246 Mythology poems

I. The question is not how like the animals we are But how we got that way. We laugh, for what is a suicide note But the epitaph of an emotion? Few of us die out in the open; And when you say thesis, I say antithesis, But we don’t stop there: we take our opposing ideas, Plant them on opposing cliffs and then build a footbridge Between them, seemingly flimsy yet sturdy enough in fact To support a battalion. Hidden behind trees, we watch The soldiers march across it, single file, too scared To look down. We cheer them all, all except the boy In the fairy tale who knew no fear. Him we pity. He laughs open-eyed, ready to die as we were not. He is one of us, all right, but better, stronger, stranger. He asks for more fear than anyone can bear. II. The guilty had three choices: awkward chords of candor, Canned laughter, or the wild hyacinth’s sutra, before Silence returned triumphant, and the journey resumed In darkness, though the sky above was classically blue. Everyone kept his opinion to himself As harmony dictated, and effigies of Tristan and Isolde Accompanied their stubborn footsteps across the wild Terrain. Yet the longing for a loud catharsis At night renewed their pain. “If only we could climb Out of these clouds and heartfelt headaches, Like ravished children in the glory of a snowball fight After school, and never again have to descend, Who would not abandon these erotic shipwrecks And fall asleep like tigers in the destined heights?” III. At a festival of conceptual art in Cairo, I saw a tank buried entirely in snow. I knew then that silence is the source Of all music, all laughter, all thought, and so I stuffed pebbles in my mouth and stood by the sea And roared my defiance of the waves. It was here, Years before, that our plane and its shadow Converged: I ran from the fire, carrying the flames In my arms. I ran and ran, feeling like a man Fighting a newspaper on a windy beach, but it wasn’t A beach at all: the sand beneath me was snow, Is snow, and the spears in the desert sky look like stars. In the pyramid’s triangular shadow, I was the man Who heard the crimson explosion, and ran. And ran. IV. Keats in one of his letters says, “My Imagination Is a Monastery and I am its Monk.” I wonder. If a man’s imagination is his monastery, This place looks a lot like an empty railway station, King’s Cross in London or the Gare St. Lazare in Paris, A place whose smoke and fog Monet dissolved Into a chorus of colors. There we stood, my love and I, Having made our vows under the suspended clock, Hero and bride. But as we walked away, side by side, Down the station’s sunless nave, amid the excitement Of the crowd, and foreign languages spoken loud, We knew our exile had already begun, could hear The conductor’s shrill whistle, could see the light At the end of the tunnel, where the battlefields begin. V. Paradise was hardly what Psyche With her bleeding blackberries and nervous orgasms Could have foretold, enjoyed, And renounced for the sake of some querulous abstraction Designed to keep us unhappy but alive. Call it civilization. Call our disobedience instinctive. Or say we obeyed an angry muse, who ordered us to dance. “Or else?” I asked. She sighed before answering. “Or else a dismal armchair will be your lot With chamber music your sole narcotic—music that will make You face your former self, and grieve over incidents Scarcely recalled, and eat without pleasure, and drink Without thirst, and dread what shall never come to pass.” In the revelation of our nakedness, we danced. VI. “A ball that is caught is fuller, by the weight Of its return, than the same ball thrown.” Our empty hands say so. We feel free. In the other room the true believers remain, The ones who insist that evil is real, the only real thing. Cannibals and missionaries they are, accomplices in sin, Greedy for punishment, to inflict or endure it. We are glad to leave them behind, glad not to have to hear Their chants and wails. Down the elevator we go And out into the canyon created by skyscraper shadows. Yet even we, dedicated as we are to good living, Sometimes walk around with a lost look on our faces, As if the blessing for a piece of fruit or cup of wine Had suddenly come to mind, though cup and plate are empty; Had come to mind and faded almost instantly away. VII. Admit it: you used to walk around thinking there had To be a reason for things, for everything. That way Paranoia lies. Not a science of syllables, the solitude Total, but the prophet’s lit lantern was what you wanted— And what you got was “neon in daylight,” a pleasure Recommended by Frank O’Hara. Those pleasures meant a lot to you, You even thought you lived for them, until the first death (A nervous uncle broke the news when you landed at Kennedy) And the first marriage (you stayed up all night and read Beyond the Pleasure Principle, a fair description Of your lovemaking). It seems that new myths are needed And consumed all the time by folks like you. Each erases the last, Producing tomorrow’s tabula rasa, after a night of dreams In which the tigers of wrath become the tigers of repose. VIII. Go back to the beginning, to the first fist fight. They played for high stakes those days. The penalty for losing Was death or slavery, take your pick. To spare a life Was the mark of the master; the mark of his slave Was fear. Noble savage, nothing. Forget about paradise. My vote goes to Hobbes’s “life of man, solitary, poor, Nasty, brutish, and short.” An amazing sentence: The syllable that ends it also lends it its poignancy, Since we go on wanting what we can scarcely bear. Go back, go back, back to when god became a swan With beautiful wounded wings, and raped the astonished maiden. Back to the dream that stays real when you wake up, Accustomed to your hunger and clinging to it, Like a panther accustomed to his cage. Go back. IX. A slap in the face, and the face burns with shame. Anger comes later, comes stranger, looking for someone to blame. End of message. Can’t see the stars; Can’t say anything that hasn’t been said before By somebody slamming the door; can only repeat The syntax that brought the crowd to its feet In the silence that appeased the nightingale. End of tale. But its moral was simple: I lost the hearing in one of my ears And listened with the other to a deaf man’s Symphony. He built a heaven out of his fears That there wasn’t one. End of nightmare. —The imperfect past, going by too fast, Begged us to collect it. It couldn’t last. X. The doctor put his cards on the table. “Take your pick,” he said. He was able To offer me fear of extinction or fear of pain, Though freedom from neither. “You mustn’t complain.” In the vertiginous air, the monks wore masks To keep their germs to themselves and their Identities a secret. A hero to his own valet, The Sultan choreographed his murderous ballet Until Scheherazade, entering the circus tent With John the Baptist’s head on a silver tray, Told her tale and made the crowd repent. The curtain dropped and the crowd went on its way, But no one could say what the nightmare meant, Or why it was sent to us, or by whom it was sent. XI. You can’t have it, so you want it, or You couldn’t have it, so you no longer want it, or You’re stuck with it, forever. It was designed with you in mind, Like the locked door that swung open majestically when you Spoke the magic words or just answered in the affirmative when Your name was called. “Here I am, ready to meet you, Ready to make any sacrifice,” you said, Still in bed, wrestling with an evil angel In your sleep. You were seventeen years old then And woke up with a limp. Desire is like that: The girl knows what you want and cries when She gives it to you because it was yours because She whispered your name in your sleeping ear And said: “Here I am.” And was gone a minute later. XII. I met her in one of those sleazebag bars— I think it was called The Bottom Line—in Buffalo, Self-proclaimed “city of no illusions,” where Silent men in shirtsleeves sit on bar stools and watch Girls with tattoos on their buttocks strip Down to g-strings and panties. They dance to the thump Of moronic music, grind and hump under hot strobe lights, And then, when the act is over, circulate among the scumbags, Gyrating in front of each in turn, making each feel special, And each, aroused by the mingled smell of musk and sweat, Folds a dollar and sticks it into her crotch for a tip. She was different. When I left the bar that night I knew She would follow, and she did, and I never looked back, never Glanced at the rear-view mirror. All other women turned into her. XIII. Her name was Mary but was Miriam before that and soon She will change it to Alice. What she offered was a shadow The shape of Europe on the map above the bed of my youth. Her shawl is all that remains of Europe in the downstairs closet. It was forbidden to lift up her skirt and look, look. Yet boys and girls danced across the bridal morning like a bridge As the wings of the fog like white sails lingered Across the bay. I flew, like a caterpillar with wings, into a new day. That was the day we buried Europe. We built a dome in air And in the icy silence of the tomb. To hang like a spider On a subway strap seemed a suitable fate for some, but we Lit a candle and watched it cast the shadow of a mountain In a valley. It was the awful shadow of some unseen power, A heaven in a wild flower. Europe, bloody Europe was gone. XIV. In the dream of your choice, you wake up In the Garden of Eden, alone except for a whore with a heart, Wearing a nurse’s uniform. The serpent says: Listen carefully. This is for your own good. At the tone it will be eight o’clock. Nine out of ten physicians recommend That you surround yourself with the kind of sorrows That can be instantly relieved by frivolous kisses, With vegetables as lush as fruits Ripening in your hands. When the hospital gates are opened, Don’t hesitate, run! And when you arrive at last in the land Of the free, take your place in line with all of the others As though nothing had happened between then and now To make you doubt the conviction that you’re blessed. XV. If you were a painter, you’d paint the wind Green. It would shake the boughs of the honey locust trees. It would chase the leaves across the continent. It would scatter their crumbs in a twist of swirling snow. It would be colorless and green at the same time, The wind that aligns the pond and the cloud, The wind that is everywhere, in constant motion, As buoyant as Ariel and as scornful of gross Caliban, The wind that holds up the fly ball, drives it back Into fair territory, causes it to drift within reach Of the right-fielder, who waves off the second baseman, Until a last gust lifts the ball over both their heads And it lands safely for the double that ends the game In extra innings, costing our team the pennant. XVI. After the flood, refreshed, was the first time You realized that the road to truth was the road Of flagrant fiction. You surrounded yourself With symbols (a mountain, a window, an ark, A rainbow) and mythic creatures (the dove that returned And the raven that didn’t). You understood the dream Of the old woman who interpreted the sailor’s dream. Then came the other birds, the clouds that come When the rain is done, and the wind that signals The discovery of dry land, a new continent, As the report of a gun sounds the start of the race, As the bottle broken beneath the bridegroom’s foot Begins the marriage, as church bells start the funeral Parade and all the townspeople march in the procession. XVII. No longer is there freedom in confusion, Nor forgiveness in confession, Nor charm in the old illusion Of moonlight, the tower, the howling dog, the escaping lovers, Escaping into midnight in the Western hemisphere, When the possibilities of expansion still seemed limitless And the soul could choose among stars without number In the vast velvet night without end. —In the midst of other woe than ours, I went to the window And cured the solitude of the listeners outside Who shivered in the rain, waiting for the police to come And ambulance sirens to sound. Drunk I was when I went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and said, “Dad, Dad, is that you?” In the terror of the night. XVIII. “Wherever you follow,” he said, “I will lead.” Where summer met fall, she picked up a brittle orange leaf. He wanted to lie on the grass, to lean and loaf At his ease, but the crisis intervened: news of her unpaid loan Prompted him to put his sandals on his head, as in the Zen koan. Slowly he walked away. Silence followed, then the sound of a moan In the room next door. So orange it seemed a painted moon Shone against the indigo sky. And quickly her mood Went from unreasonable euphoria to realistic dejection, as the wood In the fireplace turned to ash without first yielding a flame. The wool Of their sweaters had begun to unravel. “If the fool Persists in his folly,“ someone said, “he will have food Enough to eat, loaves and fishes galore. Worship the good, Which is beautiful though untrue. Turn your back on gold.” XIX. If we were painters we’d favor vibrant stripes, Primary colors, flat surfaces, a lot of white Remaining on the canvas. If we were composers We’d take the music of exotic jungles with us When we visit the vast vacant tundra. “If I were Rich enough,” vowed the philanthropist, “I’d move To a magnolia mansion and spend my days Translating modern literature into ancient Greek.” Great plans, distant vistas, a rearguard action To sabotage the present—and here we’ve all assembled, At the antiseptic airport, with haunted looks on our faces. Occasional eye contact between man with tan and woman in white. “You look like your voice,” she says, breaking the silence. The rest of us know where we’re going, but we don’t know when. XX. They’ve cornered the market on moral outrage. Yes, they have. The more noise they make about it, the more nervous we get. They’re always telling us just how shallow we are. The only convictions we have, they say, are on our driver’s licenses. The charge is not entirely fair to us, though it has its grain of truth. We tend to luxuriate in our indecisiveness. Not they. No one can say They lack conviction and passion and certitude. We have our doubts, Which make us less glamorous and give us The haunted look we wear. But something in defense Of our bemused spectatorship must be said: at least it spares us The postures of those hypocrite lechers, brothers and others Who sublimate their sexuality into opulent rhetoric and chide us For not doing the same. They have our best interests at heart. They may even be happier than we are. We have our doubts. XXI. Today’s graffiti is in the sky: “More than meets the eye.” Growing up I could tell the months by their smell. First come the fruitstand smells of spring in the city, Then the backyard trees get back their green, and we know It’s the real thing. Poetry is this puzzle of missing parts Is best represented by clouds in the early evening sky, Because they constantly change shape, are utterly indifferent To us, and seem both remote and near at hand At once. The creation of the world is a ballet With the dancers and music missing: what you see Is a miniature stage-set in a museum display case, And then suddenly you are walking in it, along the Boulevard Raspail, Until the Eiffel Tower comes into view. Watch it organize The bridges of the Seine into a coherent surprise. XXII. Love accompanies the stranger to his streetlamp Encircled by signing insects. The song he hears Meant doom or wax in the mariners’ ears. And now, as the smell of fresh cut grass gives way to the smell Of brown leaves burning, I want to tell You what I heard that night, and how the day Erased it: I woke to the rattle of a passing car Which, accelerating up the rapidly rising ramp, Seemed delighted with its capacity for making noise. From far away I could hear it coming. And just as we know that fame isn’t all It’s cracked up to be, that it can be downright Nasty in fact, and yet we want it anyway, So I, too, knew I belonged in one of those cars, tall Behind the steering wheel, racing to meet the changing light. XXIII. Winter came last. Waves of snow from who knows which wind Turned the meadow beside the frozen waterfall Into an ocean. The boy in the fairy tale who knew no fear Soon learned. On the shore of the wide world he could hear The violins of anger, spelling danger. Poetry in this era of disbelief Meant staring at a leaf until it turned into a star. It was easier in the past. All you had to do was sleep outside And let nature take over. There were more stars in the sky Than we had room for in our philosophy. And when we woke, Berries grew beside the burbling brook and bled in our soft hands. The question was not how like the gods we were But whether we could recognize them in our sleep And remember what we had seen, remember them clearly, When the radio alarm welcomes us into its next musical day. XXIV. I live in a boat in front of the door Depicting the gods as they might have been forgotten By Lazarus during the tortures of interrogation. What I see are tombs and yellow stains on the snow. Instead of quotations, I will refer to my heart, Instead of an altar, I will guard the munitions And drink wine with the sour taste of cork And eat sour strawberries in the city of New York. You who’ve been looking for a lost address, And mothers who seem to be fighting back their tears, What made you think you could resist the roar Of the years as they echo in a cavernous subway station? Can you see the boat in front of the door? What was it you forgot during the interrogation? XXV. Ovid had it wrong. The plight of the frightened maiden Gliding noiselessly into the woods, like a deer whose eyes Had been mesmerized by headlights on a cold November night, Was implausible without the contrivance of arrows: love’s dart Claimed Apollo while the dart of fear pierced Daphne’s heart, And so she ran, deeper and deeper into the woods, losing ground All the while to Apollo (for love moved faster than fear), Until the gods, granting her wish, turned the nymph Into a laurel, which Apollo hopelessly embraced. Poetic justice? Yes, except it didn’t happen that way. Their foot race ended In a forest clearing, where Daphne, exhausted but unashamed, Made Apollo watch her undress. He entered her At her request, as if his will were an extension of her own. The trees, inclining their branches, nodded in consent. Love won. XXVI. The boy, who was more eager than his father To live on a raft, sleep in the woods, and study the stars, Became his father, but not before he hid in a cave, slept in it Overnight, and was saved by a spider from sure destruction. The king’s soldiers, hot on his trail, saw the web stretch unbroken In the mouth of the cave, and assumed that no one was there. What is the correct interpretation of the spider’s web? To the soldiers it meant desolation; to the spider, conquest; To the grandfather telling the tale, providence. The boy Sees the dew cling to the web at dawn. The natural camouflage Of rabbits and snakes isn’t lost on him. He notices The triangle formed by three birds in the bare-branched sycamore. He can hear the hum of a bee admiring a tulip’s genitalia. And at night, he knows, all the colors are present in the white of the stars. XXVII. That was the year I first read H ö lderlin. The evening fell more slowly and the first day of spring Arrived more suddenly and stayed lovelier longer. Boys pursued muses and girls impersonated them. With the instinct of insects, He and She on the meadow Mate. What they dreamed stays real when they wake up In the evening of the first day of spring. Did they fall out of paradise or were they pushed? It’s unclear, but we next see them enter the gathering dusk, Hand in hand, and the camera pulls back and the voiceover says, “Good fortune is even harder to bear Than the bad fortune that came first. Remember this About the gods: their own immortality suffices them. The source of all rivers is a riddle even I cannot solve.” XXVIII. How little I have changed since then, or how much Of the change is in the eyes of the beholder Of a book I lived rather than wrote, whose author Seems like a stranger to me today. I remember, For example, wanting to write an apocalyptic parody Of Milton, in Milton’s high style, titled “Eden in Flames.” Adam and Eve celebrated their carnality, and when they woke, The branches of the fruit trees curved gracefully down And served them nectar. I couldn’t bring myself to describe Their banishment, and so the project failed. Yet what I heard When I slept sounded a lot like the chorus of joy In Beethoven’s Ninth, and what I saw when I woke up, If only for the length of a dream, was a deer, Eyes mesmerized by headlights, motionless in the middle of the road. XXIX. You could be the only passenger on the bus Who notices that the driver is blind. I, by contrast, Have eyes only for lovely you. Give me your hand. I will kiss it. You are cordially invited to my studio, Which resembles a psychiatrist’s office. Once there, I put on my glasses, Read passages out loud from Plato, Hobbes, Marx, and Freud, And ask you for your opinion of each. Together we analyze Solitude. There is a meeting of the minds, And sex follows. It’s the first day of spring and we want To walk along the river and roll on the grass and take off Our clothes while leaving the windows wide open. In fact, We can’t wait to get off this bus, which seems to be going Nowhere fast, as Spring puts her tongue in my ear And names the forbidden parts of her body. XXX. No one could say what the nightmare meant In the operating theater or the circus tent. And none of this will help us pay the rent: Many are called and sleep through the ringing, But we know it’s spring, though we’ve thrown our watches away. Our dreams, stretching across the chasm of day. Don’t deter us from waking, jumping into our clothes, Dancing down the avenue, and swinging through The revolving doors of the future, where we used to live, The day before yesterday, when we weren’t dying. —The question is whether the raven will return After his end-of-the-world adventures, after the storm When one by one the masks slip off, and the bride embraces The guilty son: true to the test, remembered and confessed.

I. Here is a place where declarations are made/where the heart takes precedence the gleam goes bland This is the heart part/intense improvisation on the I/THOU axis pity the poor actors (darlings)dust in their throats (choking) dialogue ancient (concentrated chatter dictated by clouds) click of whispers dammed up phrases     {mythologizing always) Moans move through their limbs like wind through Trees talking mad talk 'cross the illuminated Avenues of hard cities. II. Take the skin Take off the skin Remove the vital organs one by one especially the heart What is left The skeleton The skeleton is made of calcium magnesium, phosphorous et cetera: an amazing catalogue of chemicals You are holding in your arms an amazing catalogue of chemicals The elements clash tenderly Sparking compounds that move like eels Under touch. III. Dime falls, your voice rises (fevered) It's keen, the way the wind whips this Garbage up and around like a father Swinging his baby we are holding hands And yes, giggling no force can stop us now We are singing all the James Brown songs We know helpess off-key, but exhilarated Columbus Avenue breakdown: how the puddles In the sidewalks radiate splendor/glass Broken against high-rise buildings beckon We are hungry the shifting children salsa And you may be our feast, please linger You offer me your laughter I take the sweat from y our cheeks and hum. IV. Taste like tears—sea flaked and heated— Taste like try again and get nowhere, Maybe, this is the sonnet that mimes itself Sequences silent and perceptive The "might have saids" The stomach-eating rage The power of conversation is in its Possibilities of Interpretation (here's where the mime becomes important because the words sound so dumb) And here's where the anxiety dance gets choreographed. It goes like this: You turn clockwise. I turn Counter-Clockwise. We stop, stumble Resolve our steps. Begin again. V. You slipped into something dangerous after attending to your intimate conferences Thirsty friends forever requesting water Or is it blood they want?            Your blood. Somebody's screaming. Is it me? Here on the side street being a sideshow For passersby. You put on your silver armor. I have only my quaint devotion. It is not enough.            You say I can't eat your food, baby, but I sitll like your cooking. Did I trip?         Did you?    That Mingus record is still revolving. You smile serenely.             I can barely breathe. VI. If I could waste myself, I'd do it here In public. Curse your name till my tongue bled. The same tongue that searched out the darkest spot on your back and licked it like chocolate. Curse your name like you were some Broken god in need of further profaning. But I am no good at playing: victim. Sadness is so private. These tears on the Uptown Express. Take that tired song off the constant stereo. It keeps reminding me That what brought me to you was music. You said you never lied to me. Fucker. You take the exit sign home with you. But I won't become invisible.

I rise like a red balloon, untethered and vacant. The essence of my dolor has become rarefied, Holy; like a fragrance, bodiless, without referent. It is pale shadow on the sun, a wasp’s-wing, accidental Splash of poison on the white rose’s thorn— I twist it in my fingers and faint.Shall I tell you? There was one bad fairy at my birth, there came one curse, One blister, one drop of mercury in the moult of me And everything was ruined after. Still it is No good; the words drift from me like ashes. I am so old now, I have left half my life In caves hollowed out in rock by the seashore: I prayed in each one, and could not find my way back, Or lied when the pass-word was asked, or turned my back, Making gestures of despondency at the roiling surf. In a mirror I shot all my hateful selves, the yesterdays.

THE MIND IS AN ANCIENT AND FAMOUS CAPITAL The mind is a city like London, Smoky and populous: it is a capital Like Rome, ruined and eternal, Marked by the monuments which no one Now remembers. For the mind, like Rome, contains Catacombs, aqueducts, amphitheatres, palaces, Churches and equestrian statues, fallen, broken or soiled. The mind possesses and is possessed by all the ruins Of every haunted, hunted generation’s celebration. “Call us what you will: we are made such by love.” We are such studs as dreams are made on, and Our little lives are ruled by the gods, by Pan, Piping of all, seeking to grasp or grasping All of the grapes; and by the bow-and-arrow god, Cupid, piercing the heart through, suddenly and forever. Dusk we are, to dusk returning, after the burbing, After the gold fall, the fallen ash, the bronze, Scattered and rotten, after the white null statues which Are winter, sleep, and nothingness: when Will the houselights of the universe Light up and blaze? For it is not the sea Which murmurs in a shell, And it is not only heart, at harp o’clock, It is the dread terror of the uncontrollable Horses of the apocalypse, running in wild dread Toward Arcturus—and returning as suddenly ... THE FEAR AND DREAD OF THE MIND OF THE OTHERS —The others were the despots of despair— The river’s freshness sailed from unknown sources— ... They snickered giggled, laughed aloud at last, They mocked and marvelled at the statue which was A caricature, as strained and stiff, and yet A statue of self-love!—since self-love was To them, truly my true love, how, then, was I a stillness of nervousness So nervous a caricature: did they suppose Self-love was unrequited, or betrayed? They thought I had fallen in love with my own face, And this belief became the night-like obstacle To understanding all my unbroken suffering, My studious self-regard, the pain of hope, The torment of possibility: How then could I have expected them to see me As I saw myself, within my gaze, or see That being thus seemed as a toad, a frog, a wen, a mole. Knowing their certainty that I was only A monument, a monster who had fallen in love With himself alone, how could I have Told them what was in me, within my heart, trembling and passionate Within the labyrinth and caves of my mind, which is Like every mind partly or wholly hidden from itself? The words for what is in my heart and in my mind Do not exist. But I must seek and search to find Amid the vines and orchards of the vivid world of day Approximate images, imaginary parallels For what is my heart and dark within my mind: Comparisons and mere metaphors: for all Of them are substitutes, both counterfeit and vague: They are, at most, deceptive resemblances, False in their very likeness, like the sons Who are alike and kin and more unlike and false Because they seem the father’s very self: but each one is —Although begotten by the same forbears—himself, The unique self, each one is unique, like every other one, And everything, older or younger, nevertheless A passionate nonesuch who has before has been. Do you hear, do you see? Do you understand me now, and how The words for what is my heart do not exist? THE RIVER WAS THE EMBLEM OF ALL BEAUTY:   ALL ... The river was the abundant belly of beauty itself The river was the dream space where I walked, The river was itself and yet it was—flowing and freshening— A self anew, another self, or self renewed At every tick of eternity, and by each glint of light Mounting or sparkling, descending to shade and black —Had I but told them my heart, told how it was Taunted at noon and pacified at dusk, at starfall midnight Strong in hope once more, ever in eagerness Jumping like joy, would they have heard? How could they? How, when what they knew was, like the grass, Simple and certain, known through the truth of touch, another form and fountain of falsehood’s fecundity— Gazing upon their faces as they gazed Could they have seen my faces as whores who are Holy and deified as priestesses of hope —the sacred virgins of futurity— Promising dear divinity precisely because They were disfigured ducks who might become And be, and ever beloved, white swans, noble and beautiful. Could they have seen how my faces were Bonfires of worship and vigil, blazes of adoration and hope —Surely they would have laughed again, renewed their scorn, Giggled and snickered, cruel. Surely have said This is the puerile mania of the obsessed, The living logic of the lunatic: I was the statue of their merriment, Dead and a death, Pharoah and monster forsaken and lost. ... My faces were my apes: my apes became Performers in the Sundays of their parks, Buffoons or clowns in the farce or comedy When they took pleasure in knowing that they were not like me. ... I waited like obsession in solitude: The sun’s white terror tore and roared at me, The moonlight, almond white, at night, Whether awake or sleeping, arrested me And sang, softly, haunted, unlike the sun But as the sun. Withheld from me or took away Despair or peace, making me once more With thought of what had never been before——

move if you  can makeout  her  mouth sort  of miming  to B.B.  happy birthday and handing  him a  bottle which is to  illustrate the progress of civilization up to  the  present  day  that I  was  there  when bought  in Greek  four packets  of Karelia's Virginia and brought back a big bottle fit for treason, stratagem, and spoils knocking  the ball against the  little house where  I was  born beginning to see  that  "two ugly  make a pretty"  moving  upwards  of  a  crooked  village road  not  ten  miles  from the mud  baths we read about as well as a foundry, coal-breaker, machine-shops, and light-house

By such an all-embalming summer day As sweetens now among the mountain pines Down to the cornland yonder and the vines, To where the sky and sea are mixed in gray, How do all things together take their way Harmonious to the harvest, bringing wines And bread and light and whatsoe’er combines In the large wreath to make it round and gay. To me my troubled life doth now appear Like scarce distinguishable summits hung Around the blue horizon: places where Not even a traveller purposeth to steer,— Whereof a migrant bird in passing sung, And the girl closed her window not to hear.

The old men with too much gamble in them, whose eyes Are at peace only when all is lost, see the Queen's quiet face On the deck of cards, the red cuff of  her cloak, the raw tip Of  her tongue, the blood on her dress    . . .    What fled from them In their frenzies comes tiptoeing back, choiring, to the marble Concert hall where Nemesis, in velvet opera cape, is beginning Her recitative:it is your turn to go slowly now,with hands clasped behind your back,drowsy from the earth's sweet abundance and her great deprivations,the rows of crooked trees, the streets' bright monotony, and gather up the starving. . .

She visits still too much, dressed in aromas of fir needles, mango, mold: I still get lost knowing she’s close, me not getting younger or more conscious. Sometimes I fantasticate I’m broad awake: her witchy presence waits for me to jump into her arms, but then she’s just an incoherent ache in sleep’s freaked scenes. I feel her frosty nitrogenous hands and wrists vaporing nooses around my head and feet and genitals, conjuring my drab hair into a party bowl of oiled, desirable locks. She makes me nervous, but what would I do without her? So long as I can’t have her, I want her and this alarming manic frequency. Then again, who wants to wake to change, its pulped, smelly suit of meat, drawing flies? My night-watch hot girl, moon-maiden, mom, let me get just one night’s sleep without regret, released from your foxy ticklish fondlings, your latest smell of windblown fresh-cut grass.

She visits still too much, dressed in aromas of fir needles, mango, mold: I still get lost knowing she’s close, me not getting younger or more conscious. Sometimes I fantasticate I’m broad awake: her witchy presence waits for me to jump into her arms, but then she’s just an incoherent ache in sleep’s freaked scenes. I feel her frosty nitrogenous hands and wrists vaporing nooses around my head and feet and genitals, conjuring my drab hair into a party bowl of oiled, desirable locks. She makes me nervous, but what would I do without her? So long as I can’t have her, I want her and this alarming manic frequency. Then again, who wants to wake to change, its pulped, smelly suit of meat, drawing flies? My night-watch hot girl, moon-maiden, mom, let me get just one night’s sleep without regret, released from your foxy ticklish fondlings, your latest smell of windblown fresh-cut grass.

If we could only push these walls apart, unfold the room the way a child might take apart a box and lay it flat upon the floor— so many corners cleared at last! Or else could rip away the roof and stare down at the dirty rooms, the hallways turning on themselves, and understand at last their plan— dark maze without a minotaur, no monsters but ourselves. Yet who could bear to see it all? The slow descending spirals of the dust against the spotted windowpane, the sunlight on the yellow lace, the hoarded wine turned dark and sour, the photographs, the letters—all the crowded closets of the heart. One wants to turn away—and cry for fire to break out on the stairs and raze each suffocating room. But the walls stay, the roof remains strong and immovable, and we can only pray that if these rooms have memories, they are not ours.