‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:Σίβυλλα τίθέλεις; respondebat illa:άποθανεîνθέλω.’ For Ezra Pound il miglior fabbro. I. The Burial of the Dead
Have you said your sermon this morning? the road it travels is dustyand wide and goes round and round and round the mountain to say itis obvious is to say it is crowded with refugees you and the others onthe road no destination in sight you are alive though boring at timesand the smell of you is instant nausea you breathe white breath in theearly morning air indeed you may have a flair for going round andround with a skip and a jump at the most unexpected moments wasn’tthat you on a music box dancing in perfect porcelain? a quake threwyou from your shelf but round the mountain you must go suppose foronce you went up the mountain? would that be a different directionor just more tiring? would it disturb the order of the ten thousand often thousand things? do you care? do you know whose sermon this is?it’s a habit you’ll have for life although things do slow down fall intothemselves and leave the world to silence and to aha? gotcha? you’re itfor now but it won’t be long before another sucker comes this way andyou can hide under the desk with the rest of us : look : sky and sea arean undifferentiated gray even the birds disappear but forecast faith ina word and the osprey is there again hanging head-down in the windit’s plain that being unsure gives you your daily terror you even lift aprayer for it bells ring and you know it is the buoy off Saunders Reefthe red light assures you the buoy is still there that no Debussy bellshave come to dismantle your ears you’re safe in being where you are notthat you’ve got a warranty for life no matter what the salesman said yousigned up for Metaphysics 1 cost a bundle left you high and dry : howdare you take all hope away? well in the first place it crash-landed yearsago you’ve been standing there imagining greaves breastplate helmetwith plumes the whole she-bang but don’t weep today for what you didthen there’s a lot to learn about letting go and you won’t hear a clangof armor when you do in your most invincible day you were a larvaunderfoot you lived by chance shape-shifting you are a fortunate onewithout a shell no plane overhead gun to your head you are accidentallyfree in the full terror of being who you are but tell me now this onceand forever have you built your language out of the things you love?
Rome, 15— Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity! Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back? Nephews—sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well— She, men would have to be your mother once,
Here, in this darkened room of this old house, I sit beside the fire. I hear again, Within, the scutter where the mice carouse, Without, the gutter dropping with the rain. Opposite, are black shelves of wormy books, To left, glazed cases, dusty with the same, Behind, a wall, with rusty guns on hooks, To right, the fire, that chokes one panting flame.
The weaver bird built in our house And laid its eggs on our only tree. We did not want to send it away. We watched the building of the nest And supervised the egg-laying. And the weaver returned in the guise of the owner. Preaching salvation to us that owned the house. They say it came from the west
I am a bold Coachman, and drive a good hack, With a coat of five capes that quite covers my back; And my wife keeps a sausage-shop, not many miles From the narrowest alley in all Broad St Giles.
Though poor, we are honest and very content, We pay as we go for meat, drink, and for rent; To work all the week I am able and willing, I never get drunk, and I waste not a shilling.
And while at a tavern my gentleman tarries, The coachman grows richer than he whom he carries; And I’d rather (said I), since it saves me from sin, Be the driver without, than the toper within.
A Vulgar Error having long prevailed among many Persons, who imagine Sally Salisbury the Subject of this Ballad, the Author begs leave to undeceive and assure them it has not the least allusion to her, he being a stranger to her very Name at the time this Song was composed. For as Innocence and Virtue were ever the Boundaries of his Muse, so in this little Poem he had no other view than to set forth the Beauty of a chaste and disinterested Passion, even in the lowest Class of human Life. The real Occasion was this: A Shoemaker’s ’Prentice making Holiday with his Sweet-heart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the Puppet-shews, the Flying-chairs, and all the Elegancies of the Moorfields: From whence proceeding to the Farthing Pye-house, he gave her a Collation of Buns, Cheesecakes, Gammon of Bacon, Stuff’d-beef, and Bottled-ale; through all which Scenes the Author dodged them (charm’d with the Simplicity of their Courtship), from whence he drew this little Sketch of Nature; but being then young and obscure, he was very much ridicul’d by some of his Acquaintance for this Performance; which nevertheless made its way into the polite World, and amply recompenced him by the Applause of the divine Addison, who was pleased (more than once) to mention it with Approbation. Of all the Girls that are so smart
I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry. Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery. The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hung-over like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily. Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust— —I rushed up enchanted—it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake—my visions—Harlem and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past— and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye— corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb,
Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures: Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso, Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae, Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque Extenuantis eas consulto. (Horace, Satires, I, x, 17-22)
Since I am coming to that holy room, Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore, I shall be made thy music; as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before.
Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown That this is my south-west discovery, Per fretum febris, by these straits to die,
I joy, that in these straits I see my west; For, though their currents yield return to none, What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes: By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage. It's nigh my last above the daisies: My next leaf'll be man's blank page. Yes, my old girl! and it's no use crying: Juggler, constable, king, must bow. One that outjuggles all's been spying Long to have me, and he has me now.
At length, by so much importunity press'd, Take, C——, at once, the inside of my breast; This stupid indiff'rence so often you blame, Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame: I am not as cold as a virgin in lead, Nor is Sunday's sermon so strong in my head: I know but too well how time flies along, That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young.
By that he ended had his ghostly sermon, The fox was well induc'd to be a parson, And of the priest eftsoons gan to inquire, How to a benefice he might aspire. "Marry, there" (said the priest) "is art indeed: Much good deep learning one thereout may read; For that the ground-work is, and end of all, How to obtain a beneficial. First, therefore, when ye have in handsome wise Yourself attired, as you can devise, Then to some nobleman yourself apply, Or other great one in the worldes eye, That hath a zealous disposition To God, and so to his religion. There must thou fashion eke a godly zeal,
ROXANA from the court retiring late, Sigh'd her soft sorrows at St. JAMES's gate: Such heavy thoughts lay brooding in her breast, Not her own chairmen wth more weight opprest; They groan the cruel load they're doom'd to bear ; She in these gentler sounds express'd her care.
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