1
The long incision. The incipient voyage from aortic arch to thoracic inlet. Small-particled is the corpuscled city. (Bustling opuscula.) A city of animal electricity. A lowing cycling mass. Calm the cowed heart. Still the browbeating heart. Cool the controversial hearthstone. Let the blade intervene where the divine intersects bovinity.
2
Melt the fat around the heart;
Leave only muscle.
For us
Spectators
Leave
Only muscle;
Only trim the fat
To depth.
And, even if you
Nick the heart,
If you tear it
Or scratch it,
If you slice a petal off it,
Don’ t sweat it.
Be mindful only
That you leave the muscle
Clean,
Sheared of fat.
Or you can
Char the heart,
Melt down the fat,
Then eat it
With fucking
Fava beans.
Whatever you do,
Be sure
‘Aber die Thronen, wo? Die Tempel, und wo die Gefäße,
Wo mit Nektar gefüllt, Göttern zu Lust der Gesang?
‘Someone’ s got it in for me’
for Jack Spicer
the fabber craftsman
I. THE FUNERAL MARCH (CHICAGO AND ORLEANS)
When I have heard small talk about great men
I climb to bed; light my two candles; then
Consider what was said; and put aside
What Such-a-one remarked and Someone-else replied.
They have spoken lightly of my deathless friends,
(Lamps for my gloom, hands guiding where I stumble,)
Quoting, for shallow conversational ends,
What Shelley shrilled, what Blake once wildly muttered....
Along the grave green downs, this idle afternoon,
Shadows of loitering silver clouds, becalmed in blue,
Bring, like unfoldment of a flower, the best of June.
Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes and too vague to know;
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.
Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep;
It was past twelve on a mid-winter night,
When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep;
There, with much work to do before the light,
We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might
Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang,
And droning shells burst with a hollow bang;
Stunned heat of noon. In shade, tan, silken cows
hide in the thorned acacias. A butterfly staggers.
Stamping their hooves from thirst, small horses drowse
or whinny for water. On parched, ochre headlands, daggers
of agave bristle in primordial defense,
like a cornered monster backed up against the sea.
A mongoose charges dry grass and fades through a fence
faster than an afterthought. Dust rises easily.
The poor have the best views,
Views sloping down to sea.
A green and yellow planet,
A blue band, rung with stars.
The poor have the best views.
You have to walk to get there.
Up three flights, narrow paths,
Houses rising steeply side to side.
No, no space for a car.
When the flag lifts, you see the coast:
Yellow curve of sand,
Framed by reaching branches.
Little humpbacked islands,
Soon they will drill for oil there,
Deep underwater. Once microscopic
Diatoms swarmed in salt, danced, died.
On the platter set out in the center of the Matyó-embroidered tablecloth
was the syringe. And around it was silence. My father
gazed at my mother, and she back at him. Slowly,
faltering, he began to speak. I was seized by
an unusual shuddering. I recall that he used the word fate,
and that if I consented to the injected dose,
we could all fall asleep. We would stay together
for all time. And evade the uncertainty in mortifying
desperation. A fifteen-year-old’ s desire to live
cried out in me: “No!” To which
