77 Dream Songs (6 page)

could I foresee Henry’s sweet seed

unspent across so flying barren ground,

where would my loves dislimn whose dogs abound?

I fell out of the tree.

58

Industrious, affable, having brain on fire,

Henry perplexed himself; others gave up;

good girls gave in;

geography was hard on friendship, Sire;

marriages lashed & languished, anguished; dearth of group

and what else had been;

the splendour & the lose grew all the same,

Sire. His heart stiffened, and he failed to smile,

catching
(enfint)
on.

The law: we must, owing to chiefly shame

lacing our pride, down what we did. A mile,

a mile to Avalon.

Stuffy & lazy, shaky, making roar

overseas presses, he quit wondering:

the mystery is full.

Sire, damp me down. Me feudal O, me yore

(male Muse) serf, if anyfing;

which rank I pull.

59

Henry’s Meditation in the Kremlin

Down on the cathedrals, as from the Giralda

in a land no crueller, and over the walls

to domes & river look

from Great John’s belfry, Ivan-Veliky,

whose thirty-one are still

to hail who storms no father’s throne. Bell, book

& candle rule, in silence. Hour by hour

from time to time with holy oil

touch yet the forehead eyelids nose

lips ears breast
fists of Krushchev, for Christ knows

poor evil Kadar, cut, is back in power.

Boils his throne. The moujik kneels & votes.

South & east of the others’ tombs—where? why,

in Arkhanghelsky, on the Baptist’s side,

lies Brother Jonas (formerly Ivan the Terrible),

where Brother Josef came with his fiend’s heart

out of such guilt it proved all bearable,

and Brother Nikita will come and lie.

60

Afters eight years, be less dan eight percent,

distinguish’ friend, of coloured wif de whites

in de School, in de Souf.

—Is coloured gobs, is coloured officers,

Mr Bones. Dat’s nuffin? —Uncle Tom,

sweep shut yo mouf,

is million blocking from de proper job,

de fairest houses & de churches eben.

—You may be right, Friend Bones.

Indeed you is. Dey flyin ober de world,

de pilots, ober
ofays. Bit by bit

our immemorial moans

brown down to all dere moans. I flees that, sah.

They brownin up to ourn. Who gonna win?

—I wouldn’t
pre
dict.

But I do guess mos peoples gonna
lose.

I never saw no pinkie wifout no hand.

O my, without no hand.

61

Full moon. Our Narragansett gales subside

and the land is celebrating men of war

more or less, less or more.

In valleys, thin on headlands, narrow & wide

our targets rest. In us we trust. Far, near,

the bivouacs of fear

are solemn in the moon somewhere tonight,

in turning time. It’s late for gratitude,

an annual, rude

roar of a moment’s turkey’s ‘Thanks’. Bright & white

their ordered
markers undulate away

awaiting no day.

Away from us, from Henry’s feel or fail,

campaigners lie with mouldered toes, disarmed,

out of order,

with whom we will one. The war is real,

and a sullen glory pauses over them harmed,

incident to murder.

62

That dark brown rabbit, lightness in his ears

& underneath, gladdened our afternoon

munching a crab-’.

That rabbit was a fraud, like a black bull

prudent
I admired in Zaragoza, who

certainly was brave as a demon

but would not charge, being willing not to die.

The rabbit’s case, a little different,

consisted in alert

& wily looks down the lawn, where nobody was,

with prickt ears,
while rapt but chatting on the porch

we sat in view nearby.

Then went he mildly by, and around behind

my cabin, and when I followed, there he just sat.

Only at last

he turned down around, passing my wife at four feet

and hopped the whole lawn and made thro’ the hedge for the big house.

—Mr Bones, we all brutes & fools.

63

Bats have no bankers and they do not drink

and cannot be arrested and pay no tax

and, in general, bats have it made.

Henry for joining the human race is
bats,

known to be so, by few them who think,

out of the cave.

Instead of the cave! ah lovely-chilly, dark,

ur-moist his cousins hang in hundreds or swerve

with personal radar,

crisisless, kid. Instead of the cave? I serve,

inside,
my blind term. Filthy four-foot lights

reflect on the whites of our eyes.

He then salutes for sixty years of it

just now a one of valor and insights,

a theatrical man,

O scholar & Legionnaire who as quickly might

have killed as cast you.
Olè.
Stormed with years

he tranquil commands and appears.

64

Supreme my holdings, greater yet my need,

thoughtless I go out.     Dawn.     Have I my cig’s,

my flaskie O,

O crystal cock,—my kneel has gone to seed,—

and anybody’s blessing? (Blast the MIGs

for making fumble so

my tardy readying.) Yes, utter’ that.

Anybody’s blessing? —Mr Bones,

you makes too much

démand. I might be ’fording you a hat:

it gonna rain. —I knew a one of groans

& greed & spite, of a crutch,

who thought he had, a vile night, been—well—blest.

He see someone run off. Why not Henry,

with his grasp of desire?

—Hear matters hard to manage at de best,

Mr Bones. Tween what we see, what be,

is blinds. Them blinds’ on fire.

65

A freaking ankle crabbed his blissful trips,

this whisky tastes like California

but is Kentucky,

like Berkeley where he truly worked at it

but nothing broke all night—no fires—one dawn,

crowding his luck,

flowed down along the cliffs to the Big Sur

where Henry Miller’s box is vomit-green

and Henry bathed in sulphur

lovely, hot, over the sea, like Senator

Cat, relaxed & sober, watery

as Tivoli, sir.

No Christmas jaunts for fractured cats. Hot dog,

the world is places where he will not go

this wintertide or again.

Does Striding Edge block wild the sky as then

when Henry with his mystery was two

& twenty, high on the hog?

66

‘All virtues enter into this world:’)

A Buddhist, doused in the street, serenely burned.

The Secretary of State for War,

winking it over, screwed a redhaired whore.

Monsignor Capovilla mourned. What a week.

A journalism doggy took a leak

against absconding coon (‘but take one virtue,

without which a man can hardly hold his own’)

the sun in the willow

shivers itself & shakes itself
green-yellow

(Abba Pimen groaned, over the telephone,

when asked what that was:)

How feel a fellow then when he arrive

in fame but lost? but affable, top-shelf.

Quelle sad semaine.

He hardly know his selving. (‘that a man’)

Henry grew hot, got laid, felt bad, survived

(‘should always reproach himself’.

67

I don’t operate often. When I do,

persons take note.

Nurses look amazed. They pale.

The patient is brought back to life, or so.

The reason I don’t do this more (I quote)

is: I have a living to fail—

because of my wife & son—to keep from earning.

—Mr Bones, I sees that.

They for these operations thanks you, what?

not pays you. —Right.

You have seldom been so understanding.

Now there
is further a difficulty with the light:

I am obliged to perform in complete darkness

operations of great delicacy

on my self.

—Mr Bones, you terrifies me.

No wonder they don’t pay you. Will you die?

—My

                        friend, I succeeded. Later.

68

I heard, could be, a Hey there from the wing,

and I went on: Miss Bessie soundin good

that one, that night of all,

I feelin fair mysef, taxes & things

seem to be back in line, like everybody should

and nobody in the snow on call

so, as I say, the house is givin hell

to
Yellow Dog,
I blowin like it too

and Bessie always do

when she make a very big sound—after, well,

no sound—I see
she totterin—I cross which stage

even at Henry’s age

in 2-3 seconds: then we wait and see.

I hear strange horns, Pinetop he hit some chords,

Charlie start
Empty Bed,

they all come hangin Christmas on some tree

after trees thrown out—sick-house’s white birds’,

black to the birds instead.

69

Love her he doesn’t but the thought he puts

into that young woman

would launch a national product

complete with TV spots & skywriting

outlets in Bonn & Tokyo

I mean it

Let it be known that nine words have not passed

between herself and Henry;

looks, smiles.

God help Henry, who deserves it all

every least part of that infernal & unconscious

woman, and the pain.

I feel as if, unique,
she … Biddable?

Fates, conspire.

—Mr Bones,
please.

—Vouchsafe me, Sleepless One,

a personal experience of the body of Mrs Boogry

before I pass from lust!

70

Disengaged, bloody, Henry rose from the shell

where in their racing start his seat got wedged

under his knifing knees,

he did it on the runners, feathering,

being bow, catching no crab. The ridges were sore

& tore chamois. It was not done with ease.

So Henry was a hero, malgré lui,

that day, for blundering; until & after the coach

said this & which to him.

That happy day, whenas the
pregnant back

of Number Two returned, and he’d no choice

but to make for it room.

Therefore he rowed rowed rowed. They did not win.

Forever in the winning & losing since

of his own crew, or rather

in the weird regattas of this afterworld,

cheer for the foe. He set himself to time

the blue father.

71

Spellbound held subtle Henry all his four

hearers in the racket of the market

with ancient signs, infamous characters,

new rhythms. On the steps he was beloved,

hours a day, by all his four, or more,

depending. And they paid him.

It was not, so, like no one listening

but critics famed & Henry’s pals or other

tellers at all

chiefly in another country. No.

He by the heart & brains
& tail, because

of their love for it, had them.

Junk he said to all them open-mouthed.

Weather wóuld govern. When the monsoon spread

its floods, few came, two.

Came a day when none, though he began

in his accustomed way on the filthy steps

in a crash of waters, came.

72

The Elder Presences

Shh! on a twine hung from disastered trees

Henry is swinging his daughter. They seem drunk.

Over across them look out,

tranquil, the high statues of the wise.

Her feet peep, like a lady’s in sleep sunk.

That which this scene’s about—

he pushes violent, his calves distend,

his mouth is open with effort, so is hers,

in the Supreme Court garden,

the justices lean,
negro, out, the trees bend,

man’s try began too long ago, with chirrs

& leapings, begging pardon—

I will deny the gods of the garden say.

Henry’s perhaps to break his burnt-cork luck.

I further will deny

good got us up that broad shoreline. Greed may

like a fuse, but with the high shore we is stuck,

whom they overlook. Why,—

73

Karesansui, Ryoan-ji

The taxi makes the vegetables fly.

‘Dozo kudasai,’ I have him wait.

Past the bright lake up into the temple,

shoes off, and

my right leg swings me left.

I do survive beside the garden I

came seven thousand mile the other way

supplied of engines all to see, to see.

Differ them photographs, plans lie:

how big it is!

austere a sea rectangular     of sand by the
oiled mud wall,

and the sand is not quite white: granite sand, grey,

—from nowhere can one see
all
the stones—

but helicopters or     a Brooklyn reproduction

will fix that—

and the fifteen changeless stones in their five worlds

with a shelving of moving moss

stand me the thought of the ancient maker priest.

Elsewhere occurs—I remembers—loss.

Through awes & weathers neither it increased

nor did one blow of all his stone & sand thought die.

74

Henry hates the world. What the world to Henry

did will not bear thought.

Feeling no pain,