CANTO 63
A long time ago now
it seem I became
a seminal event from two nothings
made one. For me
there was to be No
turning back. Like a sentence
to death. It was
a sentence to life the glorious
shoals of opportunities
that slip in
& out.
As if one were a net.
from a nest
made for me by those
who'd fetch me here
I migrated
to another
made by myself for others
one among whom
misses me tonight
as I do her.
Let her hear
that I could not stop for
the velocity set in motion
14 billion years since
made a previous appointment.
Look up at the arrayed
evidence. It regards
you as all
intelligent
enough for now to consider
grief in this scale
arises only from wasted life
the life one has't lived
in the shadow of death.
For speaking of dying
that fills each life
at the moment of closure.
Nothing.
A cruel magic trick
brought down the house
& the curtain
would be sleep.
Child, sleep,
so we can wake.
At eleven, the dream
of the transposed genitalia.
In the day, we read, studied,
jouer au football. Counted ants.
Learned to trust.
To decline to climb symbolically.
Intelligence was our coin. But falling
ill, there appeared the staircase
down to the snug.
There was a shadow,
considerable. It parted
& my love stepped out, so her gait
arrived with her smile, her smile
with her voice, which said everything.
He wrote, "As though I had never lived
until this minute," stopped by a lie
or truth.
Hold it.
A failing not unworthy of pardon.
She says, "And you have so many."
From the distance you cannot help
but keep watching.
Fidelity. A Savings & Loan.
La-orr-ah
face in the hmm hmm hmm
soft clouds.
The chance of She
My eye an open highway to the heart
My ear our auras tears
Eros penetratred
Ferir me de saetta She
On another's arm
& so spoken for,
cloud cover yielding but one
single ray, yet spoke
Di mi quando,
Quando, quando.
The gift not quite
handed down
generation to the next
& me grinning from ear to ear,
being such a glorious grinner
& me grieving from basement up
as born to it
Amor takes of all human faces, hers
Van Gogh stars whirled above the dune
Love set above reason
A joke is consciousness
Re verses
Moves
Frost of the world in his hair
del dolce loco ov'a sua eta fornita
e da la famigliuola sbigottita
at his having moved
in his imagination.
hot-head
per causa
forcing these stiff shanks
to crank him
up once more.
The extreme dalliance of his
extreme dalliance
with daywardness
addendum to the vita
of a cool bonnie feller
busted by age along the rotting road.
Language is rotting. rotten.
-You bastards!
red days when the shirts stank
& the venality of Rome, second
to Desire, to admire
the semblance
hoped-for as the Pope has to hope Heaven
be all that She, for_him_ could be.
_____________
NB: If the Romans of the first century had put insurgents to death with swarms of stinging bees,
at times of crisis or at the dinner table when family visit, when running onto the soccer pitch, or
when kneeling in church, instead of making the sign of the Cross, we should flail wildly around
ourselves in all directions. But they didn't.
