LXXVI.
Hadley bulges into Connecticut,
Blowing bubbles into the river
Beneath the bridge under the same sky.
The café, the bus stops, the mall
And the old farms and farm stores
The Agway, the passing artery
Of the throbbing Interstate, rejoicing.
A better person stands on the bales of hay
In Hadley’s fields in the late summer, but here
At the beginning of spring, snow still crusted
Dirtily under bushes and in the shady spots
Of buildings, there is not yet goodness here.
Yet no evil, rather a pre-Adamite furry sense
Of being in a honey-coloured world, the glasses
The colour of jade, colour of ancient Emperors’
Desire for an eternal life in an unchanging world
Without point or postulate, not yet affixed to the face
And so there can be no evil at such a time in any case.
The cows flick their tails in this unimagined springtime
Their fuzzy minds, identifiable as psychology but too far
In the state of innocentia veritas to genuinely interpret
Falling to thoughts—or thought-like objects—of dimly
Remembered warmth from a forgotten summertime.
Lordly, shining in that crevasse of worldliest existence
Town and country inseparable stand strung out along the road
Something true and proper and eternal, protected and fought for
Greater than business, greater than trade or anything, just here.
The words of this world are short as they spread across the sky
Ideal words, a simpler kotoba mot lexe wort woord parola slovo
Polyglot of the air, polyglot of the river, polyglot of the whole earth.
LXXVII.
Lord God of Hosts of Montague
Steered us good and right and true
Through lands of paper and lands of pen
Until we reached true Home again.
The words upon a yellowed page
Do not fear the tyrant’s rage.
A binding, though without fresh paste
Leads not our minds to foolish haste.
Covers of leather roughened and worn
Cannot mistake when they were born.
Pulp stretched out in its drying-frame
Will never throw calumnious blame.
Yet through the paper and ink and spine
The mind upon our trust might dine
That the pusher of the poisoned pen
May use that trust to push again.
‘Book’ is ‘Bible’; in that word
Lies the heart of a sick sad bird
That on a pulpit of glass and steel
Languishes and cannot feel.
The driveling malodorous mouth
Lets out something of the uncouth
Idea and unsurpassed grand sin
Of taking those pages and lying therein.
Lies pile on lies for a thousand years
Carousers toss back a million beers
Originals torn, down they are cast
In the hypocrite’s black-cloaked fast.
The secret fast of the genuine heart
Holds its Bibliomania apart
From the braying noise of the ass’s tongue
With which the human heart is strung.
The lion-hearted hero then
Takes up a cheap black ballpoint pen.
She measures all, takes all in mind
And opens her eyes—
though she—
be—
—blind.
LXXVIII.
He spoke of the world
as a myth about love
and anger and agony
not seeing the true
character and the true
importance of those things,
here, now.
How could such a person
not fall over the railing
and into the falls
and be borne down on
that rushing stream and on
that stream feel as if
stretched on a rack?
LXXIX.
Long skirt trailing,
orange with a broad hem of patterned
deep purpley red, a girl walks
up the stairs that lead
beyond into a place with a promise
other than what it simply is. That place
at the top of the hill, is a fine old observatory
cluttered with many instruments.
Though the light of the stars persists
only in name, only
in name in this world, her eyes
beneath the curtain of her black
black hair, glance and connect
through the ambivalence of
the nature of the universe, with
a heavens that will not cease
in its wheeling existence until
all else falls to wrack and ruin.
LXXX.
Go away, go away, die
Go, go, far, fly far, on
Blackened wings leave,
Let us go, let us go
May your ridicule
Leave us, let us go
May your clattering
Fall from us like scales
From a fish being scraped
With the cook’s knife—go
Away now, go away now
In your sins you have
Broken penitence and
Made it its own set of horrors—so
Fly away now, fly far
Away, happy without
Happiness’s defining
District and circle, let us go
May your grasp leave us
That gasping, that gasping
We may draw up
Further ever up into
The skies of the loving times.
LXXXI.
I was young once
And when young
I saw a blue sky and laughed.
Now, the sky
Towers grey though
It is blue, and I can be happy.
The sky’s colour
Is a function of
The purpose of clarity in it.
With clarity seen
As a simple value
The blue sky makes children gay.
Clarity’s complexity
Coming upon the grey
Sky, has it happier.
Gazing on
The sky, even so
How, now, wonder calling?
A world without hooks
Hanging simply vaulted
Above, simply, us.
How, then, could
There have come
Any of this doubt?
That is what
A clear sky is
Though it be filled with thunderheads.
LXXXII.
When I was young, I yearned
for a power that
would take the pall of pain
and pull it back
but now, seeing pain in time
and time in death
seeing all these in death unbound
I wish instead only right now for my health.
LXXXIII.
Some day, the power that will transcend time
Will fall more clearly into the cisterns of knowledge
And make itself known in the single word that
Blasts the universe raggedly and beautifully apart.
Some day, the force that resounds through the grief
And the inchoate joy of the self-same universe
Will draw itself back once down again into a body
A single body, a beating heart at the centre of time.
Some day, from the idea of love will be sloughed
As it were, a force that takes even love apart in
Burning desire and concern to rebuild a love that can
Ascend proper the golden steps of the purple throne.
Some day, in radical dispensations from the throne
The ideas that have brought us thus far will be taken away
And may we, then, be able to see clearly something else
Or will we have lost even more, in that endless cycle—
—of losing trans-finitely to gain?
LXXXIV.
The bones leap up
along the seashore and
in the woods.
There is flood
and there is drought
and that-all is together.
Madness sleeps
in the vein and wakes
in the brain.
‘Those pond-demons
seep in through the feet
and take over.’
So the goodwife said
to make her children
behave in those days.
So she said and
so she chided them
in the United Dominion.
So in the woods
so with the butter-churn
so resplendent in black cut.
Chiding them and
making them fearful and
thus she thought teaching them.
‘Be good little children
and go to sleep
or else his hands
will drag you down.’
LXXXV.
Lethargic, still, lying
on the shore of red-tinged sea
she comes and looks
and he looks from beneath
upon the wrinkled face.
That face became all faces
so that eternally one might
gaze on a face that was in
that nature, that character
that volition, that meaning.
Burning the skull
burning the face, burning the
back, the fires of hell falling
through the white sky
to the white earth
show us their uncertain
and unclean radiance.
One world reaching out with
tasseled fingertips for a glorious
other and calling with
the soft voice of a seashore-briar:
In your hand, grasp O grasp—
—the bravery of a dying lily.
LXXXVI.
Replay, replay—
A hand comes down upon the bar
Gnarled, well-worn, leathery like an old sow’s udders.
Thick finger-nails golden-brown from dirt and age
Play among the richer gold of coins.
The gold dies. It is alive. It dies.
The coins pass across two palms and fall out of sight
And strong fingers lift the chipped, smeared glass cylinder
—Tipping cool brown liquid back into the mouth
Parched all round, thin-lipped, deep and dark
Speaker of old and new stories; truths, no less
Divined from the fathomless deeps of intellect
Which without love and hope will rot away
Into the level rancour of insanity
Where we find with misery
The dearth of meaning
that is, no doubt, a minor price to pay
For the virtues of the modern modes of thinking
Such as they are.
Such as they are.
—Or, perhaps,
There is something to be reached, some bridge to be crossed
Some line that divides our minds that must be erased
So that, unbidden, the wisdom locked within us
Like the babblings of an itinerant maniac
May rise, and bear us to a higher knowledge
Of how our world works, what it is for, and why
It was brought into being.
LXXXVII.
The birds on the high-wires sing out
With a voice of revolution
And on their faces the smiles
Of a mountain witch.
Sing that song of the travellers
Over the world that lies still
Sing it in love or in loneliness
Unto the end of this freezing land.
The night is warm, the fans are on
Comes the hazy day, and now
The world itself is bounden
In a graver duty of love.
The clocks on further down til
That day will come, the day
When the sun turned black and
Death mourned for its mastery.
Sing a song or tell a tall tale
Run for your future or jump into
The past that still offers up its problems
Searching for a substantial heart.
LXXXVIII.
Surely we were born
from the arms of sadness
that fills up to the brim
the cupped form of
the whole world.
Love is from there.
It was born and raised
insensible in that darkness
blown and
buffeted
Come on then, follow after
ride on, ride on
out of the deep woods
that are now all on fire—
—come to this whale-haunted shore
where flit over the rocks
white plovers.
From the green-bud-skirted Appalachians
I came to the grey-sea grey-rock shores at
Rockport: white blossoms
briar roses on a foggy night.
At night the sea
flashing, waves in the light
of a wisp of meteors.
LXXXIX.
Sunburst!
O over the hills
Holyoke—Chicopee,
c’mere a minute!
Over Ashfield
Buckland! Calling Montague
and Gill~
Fall in love at the gushing
falls of Millers River!
Contemplate peace on the
heights of Leverett!
Come and pass over
into—Charlemont, the plain
the winding road to Heath
and north! Brattleboro—
—Vernon and
Guilford with
their constant steam
unto the homeland
where all things lie.
Putney! West River!
Come on and move it
O Westminster West!
We are far in the southlands
the flatlands—
—but the mind
nevertheless is here in all beauty.
XC.
This sun is very bright and
the skin is very thin—
so in the evening, burning from
the goldenness and redness of
this day that was given to us
let us sit in the shade
in the bramble bush bursting
suddenly with berries’ buds
with the birds and the thorns.
The bones of the beavers bleached
in the morning and evening
in the dim light and in absolute
brightness, white with orange teeth
sit in a heap quietly and without
any kind of fuss whatsoever
in the little hollow place underneath
the brambles, in the bracken beside
the stream and the white wind.
XCI.
Fly, fly O boat
over the river or
reserved expanse of water
to the far woodlands—
—In the south, a tangle
of withered woods set
quite on fire
In the west, the harbours
of a flowing and racing sea
shaky cities
—In the east, docklands
of the older commerce
good-bye, John Smith
In the north, and here
here in these ponderous
freezing hills of springtime
looking and seeing
in darkness, you can see
above anything else
without having to search for it
without having even
to look at it
—But O but O how you can
see and know
the antiqueness of that
banner.
XCII.
Not to say—not to hear—not to see
the world that festers around
Only to say—only to hear—only to see
the beautiful world atop the pillar
so—
Stand there in the breach
of the whole world, the horse’s shoe
of the place where you can look
and—
and say ‘It is as if I had never seen
the mountains before’. Put yourself there
standing there, loving there, being there
in the whole world with the lovers thereof
be—
Standing once in the whole of life
standing in a way without any natural
end, on the top of the house of eternity
look—
out! The mountains are blazing! Their tops
burn with the green light of springtime! They are
without reproach, the masters of the view, higher than
people, higher than our own sensibility of our glory
lo—
They march up gloriously in florid raiment
so that every day though beginning in
the same routine has its own splendour
which—
looking and saying and thinking on, that splendour
taken and turned and examined, that splendour, certainly
would say that after all we have been born from the arms
of that stony wooded lion and its
mastery of the whole world.
XCIII.
Holding a frond out
As though a questionable parasol
Proceed
To the holy land of blessed
Belchertown—place of
the crosses, place of the
cemetery, child (as a
town) of smallpox and flame
AS IS no doubt the whole of this
Area in its courses.
Holding a frond out
As though a questionable parasol
Take care
For the body of the passion
and the great bulk of it
is coming upon us on the
gathering clouds of
Heaven, coming in Lightning
coming in Flame in this season
of bloody ruddy Golgotha Gloriosa
and which facing we
Hold a frond out
As though a questionable parasol.
XCIV.
Tracing for
an instant—
the barrier, yes, of
the desire to love
the desire to jump through
the barriers thrown up gracelessly
and to grasp out at something.
Tracing it
only for that instant—
the good
state of those things
that persist as the people
clamour and murmur and crush and shout
after something like a rapture.
XCV.
These days, the world in greyness persists
with something like love held for itself
a tide coming up within the heart, inflaming
the brain, creating
something like a New World
so that the holy girls among the ruins
need not go unto the still dead places for their
sustenance, but may
here without needing any others eat and breathe.
XCVI.
Wednesday dawns hideously pearly
The world falls apart on the back of the spy.
Thirty cents will buy you a single
Malted milk ball or about half a candy bar.
Wednesday carries on, the spy frowning
Wishing for an end to a war by its own meaning
Absolutely endless and without alliances.
Wednesday winds down, the sky still white
Absolutely endless but with perhaps some turning
The ground still dark and softened with drizzles
The soul still held pendulously in between.
Wednesday ends, turning darkly into
The day of the Mandate when all things
Will begin their crashdown at long last together.
Wednesday rests, waiting until inevitably
The week and the year and history turn
Right round again to the place of the spy
In his questionable and regretful motive.
Wednesday’s child is full of woe and
Will not ever go any further, the point of
Come-no-further Gate having been realised now.
XCVII.
The day of the Mandate and the world is twisted.
The day of the finale of everything and
the final aspect of nothing—
the day before the day before
the death and listless being, lifeless
existence—
Just exist, just
Stay here, hoping not hoping chanting not
Chanting, being
Being not elsewhere but only
In the single Place where the Age turns and
finds itself in a fistful of grain.
The Age of the Cupbearer shall not
come. The sadness of the world
bound up in loveless being
advances, over the blood-soaked sand
of Brega and the angry snowmelt of
Madison. Who loves the cultus?
Who mourns for the faith—
Who keeps the ceremony
through partings, with offerings
what kind of man
and woman are they whose hope is
laid
on this misfortunate Mandate?
XCVIII.
On the day of the dead
the due to the dead;
on the day of destructive Love
the Love of a creative destruction.
God spoke through a black sky a rent
shroud and a stone rolled over
a rich man’s mausoleum not yet used.
The angel in the garden
wept for the sin and shame of the world
but then, in the blackness,
they all
danced for joy—there, now. Here now—
—Always.
In sadness in penitence in
lack of charity or something like
lack of love the world
fell tumbling tumbling always
down and down and further on down into
The Kingdom from the summit of Heaven—
‘My Laurel is the Crown of Stars’.
And so the body fell from the device of
senseless torture and was laid
in the butchered cold forsaken earth
The world looked on. Tripoli
Shook and shattered. In the southern ports
The cargo with
the poverty of sainted blood.
XCIX.
Death, with the first
blush of nascent mercy, creeps
over the wet spring earth
A crack fiend
a back alley, filled with
broken bottles shattered
glass shards like the
anatomy of a twisted eye—
THE LIGHT OF CHRIST THANKS
BE TO GOD
Lost hearts
gone bubonic with jealous
and greedy and prideful feelings
festering boiling bubbling
like a Shakespearean cauldron—
THE LIGHT OF CHIST THANKS
BE TO GOD
Dying descending
solar being exalted
through lunar fate in
a misfortunate turning
nocturnal world—
THE LIGHT OF CHRIST THANKS
BE TO GOD
Lententide coming
to an inevitable twist
as it barrels past darkness
to the ending breaking free
from this grey area—
THE LIGHT OF CHRIST THANKS
BE TO GOD
All things twisted
and without hope or wisdom
come to us for your hope
not say not hear not see
yet may it never betray anyone—
THE LIGHT OF CHRIST THANKS
BE TO GOD
Death, with the last
thrust of its power meeting
resistance breaks over the earth
C.
O Hell
O Hell O Hell where are you?
What has become of you O Hell
on this day?
Into yourself thrown
in your putrid blood drowned
in your hateful body imprisoned
with nobody to host within you
any longer.
Thy sting torn out
by the hand and blood
of one from God and Woman
twisted together into an ersatz Man
a— an ersatz man who does
b—what the ‘standard’ never could
c— the second Adam
d— over the chaos looming
his mind turning to
THE FINAL DIALOGUE
of life between
death and rapture
of death between
life and rapture
of rapture between
lying and forgetting
—A truth made into a religion through
the power of mankind to
overcomplicate its truths.
Love turned into
ceremony, one force
into another, benign
but imperfect, as all human works in
this world.
I know that we had
a thing like an innocence
driving on before us to carry us this far
an innocence bred
an innocence still there but an
innocence that could not
carry us all the way.
So the weight that fell from the shoulders of innocence
was hoisted again upon the shoulders of wisdom
and with that weight the weight was broken
against Hell’s Shores Hell’s Jaws were shattered and slammed
and I know
that though it was there
that though it is here
that though it may carry
some of us on further beyond and deep—
I know that we are not carried
by our own power but
Never to forget that somewhere
Someone is always
always always
—don’t lose to arguments as to who
or what why how what why who what is there
but always, above the stars
always, in the whisper of the brain
always, in the murmur of the imperfect heart
the thrill of Love. Always Love
Always and only Love
Love without specification not needing specificity
Being there running there turning there in the place
Of our innocence—for of course the innocence
Being what it was could carry us this far but could not
could not—could not
could not I know
in that final NATURAL GROUND
of explicit being, be there fully, stand there
on a high tower singing and exulting
—It is here and there and shall ever be
but even so—may it not
mock Hell?
Hell mocked and raising its voice in a clamour
Hell bound and raising its voice to object
Hell annihilated and its voice trailing off forever—
—through high windows
bursts
a sun—
I know that however far
our pre-Adamite senses and
our antelapsarian innocence
might carry us in this world
That gentle sense of life could never survive
To see the blazing morning of this Eastertide.
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