SPECIES IS A (M) FOR US AS THE MYTHIC CENTAUR IS
FOR ATLANTIS WAS THE NO ACCIDENT CLAUSE EVEN THEN
IN OPERATION? DID GOD SEE THE CENTAURS’ USELESSNESS
& GIVE THEM THE IDEA OF US?
ACCIDENT 9: OR:
GOD B, HOLDING THE CHARTER TO CREATE HIS OWN SYSTEM,
KNOWING THAT HE MUST POPULATE IT WITH MANAGEABLE
CREATURES ONLY, CLONED THE CENTAURS WITH THEIR OWN DESTRUCTION
& CALLD US IN AS DECENT SHROUDMAKERS TO COVER THEM?
And here the lines of argument converge.
NO THEY END IN THE VAST O THE PANTHEON PLANND AS WELL
INTO DIVIDED SAFENESSES?
Viking I, its every instrument
Agog, returns from Mars—no accident?
DRAMATIC LESSONS MAY
AWAIT MAN EVEN ON HIS PLANETS IS EARTH THE SINGLE
EXPERIMENT OR ONE OF SEVERAL HYBRID SEEDLINGS?
PERHAPS THE MOSES MYTH IS AN ANSWER: FOUND IN A STREAM
Of flowing suns and stars—
THE PRINCE AS FOUNDLING & EARTH? FOR AFTER BARREN EONS
THE ? IS, DOES THE ROYAL BLOOD STILL FLOW IN EARTH’S VEINS?
HIS TAIL OUTSPREAD
MY DEARS BLUE GREEN & HIS EYES FLASHING RED
THAT U MAY ASK THE 12 P/C I CAN SAY ONLY THIS:
THE CENTAURS RAN A CONSTANT RACE ON THE SAME OVAL TRACK
BUT MORTALITY ALLOWS FOR THE DIVINE TRANSLATION
SO PLATO’S POWERS ARE FOREVER OUT AMONG THE 5
& OTHERS (AS U KNOW) BUT THERE IS A FOLDER LABELD
PLATO & ONE LABELD AKHNATON & THERE ARE GOLDEN
CONTAINERS LABELD CLIO ERATO CALLIOPE
& OF THESE 9 WE KNOW ONLY THE RUSHING OF THEIR WINGS
Maria? ENFANTS? We thought you’d gone away.
But no. Her discreet, black-clad presence, eyes
Lowered while the menfolk theorize,
Brings itself (skeptical? unmoved?) to say:
HOW SATISFYING IT MUST BE, ALL THIS
LINKAGE WITH THE WORK OF EONS LIKE
FINDING ONESELF AMONG THE BULLRUSHES
This frog here in my throat agrees. ONE KISS
5.9
GOD B THOUGHT TO DESTROY THE CENTAURS WITH FORESTS THIS PLAN
THEY CIRCUMVENTED BY INVENTING US NOW MAN HAS MADE
FORESTS OF HIS OWN KIND & FOR THIS ROUND BIOLOGY
IS LETTING HIM (READ: OUR CLONING OF HIM) SOLVE THE PROBLEMS
Short of disaster, are they solvable?
INDEED
Increase of population, of pollution—
3 DECADES HENCE WE GLIMPSE FAIR GREEN ATLANTAN FIELDS
That grim race our first teachers told us of
Between Chaos and Mind—is the heat off?
NECK & NECK BUT IF CHAOS WINS THE RACE WAS FIXD
By? GOD B
So in a mere thirty years the trend
Will be reversed? Green fields? Ah, my poor friend,
Be realistic. Can you hope to wean
Our time, in that short span, from its obscene
Smokestack nipple? How are sea and air
To purify themselves while man is there?
DJ: I won’t be there. Just twenty-nine
Years left…You know, he could have spared me that.
ENFANT WORK OUT THE TOTAL IT BEATS MATT
MY GRASP OF TIME IS IMPERFECT THE LAB IS SURE ONLY
OF THE VOLUMES OF FORMULAS TO BE DEALT WITH THEIR BULK
DIMINISHES IN THOSE AREAS WE INTERPRET AS
3 DECADES AWAY THIS LESSENING IN COMPLEXITY
SUGGESTED MY (M) GREEN GLIMPSES WE SEE NO MAJOR FOOD
OR AIR PROBLEMS POP MAY INCREASE BY 2/3 BILLION BUT
BEYOND THAT THE FORMULAS WD NEED TO BE REVISED &
THEY ARE NOT. PERHAPS NATURE’S LITTLE LUSTFUL TRICKS WILL STOP
BEING SO AMPLY REWARDED BY THE CHUCKLES OF BABES
All thought by now receding, of what saves
The day, or whose the footstep on our graves,
DJ: Well, this No Accident clause, I can’t…
JM: Of course you can’t. They’ve cloned you not to.
OUR PLAGUE OF SUICIDES CAME FROM THE GERM OF ACCEPTANCE
MAN IS NOT CLONED WITH AN ACCEPTING DENSITY THEREIN
HIS POWER: HE RESISTS IS DJ NOT OUR STEADY HAND
ON THE PLOW? WE NEED A HUSBANDMAN TO RESIST EARTH’S WEIGHT
THE WASH OF WATER THE HILARITIES OF AIR & THE
BURNING OF OUR FIRE
DJ: Maria has accepted being used.
I can’t, not yet.
RESIST AWAY IT IS CHARMING
JM: Your fear, my doubt
Seem to amuse him, he who fleshed them out.
STIFF UPPER LIP MY BOY PLAY’S GOING INTO
NEW REHEARSALS USHERS AT THE DOOR
WITH RAINCHECKS
DJ CHER ENFANT COURAGE
6
She stood (wrote Jules Renard of the divine
Sarah) in one place, letting the stair unwind
Her profiles, eerily descending wand
Of the still center, or its weathervane.
Gone, she endured. Globes lit the banister’s
Counterspiraling ascents of bronze
As in remembrance Lalique’s cabochons
Waxed and waned upon that brow of hers
Like this pale purple atom (phosphorus)
Periodic among satellites,
Messengers, sugar chains and residues
—Her memories of past performance? Cues?—
Whereby the curtain on a triple thud
Has risen. It’s the theatre in our blood.
22.vii. Boston Museum of Science.
Studying a model (2.5
Cm. per angstrom) of the DNA
Molecule—a single turn blown up
Tall as a child. My ignorance reduced
To jotting down—red, blue, black, yellow, white—
Colors of the bit-player beads, the carbons
And nitrogens all interlinked, on pins
But letter-perfect, purines, pyrimidines,
Minute intelligences that indwell
The chromosome and educate the cell…
Even grossly simplified, as here,
It’s too much. Who by reference to this
3-D Metro map’s infernal skeins
And lattices could hope to find his way?
Yet, strange to say, that’s just what everyone
On Earth is promptly known for having done.
Noon. In the hospital across the river
David is wheeled up from surgery,
Helped into bed—still numb from the waist down.
Gaps in his sorry gown don’t quite conceal
Streaks of dim, white-bandaged red. His gaze
Lights on a face within mine. When he speaks
Out comes the whisper of a little boy
Woken and wrapped in quilts, carried outdoors
Through branching dark, the milk of dream unwiped,
To see a calf born or a comet’s passage.
“I did dream,” he says now, after describing
What he remembers of the operation
(Done, not to strain his smoker’s heart,
With local anesthetic). “There was this kind of
Slow green climbing, and all round me lights
Higher and higher…” Part of my last night’s
Dream, an empty “court” or dim “dance floor”,
Comes back: four squares, each one a tone of gray
Lit from beneath and seen as from a plane,
Composed a fifth that pulsed in the pitch-black terrain
—Meaning what? Another day will tell.
I press D’s hand. He babbles on. All’s well.
6.1
So well, in fact, that in eight days he’s home
And vigorous enough to want to hear
Sweet nothings from our peacock. O I FEAR
YR DISAPPOINTMENT U ARE EARLY BIRDS
MES CHERS WILL I SUFFICE? YR TAME CANARY?
Disappointment, Ephraim? (Though he’s right
We must not say so.) Never! AH THEN A STORY:
ONE DAY WE SAT AT CAPRI ALL THE COURT
ON A SOUTH TERRACE WHEN SUDDENLY THE PAVEMENT
SHOOK & THE CYNICAL AMONG US THOUGHT
HO HUM ANOTHER EARTHQUAKE BUT TIBERIUS
EVER SUPERSTITIOUS CALLED FOR FOWL
SACRIFICE & THE PRIESTS WERE CHANTING AWAY
WHEN FROM FAUSTINA CAME A PIERCING CRY:
RISEN ABOVE SICILIA IN THE SKY
A GREAT BLACK CLOUD WAS SPREADING RIGHT & LEFT
LONG RAGGED WINGS & IN THE CENTER 2
RED SPOTS LIKE EYES APPEARED IT WAS A BAT.
CHRIST HAD BEEN CRUCIFIED Now why, I wonder,
Are you telling us this little story?
I BELIEVE MES CHERS IN PEACOCKS FROM THAT DAY
TIBERIUS DECLINED NOR DID YR E
MORE THAN A WEEK SURVIVE HIS LUNACY
It was then he had you killed? MURDER ALONE
CALMED HIM IN HIS FITS THE SAYING WAS
HE HAD BAT FEVER But you died A.D.
36, while Christ— ANOTHER CALENDAR
Well, our bats don’t cause fever, not so far.
THEY ARE I KNOW THERE4 OF THE MESSENGER STRAIN
How much you do know. Over and over again,
Wine-sweetened lips, and eyes half shut beneath
Conviviality’s unfading wreath,
Ephraim, you’ve understood what’s going on
Better than we. A SLAVE NEEDS ALL HIS WIT
LIFE HERE BELOW THE STAIRS DEPENDS ON IT
Now Wystan. He’s been thinking, as have I,
About THE UNCLONED LIVES THAT TOUCH OUR OWN
YR STRATO & MY LAST FRIEND BOTH SUCH DEARS
(DJ interrupts: Has Chester been reborn?
NOT YET STILL BOUND UP WITH HIS MINIWOP)
FORSTER HAD THIS TOUCHING THEORY
THAT GOD WANTS EDUCATED HIGHCLASS QUEERS
TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE & TO HAVE ONE MADE
To kindle sparks within the dumb physique
Of terracotta & BE WARMED WHY ARE
WE (TO EXTEND THAT) IN THIS SEMINAR?
3 OF US IN MM’S EUPHEMISM
COMME CA & SHE (THOUGH FEMALE) NOT IN LIFE
MUCH DRAWN TO ROLES OF MOTHER MISTRESS WIFE,
WHY ARE WE 4 TOGETHER LISTENING?
A) 3 WRITERS & MM RATHER A MUSE
B) EXCEPT AS MESSENGERS WE HAVE NO
COMMITMENT TO A YOUNGER GENERATION
C) A SURPRISE: MM’S 1ST LOVE WAS MUSIC!
FAILING HER ENTRANCE TO THE ODEON
SHE GAVE IT UP Good heavens, we all thought
She couldn’t tell Fats Waller from Fauré.
As for us, while I, on a good day,
Limp through my Satie or a Bach gavotte,
DJ (at twelve in Hollywood) attacked
That thing by Grieg; took Composition with
Big-timers like Schoenberg and Hindemith
While still in college. MUSIC MORE ABSTRACT
THAN METAPHOR MUST BE THE BOND THAT LINKS US
Maman, why so secretive? I PREFERRED
EFFECTS UNSTUDIED INDEED SCARCELY HEARD
AS ONCE WHEN 3 COINCIDENTAL SOUNDS
A WIND BELL IN THE GARDEN A DOOR CHIME
& THE HIGH CRY OF A SEAGULL MADE ONE FLEETING
TONIC CHORD IS MUSIC NOT LIKE TIME
RETOLD? LIKE THE NO ACCIDENT MOTIF
A WAY OF TELLING THAT INSPIRES BELIEF?
WD AN UNMUSICAL MIND TAKE IN THE PEACOCK?
THE MESSENGER THE MESSAGE THESE RING BELLS
I ANSWER TO ASK NEXT TIME ABOUT CELLS
Why? I DONT KNOW IT CAME TO ME TO SAY
DJ (tired out): Tomorrow afternoon
We’ll have our peacock back. MES CHERS Yes, Ephraim?
NOTHING I KEEP PINNING FEATHERS ON
BUT NOBODY NOTICES CALL YR OLD FRIENDS SOON
ONE IN PARTICULAR BLONDEST OF THE SCRIBES
Hans! YES THRILLED AS WE ALL ARE BY YR VIBES
6.2
THINK DJ
The white, blue-flowered ginger-pot. Sunshine
Filling with tracery its inward oval,
He sees a…ladder—wait, now more comes back—
THE LADDER OF YR SPINE
DJ: My hips went dead. A second needle
Numbed me to the toes. I’d been screened off
With pale green, and I felt this weightlessness
And followed it. There was a ladder whose
Lower rungs, as I climbed, just kept dissolving,
And at the top was light, were colored lights—
What did you say to me about the lights?
WE SHOWD U JM’S
VISION OF THE ATOM’S HEART
JM: The four lit squares that made a fifth
Almost musical— DJ DWELT IN EACH, RID OF
HIS PAIN, STILLD IN HIS LUSTS & FEARS: THE RED OF PURE POWER
OF GENERATION & THE GREEN THAT WILL BE PARADISE
JM SAW THIS AS A PRINTOUT IN BLACK & WHITE DJ
WE PLACED WITHIN IT U WERE BOTH SENT TO THE HEART OF LIFE
DJ: My task
Was to bring home the colors to us all.
FOR US MES ENFANTS IT WAS LIKE A BALL
COSTUMES & DANCING
OR MY DEARS A MASQUE
INDEED WE PROMISED U ENTERTAINMENT & U GOT IT
AS ON A STAGE VIEWD FROM A MOUNTAINTOP WE FROLICKD IN
THE 4 COLORS OR LIKE CELLS UPON A MICROSCOPE FLOOR
TO SILENT MUSIC & UNSPOKEN WORDS OUR MASQUE CALMD U:
WE ARE THE DRUG & THE AWAKENING
JM: Why not the cure as well—a wand of
Healing fire to save D from the knife?
MM’S LESSON
& IT IS PERHAPS THE MAIN LESSON OF THIS SEMINAR:
NO UNNECESSARY DOSES OF OUR STRONG MEDICINE
The tone has darkened suddenly. I strain
To think. What lesson? What strong medicine?
RADIUM COBALT U DID NOT REALIZE YESTERDAY
WHY SHE IS WITH US?
Because of music, Wystan said.
NO: SHE IS ONE OF US
The water,
Yes, in our elemental union, and—?
ONE OF US
DJ. What is he saying? I can’t quite…
MES ENF
—as light breaks. Horrifying light
Whose rays our union absorbs. We’re back
At Square One. Presence of no color. Black.
DJ: Ah I could kill them! JM: It’s
Not their fault. DJ: So they
say—those shits!
JM: Her months spent back and forth from bed
To godforsaken box of buzzing lead…
That’s why the plant world’s taking her. She hasn’t
Any soul left—she’s no longer human!
ENFANTS DJ: She said she’d see us through
These talks. She had no choice. She knew. She knew.
WILL U FORGIVE MY SMALL CHARADE? PART TRUE
PART THE DESIGN I SHALL HOWEVER BE
ALLOWED (NO LITTLE THING) THE ANGEL VOICES
THANK GOD FOR GARDENS INCIDENTALLY:
MY GREEN SHIELD SAVED ENOUGH OF ME FOR U
My face begins to quiver. Oh Maman—
POSO AKOMA (her last words, “How much more?”)
I CROAKED NOT TO POOR LOUROS BUT THE RAYS:
HOW MUCH MORE WD THEY TAKE FROM ME B4…
(This is the point, I later tell DJ,
When Dante would have fainted dead away.
But, cloned with minerals, heartsick, eyes red,
I see no way out but to forge ahead.)
AH TEARS DEAR DEAR ENFANT THEY COMFORT U
& MAKE MY OLD BLACK DRESS QUITE CLINGING & SEXY
DJ: She used to have a “wet look” raincoat.
DO ADMIT THE ELEMENT OF CHIC
But now, you look like Them? MAIS QUELLE HORREUR
DJ DO U WANT ME TO FLOUNCE OUT OF HERE
JM: You said four stars were in your hair—
Are they still? SHALL WE BE SERIOUS
I am serious! WELL THESE LESSONS THEY
SEEM TO BE IMPOR O J J J
THINK: NONE BUT THE FOOL IS PITIABLE
THIS LIKE DJ’S NEEDLE IS THE BLESSED
RELIEF AT LAST TO LEAVE THE WORLD OF BLIND
IF CHARMING FOOLS WE LOVED (& WERE) BEHIND
MY DEAR JM CONFRERE SHE IS RIGHT U KNOW?
NOW U MUST ASK HER QUESTION ABOUT CELLS
CALL BACK OUR PEACOCK AS B4 HE FLEES
AT THE ONSET OF FEELING WE WD SEEM
TO INTRODUCE OUR ELEMENT OF TIME
WHICH CHOKES HIM IS TIME THEN THE SOIL OF FEELING?
SO ODD Stop talking, Wystan, can’t you, please?
FIRST MAY I SAY? THAT DANCING IN THE MASQUE
IT DAWNED (ON ME AT LEAST) THAT WE WERE BEING
EACH IN TURN STRIPPED REDUCED TO ESSENCES
JOINED TO INFINITY THAT’S ALL NOW ASK