Image-Nation 9 (half and half

Robin Blaser

for Dennis Wheeler

there are shining masters

when I tell you what they

look like some of it is

nearly false their blue hair

but they are not ourselves they

are equivalents of action they

compose forms, which we hear

sound within a context

as if that action we are

images of used us

the body becomes an instrument

sometimes the harp pierces the body

and a man only hangs on the strings

I hear the airborne-fire, the dead rebels’

second speech, which follows their live words,

and the rice, and the motorcycles

but public life has fallen asleep

like a secret name the wrong-reader

will say he has pity for others

where the thought is born in hatred

of pity, which is only feeling the action

we are only images of hates pity

and its reduction of horror to sentiment

wordlessness no thing is so simply

personal I put my hand out to catch

beauty in the act of I know no beauty

which is not permanent not invoked

in splendour the words are meaningless

until they emerge in the action they are

images of

I was once a youth, and I was

a maiden, a bush, a bird, a fish

with scales that gleam in the ocean

they come from the dark under

many names the blue wind

they are not ourselves, not even

the moon drawn down into our

breasts that we may strike others

with eros the

body gleamed so wind

master a bone, a ball, a top

an apple, a mirror, a skein of wool

wind — words wind — hair we

have dismembered the earth and

are born lifeless on the moon mouths

to the wind

unthought the many mountains, the many

cities, the many houses

I was once another man’s heart

an eagle, a wolf cloud, smoke,

splash

psychron (cold, refreshing

anapsychsai (to be refreshed from evil

we have eaten ourselves luxurious and

careless I must bathe at the

gates of the city I must tell you

they have been blue in the heart,

in the wind

I have opened my mouth

they have come from the black-fire

we have stiffened

the terror of earth, as if terror were the only unearthly

thing in our hearts

we have given her rivers

of our own salt earth then remains uncanny,

sublime water is fear’s movement grief cries

in the air like birds fire is hidden in the imageless

self

the blue hair the face of gold the clothes

like snow the blood

is light

zero

enacts it

Jack Clarke’s ‘we are under image’

rythmos (form’s movement) to walk into ‘the

primordial always exists’ face to face always outside

ourselves the astonishment is

that it is kosmos

playing out with one man entheos

they are

the flowing boundary taking birth taking leave

at the point of the heart a continual

division of halves

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A Valediction of the Book by John Donne

I’ll tell thee now (dear Love) what thou shalt do
To anger destiny, as she doth us,
How I shall stay, though she esloygne me thus
And how posterity shall know it too;
How thine may out-endure
Sybil’s glory, and obscure
Her who from Pindar could allure,
And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame,
And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name.

Study our manuscripts, those myriads
Of letters, which have past twixt thee and me,
Thence write our annals, and in them will be
To all whom love’s subliming fire invades,
Rule and example found;