(The tanks of the elders roll, in exercise, on the German plain.)
Even if their sense is to (swill &) die
why don’t they join us, pal, as Texas did
(the oil-mailed arrogant butt), and learn how to speak
modestly, & with exactness, and
… like a sense of the country, man? Come off it. Powers,
the fêted traitor, became so in hours,
and the President, ignorant, didn’t even lie.
217
Some remember (‘Pretty well’) the Korean war.
The unrecruited memory seems to embrace
the Bay of Pigs, Franklin Roosevelt. Who has in mind
with a shudder Cold Harbor,—
Henry is schlaft in his historical moode,—
with pity & horror the Bloody Angle?
Good Friday, and the end?
Three like terrifying political murders
have cast, as Adams sighed, no shadow on the Whites’ House.
—Adhere, Sir Bones, to Heaven; tho’ the shrine is still,
what here or there but by the will
of hidden God git done? Ah ask.
—I have an answer lost here on my desk:
Pakistan may Pakistan, well, find;
or not.
Henry couldn’t care less.
—Mr Bones, cares for all men!
—Overloaded. It is my country in my country only
cast is our lot.
218
Fortune gave him to know the flaming best,
expression’s kings in his time, by voice & hand,—
the Irishman,
the doomed bard roaring down the thirsty west,
the subtle American British banker-man
and the lunatic one
fidgeting, with bananas, and his friend the sage
(touchy, ‘I’m very touchy’) in his cabin
two miles from mine here,
and already now let’s call it a strong age,
not just a science age, as idiot habit
cries; I’m getting near
an end, but I add on the Bostonian,
rugged & grand & sorrowful. That’s six,
and that’s enough.
Henry as I was muttering knew them man
by man: much good it did him in his fix
except for letting out love.
219
So Long? Stevens
He lifted up, among the actuaries,
a grandee crow. Ah ha & he crowed good.
That funny money-man.
Mutter we all must as well as we can.
He mutter spiffy. He make wonder Henry’s
wits, though, with a odd
… something … something … not there in his flourishing art.
O veteran of death, you will not mind
a counter-mutter.
What was it missing, then, at the man’s heart
so that he does not wound? It is our kind
to wound, as well as utter
a fact of happy world. That metaphysics
he hefted up until we could not breathe
the physics. On our side,
monotonous (or ever-fresh)—it sticks
in Henry’s throat to judge—brilliant, he seethe;
better than us; less wide.
220
—If we’re not Jews, how can messiah come?
Praise God, brothers, Who is a coloured man.
(Some time we’ll do it again,
in whiteface.) ‘Rám,’ was his last word, like ‘Mary’
or ‘OM’ or a perishing new grunt.
(winged ’em.) Kingdom? Some.
My God! they’m be surprised to see Your face,
all your admirers, in their taffeta,
or—upon thought—not all:
we will not wonder, will us, Mr Bones,
when either He looms down or wifout trace
we vanisheth. It’s tall
time now in Ghetto-town: it’s curtain-call:
hard now to read the time. Seem to Me I’m
not altogether the same
pro-man I strutted out from the wings as,
like losing faith. Counsel me, Mr Bones.
—my friend, the clingdom has come.
221
I poured myself out thro’ my tips. What’s left?
I slipt. I slipt. What’s right? Whose centre’s where?
His son has set.
Their towers lean & wobble. Anything I sang
I take back. Crimson is succeeded by black;
it is a fact.
Beckett shuddered, with thought. An unspeakable sound
as I sat thinking.
Pray as I would, dawn came to my hills:
in perfect silence I took out my laundry
and had it done.
If the blood banged, as it must do, faint
with necessity, forgive it, please. ‘I paint’
(Renoir said) ‘with my penis.’
A picture in Philadelphia proves it. Pal,
in wars & loves when we lost ground, how shall
we know who it means?
222
It was a difficult crime to re-enact,
Fatty’s; if crime it were. Was he so made
as to be dangerous?
or if she’d gone to the john beforehand might
in the middle of his love she have been all right
or was there shoved ice?
This burning to sheathe it which so many males
so often and all over suffer: why?
Is it: to make or kill
is jungle-like what constitutes my I,
so let’s thrust? When both crimes lead into wails,
at once or later. Tales
told of these truths stand up like goldenglow
head-high, and around the planet men are erect
and girls lie ready:
a bounce, toward pain. Melons, they say, though,
are best—I don’t know if that’s correct—
as well as infertile, it’s said.
223
It’s wonderful the way cats bound about,
it’s wonderful how men are not found out
so far.
It’s miserable how many miserable are
over the spread world at this tick of time.
These mysteries that I’m
rehearsing in the dark did brighter minds
much bother through them ages, whom who finds
guilty for failure?
Up all we rose with dawn, springy for pride,
trying all morning. Dazzled, I subside
at noon, noon be my gaoler
and afternoon the deepening of the task
poor Henry set himself long since to ask:
Why? Who? When?
—I don know, Mr Bones. You asks too much
of such as you & me & we & such
fast cats, worse men.
224
Eighty
Lonely in his great age, Henry’s old friend
leaned on his burning cane while hís old friend
was hymnéd out of living.
The Abbey rang with sound. Pound white as snow
bowed to them with his thoughts—it’s hard to know them though
for the old man sang no word.
Dry, ripe with pain, busy with loss, let’s guess.
Gone. Gone them wine-meetings, gone green grasses
of the picnics of rising youth.
Gone all, slowly. Stately, not as the tongue
worries the loose tooth, wits as strong as young,
only the albino body failing.
Where the smother clusters pinpoint insights clear.
The tennis is over. The last words are here?
What, in the world, will they be?
White is the hue of death & victory,
all the old generosities dismissed
while the white years insist.
225
Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt
Madness & booze, madness & booze.
Which’ll can tell who preceded whose?
What chicken walked out on what egg?
I can tell, which am which oblong.
Corroborate, Los Alamos. —We read you. Wrong.
—I put up my radar & beg:
Corroborate from Berkeley. —Wrong. —Corrob
O from Woods Hole. —No wish to bob
your cred’, but we knew that.
Yes. Confirmed, confirmed.
—Dance in my corridors, under the orange-grey moon,
stuff on your glory hat,
and potstill highland malt that whisky out
swifter than missles to the side of the hill,
the side of the sweet hill,
where installations live forever, about.
Up Scotland! who only drunky sexy Burns
producing, which returns.
226
Phantastic thunder shook the welkin, high.
The animals sat face to face & glared.
Henry was afraid.
Her love, which was not exactly that of a maid,
failed to assuage his terrible fears, who fared
forth in such a world.
Arose from throats anguish. Disappeared in air
many, and many on the ground, and many at sea.
It was not a place to love.
Thumbs into eyes, enormous explosions of
what we know not, until sobriety became a vice.
‘Our breakdowns guarantee us,’ said a pal.
I saw her in a dream, from my dream she woke,
pleasantness & courtesy & love
and all them stuff.
She had long hair as if long hair enough
to smother horrors. What with her in the smoke
he did he will not say.
227
Profoundly troubled over Miss Birnbaum—
a photograph! from Heaven! by Heaven, please!—
Henry rocked on knees
tortured with his project: Lebensraum!
(Unused to pray, he ache.) Away with treaties!
Lassen Sie uns
herausgehen! (Bony, either, his knees hurt,
all over he hurt.) Down with the superior race!
One look more at that face
live enchanting would trance Henry to assert
ideologies weird: take her aways:
disband the Bunds:
leave wizard Henry: at his lectern where
he’s working on his phantasies: Disperse!
and everything goes worse
so the world fills with hér knees, harmful & fair:
a medium where ‘Fuck you’ comes as no curse
but come as a sigh or a prayer.
228
The Father of the Mill surveyed his falls,
his daughterly race, his flume, his clover, privy, of all
his waterfall, found well.
Rain fell in June like … grace? One flopping trout
(a rainbow) make his lunch who took his bait.
Pitch, & Fate flout.
Each cat should seizing private waterfall,
or rent, as Henry do. Seizure is gall,
I guess. Yes;
we nothing own. But we are lying owned.
When last his burning publisher telephoned,
he dying to confess.
The father and the mill purveyed their falls:
grist, grist! Still, stamping on Fate,
he lauded his lady;
ladies. Waders were treble at his end
or ends. The fool danced in the waterfall
losing his footing, ready.
229
They laid their hands on Henry, kindly like,
and swooped him thro’ the major & minor orders
and said to him: ‘You’re in business.’
‘OW’ he responded. It was raining at the time,
or cascading, or the seas were climbing up out of their borders,
when he took up Is-ness.
Dragons, good dragons, sport in the violent foam
on the second floor of the Boston Art Museum
in the joy of the dead Sung Master.
Tigers were friendly: they do not kill needless
and remove pests; dragons are male, yes.
The subject: triumph—disaster.
God’s own problem, whistled the whiskey priest.
I cannot help him. But, if he repents,
I’ll do what I can, man.
Like exorcize: a slow process: at least,
unless he dies, he’ll scream with less vehemence
and we’ll get the Devil a bus ticket.
230
There are voices, voices. Light’s dying. Birds have quit.
He lied about me, months ago. His friendly wit
now slid to apology.
I am sorry that senior genius remembered it.
I am nothing, to occupy his thought
one moment. We
went at his bidding to his cabin, three,
in two bodies; and he spoke like Jove.
I sat there full of love,
salt with attention, while his jokes like nods
pierced for us our most strange history. He
seemed to be in charge of the odds:
hurrah. Three. Three. I must remember that.
I love great men I love. Nobody’s great.
I must remember that.
We all fight. Having fought better than the rest,
he sings, & mutters & prophesies in the West
and is our flunked test.
I always come in prostrate; Yeats & Frost.
231
Ode
To That Boring Shit James Thomson, Seasonal
Now gently rail on Henry Pussycat,
for he did bad, and punisht he must be,
by them, & by them, & by all.
He’ll lose his place (in the book) and each thing that
ever he valued. He’ll lose his minstrelsy.
Vainly will topics call
for cunning putting to who smashed his lyre,
drowned his harmonica, covered with foes,
and coughed with horror, & gave uts.
One word of them: (he’ll lose his scholar-ire,
pereant qui . .) a voyeur, O and those
the slob’s associates
the aggressive tease shockfull of malice, the dead-end
out-of-conflict father, the clever brother & the dull,
the nosey Jesuit.
A tribe to lose to: I lose my right hand,
she lost the honour of her word, ah well
Henry fell among . . it.
232
They work not well on all but they did for him.
He wolfed friend breakfast, bolted lunch, & pigged
dinner.
Beastly yet, meat at midnight, juice he swigged,
juices, avocado lemon’d, artichoke hearts,
anything inner,
except the sauce. Stand Henry off the sauce.
He scrub himself, have nine more matchless cigarettes,
waiting upon the Lord.
Pascal drop in, they placing cagey bets,
it’s midnight! Being ample in their skins
they hang around bored.
Negroes, ignite! you have nothing to use but your brains,
which let bust out. —What was that again, Mr Bones?
De body have abuse
but is de one, too. —One-two, the old thrones
topple, dead sober. The decanter, pal!
Pascal, we free & loose.
233
Cantatrice
Misunderstanding. Misunderstanding, misunderstanding.
Are we stationed here among another thing?
Sometimes I wonder.
After the lightning, this afternoon, ca
me thunder:
the natural world makes sense: cats hate water
and love fish.
Fish, plankton, bats’ radar, the sense of fish
who glide up the coast of South America
and head for Gibraltar.
How do they know it’s there? We call this instinct
by which we dream we know what instinct is,
like misunderstanding.
I was soft on a green girl once and we smiled across
and married, childed. Never did we truly take in
one burning wing.
Henry flounders. What is the name of that fish?
So better organized than we are oh.
Sing to me that name, enchanter, sing!
234
The Carpenter’s Son
The child stood in the shed. The child went mad,
later, & saned the wisemen. People gathered
as he conjoined the Jordan joint
ánd he spoke with them until he got smothered
amongst their passion for mysterious healing had.
They could not take his point:
—Repent, & love, he told them frightened throngs,
and it is so he did. Díd some of them?
Which now comes hard to say.
The date’s in any event a matter of wrongs
later upon him, lest we would not know him,
medieval, on Christmas Day.
Pass me a cookie. O one absolutely did
lest we not know him. Fasten to your fire
the blessing of the living God.
It’s far to seek if it will do as good
whether in our womanly or in our manlihood,
this great man sought his retire.
235
Tears Henry shed for poor old Hemingway
Hemingway in despair, Hemingway at the end,
the end of Hemingway,
tears in a diningroom in Indiana
and that was years ago, before his marriage say,
God to him no worse luck send.
Save us from shotguns & fathers’ suicides.
It all depends on who you’re the father of
if you want to kill yourself—
a bad example, murder of oneself,
the final death, in a paroxysm, of love
for which good mercy hides?
A girl at the door: ‘A few coppers pray’