirror! I can’t find my things!”) So that when you’ve at last arrived there too Shall we bleak and holy strangers distant forgiving nod and smile? But soon you’ll be asking me, “How do I look? Is my halo all right? I know my wings are all slaunch-wise Along the trailing edge.” (Preen, preen.) “I wish I had My mirror, Kids! I wish I had all my things Oh well I don’t care please hold me I want you to hang onto me a while.” Torn paper fake mountains become three-dimensional Transparent crystals. Bushes and trees all Barbered and shaved plaques of tourmaline, emerald They used to tell me I must apply myself Work hard and don’t be lazy But what I must learn is to accomplish everything Which has nothing to do with work. Work is what an instrument or engine does. We say a crystal changes white light to green Breaks light into rainbow, scatters it Focuses to burning point. The crystal does Nothing. Its shape and structure make all The difference. Think of transistors and lasers. In order to make this day great Yesterday must be altered Rain I must wear overcoat muffler and bamboo umbrella Thinking of monkey tribes on Hieizan and Iwatayama Wet & freezing I hope they’re finding food Lovely bronze-green fur, defenseless eyes They run if you stare at them: Fixed gaze prepares for pounce crunch fangs of death All monkies everywhere look worried all the time Eyes and faces, Oh God, what next. Me?” Lots of instructions wasted Go down town and argue with the bank Fall, as leap Fred? Yesterday afternoon they said They’d pay in the morning. This morning they say They’ll pay in the afternoon Raving hot sunshine two days before Christmas BAFFLEMUTE & so to Osaka. Beguile me with all them blandishments again! Cursus: The hotel falls. The false hotel. Enter One in the character of a false hotel. He speaks: MALEMUTE! BEZOAR! TREMENDULATE! FACTION. CUCURBITE. Pantages. TRASHMULE. finger A man in a black suit stands at the entrance to the tomb Of the Emperor Enyu, catty-corner from my front door He bellows like a bull at irregular intervals A man steps out the front door of his house He says (in French), “Again, the same thing.” Radio gives me German actors performing Faust I’m reminded of Hudibras The triumph of commercial middle class Chanted in paltry quatrains.Toujours la même chose. A little chocolate tomb for a dead maraschino cherry Coffeeshop sugarbowl another compromise Picture of childish French sailor “English” inscription (sans-serif letters) “anchortheway” A lisping matelot?Encore, the way? “Encore, vos nerfs.” Leaps & bounds Ponderous numbers to confine Limit the flower A measured compromise “I didn’t get her cherry but I got the box it came in.” The flower goes beyond the edge of its petals The poem runs past the edge of the paper Teeth I don’t have anymore hurt me today Today I started late and quit early And accomplished everything, but the next day was Marred by fits of rage, mental confusion Lapses of memory. Olson dead in New York Jack dead in Florida. Today I am going to take more: Smoked some and ate some OM.         AH.         HUM. in five sacred colors I woke up a couple of times during the night High with lights and music behind the eyes This morning I am cured and know who and where I’m at Why should I go to Europe to look at Several million nervous white folks My very own relatives there they are Totally uncivilized, fingering and puzzling over The ruins of Western Civilization I feel closer to that culture which our ancestors Destroyed . . . megalithic builders initiated in mushroom Mysteries at Crete, Eleusis, New Grange In this capital we also fumble with ruins of high culture But feelings of antique propriety keep heavy sway Over family, marriage, feudal obligations to a chief The life of the Capital goes by in tight pants Or on horseback brilliant silk hakama Brocade karaginu gleaming lacquer hat Summer’s dead leaves philaudering into dusty moss Like melting Dracula. (PHILAUDERING.Mot imaginaire de l’auteur.) The soul extractors are here. Edgar W. Tomczyk of Lima, Ohio, will now attempt To drive a 35-ton Caterpillar tractor through Two inches of boiling water from which he will escape Absolutely unharmed! (oops.) Rupert Scanlon of Great Falls, Montana will now . . . The world (and I) Barge past the sun Glass on stove’s fuel-gauge reflects The sun onto north wall twenty feet away The passage of Time, the zooming of the earth Can be witnessed as a disc of light Sliding over dots of mud plaster sand Other goop embedded in the surface Daitokuji celebration day still echoes in my head Sound of manhole-cover falling flat on stone floor The rainy maples at Koto-In Last night wild boar for supper Shakuhachi music over snowy torrent BOTAN NABE, Peony Cassoulet So far north of the Capital the road is only paved When it becomes (five seconds) mountain village mainstreet Among sugi trees ordinary dirt in the canyons But the people speak Kyoto-ben BOTAN garden of Daitokuji monastery Manhole-cover clang crash Big pair of cymbals, thin brass with center bowl Broad-rim soup dishes B L A S H! Everybody dolled up in brocade bib and tucker Chinese canal-boat shoes, Nootka shaman hats To exceed wisdom and ignorance escape skull chain (Juzu beads I saw today each bead a white head-bone Apparently impossible although there’s enough space Between bone crystals to drive a truck through) There’s not an owl in the world who thinks or knows “I am an owl.” Not one who knows there’s a man called Slotkin who knows more about owls and the owl trade Than any owl. I wonder though, Can Professor-Doktor Slotkin eat mice and fly. Kyoto 6 P.M. News: Somebody left a pistol in a raincoat in a taxi on Higashiyama (Eastern Mountain) Road New York Buddha Law: All sentient beings will be brought To complete final perfect enlightenment If you will write a letter to The New York Times Condemning Ignorance, Desire and Attachment. Almost all Americans aged 4 to 100 Have the spiritual natures of Chicago policemen. Scratch an American and find a cop. There is no Generation gap. I sit in the north room Look out across the floor into the garden 12 1/2 tatami mats the pleasure of contemplating them They are beautiful and they aren’t mine. Present appearance of quiet neutral emptiness Books, music, pictures, letters, jewels, machines Buddha statues and other junk all hidden away As if inside my head (think of the closets As memory banks) Wooden ceilings pale orange Floors the color of wheat straw, light-grey paper Colored mountains near the bottom cover the fusuma That divide rooms hide closets. Glass and white paper Shoji screens two garden ends of the house north and south Heavy floral designs of Michoacan (Have you ever considered going THERE to live) O flowers more lovely than wine Adonis and/or Dionysus . . . “. . .only one note and it a flat one . . .” “Only a rose For you.” (That was a long time ago.) (unique abyss) “I’ll go along With a smile & a song For anyone . . .” all this was Copyrighted maybe 1911 “ONLY A ROSE FOR YOU!” So long ago I was a prisoner still and other people Made everything happen good bad & indifferent “Control yourself!” they said To survive continuous neural bombardment Meningeal bubbles twenty years after— Now I make things happen These thin brass domes and birds of ice Cheap fruit cries pop There’s your tricycle (from Jimmy Broughton’s movie, Mother's Day) Tricycle from the Isle of Man Three legs running “The Shinto emblem showing three comma-shaped figures in a whirl symbolizes the triad of the dynamic movements of musubi. . .”—Jean Herbert Athenian abyss       Tarquin Old Stairs       off the steep edge of town       Delphi something else a friend writes from Eleusis: “nothing here but a vacant lot . . .factories in the distance” “Those caves of ice” , (large comma) “JA!” Mr. C. Olson used to say so the word Had a big walrus mustache laden with fresh beer foam Flowers have great medicinal virtue I decide not to go to town until Wednesday Buy Time to read at Asahi Beer Hall, not have to teach I just now caught bright future glimpse Of myself on Wednesday: Long green coat Orange beard glasses completely distracted By trauma of trying to talk Japanese to the waitress Out of patience out of breath wrestling to break Strong wool British overcoat stranglehold Flowers and vegetables maybe they will change my mind The light is different because it’s a different season (Audumb in New York) usual garden uniform green moss a pleasure. In spring unexpected crocus and lily and tulip Crash through it—surprising shapes and colors Western Civilization rigid and tyrannical But it also teaches necessity for objective examination Of the organization and also provides all kinds of suggestions How to alter the works. Mr. Karl Marx wrote a book All by his lonesome in the British Museum. (Shhh!) I’ve read the trial and death of Socrates Lots of times. When it hits me right I can cry Other days I wonder why it took the Government so long To catch up with him. Nothing happened To Plato, there he sits, writing. Homer and The Classics burnt at Appomottox Confucius enjoyed a vogue as originator of jokey sayings, 1939 30:IV, 7:55 A.M. Unknown quantity and quality LSD 7:21 P.M. head full of million-watt light Hangs from the ceiling, old China dome Newly uncovered. Dirty but thin, hard and shiny. Far-away midge on quiet tatami. Many amperes and micro-watts weeded the garden Picked it up by one end and shook it Like the dog’s dirty blanket,flooch! flooch! And resettled it softly down over the shrubs and bugs Lots of discoveries underneath All miraculous and alive The Capital more than usually full of foreigners— Expo ’70, Osaka. Americans at first imagine Japan is extension of Cincinnati suburbs Amazed and outraged to find everything here In careful and complete control of people who don’t Speak English, occupied (somewhat aggressively) with Being very Japanese. That is the funny man’s house over there. That’s where the funny man lives. Keep away. Hair.       Hair.       Hair.       Hair.       Hair. THE JOURNAL OF JOHN GABRIEL STEDMAN 1744-1797, “June 9 (1795) . . .the Apollo gardens, Marylebone, Madagascar bat as big as a duck . . . June 24 . . . How dreadful London; where a Mr. B—declared Openly his lust for infants, his thirst for regicide, and believes in no God whatever. . . . August . . .Met 300 whores in the Strand . . .Saw a mermaid (. . . September . . .) All knaves and fools and cruel to the excess. Blake was mobb’d and robb’d.” A friend wrote from Kent, Ohio, last year “The Midwest is full of people who want to write poetry and want to listen to it.” This year the National Guard, weeping with pity and fright Kill four students, firing “into the mob” Nobody cared. Nobody remembers the Korean “Police Action” Nobody will remember our “Advisory Mission” to Indo-China why are they doing it Why are they oh, never mind am I supposed to judge them Don’t you remember being high and weeding the garden And whatever is really beautiful can’t be destroyed We can’t get our hands on it, “. . .The truly great Have all one age, & from one visible space Shed influence! They, both in power and act, Are permanent, and Time is not with them, Save as it worketh for them, they in it.” -S.T. Colerdige, “To William Wordsworth” Endless weedy babble comes away easily The flowers feel different, having been intentionally Placed by living fingers which I also feel Just think of it as a large allegorical painting Nude figures, red velvet drapery, white marble “Classical Architecture” (Parthenon Bank of Chemical Pantheon Library) America Devouring Her Own Young (The soldiers are also our children, we’ve lied to them, too Americanism, Baseball, Commerce, Democracy, Education, Fanaticism Gold, Home Economics, ignorance The complete college curriculum Then put them into uniform and turn them loose with guns To kill “hate-filled long-hair dirty dope-fiend Com/Symp”) Nobody cares because nothing really happened It was on the TV, everybody will get up Wash off the catsup, collect union wages & go home Nobody cares, nobody thinks anything about it No thought at all; a succession of needs and little raunchy Schemes. They should have killed a few hundred more— All a Communist plot to move Blacks into suburbs Turn over the country to freeloaders, dope-fiend hippy queers” The American Revolution was a tax-dodge Dreamed up by some smart Harvard men Who got some good out of it. A few of their high-society friends also scored Russian Revolution a strictly ugly downtown proposition The Great Unwashed on a rampage. No reference to mystical Rights to Life & pursuable happiness guaranteed by Eighteenth Century rationalist Deity in curly wig Old man potters down the lane singing Stops to search the roadside flowers and weeds For some particular leaf that he puts in plastic bag Of greens. Last night’s old man, KONDO Kenzo (80-some odd years) performed the No of Motomezuka Acting a young girl and her ghost frying in hell We all kept waiting for him to stumble, collapse Fall off the stage disintegrate But the longer we watched the clearer it became: The stage, the entire theater might collapse much sooner Fall to sand and rust and splintered beams Mr Kondo would still be there singing and dancing Every fold of his costume in place five hundred years It pleases folks in Washington D.C. to imagine The Russian Revolution is going to flop any minute now (After fifty years) the insurgent Bolsheviki will be put down The dear Tsar restored as modern constitutional monarch (We did it in Tokyo, didn’t we?) and the Patriarch of The Church will crown him in St. Basil’s while the Don Cossack Choir (beards and gold brocades) chant Slavonic Liturgies in full color satellite TV an example To the benighted everywhere, if only we will pay Just a little bit more and hire a few more FBI men A few inches of adhesive tape seals the mouth But it is hard to get rid of the idea of liberty After forty years of war Asia still exists, Not to mention the Viet Cong And quite different from the plans of Washington Or Moscow or the Vatican. (Napoleon said, “China . . . sleeping giant. I shudder to think what happen When he wake . . .”) Adhesive tape in Federal Court Nothing wrong with the System You’ll get a chance to talk later Federal Court held together with gum Arabic And Chicago cops Nara has a great magical feeling The city no longer exists, the first capital Restored fragments of temples, carefully excavated Site of Imperial Palace in the rice fields Like Olson I’ve been writing about the wrong town? “Worcester! I’m from Worcester! All this about Gloucester . . . I’ve been writing about the wrong town all this time!” (Vancouver, 1963) Kent State, Jackson State, There was no reason to kill them Fusillade into an unarmed crowd Of children. I can’t forgive us for feeding them To the Bears currently raiding Wall Street Painless Extraction time again Squeezing water out of the stocks Blood out of the suckers Everybody hopes to catch a nice gob of the goo But there’s never quite enough Didn’t you hear about the reservations? We were supposed To phone ahead for reservations. In advance. Never quite enough, the Official Party had To be served first. Never quite enough Because it was planned that way. My grandmother used to say, “And so he was left S.O.L.” I asked her, “What’s that mean?” “Certainly out of luck.” Those that’s got, gets. Them that ain’t is S.O.L. “Oh, the coat and the pants Do all of the work But the vest gets all the gravy!” We complain of Tiberius in the White House But consider: Caligula Waits fretfully in some provincial capital CAPITAL REMOVED TO FUKUHARA (Kamo no Chomei reporting) 6th month, 1180— “To north the land rose up high along a ridge of hills and to the south sloped down to the sea. The roar of the waves made a constant din and the salt winds were of a terrible severity. The palace was in the mountains, and, suggesting as it did the log construction of the ancient palaces, was not without its charms. . . . The manners of the capital had suddenly changed and were now exactly like those of rustic soldiers.” Oregon City by the papermill falls of Willamette There’s Dr. John McLoughlin’s big white house Retired magnificence of Hudson Bay Co. Benefactor of our Pioneer Ancestors John Jacob Astor ran him out of business Washington Irving described all but the money Where was the capital: Champoeg, Oregon City, Portland, Salem. The money is in Portland the university in Eugene The capital in Salem: Life Along the Willamette River? now a stink-hole Paper-puke sulphur trioxide and mercury The lesser towns contribute only garbage and human excrement The Capitol’s great brass dome warping Melting in the flames Hand-carved oak and myrtle and walnut paneling State House in the park, toy stage set, blazing A lost art, my father used to say. Nobody knows How to do that nay more. Palaces by Vanbrugh, mansions and Watergates of Inigo Jones Gardens by Capability Brown blazing “Sept. 2, a lamentable fire. . . .the wind being eastward blew clouds of smoke over Oxon the next day . . .the moon was darkened by clouds of smoak and looked reddish. The fire or flame made a noise like the waves of the sea.” So says Anthony à Wood. Yet there are still remaining Shosoin, parts of the Horyuji, Yakushiji, Toshodaiji The capital disappeared around them. Byodoin and Muroji Parts of Daigoji too far away from the battlefields And from carelessness, perhaps. These can still be seen, In spite of earthquake, ambition, silliness The thousand Buddhas at Sanjusangendo, the others at The Toji, survived though the city was flattened Eight or ten times in a row Jack used to say “Some day you and Gary and Allen and me Will all be old bums under a bridge, Down by the railroad tracks. We’ll say, Remember when we was all out there in Californy, Years ago?” Gentle rain from grey-black lump clouds Fine pale blue sky Three-color cat sits on weedpile Near but not under the largest ranch of Mt Koya pine All I can say this morning is a dance Which can’t be recorded here A wish to be free from orders, notions, whims Mine or other people’s Waiting for the laundry delivery man Waiting for 95 liters of kerosene Chrysanthemum yellow starfish tube- Foot petals Ancient Orient! Shortest route to the forebrain Through olfactory lobes. Longest way round is The shortest way home. A little trip Through the Anima Mundi, now show Now currently appearing a persistent vision When it happens at the correct speed But if you get too close it is only Patterns of light Drop candy and try to follow it Creates new place and time. Looking up I see blank staring faces Reflecting steady silver glow. Silence. Under the bright umbrella, University of British Columbia Beer on the terrace of the Faculty Club Allen & Bob Straightening out something complicated, Olson sighing the while, “I hear you. One, four, three. I hear you. One, four, three. Minot’s Ledge Light. One, four, three. I LOVE YOU. One, four, three, Minot’s Ledge Light. You remember, don’t you Bob. One, four, three I LOVE YOU—what better way to remember?” Do intelligent questions get interesting answers. All I know is Every time I get mixed up with rich folks It costs me all the money I have in my pocket CURIOUS ELISION LORD, HAVE MERCY UPON US Michaelangelo/Cole Porter Variations DAY & NIGHT: DAY & NIGHT, waking and sleeping That’s what that’s all about A man with titties like a woman A woman with muscles like a man “To Europe?” . . . . . . . . “I must have adorned it with a strange grimace, but my inspiration had been right. To Europe . . .” -Henry James Pierre who? “coming & going” “well if you’d got drunk and climbed up to the top of the door and took off all your clothes and passed out cold how would       Y O U       look?” No matter how far we travel We find most of the world living as quasi-civilized Nomads among polished marble ruins of great cultures The quality of life and the meaning of these remains Are quite imperfectly known to us, no matter how skillfully We parse the verbs of lost languages All ignorantly we project our own savagery & cannibalism Upon societies and individuals who were Our civilized ancestors Christ now returns under the name U.S.A. Rages wild across the earth to avenge himself Napalm and nuclear bombs for every insult Every prick of thorn crown “Not peace but a sword”         (Curious elision.) Lays about him burning and smashing Murdering the Sea, The war continues because it is profitable. It’s making good money for those who had Money to invest in it from the beginning Curious elision for all who did not. All of   a sudden it became as if nothing had happened And that was the end. Babies we creep out of water sack Hid there by young men Old we slide into firebox Drift up the flue to heaven A natural history. A narrow escape What happened. Walked to local coffeeshop Tomato juice. Start home via Ninnaji templegrounds People chanting in front of magic Fudo spring I went to look at the Mie-do, then realized I was sick or at least beleaguered by creep vibrations Clearly time for magical cure. I poured water over Fudo his rocky image Chanted his mantra and bowed. I also rubbed Magic water on my head. Old lady caretaker Delighted;       she said I had done well and wished For my rapid recovery. To enforce the cure I visited Fudo spring at Kiyomizudera, the Kwannon and other Buddhas there Expensive tempura lunch with view of Chion In The Eastern Mountains and a glimpse of Momoyama Castle Glimpse has a marvelous sound like limpkin and Temko “That Fudo a good old boy he from Texas!” Shinshindo Coffee house brick fountain Stone, tree, new leaves, now a new electrical Garden lamp on metal pole, as in Mrs Blah’s patio/barbecue “area” Chagrin Falls, Ohio. The latest incarnation of The Frog Child tries to ride minute red tricycle That groans and squeals. Delicious croissants. I can still feel happy here. How come. I’m too fond of eggplant ever to be allowed into Heaven But imagine celestial brinjal— aubergines du paradis! ANACHRONISM: a) homesick for one of the chief cities of Ohio b) process for correcting chromatic aberration in camera and other lenses One of the most wonderful and magical actions We can perform:         Let something alone. Refuse To allow yourself the pleasure of messing it up. The things appear to want adjusting, improving, Cleaning up &c. APPEARS so to us But as a collection of “event particles” A section of the Universe as a noisy morning &c Leave it alone. Don’t tamper with it. Free of that poor-ass Oregon down-home history As this clear water streaming over head eyes face I can see hollyhocks ten feet high sideways To go and to stay illusory I flee pale music (I know what I’m doing, NIGHT & DAY) I flee Death’s pale music (Well, what?) Fleeing Death’s proud music, “Get up out of there,” my father used to say, “You can’t sleep your life away. People die in bed.” But I am tired of all the world With notebook and pen I hurl myself deep among The dopey sheets to bed, and lock the gates! Shopping among the sand at the bottom of a birdcage Every grain a universe designed by Walter Lantz Nonskid never-fail plastic whose colors fade All surfaces dim and grubby all of them scraped Minutely scored cracked and flawed Material impervious to most chemicals Resistant to ordinary wear Allegorical painting: CUPIDITY DECEIV’D BY ADVERTISING The canary in residence is terribly Intelligent and infested with mites. “Rooty-toot-toot” was the sound of the little .44 Frankie wasted her faithless lover Whenever I asked people what all that meant They said “Never mind” – “Row the boat, Norman, row!” Hot weather erodes my powers At the Ishiyamadera, small room with bo-leaf window (For the viewing of the moon, the priest explains.) She looks at the moon through that window that you see Over there. She is now a wax dummy with a face That exhibits what the Japanese think of as “refined” Features. All dressed up in Heian court robes Long black hair down her back. In the antechamber A smaller dummy represents girl-child attendant Grinding ink at a large inkstone The figure of Murasaki holds a writing brush And a long piece of paper. Her head has begun to turn Away from the writing to observe the moon And quite likely to remark upon the song of the uguisu Scholars, Japanese and Western, say she never did Never was here a minute. The priest shows A sutra copied out in Murasaki's own handwriting Here's the very inkstone that she used. There is the moonlight window Dog days, ten years, I try to remember your face You disappear, all my head can see Are two paintings and drawings in red ink Whatever else I've done with my life Amounts to nothing But inside the lantern a white speckled black beetle Not quite as large as a rice-bird gives Complete performance of Siegfried all alone I am a hunting and gathering culture The Moselle wine-boat sails over icy Delaware On gossamer wing through the woods to Skye (Hurrah for Miss Flora MacDonald) Under the shadow of those trees Edge of typhoon sudden rain Shelter at Basho's Rakushisha hut Green persimmons next door to Princess Uchiko her tomb (Famous for her Chinese poems, first priestess of Kamo Shrine) Under the shadow of those trees, waiting for the boat Cythère POÈME IMMENSE ET DRÔLETIQUE Night morning Greyhound bus NEVADA have a new driver all on different schedules "quel sentiment. quelle delicatesse

Natchez Afternoon burns everything off Franklin Street. Even the birds, even the flies. Or iced-tea sugar and chicken grease weigh everyone into a doze, all indoors, in a cool they said would never come eighty years ago when this was still the center of business and the civilized left these high hours to the dogs, ice in a highball, and let each house close its lids a while. They've kept their quiet, so I'm alone before the windows, the radiant panes, each with its scrim of clay, the finish the river gives everything, so nothing, not even glass, is clear. It's almost painful, this saturation, this street and its stores of rugs and signs and flags, bright and strange as a magazine photo you'd find in an attic or an antique store, hard to believe the color was ever real. The teacups, the painted china and jeweled eggs, even the bottles, medicine vials and flasks each with its ounce of dirt, even the smell of the prolific earth, the sedimentary atmosphere of empire chairs and oak armoires and mantles that survive their tall, white homes, like the plantation house where, later, I'll witness again the marriage of gray suit and hoop skirt that still feels like a dream, where I'll walk out of—or is it into?—myself, the maitre'd's small, solicitous voice proffering another julep—cotton-leaf hand, silver cup—though even he must be a reenactment or a revenant, a hanger for the clothes of memory. I will take it, I would, a handful of refuge in unthinking weather, will take the same lethargic joy in a breeze, any chill in the throat, any kind of shade— so I enter the dim of one old cotton house, its air-conditioned maze of hand-tools and quilts, corn cribs and cotton gins, and of course the owner's smile, porcelain, bright, almost blinding, blooming in welcome and how-you-do and what-brings-you. We talk amid rows of cook-stoves, stew-pots, and cast-iron skillets about the wedding I've come to see on the famed estate, the time the town exploded, the Rhythm Club's inferno, and then she ventures she knows the accent, knows I'm from Alabama, and soon she's eloquent on our lakes and rivers, where the mister takes her every chance they get. She's seen it all, so she asks where I'm from, and when I say she starts to glow, gushing over mountains all the way to Gatlinburg. She's walked each one, even skied the state's one slope, which conjures not the "Southern snow" that required almost everything around us, but snow, cold snow, a thought that cools me further, so my sweat is nearly dry when the smile tightens across her teeth and she leans in to say Ijust love it you know—there are no darkies there. Then afternoon is a conspiracy of color, an echo the heat or the history in our voices draws us into— someone else's version of ourselves— and the inevitable, painful quiet in which an answer must arrive. What can you say? And how long do you have to wait before you can leave, before you can walk out of yourself and down the cotton-trading streets into the smother of trees on some more recent lane? How long do you have to wait before you can leave and not be followed, and how long do you have to walk before the mockingbirds drown in bass and drum and anger, before you can cross back into the proper century? The smell of the river stays with you, maybe even grows as you move so you don't know where you're going, and the key in your hand could open a car door or a plantation room or nothing at all, some door that's vanished in the air, June's shimmer from the asphalt and the roofs of every house, so you walk toward that moment when the sun starts burning and the magnolias' thick perfume washes all around and you find yourself on a corner, all linen and sweat, again the only one who'd walk in a heat like this. You have no idea where you are, so you cock your head as if you might hear your way through the afternoon, and when you raise your head, you see, across the street, two men hunched in shadow on a barbershop's stoop, ties dangling like smoke in the solid air. They've seen you and now their brows sharpen as if they know, too, you're not from here, and in the space between you anything could pass, the ghosts of Farragut or Grant or a hot white Caddy rattling New Orleans Bounce, you're waiting to see, it seems like years or centuries, then one rises, ties his tie, and steps back in, leaving the other, who keeps your eye a moment longer then looks into the distance through that lace of smoke that seems etched in the air for something far behind you, something you don't even know how to look for, something that may never arrive.

Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts, Bootleggers in silken shirts, Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs, Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks. Seventh Street is a bastard of Prohibition and the War. A crude-boned, soft-skinned wedge of nigger life breathing its loafer air, jazz songs and love, thrusting unconscious rhythms, black reddish blood into the white and whitewashed wood of Washington. Stale soggy wood of Washington. Wedges rust in soggy wood. . . Split it! In two! Again! Shred it! . . the sun. Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? Blood suckers of the War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood. Prohibition would put a stop to it. Who set you flowing? White and whitewash disappear in blood. Who set you flowing? Flowing down the smooth asphalt of Seventh Street, in shanties, brick office buildings, theaters, drug stores, restaurants, and cabarets? Eddying on the corners? Swirling like a blood-red smoke up where the buzzards fly in heaven? God would not dare to suck black red blood. A Nigger God! He would duck his head in shame and call for the Judgement Day. Who set you flowing? Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts, Bootleggers in silken shirts, Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs, Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.

Shattered glass in the street at Maryland and 10th: smashed sand glittering on a beach of black asphalt. You can think of it so: or as bits of broken kaleidoscope, or as crystals spilled from the white throat of a geode. You can use metaphor to move the glass as far as possible from the raised hands that threw the bottle for their own reasons of amusement, or despair, or the desire to make a cymbal crash in the ears of midnight sleepers. Or you can use words like your needle, the probe curious in tough heels, your bare feet having walked in risky places. You can work to the surface the irritant, pain, the glass sliver to blink in the light, sharp as a question.