Once, in the city of Kalamazoo, The gods went walking, two and two, With the friendly phoenix, the stars of Orion, The speaking pony and singing lion. For in Kalamazoo in a cottage apart Lived the girl with the innocent heart.
Thenceforth the city of Kalamazoo Was the envied, intimate chum of the sun. He rose from a cave by the principal street. The lions sang, the dawn-horns blew, And the ponies danced on silver feet. He hurled his clouds of love around; Deathless colors of his old heart Draped the houses and dyed the ground.
On the telephone, friends mistake us now when we first say hello—not after. And that oddly optimistic lilt we share nourishes my hopes: we do sound happy. . . .
Last night, in my dream’s crib, a one-day infant girl. I wasn’t totally unprepared—
The sight of beauty simply makes us sick: There are too many hours in the day, Too many wicked faces built like flowers And far too many bargains for a song. Jade and paste, cashmere and ormolu— Who said that all the arts aspire to music? It’s obvious, for time is obvious, That all that art aspires to is junk.
Between pond and sheepbarn, by maples and watery birches, Rebecca paces a double line of rust in a sandy trench, striding on black creosoted eight-by-eights. In nineteen-forty-three, wartrains skidded tanks, airframes, dynamos, searchlights, and troops to Montreal. She counted cars
On a wall shadowed by lights from the distance is the screen. Icons come to it dressed in capes and their eyes reflect the journeys their nomadic eyes reach from level earth. Narratives are in the room where the screen waits suspended like the frame of a girder the worker will place upon an axis and thus make a frame which he fills with
One granite ridge A tree, would be enough Or even a rock, a small creek, A bark shred in a pool. Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted Tough trees crammed In thin stone fractures A huge moon on it all, is too much.
The lean hands of wagon men put out pointing fingers here, picked this crossway, put it on a map, set up their sawbucks, fixed their shotguns, found a hitching place for the pony express, made a hitching place for the iron horse, the one-eyed horse with the fire-spit head,
In the muddy maze of some old neighborhood, Often, where the street lamp gleams like blood, As the wind whips the flame, rattles the glass, Where human beings ferment in a stormy mass,
One sees a ragpicker knocking against the walls, Paying no heed to the spies of the cops, his thralls, But stumbling like a poet lost in dreams; He pours his heart out in stupendous schemes.
He takes great oaths and dictates sublime laws, Casts down the wicked, aids the victims' cause; Beneath the sky, like a vast canopy, He is drunken of his splendid qualities.
The river brought down dead horses, dead men and military debris, indicative of war or official acts upstream, but it went by, it all goes by, that is the thing about the river. Then
Sweet beats of jazz impaled on slivers of wind Kansas Black Morning/ First Horn Eyes/ Historical sound pictures on New Bird wings People shouts/ boy alto dreams/ Tomorrow’s Gold belled pipe of stops and future Blues Times Lurking Hawkins/ shadows of Lester/ realization Bronze fingers—brain extensions seeking trapped sounds Ghetto thoughts/ bandstand courage/ solo flight
Crows see us as another invention. Like summer and beauty, They shimmer at sunrise in their new cars, Change their names and color when they see us. When they fly, they’re the bite marks on the sun, And nail-scratches of black against the sky.
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