254
Mrs Thomas, Mrs Harris, and Mrs Neevel
were all his students all a summer’s day.
He couldn’t tell, from the other, one.
And he did teach them Luther, who undone
the sacramental system & taught evil
is ingrained. Why,
that was a sexy summer, with Mrs Thomas
sitting under her hair on a chair-form
& Mrs Harris & Mrs Neevel
who I may hope for Mr Harris & Mr Neevel
do giant shrimp in olive oil & lemon
taking no notes.
Mrs T, Mrs H & Mrs N
figured among my kids, busy as all
get-out, in our shrewd heat.
Luther went into seclusion, along with Mrs Thomas,
and once I felt in my flying tackle face a cleat
when I sailed through the Fifth Form.
255
My twin, the nameless one, wild in the woods
whilst I at Pippin’s court flourish, am knighted:
we met & fighted
on a red road, made friends, and all my goods
now are half his. I pull this out of the past,
St Valentine’s forecast.
Trim, the complex lace, whitest on red:
my baby’s kindergarten had a ball
save one got none at all
& tears, like those for the Roman martyr shed
& the bishop of Terni who suffered the same day,
so ancient writers say.
I say, said Henry (all degrees of love
from sky-blue down to spiriting blood, down to
the elder from the new,
loom sanctuaries we are pilgrims of,
the pierced heart over there seems to be mine)
this is my Valentine.
256
Henry rested, possessed of many pills
& gin & whiskey. He put up his feet
& switched on Schubert.
His tranquillity lasted five minutes
for (1) all that undone all the heavy weeks
and (2) images shook him alert.
A rainy Sunday morning, on vacation
as well as Fellowship, he could not rest:
bitterly he shook his head.
—Mr Bones, the Lord will bring us to a nation
where everybody only rest. —I confess
that notion bores me dead,
for there’s no occupation there, save God,
if that, and long experience of His works
has not taught me his love.
His love must be a very strange thing indeed,
considering its products. No, I want rest here,
neither below nor above.
257
The thunder & the flaw of their great quarrel
abased his pen. He could not likely think.
He took himself out of it,
both wrong & right, beyond well beyond moral,
in the groves of meaningless rage, which ache & stink
unlike old shit
which loses its power almost in an hour,
ours burgeons. When I trained my wives, I thought
now they’ll be professional:
they became professional, at once wedlocks went sour
because they couldn’t compete with Henry, who sought
their realizations. The J.P. coughed.
Married life is a boat
forever dubious, with the bilge stale.
There’s no getting out of that.
Gongs & lightning crowd my returned throat,
I always wept at parades: I knew I’d fail:
Henry wandered back on stage & sat.
258
Scarlatti spurts his wit across my brain,
so too does Figaro: so much for art
after the centuries yes
who had for all their pains above all pain
& who brought to their work a broken heart
but not as bad as Schubert’s:
that went beyond the possible: that was like a man
dragged by his balls, singing aloud ‘Oh yes’
while to his anguisht glance
the architecture differs: he’s getting on,
the tops of buildings change, like a mad dance,
the Piazza Navona
recovers its calm after he went through,
the fountain went on splashing, all was the same
after his agony,
abandoned cats had what to say to you,
lovers performed their glory & its shame:
Henry put his foot down: free.
259
Does then our rivalry extend beyond
your death? our lovely friendly rivalry
over a quarter-century?
One of my students gives me, late, a long paper
on one of your poems, which I barely can stand
for excellence & loss?
When worst it got, you went away I charge you
and we will wonder over this in Hell
if the circles communicate.
I stayed here. It’s changing from blue to blue
but you would be rapt with the gold hues, well,
you went like Pier to another fate,
I never changed. My desire for death was strong
but never strong enough. I thought: this is my chance,
I can bear it.
I’m not a Buddhist. I studied the systems long,
the High Systems. Come hunt me, ancient friend,
and tell me I am wrong.
260
Tides of dreadful creation rocked lonely Henry
isolated in the midst of his family
as solitary as his dog.
In another world he’ll have more to say of this,—
concepts came forward & were greeted with a kiss
in the passionate fog.
Lucid his project lay, beyond. Can he?
Loose to the world lay unimaginable Henry,
loose to the world,
taut with his vision as it has to be,
open & closed sings on his mystery
furled & unfurled.
Flags lift, strange chords lift to a climax. Henry
is past. Returning from his travail, he
can’t think of what to say.
The house’s all about him, so is his family.
Tame doors swing upon his mystery
until another day.
261
Restless, as once in love, he put pen to paper—
a stub point with real ink, he hates ballpoints—
and on a thick pad, on lap—
how many thousands times has this been the caper,
in fear & love, with interest, whom None anoints,
taking instead the fourth rap—
habitual—life sentence—will he see it through?
or will a long vac, at the end of time—
discharge—greet gravid Henry?
Many a one his pen’s been bad unto,
which they deserved, some honoured in his rhyme
which they deserved, hee hee!
A stub point: one odd way to Paradise
ha ha! but of more dignity than my typewriter,
than my marvellous pencils darker.
We’re circling, waiting for the tower & the marker
the radio’s out, some runways are brighter
as we break Control & come down with our size.
262
The tenor of the line of your retreats,
done in an instant, hurts me forever. Well,
I suffer that bad will
so long as I suffer. You would not have wanted this,
the chaining of your friend to your abyss
with one of the best seats.
I overlook the hopeless spectacle
with pity & love & almost perfect admiration,
I feel your terror.
I wish I didn’t. Go, but not to he
ll
but you have disqualified yourself for this nation
of attempts & trial-&-error.
You lowered a wall between us
which was your privilege. Now you must not expect
anything but suffering more,
fearless & final. You became anonymous
and untruth after in your regard will be correct
hung on the veil you tore.
263
You couldn’t bear to grow old, but we grow old.
Our differences accumulate. Our skin
tightens or droops: it alters.
Take courage, things are not what they have been
and they will never again. Hot hearts grow cold,
the rush to the surface falters,
secretive grows the disappearing soul
learned & uncertain, young again
but not in the same way:
Heraclitus had a wise word here to say,
which I forget. We wake & blunder on,
wiser, on the whole,
but not more accurate. Leave that to the young,
grope forward, toward where no one else has been
which is our privilege.
Besides, you gave up early in our age
which is your privilege, from Chatterton
to the bitter & present scene.
264
I always wanted to be old, I wanted to say
‘O I haven’t read that for fifteen years’
or ‘my copy of that
seems in the usual course to have gone astray’
or ‘She—that woman moved me to young tears,
even Henry Cat.’
But now the moment’s mine, I find I love it not.
Base envy of the very young afflicts me,
contempt & boredom, but envy.
I just came on my notes for an old play,
fifty volumes I read from Widener, thought
that now would turn me grey
roiled in my burning brain, Connolly & Pearse
my hero-martyrs over fifty books
stampt down in lime:
their triumph needs a man younger in rhyme,
reservationless, unfeeling for the worse,
a young man with three rooks.
265
I don’t know one damned butterfly from another
my ignorance of the stars is formidable,
also of dogs & ferns
except that around my house one destroys the other
When I reckon up my real ignorance, pal,
I mumble ‘many returns’—
next time it will be nature & Thoreau
this time is Baudelaire if one had the skill
and even those problems O
At the mysterious urging of the body or Poe
reeled I with chance, insubordinate & a killer
O formal & elaborate I choose you
but I love too the spare, the hit-or-miss,
the mad, I sometimes can’t always tell them apart
As we fall apart, will you let me hear?
That would be good, that would be halfway to bliss
You said will you answer back? I cross my heart
& hope to die but not this year.
266
Dinch me, dark God, having smoked me out.
Let Henry’s ails fail, pennies on his eyes
never to open more,
the shires are voting him out of time & place,
they’ll drop his bundle, drunkard & Boy Scout,
where he was once before:
nowhere, nowhere. Was then the thing all planned?
I mention what I do not understand.
I mention for instance Love:
God loves his creatures when he treats them so?
Surely one grand exception here below
his presidency of
the widespread galaxies might once be made
for perishing Henry, whom let not then die.
He can advance no claim,
save that he studied thy Word & grew afraid,
work & fear be the basis for his terrible cry
not to forget his name.
267
Can Louis die? Why, then it’s time to join him
again, for another round, the lovely man.
Years roll away,
and we are back in London, in ’53.
He was doing the documentary
of the Everest film.
(Book V is done. Would Louis have been delighted therewith?)
He was not of the character of myth,
& knew nothing about climbing.
I had to tell him about Leigh-Mallory
& Leigh-Mallory’s daughter Clare, & Leigh-Mallory’s
remark: ‘Because it is there.’
So Henry’s thought rushed onto a thousand screens
& Louis’, the midwife of it. A thousand dreams behind,
birds are incredibly stupid.
My love for Louis transcended his good work,
and—older than Henry—saw him not in the dark
& suffocating.
268
Henry, absent on parade, hair-triggered, mourned
on Memorial Day a many of my dead
and all of the living.
He finally decided: It’s forgiving.
We wakes at dawn & we sits up, forlorned,
besides the panic dread.
His love passed on to him through one a note,
which made him ache. Notes in the sullen ground
are not passed, or found.
Their solitude is great & dug to last,
their final memory the scary boat.
Now let’s have a new sound:
that of the banners & the bands, and my love,
Hurrah for the lost!
These thoughts, and of his love, in his mind he tossed
enough until he nearly died thereof.
Then came back the fear.
269
Acres of spirits every single day
shook headed Henry toward his friendly grave.
But after one square mile
less he shook, more he laboured, with each Wave
further he vanished, while the great sky grew grey
never to wake again while
the visible universe grows older, while
onflying stars out to my edges sail—
the edges of what?
I pause in a welcome distance of applauses
Henry obeyed sometimes some strange old laws:
mostly he made his own, cupshot.
High weird the hymns now in his final days,
items he sought of what was once called praise
which now spits & shrieks,
They say Henry’s love is well beyond Henry
& advise the poor man back into the tree
giving up spirits & steaks.
270
This fellow keeps on sticking at his drum,
the only decent german for decades. Some
would like you to make room,
mother, and you know where
whence we were foxed to flower into power
& bloom, headed thence for the tomb.
Womb was the word, where Henry never developed.
Prudent of him, though gloomy. I assume
that which you neglect.
The face he put on matters, slightly wrecked,
passed muster O at noon & while he supped
& enroute back to the womb.
There was no time, in the end, to finish her off.
Halfway he left her, with the right side of her head
a’ gone,
with the strength to speak diminishing instead
but cured forever of that coffin cough
& the rest of her hair wind-blown.
271
Why then did he make, at such cost, crazy sounds?
to waken ancient
longings, to remind (of childness),
to make laugh, and to hurt,
is and was all he ever intended. Short
came his commands.
Today, in April, the clouds have personalities. Yes,
there’s a lamb one; that’s lying down; he waits
his frightful chances; she hangs over; there’s a dove;
two are conspiring;
one flies, wild. These banks and ranks of glowing cloud require
his passioning attention. Throng the Fates,
he couldn’t care less, being in love
with his own teeming lady,—whose dorsal fin
is keeping her nauseous. Wait till that kid
comes out, I’ll fix her.
I’ll burp her till she bleeds, I’ll take an ax
to her inability to focus, until in
one weird moment I fall in love with her too.
272
The subject was her. He was the object. Clings
still to these facts affect. If little cats
come to the parapet
and hurt my shoulders, growing there like wings
where most I should go safe: let’s face it, that’s
the looking to a wet.
—I’ll see you in the a.m., Dr Bones.
—Don’t leave now. An eminence of man,
an imminence of her,
boils on my brothers’ deaths. Nobody owns
much, good friend. A parapet with wings,
an egg lined with fur.
—I really gotta go. You don’ make sense.
—I don’t try to. Get with it. When’s said & done
all that we did & said
& drank & dreamt, a hundred seasons hence,
who’ll forgive sunspots & the stains of the son
where all we crawled & bled?
273
Survive—exist—who is at others’ will
optionless; may gelded be, be put to stud,
and were sweating sold;
was sold. —Mr Bones, dat slavey still
is of our former coast. —When they make me, Bud,
I show my genitals, cold.
Saudi Arabia is mah favourite place.
’conditioned Cadillacs, like bigoty Texas
of our own mindless oil.
Come closer, Sambo. I planting in your face