Sunday, June 20, 2010

LXXIV

The enormous tragedy of the dream in the peasant’s bent
            shoulders
           
                                                tanned and stuffed,
            Thus Ben Mussolini and la Clara a Milano
                                    by the heels
That maggots shd/ eat the dead bullock
DIONYSUS, Dionysus, but the twice crucified
                                                where in history will you find it?
yet say this to Possum: a bang, not a whimper,
            with a bang not with a whimper,
To build the city

                                                whose terraces are the colour of stars.
The suave eyes, quiet, not scornful,
                                                rain also is of the process.
What you depart from is not the way
and olive trees blown white in the wind
washed in the Yangtze and Han
what whiteness will you add to this whiteness,
                                                                        what candor?
“the great periplum brings in the stars to our shore.”
You who have passed the pillars and outward from Gibraltar
when Lucifer fell in N. Carolina.
if the suave air give way to scirocco
NO MAN, NO MAN? Odysseus
                                                the name of my family.
the wind also is of the process,
                                                            sister the moon
Fear god and the stupidity of the populace,
but a precise definition
            transmitted thus

Bride of Christ in mosaic till our time / deification of emperors
but a snotty barbarian ignorant of T’ang history need not deceive
                                                                                                            one
            nor

                                    money on loan from anonimo

and in India the rate down to 18 per hundred
but the local loan lice provided from imported bankers
so the total interest sweated out of the Indian farmers
                        rose in Churchillian grandeur
as when, and plus when, he returned to the putrid gold standard
as was about 1925            Oh my England
that free speech without free radio speech is as zero
                        and but one point needed for Stalin
you need not, i.e. need not take over the means of production;
money to signify work done, inside a system
                        and measured and wanted
“I have not done unnecessary manual labour”
says the R. C. chaplain’s field book
                                                (preparation before confession)
squawky as larks over the death cells
                                                militarism progressing westward
in All Quiet on the Western Front
and the constitution in jeopardy
and that state of things not very new either

“of sapphire, for this stone giveth sleep”
not words whereto to be faithful
            nor deeds that they be resolute
                        only that bird-hearted equity make timber
                                    and lay hold of the earth

                                                they spoke of Elijah
in telling the tales of Odysseus                                    NO MAN
                                                            NO MAN
“I am noman, my name is noman”
but

            the man with an education
and whose mouth was removed by his father
                                    because he made too many things
whereby cluttered the bushman’s baggage

                        spoke and thereby created the named
                                                                        thereby making clutter
the bane of men moving
and so his mouth was removed
as you will find it removed in his pictures
                                                            in the beginning was the word
                                    paraclete or the perfect word: sincerity
from the death cells

                                                                        @ Pisa

when the cat walked the top bar of the railing
and the water was still on the West side
flowing toward the Villa Catullo
where with sound ever moving
                                    in diminutive loud-roarings
in the stillness outlasting all wars
“Woman”

                                                “woman,
                                                                        woman!”
Why must I continue?
“If I fall

“it’s not to my knees”
and with one day’s reading a man may have the key in his hands

                                    Hail Heroes

came a lion-coloured pup bringing fleas
and a bird with white markings, a stepper
                                                under the six gallows
Absolve, may you absolve us all
lay there Barabbas and two thieves lay beside him
infantile synthesis in Barabbas

                                                            ebullient
and by name Thos. Wilson
Mr K. said nothing foolish, the whole month nothing foolish:
“if we weren’t dumb, we wouldn’t be here”
                                                            and the Lane gang
Butterflies, mint and Lesbia’s sparrows,
the voiceless with bumm drum and banners,
                                                and the ideogram of the guard roosts
the sad thought turns

                        the thought goes, time returns
                                    the young salesman
bowed with such french politeness “No that is impossible.”
I have forgotten which city
But the caverns are less enchanting to the unskilled explorer
            than the Bisons as shown on the postals,
we will see those old roads again, question,
                                                                        possibly,
but nothing appears much less likely,

and there was a smell of mint under the tent flaps
especially after the rain
                        and a white ox on the road toward Pisa
                                                as if facing the tower,
dark sheep in the drill field and on wet days were clouds
in the mountain as if under the guard roosts.
            A lizard upheld me
            the wild birds wd not eat the white bread

From Carrara stone to the tower
            and this day the air was made open
                        for Mercy of all delights,

                                                            whose prayers,
the great scarab is bowed at the altar
the green light gleams in his shell
plowed in the sacred field and unwound the silk worms early
                                                            in tensile display
in the light of light is the creative power
                        “are lights

and in the hall of the forebears
                                                as from the beginnings of wonders
the paraclete
                                                                        the precision

                        the compassionate

            the guider of waters

4 giants at the 4 corners
            three young men at the door
and they digged a ditch round about me
            lest the damp gnaw thru my bones
                        to redeem Zion with justice
sd/ Isaiah. Not out on interest said David rex
                                                                        the prime s.o.b.
Light tensile immaculate
                        the sun’s cord unspotted
“are lights”

                                                “ALL,
all things that are are lights”
and they dug him up out of sepulture
ostensibly looking for Manicheans.

                                    a problem of history,
and the fleet at Salamis made with money lent by the state to the
                                                                                                shipwrights
                                    A time for silence, a time for speaking.
Never inside the country to raise the standard of living
but always abroad to increase the profits of usurers,
                                    Lenin said,
and gun sales lead to more gun sales
            they do not clutter the market for gunnery
                        there is no saturation
Pisa, in the 23rd year of the effort in sight of the tower
and Till was hung yesterday
for murder and rape with trimmings

            plus mythology, thought he was Zeus ram or another one
                                    Hey Snag wots in the bibl’?
                                    wot are the books ov the bible?
                                    Name ’em, don’t bullshit ME.
                                                                                                NO MAN

a man on whom the sun has gone down
the ewe, he said had such a pretty look in her eyes;
and the nymph

                                                            came to me,
                                                                        as a corona of angels
one day the clouds were banked
            or in glory of sunset
                        and comrades blessed without aim
wept in the rainditch at evening
                                                Are lights
that the drama is wholly subjective
stone knowing the form which the carver imparts it
the stone knows the form
either Aphrodite,

                                    or Saint Mary of the Miracles

NO MAN
a man on whom the sun has gone down
nor shall diamond die in the avalanche
                        be it torn from its setting
first must destroy himself ere others destroy him.
4 times was the city rebuilded, Hail Heroes

                                    Hail Heroes            of Italy betrayed
now in the mind indestructible,

                                                                        Hail Heroes,
With the four giants at the four corners
and four gates mid-wall Hail Heroes
and a terrace the colour of stars
pale as the dawn cloud, the moon
                        thin as Demeter’s hair
Hail Heroes, and in a dance the renewal
            with two larks in counterpoint
                                    at sunset
                                                that softens
to the left the Tower
                        seen thru a pair of breeches.
who forgets and lets himself fall

                        and the Charybdis of action
                        to the solitude
woman, woman, that wd/ not be dragged into paradise by the hair,
under the gray cliff in periplum
            the sun dragging her stars
                        a man on whom the sun has gone down
and the wind came as tree nymphs under the sun-beat
                                                Woe to him alone
                                                                        are never alone
amid the slaves learning slavery
            and the dull driven back toward the jungle
            are never alone SUN AROUND SUN
                        as the light sucks up vapor
                                    and the tides follow

            that had been a hard man in some ways
                        a day as a thousand years
as the leopard sat by his water dish;
            has killed the aurochs and the bison sd/ Bunting
                        doing six months after that war was over
as pacifist tempted with chicken but declined to approve
of war “A Wreath of Chamberpots”
                                                            privately printed
                        to the shame of various critics
nevertheless the state can lend money
                        and the fleet that went out to Salamis
                        was built by state loan to the builders
                                    hence the attack on classical studies
and in this war were

                                                Bunting and cummings
as against thickness and fatness

black that die in captivity
            night green of his pupil, as grape flesh and sea wave
undying luminous and translucent

                                                It is over, Go;

                        surrounded by herds and by cohorts looked on

but in Tangier I saw from dead straw ignition
                                    From a snake bite
            fire came to the straw
            from the fakir blowing
            foul straw and an arm-long snake
            that bit the tongue of the fakir making small holes
                                    and from the blood of the holes
                                    came fire when he stuffed the straw into his mouth
dirty straw that he took from the roadway
                                                first smoke and then the dull flame

            elemental he thought the souls of the children, if any,
but had rented a shelter for travelers
            by foot from Syria, some of them
nor is it for nothing that the chrysalids mate in the air
                                                            color of light
green splendour and as the sun thru pale fingers
Lordly men are to earth o’ergiven
                                    these the companions

                        wrote of giants

                                                dreamed of nobility

                                                comedian singing:
                                    “Blarrney castle me darlin’
                                    you’re nothing now but a StOWne”

                        talking of mathematics

                                    lover of jade

                        wrote historical novels

                                                            looked twice bathed
                                                are to earth o’ergiven.
                        And this day the sun was clouded
— “You sit stiller”

“if whenever you move something jangles.”

                                                there might be some society (good) left in
                                                Spain, wd. he care to frequent it, my god, no!
            opinion in 1924

Uncle George stood like a statesman ALL THINGS FLOW
fills up every hollow
            the cake shops

                                                            Madame the owner getting older

                                                had never before met an American
            “and all their generation”
                        no it is not in that chorus

                        going out and taller than anyone present
                                                            where are the hours of that year
Mr James shielding himself with Mrs Hawkesby
as it were a bowl shielding itself with a walking stick
as he maneuvered his way toward the door

                                    of the education,
                        Teach? at Harvard?
                        Teach? It cannot be done.
and this I had from the monument

                                    These are celebrations

                                                            July fourteenth
with the hill ablaze

                                                the end of that chapter
                                    see time for June 25th,

                                    himself unmistakeably,
                        on a horse, an ear and the beard’s point showing
            and the Farben works still intact
            to the tune of

and they have bitched the Adelphi
niggers scaling the obstacle fence
                                    in the middle distance
and Mr Edwards superb green and brown
                                    in ward No 4 a jacent benignity,

                                                “doan you tell no one
            I made you that table”
                                    methenamine eases the urine
and the greatest is charity
to be found among those who have not observed
                                                regulations
            not of course that we advocate —
            and yet petty larceny
            in a regime based on grand larceny
            might rank as conformity naught else
            with justice shall be redeemed
who putteth not out his money on interest
            “in meteyard in weight or in measure”
                                    XIX Leviticus   or
First Thessalonians 4, 11
300 years culture at the mercy of a tack hammer
                                    thrown thru the roof
Cloud over mountain, mountain over the cloud
I surrender neither the empire nor the temples
                                                                        plural
nor the constitution nor yet the city

each one in god’s name

                                                rose from the sea West Wind behind her
                                    and from her manner of walking

            till the shrine be again white with marble
            till the stone eyes look again seaward
                                                                        The wind is part of the process
                                                                        The rain is part of the process
and the Pleiades set in her mirror
Mercy, this stone bringeth sleep;
                        offered the wine bowl
                                                            grass nowhere out of place
Deep   Earth,  Mother,
            by thy herbs mint thyme and basil,
                                    from whom and to whom,
                                    will never be more now than at present
being given a new green katydid of a Sunday
emerald, paler than emerald,
                                                minus its right propeller
                        this tent is to me and TITHONUS
eater of grape pulp
            lit by sex
Manet painted the bar at La Cigale or at Les Folies in that year
            she did her hair in small ringlets, à la 1880 it might have been,
red, and the dress she wore

                        a great goddess, Aeneas knew her forthwith
by paint immortal as no other age is immortal
                                    France nineteenth
Degas Manet Guys unforgettable
a great brute sweating paint

                                                                        of Vlaminck
                        for this stone giveth sleep
                                                            rest without more tossing
                        and eucalyptus that is for memory
                        under the olives, by cypress, Tyrrhenian Sea,

                                                in field by the river the tables

                                    the keys of the chateau;
            rain,
To the left of the beautiful Tower            the tower
in the tower to the left of the tower
                        chewed his son’s head
and the only people who did anything of any interest were Hitler, Mussolini
                                                                                                                        and
            Frobenius
in Baluba the man who created the storm
                        and Monsieur Jean wrote a play now and then or the
                                                                                                            Possum
                        poor and old   I never read a letter
I don’t know how humanity stands it
            with a painted paradise at the end of it
            without a painted paradise at the end of it
the dwarf morning-glory twines round the grass blade
great NUT of the soul    with Barabbas and 2 thieves beside me,
                                    the wards like a slave ship,
                                                Mr Edwards, Hudson, Henry   companions in misery
                                                            Comrades Kernes, Green and Tom Wilson
                                    God’s messenger Whiteside
and the guards op/ of the . . .
                        was lower than that of the prisoners
            “all them g.d. m.f. generals c.s. all of ’em fascists”
“fer a bag o’ Dukes”
                                    “the things I saye an’ dooo”
            and I in a pig-sty
so lay men in Circe’s swine-sty;
            I went into a pig-sty and I saw corpses of souls
                        “c’mon small fry” sd/ the little coon to the big black:
of the slaver as seen between decks
                        and all the presidents
Washington Adams Monroe Polk Tyler
plus Carrol (of Carrolton) Crawford
Robbing the public for private individual’s gain TO DUPE
every bank of discount is downright iniquity
            robbing the public for private individual’s gain
            and fair-haired Circe, mah! she gave them bad drugs
neither with lions nor leopards attended
                        but poison, poison
in all the veins of the commonweal
if on high, will flow downward all thru them
            if on the forge

                        “not the priest but the victim”
                        his seal Apollo,   sd/ the old combattant: “victim,
withstood them by Thames and by Niger with pistol by Niger
            with a printing press by the Thames bank”
            until I end my song
                                    and shot himself;
                                                for praise of intaglios

                                                            out of Babylon
                                    they are left us
for roll or plain impact
            or cut square in the jade block

great night of the soul from the tent

amid what was termed the a.h. of the army
the guards holding opinion. As it were to dream of
morticians’ daughters raddled but amorous
To study with the white wings of time passing
                                                is not that our delight
to have friends come from far countries
                                                is that not pleasure
nor to care that we are untrumpeted?
                                                filial, fraternal affection is the root of humaneness
                                                the root of the process
nor are elaborate speeches and slick alacrity.
                                    employ men in proper season
                                    not when they are at harvest

                        and the other woman: “I am the Moon.”
dry friable earth going from dust to more dust
            grass worn from its root-hold
            is it blacker? was it blacker? Night of soul?
            is there a blacker or was it merely San Juan with a belly ache
                                                            writing for posterity
            in short shall we look for a deeper or is this the bottom?

                                    the tower there on the tree line
Berlin                        dysentery                        phosphorus
                                    Candide’s old woman
            (Hullo Corporal Casey) double X or burocracy?
                                                                        Paradise is not artificial
            but shattered apparently
it exists only in fragments unexpected excellent sausage,
                                                the smell of mint, for example,
                                                Ladro the night cat;

            waited on the slope above the lake sunken in the pocket
                                                                                                of hills
awaiting decision from the old lunch cabin built out over the
                                                                                                shingle,
Zarathustra, now obsolete
to Jupiter and to Hermes where now is the castle
            no vestige save in the air
in stone is no imprint and the grey walls of no era
                        under the olives
                        sacred to Athena
                        little owl, gleaming eyes,
                                                                        olive trees
that which gleams and then does not gleam
            as the leaf turns in the air
            North East South Winds
“That’s the bugbear,” said the young mother
                        and the bathers like small birds under hawk’s eye
                        shrank back under the cliff’s edge

“wd.” said the guard “take everyone of them g.d.m.f. generals
c.s. all of ’em fascists”
            Oedipus, grandsons of the magnanimous Remus
so Mr Bullington lay on his back like an ape
singing: O sweet and lovely
o Lady be good”
                                                into a pig-sty I too went
Criminals have no intellectual interests?
                        and for three months did not know the taste of his food

                                                the sharp song with sun under its radiance
                                                                        shrill
one tanka entitled the shadow
bugbear, or the hawk’s wing
            of no fortune and with a name to come
Is downright iniquity said J. Adams
                                    at 35 instead of 21.65
                                    doubtless conditioned by what his father heard in
                                                                                                            Byzantium
doubtless conditioned by the spawn of the gt. Meyer Anselm Rothschild
That old H. Morgenthau had heard from the ass eared militarist in Byzantium:
            “Why stop?” “To begin again when we are strong.”
and young H/ the tip from the augean stables in Paris

                                                            thus conditioning.
Meyer Anselm, a rrromance, yes, yes certainly
but more fool you if you fall for it two centuries later
. . .
            from their seats the blond bastards, and cast ’em
                        the yidd is a stimulant, and the goyim are cattle
            in gt/ proportion and go to saleable slaughter
            with the maximum of docility.    but if
a place be oversalted, , ,?
With justice,
by the law, from the law or it is not in the contract

                                    nothing pinned on Jehoveh

                                                                                    to the
autumnal heavens succession dance
with the sun under its melody
            to the compassionate heavens
            and there is also the XIXth Leviticus.
            “Thou shalt purchase the field with money.”
                        signed Jeremiah
from the tower

unto the horse gate $8.50

which is in Benjamin, $8.67
                        For the purity of the air on Chocorua
                                    in a land of maple
            From the law, by the law, so build yr/ temple
            with justice in meteyard and measure
a black delicate hand
a white’s hand like a ham
                        pass by, seen under the tent-flap
                                    on sick call : comman’
                                    comman’, sick call comman’
            and the two largest rackets are alternation
                        of the value of money
            (of  the  unit  of  money   CHANGING ONE CURRENCY
                                                                        FOR ANOTHER
and usury @60   or lending
                        that which is made out of nothing
and the state can lend money            as was done
by Athens for the building of the Salamis fleet
            and if the packet gets lost in transit
                                                ask Churchill’s backers
            where it has got to                        the state need not borrow
            nor do the veterans need state guarantees
            for private usurious lending
            in fact that is the cat in the woodshed
                        the state need not borrow
                        as was shown by the mayor of Wörgl
                        who had a milk route
                        and whose wife sold shirts and short breeches
and on whose book-shelf was the Life of Henry Ford
and also a copy of the Divine Comedy
                        and of Heine’s poems
                        a nice little town in the Tyrol in a wide flat-lying valley
near Innsbruck and when a note of the
                                    small town of Wörgl went over
a counter in Innsbruck
            and the banker saw it go over
            all the slobs in Europe were terrified
            “no one” said the Frau Burgomeister
            “in this village who cd/ write a newspaper article.
            Knew it was money but pretended it was not
            in order to be on the safe side of the law.”
But in Russia they bungled and did not apparently
grasp the idea of work-certificate
and started the New Economic Policy with disaster
and the immolation of men to machinery
                        and the canal work and gt/ mortality
                                                (which is as may be)
and went in for dumping in order to trouble the waters
                                                in the usurer’s hell-a-dice
all of which leads to the death-cells
each in the name of its god
or longevity because as says Aristotle
philosophy is not for young men
their Generalities can not be sufficiently derived from
            their particularities
their generalities cannot be born from a sufficient phalanx
                                                                                    of particulars
lord of his work and master of utterance
                        who turneth his word in its season and shapes it

who seized the extremities and the opposites
holding true course between them
shielding men from their errors
cleaving to the good they had found
holding empire as if not in a mortar with it
                                    nor dazzled thereby
wd/ have put the old man, his father on his shoulders
            and gone off to some barren seacoast
Says the Japanese sentry  :  Paaak yu djeep over there,
some of the best soldiers we have says the captain
            Hail to Great Japan from the Philippines

                                                “how stiff the shaft of your neck is.”
                                    and they went off each his own way
“a better fencer than I was,”

“I believe in the resurrection of Italy            which is impossible
            4 times to the song

                                    now in the mind indestructible

                                    .     .     .     .

                                    DAUGHTER, THE BLIND MAN’S SHINING
            Glass-eye

                                                treading water
                                    and addressing the carpenter from the seawaves
            because of an unpinned section of taff-rail
                                    we are not so ignorant as you think in the navy

Oh yes, the money is there,
                        the money is there

                                                (very peculiar under the circs)
                        musketeers rather more than 20 years later
an old man (or oldish) still active
serving small stones from a lath racquet
Persephone

                        in sight of the tower that leans
on such a litter rode Pontius
                        under such canvass
in the a.h. of the army
                        in sight of two red cans labeled “FIRE”

                                                                        beware of their charm
SIRENS this cross turns with the sun
and the goyim are undoubtedly in great numbers cattle
whereas a jew will receive information
                                    he will gather up information
                        in place of . . . something more solid
                                                but not in all cases
SIRENS                                   had appreciated his conversation
            GRACES possibly in the soft air
            with the mast held by the left hand
            in this air as of Mercy
enigma forgetting the times and seasons
but this air brought her ashore a la marina
with the great shell borne on the seawaves
                                                white shell
            By no means an orderly Dantescan rising
but as the winds veer
                                                            southwest wind

                                                southwest wind
                        as the winds veer and the raft is driven
                        and the voices

                                                Southeast, East as the winds veer in periplum
I am the moon”  .

                                    as the winds veer in periplum

            drunk with wine

            “in the name of its god” “Come spirit”
                        “come” / not to a schema
                                    “is not for the young” said Arry, Aristotle
            but as grass under West Wind
                                    as the green blade under East Wind
Time is not, Time is the evil, beloved
Beloved the hours rosy-fingered
                        as against the half-light of the window
                        with the sea beyond making horizon
against the light the lie of the cameo
profile
                        a dream passing over the face in the half-light
                        Venus, Aphrodite “or Rhodes”
                        Ligurian wind, come
“beauty is difficult” sd/ Mr Beardsley

                                                            “Pity you didn’t finish the job
while you were at it”

                        having run into the future non-sovereign Edward
on a bicycle equally freshman
                                    a.d. 1910 or about that
beauty is difficult
in the days of the Berlin to Baghdad project

                                    photos of rock temples

but he wd/ not talk of

                                    the frogbassador, he wanted to
            talk modern art

            but of second rate, not the first rate
            beauty is difficult.
He said I protested too much            he wanted to start a press
and print the greek classics . . . . periplum

hilarity quoting the he seems to me
in reply to the trembling air
                                                beauty is difficult
But on the other hand the President of Magdalen
(rhyming dawdlin’) said there were
too many words in “The Hound of Heaven”
                                    a moddddun opohem he had read
and there was no doubt that the dons lived well
                                                                                    in the kawledg
it was if I remember rightly the burn and freeze that the fresh-
                                                                                                men
had failed to follow
or else a mere desire to titter etc.
and it is (in parenthesis) doubtless
                        easier to teach them to roar like gorillas
than to scan he seems to me
                                                inferior gorillas
of course, lacking the wind sack

                        we have not yet calculated the sum                        gorilla + bayonet
and there was a good man named Burr
                                    descendant of Aaron during the other war
who was amused by the British
                        but he didn’t last long AND
Corporal Casey tells me that Stalin
                        good man Stalin
                        has no sense of humour (dear Bear!)
and old Rhys, Ernest, was a lover of beauty
            and when he was still engineer at a coal mine
            a man passed him at high speed radiant in the mine gallery
his face shining with ecstasy
            “A’hv joost . . . . . . . . . . . Tommy Luff.”
            and as Luff was twice the fellow’s size, Rhys was puzzled
The Muses are daughters of memory
            Clio, Terpsichore

and the three ladies all waited
                        “and with a name to come”
                                    for generations to come

                                    the grove needs an altar

            Came Madame Lucrezia Borgia
            and on the back of the door
            are, or were, still the initials
            lovely quarter hour,

to the click of hooves on the cobbles

and “my fondest knight lie dead” . . or Mary Stuart
“ghosts move about me”            “patched with histories”

                                                                        if they were,
what have they done in the interval,
                                                eh, to arrive by metempsychosis at . . . . ?
and there are also the conjectures of the Fortean Society
Beauty is difficult . . . . the plain ground
                                                                        precedes the colours
and this grass or whatever here under the tentflaps
                        is, indubitably, bambooiform
representative brush strokes wd/ be similar
. . . . cheek bone, by verbal manifestation,
                        her eyes

                        whereas the child’s face

                                                in the fresco square over the doorway
                        centre background
the form beached under the Sun
                                    tensile light pours down,
and that certain images be formed in the mind
                                    to remain there
                                                            in a prepared place
            Arachne brings me good fortune
to remain there, resurgent IMAGES

for the deification of emperors
and the medallions

and as for playing checquers with black Jim
            on a barrel top where now is the Ritz-Carlton
and the voice of Monsieur Fouquet or the Napoleon 3rd
goatee of Mr Quackenbos, or Quackenbush
as I supposed it,
and Mrs Chittenden’s lofty air
                        and the remains of the old South
                        tidewashed to Manhattan and brown-stone
                        or (later) the outer front stair

            or old Train (Francis) on the pavement in his plain wooden
                                                                                                            chair

or a fellow throwing a knife in the market
past baskets and bushels of peaches
                                                at $1. the bushel
and the cool of the 42nd St. tunnel                        (periplum)
white-wash and horse cars, the Lexington Avenue cable
refinement, pride of tradition, alabaster
                                                            Towers of Pisa
                                                            (alabaster, not ivory)
coloured photographs of Europa
carved wood from Venice venetian glass and the samovar
and the fire bucket, 1806 Barre Mass’chusetts
                        and the Charter Oak in Connecticut
                        or to begin with Cologne Cathedral
                        the Torwaldsen lion

                                                                        the lion court

orient reaching to Tangier, the cliffs the villa

            periplum
Mr Joyce also preoccupied with Gibraltar
                                                            and the Pillars of Hercules
not with my patio and the wistaria and the tennis courts
or the bugs

            or the quality of the beer served to sailors
to see Naples
                                                            the romanesque
                                    being preferable
and by analogy the form of

            columns signed by their maker
                        the frescoes

                                                                        the madonna
and “make the air tremble with clarity”
as in the manuscript

“Here is your tea” said the head waiter
in 1912 explaining its mysteries to the trainee
with a teapot from another hotel
but coffee came to Assisi much later
                                    that is, so one cd/ drink it
when it was lost in Orleans and France semi-ruin’d
thus the coffee-house facts of Vienna
                        whereas Mr Carver merits mention for the
cultivation of peanuts,
peanuts, and the soja has yet to save Europe
                                    and the wops do not use maple syrup
the useful operations of commerce
                        stone after stone of beauty cast down
and authenticities disputed by parasites
                                    (made in Ragusa) and : what art do you handle?
“The best” And the moderns? “Oh, nothing modern
we couldn’t sell anything modern.”
But Herr Bacher’s father made madonnas still in the tradition
carved wood as you might have found in any cathedral
                        and another Bacher still cut intaglios

where the masks come from, in the Tyrol,
                        in the winter season
                        searching every house to drive out the demons.
Serenely in the crystal jet
                        as the bright ball that the fountain tosses
(Verlaine) as diamond clearness
                        How soft the wind

                                                where the sea is remembered
                        out of hell, the pit
                        out of the dust and glare evil
                        West Wind / East Wind
This liquid is certainly a
                        property of the mind
it’s not an attribute                        but an element
                                                            in the mind’s make-up
it is an agent and functions                        dust to a fountain pan otherwise
                        Hast ’ou seen the rose in the steel dust
                                                (or swansdown ever?)
so light is the urging, so ordered the dark petals of iron
we who have passed over Lethe.
   

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