Die Verschwundenen/The Vanished

We can infer his long since looted head
with eyes like curated hail. And that his chest
is still benumbed by empire from above,
as if a morgue, in his glare, now canonized,

fires an arctic solstice. Otherwise, the pocked tits
could not oppress you, and Victory
would not grin through smug ligaments
to reach that sperm hive where priapism lived.

Fore there neidfaerae naenig uuiurthit
thoncsnotturra than him tharf sie
to ymbhycggannae aer his hiniongae
huaet his gastae godaes aeththa yflaes
aefter deothdaege doemid uueorthae.

1

I always wonder
what they think the niggers are doing
while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists,
are containing
Russia
and defining and re-defining and re-aligning
China,

Drowned together in his car in Lake Chippewa.
It was a bright cold starry night on Lake Chippewa.
Lake Chippewa was a “living” lake then,
though soon afterward it would choke and die.

In the bright cold morning after we could spy
them only through a patch of ice brushed clear of snow.
Scarcely three feet below,
they were oblivious of us.

December 13, 1993  John Gordon Boyd
died on the birthday

Oh! had I now an overcoat,
For I am nearly freezing;
My head and lungs are stopped with cold,
And often I am sneezing.

And, too, while passing through the street,
Where merchants all are greeting,
They say, young man this is the coat
That you should wear to meeting.

Then, looking down upon my feet,
For there my boots are bursting,
With upturned heels and grinning toes,
With tacks which long were rusting.

Right up to my final hour
I'll be obliging and polite.
Should I hear death firmly knocking,
I'll blithely shout: Come in all right!

What's on the schedule? Dying, is it?
Well, that's something rather new.
But I'm sure that we can swing it,
showing them a thing or two.

What is this? Your hourglass?
Interesting! And good to grasp.
And the scythe is for grim reaping,
did you say? I thought I'd ask.

It was a very little while and they had gone in front of it. It was that they had liked it would it bear. It was a very much adjoined a follower. Flower of an adding where a follower.
Have I come in. Will in suggestion.
They may like hours in catching.
It is always a pleasure to remember.
Have a habit.
Any name will very well wear better.
All who live round about there.
Have a manner.
The hotel François Ier.
Just winter so.
It is indubitably often that she is as denied to soften help to when it is in all in midst of which in vehemence to taken given in a bestowal show than left help in double.
Having noticed often that it is newly noticed which makes older often.
The world has become smaller and more beautiful.
The world is grown smaller and more beautiful. That is it.
Yes that is it.

Ach, in den Armen hab ich sie alle verloren, du nur, du wirst immer wieder geboren ....
—Rilke, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge The twilight falls; I soften the dusting feathers,
And clean again.