LI.
Just being here
Just under the same
sky, sleeping
here, our existence
flourishing, gives us
A second point to move on.
Love itself
Taking the form of a
reading from the books
of fate, is lifeblood
pulsing, in an eternal rush
Within vividly carnelian veins.
The whole world
Amorous and ambiguous
squeals, its voice
resounding over rock and
flood, taking a point
Drawing it out for a hundred years.
LII.
In elation, the lights go out
The colours come out after
the fall, before the spring
that yet begins, its light
greenness blinking.
Over the parks and pales
Light greens and delicate
reds, making worlds
out of dull understanding
bring it all on by.
In a desirous sort of culture
Wanting is the nature of feeling
really here, wanting
all manner of things
and loves in the breast.
The fir tree shakes in the spring rain.
LIII.
Mask off, a witch-woman
runs and rises.
The mountains ring with it!
Southward, northward
and over and on from Berkshire
to Worcester, the laughter
of a striding maga comes and
falls and makes to bend.
Strike! She comes with a
sword and quiver.
The bow behind her, drifting
with the hearts bound together
hither and yon behind the
poncho with its garish hue
and the mask in its ogre’ cast
following her teeming continuously.
She throws herself at a mercy
of something precious.
Seat of power, the throne of the soul.
So two worlds unite and
beyond totally beyond past Catamount
into New York they fly
looking for the valley in whose
belly she lies dimly dreaming.
LIV.
Carry us, let us strive
You and the I which is
not less than everyone—
—let us, grant that we
may in this time and in
this manner,
strive to trace
the line of the blue sky.
Senescent mountaintops
loom above us, and our
existence in questionable, making
us doubt each other in this time.
Let us be kind, let us
be good, and embrace
the sameness of one
another here and not here
now and otherwise.
Carry me away, the me
which is to say a legion
Yet not Legion, simply
a multitude of imperishable hearts.
Surely the loving times
are upon us, surely
the world careens through infinite space in
yearning.
LV.
When the sky came
to like us, eternity ended.
It became
the special dominion and
playground of a present
without an associated past
or affiliated future.
When the waves came
to care for us, they froze.
The long years
of swirling and crashing
of favour and disfavour
ended in a sudden decision
to lift all boats
without distinction.
But being lifted the boats and the people in them
found that in the air that way there is much to do and
little with which, properly, to do it.
They found,
in other words, new difficulties in a new way of being.
LVI.
Pile dirt on my corpse
here in this nighttime, and say to me:
‘Be here with a hug,
be here with a kiss, be here with a smile,
yet only be here, only
within this messy and squalid created
universe, with your
reason for life its main bulwark against
what lies inside.’
Pile dirt on my corpse
O lady of the dark
passages, and say to
the air that the earth
is in itself the fruit
of the first temptation!
Pile dirt on my corpse
O how you must feel that soil, trickling between
your thick fingers scratched from
farm work, from your hands to the furrows, blooming
as the blessed flowers will bloom upon my
grave down there, indicating a chthonic sense of innocence
that brings into grave question the wheel of fate
itself, and the existence of laughing times in such a world as this.
LVII.
This is no kind of life.
How do we live
like this? How do
we touch the true nature
of heart and
heartlessness?
Heartlessness is
sin, sin
heartlessness. The sun
slants through shaky
and flimsy
Venetian blinds, painting
low-grade marble floors
brown with gold streaks
A chilly sunny day.
The ground yields.
Soft, the stalks
come up, pressing
up against the crisp top layer,
being
the avatars of vernal
excited motion.
The ground yields.
The sky goes on
turning, twisting
in its centred
character with no such
centre.
Sin advances, and metropole
encroaches.
The world fills gradually up with
sadness, as
the vision of the true nature goes
totally beyond the orbit
of simplicity’s eye.
LVIII.
The Lord with a loud voice inquired after Man
Golden eyes glinting on the endless peaks.
The witches soaring to the roof of the world
Endured though ended officially through
Something in the manner of a rational power.
Even if in this reasonableness nothing could be
Created, it is yet thankful that it is here, for
It lends a certain panache to the standard to which
The music and motion of a human life can be held.
It lends, of course, no true value, but that which is
Implicit in the nature of modern-day comfort.
Even if nothing is created, it comes and helps
With the simple mercenary heart of the world
Of bread and butter and blood and water
The sacral objectivity of herring-scales and rain.
The chain comes down through the sky and
Will not be broken, though it spans earth and
A heaven that goes on, though potentially empty
Or potentially thought to be empty in a season
Of blood and coffee and gasoline and gold.
The Lord’s loud voice inquiring made the world shake
To its very foundations, and the mountains moved.
They danced with fire and thunder, moving like
Great puissant beasts over the face of a questioned
Earth, under the chill singular gaze of the North Star.
LIX.
From Hell, bent on
returning, it comes,
flapping, screeching,
saying all things, meaning no-thing
(Sin, that is to say a no-thing)
Under the beds of dry
lakes.
The starts, twisting
around, light it,
strange, whispering,
working through abjectly dark
Valley and up to the
Reservoir, wondering of
existing.
Its wonderments, shedding
themselves all over, glitter,
twinkle, glisten harshly,
make an artificial appeal, turning
(For in such places is there a will?)
The horde of personae to
admiration.
Long wings, working
swiftly, twisting
tugging, spinning
the world, work through mud
Connecticut in sediment
Quabbin without such
disaster.
Long-necked, eyes
blaring, it regards,
clinically, surgically
the needs of its feeding, without
(As for what is it needed?)
Concern for the first
flame.
LX.
The world is beautiful
The beauty is naked
The naked is along
the watched edge of
the whole world.
The edge twists and turns
The twists spin the wheel.
Seeing the third flame
Through the third eye
Child of heat, child of
Blood, child of flame,
Child of unyearned-for
Blazing winter, child of
Desired and begged-for
Freezing summer—come!
Come up the beautiful
Nakedness of the jagged
Sides of this rounded line
that is called
the whole world.
The roundness is soft
The softness straightens the line.
Child of sin, child of
Penitence, child of
Ashes on the sleeve and
Ashes on the forehead
On that fortnight-passed
Day of interior purgation
Child of flowers, child of
Laughter, child of all things
Still and chill and not
Seen by the bodily eye—come!
LXI.
The moon rabbits
dance in the music-hall at
the end of history.
The light greyness and
soft silvery snow of the last
snowfall at the beginning of
April
fall around and all over.
Having passed through
the night in tiredness, now
sitting, gazing through smeared
and dirty window-panes—
The world is ambivalent,
anaemic in its character now.
Sadly, sadly
look up to the sky
throbbing with grinding sounds
not knowing, not seeking
that which should have been
its blue heart beneath
the grey flesh and bone.
Historical being and historical
character end, falling through
and spiralling on and on down
forever.
LXII.
From cradle to grave,
the spiral, the
repetition is infinite.
Surety
falls, in the sense of
a crashdown, the spiral
collapsing
in its nature infinitely.
The cradle rocks at the end
and in the corner of the whole world.
Growing from the cradle,
the witch emerges into
the world. At the bottom of Hell
the birds flutter over
the utmost abyss
listening to the nature of her words.
Sinking down
into Hell’s Jaws
the greater torment
continuing—
The love that moves
the restless yearning
for the deep deep sea
sets the woods on fire
and raises Cain from
his birth at the heart
of the whole world.
LXIII.
Second flight takes off
from the borderlands of
the Hells and the worlds
on the outside.
The wings beat, endlessly
beat, over the sea from
the girt smoke of the islands
on to the bloody sands.
Even though the world is
screaming out in agony and
at death’s door, I still need to be
on this island with you.
Taking flight from this island yet
retaining our attachments to it
we can walk down by the shore
on the rough boardwalk.
In our minds, the boardwalk
takes on a liturgical cast and
the beating of the feet
on it, that nature.
Running over the whole world
while staying on this island, our
feet beat tremendously over and
on this true country.
So with our third flight
let us go and make a periplus
over the blood and the sea and
on to the half-moon.
LXIV.
‘Life’s to be lived
With no such repentance
Because there is nothing
Of which to repent—’
Such are the words
Of a man, old and dying
Who at his last bedside
Consultation, squirms.
The man with his mouth
Ravaged by age-lines
Should not have so much
Of youth’s listless spirit.
That libertine soul
Of youth before wisdom
Has fallen upon
His own vision of things.
Such a desire
For his world to be pure
For his vision to control
The cogwheels of fate!
He wants the changes
That make this world
To go backwards, rather
Than to be harnessed.
To harness such changes—
To make them ‘repentance’—
Such is the challenge
Of this American life.
The world changes
And in such changes there
Is or can be or should be
Something of the old renewal.
The world changes
Whether or not we will
So that we must make it
Stick to our reasons for life.
LXV.
In the gears of the old
clock, the black roaches
trickle forth, lean forward
ghoulish on spindly legs, and
to become ghouls, their bodies
heaving over dank clockwork
dripping with the dew of
dawn—
a— born in Hell and
b—bent on returning
c— from the arms of darkness
d— taken all together
e— in the single lily
f— that is the whole Kingdom
Maybe it’s only luck—
Harvest-time for the Kingdom, harvest-
time for civilised man, harvest-
time for all things
Magian and Faustian
rushing, outright rushing
to the harvest, this true harvest
dark with pleasure and
bright with penitence.
LXVI.
Hope is burning.
Hope burning takes into itself
the dreams of the lost
the penitent of course the
homeless also, the sick
the friendless and the needy—
The streets are slippery with spouting blood.
O! O! O! A rain of blood and gasoline
hath fallen hard and ever harder upon us.
Flowers, two
fall in twin and loving
united separation and separate union.
On fire, the world
sets itself out to dry
in the river, with the
great falls by the power dam
rushing over its head.
A black bird flying in
A grey sky—can you see
that bird with the bodily eye?
LXVII.
The light of the unjust
falls like a beacon
like a searchlight like a fountain
on the whole selfness
and ostensible fulfillment
of the cracked and bruised world.
The case is not in any traditional sense
an example of privation of recognition
because it is not a complete railroading
(the sins of course did occur), but it is a privation
and a miscarriage in that those involved failed
in their duties to take the proper measure of a man
into its due and full and proper consideration.
There do not
appear to have been
any LEGAL improprieties, therefore
the case should not be thrown out; however,
the case against humanity
through the blood and incarnation
and because of that blood and those loud cries
should be considered not only possible
but positively fecund
ground for the nullification
or commutation of the hateful times.
LXVIII.
Gathered on the beach
of the cold spring river
fluttering over the
utmost deep deep point—
this is a tale of
those birds.
Those waterbirds
duck and drake and
goose and grebe and
mergansers that
pick and choose
the remains of human
living—
—such, such are
the joys, in this static
city, this country, this town
that will never let us go
for we do not wish that it would.
LXIX.
Love in this cool darkness
shines, in light softens
and empties itself
through three towns
across two bridges
over one big deep river
along the foursquare
sides of the Five Colleges
and the six counties (counting
Bristol as being
sufficiently far
from Boston for purposes of
considering a ‘hinterland’)
past the seven seals
and the eight heads of
the unrighteous
the hateful, the sinbound
coming upon the Apostles
twelve, the eleven
who kept the faith and
the ten and the nine
commandments and orders
in a land with smaller gods
smaller spirits
waiting in the wings
chattering in their little mercies.
LXX.
In oldness, in
greyness it is not
what once, joyously
it could have been, what once
verily, it was.
You have fallen upon it!
This beautiful world. You have
lived above and beyond
its beauty and truth.
Go to the beautiful world
and sound out to it your ‘sorries’
with the doleful mien
of a temple bell
at Obon or Passiontide.
Oh in this passion
in this fiesta of the lanterns
let the love that is
the true world come
and overthrow this order
like the waters of the jewel-river
down out of Coös.
Let the world come
gushing down out of
that place
in a chatter of birdsong.
Come by, come by—
—up the mountains to the peaks craggy
with their imagined visages.
LXXI.
Do you pretend to
care at all?
Hurry up and do
it, do
something
hurry up please
time waits for no man
Life is passing as all things
do in their eventual
fulfillment
and so you can see
so you should see
just by opening your eyes that
this is
harvest-time for your
desired life.
Ash in a mangled throat
Is worth far more
than a tongue-tied groat—
Diamonds drenched in bloody spite
Worthless next
a widow’s mite.
LXXII.
The world decays, the world decays and falls—
Grasping, we sink peaceful to the ground.
They come and from the harvest separate
The tares to pile high in barns and burn.
When I was a child
I dreamed of this world
This childishly-sketched
Half-childishly thought
Lurid apocalypse so written—
—O with such a point
So described, so bright
In a child’s dreams
Not having yet grasped
The bravery of ending this—
—Fürwahr!
The life so short, the death so long to earn
The sword so swift, so sweet the suffering—
So sick and undesired these dark ideas
Yet O my children how could I not see?
LXXIII.
Gifts
are paid for
utterly paid for
in this land flowing
with the promised.
Exchange
annihilated in
its understanding
in a concupiscent
idea.
Water
flows red, red
the colour of
streaming and racing
lifeblood.
Swords
crossing, over
the heart’s chill
anatomy draw
a knotted line.
Power
lying only in
the heart, only
true in love
is false there.
Going
on and paying
dearly and
looking out
she cries.
‘Understand
please understand
this: I didn’t
mean
to deceive you.’
LXXIV.
Silently in spring
western light, above
the pink so pale as to
fade into whiteness
of the apple-blossoms
the god of swords advents.
The swords that crossed the heart
now cross the corners of the whole
world.
The river’s silver roiling
body that is its
blood flows on
silver the blade
silver the life
silver the quickening.
Long ago, these mountains
towered like the Western peaks
and danced with tectonic
fire and waste of crashing rock—
—‘til came
such age
as to wear down
even those places.
The red-winged blackbird
soars above the swords
and the blood of the battlefield
and the strewn guts and the cries
of the dying.
The red-winged blackbird
Above it all, goes to the swamp
and feeds it young
above the little
whirlpools—
—Here we are in the
Spring rains, nourishing and to ravage
LXXV.
The moon is mad
Coming out above
The sun in the afternoon light.
Tell me, what is this place?
Why have the sun and moon
Gone mad? Where are
The stars? What of
The beautiful
World destroyed by
Blows from the fist
Of a demigod as
The Prophet of
Franconia wrote?
What and where and
For what reasons
Does this place sustain
Its half-coherent sense
Of being here and
Of being at all
In this place
In this thought
In this type of motion?
At the bottom of a well
Whirling round a mine
Within an abyss between
Abysses, high
And exalted in
Endless dark space
An exaltation that
Makes it not so
Different at all
From any other places?
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