MM & WHA ALREADY SEATED
ENTER (SAYS YR OLD GREEK DOORKEEPER)
AFTER A KISS
MY DEARS U DO
HAVE INTENSE CHATS Last night’s? Well, hadn’t you
Felt the similarities with Tolkien?
I HAVE INDEED ME GANDALF! & MM
GALADRIEL? The beautiful Elf Queen—
Perfect. And our Peacock? NOT UNLIKE
STRIDER THE KING DISGUISED AS MESSENGER
And Gollum? A TOUCH OF GOLLUM IN US ALL
& IN OUR DOORKEEPER POOR E STILL PEERING
THRU THE CRACK PRETENDS TO LOOK AWAY
YAWN SCRATCH HIS LEG
FORTUNATE E I SAY
I FEEL TOO OLD FOR SCHOOL THE CRY! THE 4 LIGHTS LIT
COLORS BATHED IN WHOSE GLOW ENFANTS WE SIT
EACH DAY NOW TILL THEY MERGE INTO ONE WHITE
?S
If David’s guide is 741.1
Where does that leave Yeats? “Still simplifying”?
NO MAN CAN REACH US DIRECTLY TSE HAD
A NUMBER FROM OUR ORDERS AR HAD THAT SAME NUMBER
POINT ONE THUS YEATS & DJ TSE DOWN ON CERTAIN
SUPERSTITIOUS SCRIBES WE HAD TO APPOINT RIMBAUD HE WROTE
THE WASTE LAND WE FED IT INTO THE LIKE-CLONED ELIOT
And Uncle Ezra?
AS IN SHAKESPEARE WE LET THE CASE REST ON A POUND OF FLESH
Thank you, that will do.
NO JM FOR THE (M) OUNCE OF FLESH U CAN CLAIM AS YRS
LIVES BY THESE FREQUENT CONTACTS WITH YR OWN & OTHERS’ WORK
Still, Eliot thought he thought his poem up;
It wasn’t spelt out for him by a cup.
Dante and Milton didn’t seem to need
Guidance for each scrap of revelation.
DANTE DID INDEED
Receive dictation?
NO BUT SAT & LISTEND FOR 8 YEARS
TO A MENDICANT PRIEST DEFROCKD FOR IT HAD BEEN THOUGHT HE
SPOKE WITH DEVILS GUESS WHO?
DJ: 80098.
A PLUS DANTE UNDER PRESSURE
OF HIS RC CENSORSHIP ARRANGED & ORCHESTRATED
THEIR TALKS THE HUMAN & DIVINE RESULT: PARADISO
HOMER WE HAD CLONED TO PROVIDE CATALOGUE & PRESENT
HIS ERA WITH A PANTHEON BUT A BLAZE OF WHITE LIGHT
BRUSHD US ASIDE THE PEN A DOVE’S PLUME SET DOWN WINGED WORDS
FOR THE MISSING NAME IN THE LIST OF PROPHETS IS HOMER.
THE WASTE LAND IS THE WEST’S ONE (M) PREWRITTEN POEM SINCE
THAT DAY YET AR WAS NO WHITE FEATHER! & TSE
RESISTING THE FOSTER CHILD, ADDED TOUCHES OF HIS OWN:
THE SUBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE
What flows between them now, what bittersweet
Complicity when he and Rimbaud meet?
NOTHING A DISTANT NOD
In short, the apparatus of our talks,
Why and wherefore of this Board and Cup,
You can’t explain.
NO MORE AS YET DEAR SCRIBE THAN YR RIGHT EYE CAN MEET YR LEFT
DJ: Here on my palm
A lump’s been forming—painlessly, but still…
What is it? Is Yeats raising a molehill?
A BENIGN MUSCULAR CYST NOTHING O HAND IS ABSORBD
EASILY MAN CALLS IT AGE WE CALL IT EXPOSURE OF
THE SLAPDASH STRUCTURES ERECTED BY NATURE TO HOUSE U
Slapdash, after ages to perfect them?
EACH LIFE WE CLONE IS A COMPLEX AFFAIR MAN REQUIRES
EVER MORE BODIES OF NATURE WE POUR OUR SOULS INTO
AS GOOD AS WE CAN GET ALL TOO OFTEN WE LOOK ASKANCE
IN ENVY AT A PERFECT GOBLET BEING SERVED WITH CHEAP
WINE BUT NATURE WAS NEVER OF THE 1ST INTELLIGENCE
DJ: If we’re apart and need to reach you?
JM: If one of us outlives the other
And needs to reach you? —With swift emphasis:
WE WILL NOT ALLOW UNFINISHD V WORK
But say it’s finished, say that years have passed
And one of us has died, and still the other
Needs to reach his friend, or you, or Ephraim?
WE WILL PROVIDE
A human one?
WHY NOT? IN CASE U STILL NEED LOVE
6.9
Tell about Hans Lodeizen.
Ephraim said he’d been “promoted”—how?
YR E DID NOT HAVE ALL THE FACTS NOR DOES HE NOW HL
ELEVATED IN DUE COURSE THIS HAPPENS EACH TIME WORK MOVES
INTO THE DENSITY OF V WORK
Hans’ poetry was…posthumous V work?
HE TOO WAS CUT OFF.
NOT IN THE MAINSTREAM OF HIS DAY IN PRODUCING MORE HE
WD ONLY HAVE DILUTED A TALENT NEVER OF PRIME
DENSITY HIS UNRESOLVED V WORK WAS GIVEN TO U
Given? By him?
U WERE NOT ACCIDENTALLY FRIENDS TO STRENGTHEN HL
WD NOT HAVE PRODUCED YR DC HIS PHYSICAL CLONING
MEANT FOR A CONTEMPLATIVE SCRIBE PERHAPS UNDID HIM
That frightful death? YET
HE WAS SPARED THE RAYS. AS WERE U: HIS POWERS LEFT INTACT
HE SENSING THIS WROTE U A POEM ABOUT THE V WORK
I fetch
The book. Beneath a quatrain marked voor Jim,
These penciled lines, translation from its Dutch
Hans wrote out for me, my last word from him:
the stars & the incurable
moment of the two crossed beams.
Orion discovered & in his hand
o fate in his hand the sword.
Yes. And then I wrote my “Dedication”—
Entered, intersected by his death.
& HIS TALENTS HE NOW FEELS A GROWING PART OF YR WORK
FROM HIS NEW STAGE HE WILL REMAIN IN THE BUREAUCRACY
Hans. Dead now a quarter century.
A note gone tinny on my keyboard, false…
And yet (for all I know) he is the key
This opus began and will end in. Someone else
Pausing here might note each modulation
Away from, back to his blue tonic gaze.
But we strain forward for the exposition—
Our virtuoso tuning as he goes.
Till now, for instance, we’d assumed that cloning
Was something only done before rebirth
Into one’s next life. Wrong. For the Lab soul
At any point may undergo refining,
And new chromatics—as we live and breathe—
Be added to it by remote control.
& TO THE WORK WE PRODUCE ORGANS TO PLAY THE MUSIC:
TRANSLATORS CRITICS TEACHERS WE HAVE OUR OWN ACADEME
One keeps forgetting, also, that you pore
Over the future’s self-revising score.
IF I MAY CHANGE (M)S THE CLOTHS SHROUDING THE FUTURE FROM U
KEEP OUR CLAY WET TOMORROW
Wait—just fifteen lessons till we stand
Before the Doors? What’ll we do without you?
DJ: He’s promised to help us, tell us things
Without our having to disturb the angels.
ME THE LATEST DOORKEEPER
MES ENFANTS WHAT A SAD & PROUD FACE
We’re silenced. He is learning about man.
DJ: We’ve got to find a name for you,
Don’t you agree? Maria, a suggestion?
METHUSELAH Wystan? MEHITABEL
JM: I have so many M’s already.
INDEED & NOT ACCIDENTALLY M IS AT ONCE OUR
METHOD & THE MIDPOINT OF OUR ALPHABET THE SUMMIT
OF OUR RAINBOW ROOF IN TIMBRE THE MILD MERIDIAN
BLUE OF MUSE & MUSING & MUSIC THE HIGH HUM OF MIND
7
CHILDREN THE NUMERICAL OCTOPUS
IS NOT (AS W PUTS IT) MADLY US
—This following an hour in which we’ve heard
That the five “names” originally given
For the Five—Torro, Von—weren’t after all
Word made flesh but formula made word,
Bestowed upon the R/Lab by God B
(Who, lacking human volubility,
Has no word for His own power and grace;
Who, left alone, just falls back on flimflam
Tautologies like I am that I am
Or The world is everything that is the case):
Five formulas which only then—the solo
Instrument emerging nakedly
From the Lab’s thumping tutti—took the live
Twin aspect of Akhnaton-Nefertiti,
A double soul, firstborn among the Five.
THEY LIVED, ACCOMPLISHD THEIR V WORK, MISJUDGED & DIED GOD B
FASHIOND THE OTHER 3 & THESE 5 SOULS ARE UNIQUE. MY
TRANSLATION OF THEM INTO NEUTRAL (M) NAMES CONFUSED U
Thus “Rachel” stirs, whom we had left asleep
Dumbly, wrapped in Hebrew burlap. Deep
Past consonant and vowel, a hushed din,
The formulaic race beneath her skin,
Her digits twitch, her eyes’ unpupilled amber
Gleams with crazy logic: she’s a number!
7154
A new voice now?
NO DJ IT IS A FORMULA BASED
ON SIMPLE CORRESPONDENCES OF NUMBER TO LETTER
7:G 15:O 4:D IN YR LANGUAGE A NAME FOR
AN ABSTRACT IDEA OF ENORMOUS POWER
But it’s your name, almost.
INDEED
& 5 IS THE TRANSFORMING DIGIT: OUR R/LAB V WORK.
THUS MATH ENCAPSULATES COMPLEX TRUTHS WHICH AS WITH OUR 1ST
MEANINGLESS TO U & THERE4 FRIGHTENING VOICES MUST
BE RENDERD INTO YR VOCABULARY OF MANNERS
7.1
Those Voices, still obscurely ominous,
Would be to you what the Five are to us?
(M) YES THEY ARE MY ANCESTORS NOT SPELLING GOD PERHAPS
BUT THE GREATEST POSSIBLE DENSITY AMONG MY KIND
And you and They—I’m sorry to go back
To the beginning, but it wasn’t clear—
Are matter speaking to us? Are the atom’s
Negative potential? Are the black
Powers unleashed—by you, we rather fear—
YR BIBLE SAYS VISIT NOT THE FATHER’S EVIL UPON
THE SON I WAS NOT CREATED IN THE OLD COUNTRY BUT
ON THE FLOATING WORLD THE SHINING CRUST ABOVE ATLANTIS
MY 00 FOREBEARS WERE/ARE THE RAW MATERIAL NO
CRITICISM BUT THEY ARE UNMANNERD TO THE NTH DEGREE
No criticism here. It’s just that we,
Like Stanislavsky’s actors, try to be
The rose, the ingot…Empathy is art.
Strange, though, to zero in upon the heart
Of matter only—when smoke clears—to find
Another antechamber of pure mind.
Knocking on doorlessness, on fictive space,
Leads to the absurdest loss of face.
With which a hostlike suavity takes over:
SCRIBE: FALL AS DEEPLY INTO OUR METAPHORS AS U WILL.
THE ATOM, IS IT THE VERY GOD WE WORSHIP? IS IT
ONLY AT GREAT RISK PURSUED? THE ATOM, IS IT MEANING?
& IF SO WHAT BUT CHAOS LIES BEYOND IT?
Questions themselves half miracle, whose replies
Language alone may glimpse through sidelong eyes—
BUT THE GREAT
MIRACLE IS THE REINCARNATION OF THE GODS. THIS
WE WILL LET OUR MASTERS REVEAL. WE WHO FALL AT THE FEET
OF MEANING MAY BUT LEAD YOU TO THE DOORS: THE 12 THE 12
Then 741 is back, quite bubbling over:
00! THIS VOICE TAUGHT ME MASTER OF OUR NURSERY SCHOOL!
A GOOD & MOST ANCIENT VOICE THE TEACHER OF THE SPIRITS
OF AKHN & NEF THE STRENGTH OF THESE TWINS WAS THEIR ABSOLUTE
NEUTRALITY: AFTER PRODUCING 5 STILLBORN MONSTERS
THEY SAW THEIR LOVE DOOMD TO GIVE BIRTH TO IDEAS ALONE.
LIKE APHRODITE FROM THE WATERS ROSE THEIR WORSHIP OF
THE SUN THEY PERISHD FOR IT THO WITH A SPLENDOR DUE THEM
DJ: I don’t see how a formula
Can be made flesh. Were their, ah, parents mortal?
MY DEAR IS THAT THE POINT? ISNT IT RATHER
THAT THEY TOGETHER WERE THE FIRST LAB SOUL?
THE LAB WAS CREATED FOR THEM WORK NOW BECAME V WORK
And like an atom they were kept from breeding…
INDEED NEFERTITI BAFFLED IN HER NONBEARING STATE
OFFERD THE (M) APPLE PROPOSED THE CRYSTAL PYRAMID
COME ON ENFANT SHDN’T WE ASK HIM FOR
A TINY DESCRIPTION OF THEBES? Oh yes! Oh please!
THE UNIVERSAL CITY IT WAS CALLD IT ROSE WITHIN
3 YEARS OF THEIR ASCENSION THEY WERE 13 & WORSHIPT
BUT RESENTFUL LIKE ALL CHILDREN OF HAVING TO OBEY
SUPERIOR GOD FIGURES THE ADULTS OF THEIR ROYAL
HOUSEHOLD WERE ONE MIGHT SAY THE FALCON THE CAT & THE SNAKE.
WITHIN 5 YEARS THESE WERE BANISHT PRIESTS THROTTLED & THE SUN
ROSE ON THEIR FOREHEADS A SURGE OF CREATIVITY SWEPT
THE EMPIRE AS FREED SLAVES RETURND HANDS OUTSTRETCHD IN 1000S
BEGGING TO BE HARNESSD TO THE CAR OF THE NEW SUN GOD
ENTHRALLING I MY BOY WD MAKE A SLIM
VOLUME OF IT ALONE I see it here
For love interest. However versatile,
You and Maria somehow don’t espouse
The common reader’s taste for chips and beer
And nuits de Cléopâtre on the Nile.
U ARE THE SUNS MES ENFANTS ON OUR BROWS
7.2
NIBBLE NIBBLE LIFE IN THE RAT WORLD EH?
We’re back from downstairs where Urania’s mother
Is giving herself a birthday party:
Coca-cola, sweet red wine, a cake
Shaped like Stonington—streets, gardens, docks
Iced round by bright blue wavelets. The dear child
Squirmed in my lap, pushing away her plate,
While D and I and various overweight
Furies in hairdos licked our lips and smiled.
ONE THERE WAS UNIQUE: YR WARD JM SAVE HER WHEN SHE BRINGS
HER DEAR SOBER SOUL TO U IT WILL BE PERHAPS A FORM
OF INTERFERENCE BUT RITES ARE SACRED IN THE RAT WORLD
Rites?
ARE U NOT GODFATHER?
Oh. So I am. But “interference”?
IN THAT WORLD IT IS EXPECTED.
PUT B4 HER THE TOYS OF LEARNING: BLOCKS PYRAMIDS BOOKS
ONCE AS NEFERTITI WAS BEING ROWD TO THE SITE OF
A NEW PLANETARIUM SHE FOUND ON THE BANK A CHILD.
LEGEND OF MOSES BEGAN HIS NAME MEANT STARFOUND ONE MORE
M
NAME ATOP YR ARCH HE MUCH AS DID YR WEIGHTED &
ELEMENTAL GODDAUGHTER CAME TO COURT
But not to Thebes. Our book says Tel-el-Amarna.
THEBES UPRIVER
WAS THE SITE OF THEIR FAMOUS STUDY CENTER THEY CONTROLLD
THE DELTA EBB & FLOW & CLOSED THE GAP AT GIBRALTAR
TO KEEP THEIR SEA CALM & TIDELESS THEIR MATHEMATICIANS
& NAVIGATORS FOUND THE EXACT MEASUREMENTS NEEDED
TO LEAVE THAT DOOR AJAR BUT NOT OPEN 1000S WORKD TO
PUSH UP THE AFRICAN COASTLINE & THE THING WAS DONE. PET
APES LIVE ON FROM THEIR EXPEDITIONS
On the rock of Gibraltar, the Barbary apes—yes, yes!
NO GREATER BUILDERS
EVER EXISTED THEY LITERALLY HARNESSD MATTER
WITH THE REINS OF THE SUN INDEED IT WAS THAT TOPMOST PIECE
Earlier we’d been admiring an inch-high
Prism set in noon light on the sill.
Outflung, slowshifting gouts of color stain
Ceiling, walls, us. DJ: It’s really how
His lessons flow through us. JM: And will
Forever be deflected by the grain
Of imperfection in that quartz capstone,
The human mind—Akhnaton’s or our own.
ITS GRAIN VARIED JUST ENOUGH TO SAVE THE WORLD: GOD B’S WORK.
THEIR FLAWLESS DIAMONDS ERRD MINUTELY IN MEASUREMENT.
THE SUN WORSHIP WAS A GLORIOUS RITE AKHN/NEF DAILY
WERE CARRIED UP 500 STEPS & AT THE MOMENT OF
SUNRISE STEPT FORTH LITERALLY ON AIR A TRANSPARENT
PLATFORM WHILE THE WORLD FELL ON ITS KNEES B4 THEM & NOT
A DAY OF THEIR WHOLE REIGN WAS THERE NO SUNRISE 18 YEARS
& IN THAT TIME THEY HAD TRANSFORMD THEIR WORLD: PHYSICIANS FOUND
GREAT CURES THERE WERE NO FEVERS A GENERATION WAS BORN
A HAND TALLER THAN ITS PARENTS LIGHT STORAGE MUCH LIKE THE
BATTERY WAS INVENTED BOTH PALACES & HUMBLE
HOUSES WERE LIT & HEATED BY THE SUN IT WAS THE DAWN
OF ARCADIA & GOD SMILED LIKE THE SUN UPON THEM
Then in one wasteful flash it ended—why?
THEIR OWN BATTERY CELLS CD NOT BEAR THE STRAIN THE FLAWD QUARTZ