I was playing in the street
no one paid attention to me
as I made forms out of sand
mumbling Rimbaud under my breath
once an elderly gentleman overheard it
— little boy you are a poet
just now we are organizing
a grass-roots literary movement
he stroked my dirty head
gave me a large lollypop
and even bought clothes
in the protective coloring of youth
I didn’ t have such a splendid suit
since first communion
short trousers and a wide
sailor’ s collar
unwavering noon, self-minus
sun flake on the levels of gold
there are names for these things: rose, brick, plate glass
the annunciation of the sparrow
a gene for anxiety
add hope, fear, greed, desire
no rest but the shade
to which a sun implodes
perhaps on other worlds others walk streets
muse on the weather
psyches built, say, on a double sun of unwavering noon
the balm of such congruence
•
thick, white, stick bicyclists painted on the esplanade to Chambers
I
Turned from the “eau-forte
Par Jaquemart”
To the strait head
Of Messalina:
“His True Penelope
Was Flaubert,”
And his tool
The engraver's.
Firmness,
Not the full smile,
His art, but an art
In profile;
Colourless
Pier Francesca,
Pisanello lacking the skill
To forge Achaia.
II
E. P. ODE POUR L’ ÉLECTION DE SON SÉPULCHRE
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain “the sublime”
In the old sense. Wrong from the start —
No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait:
“Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie
Caught in the unstopped ear;
Giving the rocks small lee-way
The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.
Defier of closed space, such as the head, opener
Of the sealed passageways, so that
Sunlight entering the nose can once again
Exit the ear, vaporizer, mist machine, whose
Soft hiss sounds like another human being
But less erratic, more stable, or, if not like a human being,
Carried by one, by my mother to the sick chamber
Of my childhood as Freud said,
Why are you always sick, Louise? his cigar
Confusing mist with smoke, interfering
With healingEmbodied
"Heaven bless the babe!" they said.
"What queer books she must have read!"
(Love, by whom I was beguiled,
Grant I may not bear a child.)
"Little does she guess to-day
What the world may be!" they say.
(Snow, drift deep and cover
Till the spring my murdered lover.)
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
Did an argument break out in the kitchen that morning?
Was there smashing of pots and pans: you
want to eat somewhere else? Go on,
get out! Or were they set outside, shrewd,
meant to feed on dust and hunger or to tempt the doves
of peace? Nothing wrong with that as long as
the cook stays put by another fire. Hollow
vessels on grass socks, what do they want from this
puzzle of trees and clouds? Even the wind
seems to have forgotten how to whistle and wherever
you look, those who are gone cannot be seen.
The unicorn is an easy prey: its horn
in the maiden’ s lap is an obvious
twist, a tamed figure — like the hawk
that once roamed free, but sits now, fat and hooded,
squawking on the hunter’ s wrist. It’ s easy
to catch what no longer captures
the mind, long since woven in,
a faded tapestry on a crumbling wall
made by the women who wore keys
at their waists and in their sleep came
hot dreams of wounded knights left bleeding
The way a tired Chippewa woman
Who’ s lost a child gathers up black feathers,
Black quills & leaves
That she wraps & swaddles in a little bale, a shag
Cocoon she carries with her & speaks to always
As if it were the child,
Until she knows the soul has grown fat & clever,
That the child can find its own way at last;
Well, I go everywhere
