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From Off the Road Database
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F
<div class="poem">
<p>We know, eternal gunman, our flesh remembers<br />
The tensile boughs, the nimble blue plateaus,<br />
The mounted, yielding cities of the air!<br />
That saddled sky that shook down vertical<br />
Repeated play of fire—no hypogeum<br />
Of wave or rock was good against one hour.<br />
We did not ask for that, but have survived,<br />
And will persist to speak again before<br />
All stubble streets that have not curved<br />
To memory, or known the ominous lifted arm<br />
That lowers down the arc of Helen’s brow<br />
To saturate with blessing and dismay.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>And yet, suppose some evening I forgot<br />
The fare and transfer, yet got by that way<br />
Without recall,— lost yet poised in traffic.<br />
Then I might find your eyes across an aisle,<br />
Still flickering with those prefigurations—<br />
Prodigal, yet uncontested now,<br />
Half-riant before the jerky window frame.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>The siren of the springs of guilty song—<br />
Let us take her on the incandescent wax<br />
Striated with nuances, nervosities<br />
That we are heir to: she is still so young,<br />
We cannot frown upon her as she smiles,<br />
Dipping here in this cultivated storm<br />
Among slim skaters of the gardened skies.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;">III</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>A thousand light shrugs balance us<br />
Through snarling hails of melody.<br />
White shadows slip across the floor<br />
Splayed like cards from a loose hand;<br />
Rhythmic ellipses lead into canters<br />
Until somewhere a rooster banters.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Capped arbiter of beauty in this street<br />
That narrows darkly into motor dawn,—<br />
You, here beside me, delicate ambassador<br />
Of intricate slain numbers that arise<br />
In whispers, naked of steel;<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 11em;"> religious gunman!</span><br />
Who faithfully, yourself, will fall too soon,<br />
And in other ways than as the wind settles<br />
On the sixteen thrifty bridges of the city:<br />
Let us unbind our throats of fear and pity.<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 17em;"> We even,</span><br />
Who drove speediest destruction<br />
In corymbulous formations of mechanics,—<br />
Who hurried the hill breezes, spouting malice<br />
Plangent over meadows, and looked down<br />
On rifts of torn and empty houses<br />
Like old women with teeth unjubilant<br />
That waited faintly, briefly and in vain:
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Brazen hypnotics glitter here;<br />
Glee shifts from foot to foot,<br />
Magnetic to their tremolo.<br />
This crashing opera bouffe,<br />
Blest excursion! this ricochet<br />
From roof to roof—<br />
Know, Olympians, we are breathless<br />
While nigger cupids scour the stars!
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"><i>“And so we may arrive by Talmud skill</i></span><i><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">And profane Greek to raise the building up</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">Of Helen’s house against the Ismaelite,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">King of Thogarma, and his habergeons</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">Brimstony, blue and fiery; and the force</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">Of King Abaddon, and the beast of Cuttim ;</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">Which Rabb David Kimchi, Onkelos,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">And Aben Ezra do interpret Rome.”</span></i><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;">—THE ALCHEMIST</span>
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<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;">I</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>A goose, tobacco and cologne—<br />
Three winged and gold-shod prophecies of <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">heaven,</span><br />
The lavish heart shall always have to leaven<br />
And spread with bells and voices, and atone<br />
The abating shadows of our conscript dust.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Reflective conversion of all things<br />
At your deep blush, when ecstasies thread<br />
The limbs and belly, when rainbows spread<br />
Impinging on the throat and sides . . .<br />
Inevitable, the body of the world<br />
Weeps in inventive dust for the hiatus<br />
That winks above it, bluet in your breasts.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Accept a lone eye riveted to your plane,<br />
Bent axle of devotion along companion ways<br />
That beat, continuous, to hourless days—<br />
One inconspicuous, glowing orb of praise.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>The mind is brushed by sparrow wings;<br />
Numbers, rebuffed by asphalt, crowd<br />
The margins of the day, accent the curbs,<br />
Convoying divers dawns on every corner<br />
To druggist, barber and tobacconist,<br />
Until the graduate opacities of evening<br />
Take them away as suddenly to somewhere<br />
Virginal perhaps, less fragmentary, cool.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Greet naïvely—yet intrepidly<br />
New soothings, new amazements<br />
That cornets introduce at every turn—<br />
And you may fall downstairs with me<br />
With perfect grace and equanimity.<br />
Or, plaintively scud past shores<br />
Where, by strange harmonic laws<br />
All relatives, serene and cool,<br />
Sit rocked in patent armchairs.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>There is some way, I think, to touch<br />
Those hands of yours that count the nights<br />
Stippled with pink and green advertisements.<br />
And now, before its arteries turn dark,<br />
I would have you meet this bartered blood.<br />
Imminent in his dream, none better knows<br />
The white wafer cheek of love, or offers words<br />
Lightly as moonlight on the eaves meets snow.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>The mind has shown itself at times<br />
Too much the baked and labeled dough<br />
Divided by accepted multitudes.<br />
Across the stacked partitions of the day—<br />
Across the memoranda, baseball scores,<br />
The stenographic smiles and stock quotations <br />
Smutty wings flash out equivocations.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Anchises’ navel, dripping of the sea,—<br />
The hands Erasmus dipped in gleaming tides,<br />
Gathered the voltage of blown blood and vine;<br />
Delve upward for the new and scattered wine,<br />
O brother-thief of time, that we recall.<br />
Laugh out the meagre penance of their days<br />
Who dare not share with us the breath released,<br />
The substance drilled and spent beyond repair<br />
For golden, or the shadow of gold hair.<br />
Distinctly praise the years, whose volatile<br />
Blamed bleeding hands extend and thresh the <br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;">height</span><br />
The imagination spans beyond despair,<br />
Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;">II</span>
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>In fact, Claire learned that there may be an almost tolerable state of existence without gardenias or the news about the latest Parisian imagists.
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