John Ashbery: “The Skaters”

1
pinchball	Some sounds, of course, it is almost impossible to reduce to writing, as, for example, the hollow "skaw" and murmur produced by a multitude of skaters, or the roar of an excited crowd, but in listening to these sounds, it is useful to remember that we may often obtain a key tone to work onxx upon by closing the ears--just as a

The	Skaters	painter can often find the prevailing
A poem in five	parts	tint of a confused mass of objects
Part	ChapteXXXXXXr 1	by partly closing the eyes."

Three Hundred Things

Description of the actual scene. Abe. His way with children. First digression: Portrait of a Spendthrift. His bad habits. Nobody to help him. "Only a mother could ever love a guy like that." Possibility of happiness in another world. Life after death--a possibility? A kind of musical night is invoked. The poet thinks of friends and other people he has known. Abe again. A child's devotion. Penmanship. The forest at dawn. At sunset. The natural habits of animals. Instinct it general. Can animals think? What makes the human brain tick? Second digression: Wind and its Effects. Parabolas. Return of a beloved likened to the lengthening season. Paris. The Skaters' Waltz. Her handout. "Weasel-face." Dandruff and what to do about it. Leaves of the Ginko tree. Photo. Phantom Poodles. "I have to watch Charlotte." Cremated Alive. Silkworms. The Points. The man in the hall. The Critique of Pure Resin. "Blue-bottles drive me crazy!" Good-bye. Bubble Balloons.

	and became
	These      decubels xxxxxxxxx decibels quite
	Are a kind of flagellation, an entity of sound expert
	Into which being enters, and is apart.at it
	Their colors on a warm February day
	Make for masses of inertia, and hips
	Prod out of the violet-seeming into a new kind
	Of demand that stumps the absolute because not new
	In the sense of the next one in an infinite series
	But, as it were, pre-existing or pre-seeming in
	Such a way as to contrast funnily with the unexpectedness
	And somehow push us all into perdition.

Here a scarf flies, there an excited call is heard.

	The answer is that it is novelty
	That guides these swift blades oer the ice
	Projects into a finer expression (but at the expense
	Of energy) the profile I cannot remember.
	Colors slip away from and chide us. The human mind
	Cannot retain anything except perhaps the dismal two-note theme
	Of some sodden "dump" or lament.  (Leave in).

	The feet of the animals
	Scrape the ground.

	There is meaning in the evident mastery
	Of someone who tries to show you the trick in such a way as will be understandable to all

2

	And all who come may understand, and go away
	Before night reaches the this shore.

	"The person," Abe, is lonely
	As that Weenix "Head of a Man," or an old and discolored umbrella.
	Near the postoffice calender with its amazing digits cool company
	The colored perfume of "sense" appropriations makes a kind of shroud
	Of mere slips and postscripts of meaning--here is the central orifice
	Of all the gigantic vocabulary of meaning, like a garden with a central spot or flower.
	A granite terrace extends out into so much that is fresh and green
	As though buoyed up by the negation of its own dishonoring weight.
	Here skulks and ethereal man. The children used to crowd around with toys and goodies,
	He... always had a kind word or some little thing for them.
	He used to offer them presents of candy or lollipops...

	In suppressing the iron links that chain you to the grim desire of reality
	Be careful not to substitute gold ones,
	The execrable charity of platinum cufflinks that views
	Darkness and disaster surrounding us,
	Mass piZZZZZZZ Masts pitched on the slow and denominating tide of ice,
	The perpetual calendar of rubies, emeralds and sapphires
	And other precious stones, gleaning the heart of runnels of
	The milk of human kindness, down to my last unspent dollar,
	Gladness of waking, sportive humor after the that terrible strangeness
	Of being asleep, yet the leather film that still confidesXXXXXXXX confines us
	Asks in vain theXXX of the pear-shaped head of the a governor striding into the room
	Black as pitch after an uneasy night applying seals to the brown scroll
	Of debtor's prison, jail and panic
	Under the uneasy awnings of a careless life.         heliocopter
	Not everything is picknicking on the campus,
	Harlotry and perfections, toddling over green fields         flakes
	Breathless with ectoplasm, from the long run, by heliocopter
	Shirttails hanging out nurtured by coalfields
	Who have taught you to exist in the Pyreness of confusion           pyres
	That is your youth's living image and damnation.

	Abe lifted the bottle slightly closer to his knee.
	The barman (disquieting personage) raised the bottom of a tumbler
	(Snow, flirt and piano) to the level of someone
	Imbibing various personal flares. A jackdaw of           Absorbing
	Undrifting dark, dust rose of the center of gray
	Bottles: wheedled cabs broached the theater's
	Indigo and marble resonances. A guy got out.
	"Where we are that factor encrusts dental snow XXXXX work
	On the umbilical low summits of average pleasure.
	A guy's mother is XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX lug's mother is his true measure, and
	No mother could love an ugly boob like that," and, like a tailor
	Removing the tape measure, "Bats flot around town; sSome,
	Not all, will roost; the others fry stupefaction
	For wise guys' wry brains. {The commuter trains
	Pull slowly away from the planet. Time is a smudge,
	Reckoned by district attorney's impute.
	Square box of decay mixing grain and grape
	To fraulein's necklace, short-circuited systems of abuse."

-3-

	I'm going. It can escape me.
	When we look through a railway tunnel, it looks as though the way out
	At the other end were smaller than the way in at this;
	But we know they are of the same size.
	The lines of brass round the key-hole follow the same rules.
	The lines that draw nearer together are said to "vanish."
	The point where they meet is their vanishing point.

	Objects, as they recede, appear to become smaller.
	All horizontal receding lines have their vanishing point upon the line of sight.

	The receding lines of the road, the grass edges, the walls--
	All parallel lines xxxxxx retiring lines have the same vanishing point as each other.
	The front of the farmhouse is so much foreshortened.
	The white feathers of chickens in the snow seem outlined in gray or black.
	The frozen pump's encrusted with ice which seems gray-blue against the white of the snow.
	The lamp casts monstrous shadows.
	The most difficult of all is an arrangement of hawthorn leaves in different tones of color.
	The leaves can easily be obtained in different tones of color.
	Upon the benzine bottle put the ro XXX rubber stopper that has the metal nozzle
	And join the bellows and the tubing. Now light
	Your alcohol lamp, and in its flame hold with your headxxxx right hand the platinum point,
	And with your leftXXXX head work the bulb steadily and continuously.
	All flies upward. My gosh, white scraps
	From the scrap-basket, that were the snow-chickens
	Fly upward as to some ceiling-roost, covered with platinum dust.
	The rooster screaming among the grape and hawthorn leaves is upeneded.
	A shallow wooden drawer shot open; what looked like shallow, dust-covered wooden discs spilled out on the turkey carpet
	Whose linted scarlet threads adhered to the porous surface.
	The color will have penetrated the muslin and gone a little way into the willXXXX wool
	Still irregular grayish patches still stood out on the dust-covered part of the surface
	Contrasting with the dark of the newly-stretched pleats, like a dark delta in some flat, sandy river valley;
	An illusion destroyed by the ham-shaped flecks of leaves spotting the regular surface
	(You will find that leaves are not alike in the character of the surface: some are covered with hairs, like the mulleins; or have a strong smell; these will take almost any quality of color.                 quantity
	Perhaps you had better begin upon such leaves.) So it was thaXXXXXXXXXXXXX The spilled threads
	Merged upward with the moan of the leaves; the teakettle boiler emitted one last small white puff
	From the spilled threads of the workbasket a kind of wap emergedAAoAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKA
	of steam                                       steam engine

	As I sat watching the child's indifference
	The rest was handed to me, on condition that I make no sign
	Of the sea mating to embellish with land
	On condition that the weight of the testimony pass from mind
	Into oblivionXXXXXXXX marriage
	The sea decided to embellish with land
	Shudders of the young polyhphonist. The economy of fear
	Blazes our nights with spectral thunder.

keep for next page

4

	Sitting watching the indifference of a child, the young polyphonist
	Grows, precisely, away from the musical night invoked by prestidigitation
	The smoke-covered alley thought better about. A sail
	Which vanishes has no more adherence.
	Therefore we should give over this absence, petrifying coal-dust
	The way leagues of imps do. "The ship came sailing up the," and so on,
	But as the water surface ripples, the whole light changes. Skies are aghast.
	Some defacing of private property goes on, and the wild life in this region is polluted.
	You answered him in lying articles. The column never appeared again.
	So wails one possible answer next to the discreet head of the young cartomancian.

	Baroque dummies of fallen mist could, in a pinch
	Unwind the false patinas you've read about. Through a hole in the
	Cardboard case half full, the skaters can be seen.
	At this stage everything depends on a special bottle
	Covered by its tin case, and a second glass beneath
	The bottle in its position, now nor two bottles instead.
	Again, the cases are put over the bottles, and again they
	Are raised, nipping the special bottle with its
	Two linings, and the space for the glass to stand within its
	OfXX Dumb patina. There are many false starts, and you can
	Choose among them. Obliged to play with two or more, you
	May not know the skaters' false chips, in the night of turns
	Coming back once again the the anchor of morning. In your arms
	lie the pasteboard remains. Now your only choice is to begin over.
	Secretly dip the point of the glass rod in oil of vitriol, and touch the mass.

	Few of them were present on that occasion:
	The teacher, and a few friends. Abe thought of a child's devotion
	To penmanship. It is necessary to trace each letter
	Of the alphabet quite a few times to get them right.
	The "c's" and "i's" can resemble each other quite a lot.
	Now loosen the writing a little, and presently it will spread
	On the farm landscape. The squares are clalled "White" and "Black" whatever their actual color may be.
	For invisible writing, dip a quill in some goose grease and write
	On the pad. Then dust some powedered charcoal over the surface
	And the magic writing will appear. For plain writing
	Try beginning with an easy word, such as "neck"
	If you want the whole pad to be a success. The magic words can appear.
	On an easily prepared pad.

Old sol was just reappearing on the tangent slope

5 A

	We children are ashamed of our bodies
	But we laugh and, demanded, talk of sex again
	And all is well. The waves of morning harshness
	Float away like coal-gas into the perennial sky.
[	Toilet training provokes an instinct of happiness in the adult.]
	But how much survives? How much of any one of us survives?
	The articles we'd collect--stamps of the colonies
	With greasy cancellation marks, mauve, magenta and chocolate,
	Or funny looking dogs we'd see in the street, or sofa cushions, particularly bright remarks.
	One man collects bullets. An Indianapolis, Indiana, man collects slingshots of all epochs, and so on.

	Subtracted from our collections, though, these go on a little while, collecting aimlessly. We still support them.
	But so little energy to tide them over! And up the swollen sands
	Staggers the darkness fiend, with the storm fiend close behind him!
True that	Ture, melodious tolling does go on in that awful pandemonium,
	Certain resonances are not utterly displeasing to the frightened terrified eardrum
	Some paroxysms are dinning of tambourine, others suggest piano room or organ loft
clavicles	For the most dissonant night charms us, even after death. This, after all, may be happiness: tuba notes awash on the great flood, ruptures of xylophone, violins, limpets, grace notes, the musical instrument called serpent, viola da gambas, aeolian harps, pinball machines, electric drills, que sais-je encore!
	The performance has rapidly reached your ear; silent and tear-stained, in the post-mortem shock, you stand listening, awash
	With memoiries of hair in particular, part of the welling that is part of you,
	The gurgling of harp, cymbal, glockenspiel, triangle, temple block, English horn and metronome! And still no presentment, not feeling of pain before or after. The passage sustains, does not give. And {Thus} you have come far indeed.

	Yet to go from "not interesting" to "old and uninteresting,"
	To be surrounded by friends, though late in life,
	To hear the wings of the spirit, {though} far...
	Why do I hurriedly undrown myself to cut you down?
	"I am yesterday," and my fault is personal, eternal current
your	I do not expect myXX constant attendance, knowing myself insufficient for your present demands
	And I have a dim {presentiment} that I am that other "I" with which we began.
	My cheeks as blank walls to your tears and eagerness
	Fondling that other, as though you had let him forever get away.

	The evidence of the visual henceforth replaced
	By the great shadow of trees falling over {an active} life.

	The great problem is a child's devotion
	To this normal and shapeless entity...

	And the young polyphonist seizes a penholder, to write
	Across that dirt rose that is our "scraps," the little punishment booth
	Forgotten as the words fly briskly across bringing meaningXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX each time
	Bringing down meaning as snow from a low sky, or rabbits flushed from a wood.
	How strange that the narrow perspective lines
	Always seem to meet, although parallel, and that an insane ghost could do this,
	Could make the house seem so much farther in the distance, as bands of yellowXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

6      B

	Seemed it to the horse, dragging the sledge of a perspective line.
	Dim banners in the distance, to die... And nothing put to rights.
Ellen	Carol wondered at the pigs in their cages,

	At so much snow, but it is to be littered with waste and ashes
	So that cathedrals may grow. Out of this spring builds a tolerable fair XXXXX
	Affair of brushwood, the sea is felt behind the oak wands, noiselessly pouring.
	Spring with its promise of winter, and the black ivy once again
	On the porch, its yellow perspective bands in place
	And the horse nears them and weeps.

	So much has passed through my mind this morning
	That I can give you but a dim account of it:                       many things
	First the plasterers, the pen with maying sheavesXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and the din of so much to be done,
	And the holly gatherersXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX On account of so short a time, the noon          dismaying whistle has already blown
	Some minutes ago, and it is already after lunch. The men are returning to their positions around the cement mixer
	And I try to sort out what has happened to me. The bundle of Gerard's letters
	And that alXX awful bit of news buried on the back page of yesterday's paper.
	Then the news of you, this morning, in the snow. Sometimes the interval
	of bad news is so brisk that... And the human brain, with its tray of images
	Seems a sorcerer's magic lantern, projecting black and orange cellophane shadows
	On the distance of my hand... The very reaction's pursey puny,
	And when we seek to move around, wondering what arXX our position is now, what the arm of that chair.

	A great wind lifted these cardboard panels
	Horizontal in the air. At once the perspective with the horse
	Disappeared in a bigarrure of squiggly lines. The image with the crocodile in it became no longer apparent.
	Thus a great wind cleanses, as a new ruler
	Edits new laws, sweeping the very breath of the streets
	Into posterior tashXXXX trash. The films have changed--
	The great titles on the scalloped awnings have turned dry and blight-colored.
	No wind that does not penetrate a man's house, into the very bowels of the furnace
	Scratching in dust a name on the mirror--say, and what about letters,
	The dried grasses, fruits of the winter--gosh! Everything is trash!
	Thus wind points to the advantages of decay
	At the same time as removing them far from the sight of men.
	The regent of the winds, Aeolous, is a symbol for all earthly potentates
	Since holding this sickening, festering, process by which we are cleansed
	Of afterthought.
	A gril sloXXXXXXXX girl slowly descended the sin XXXX line of steps.

The wind and treason are partners, turning secrets over to the military pooiXXXX police.

	The whitest police that came in your night, bringing snow to the parched DHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDH
	Skyline, overturningXXXXXXXXXXX overwhelming bank and burglar alarm system AKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKA

	Lengthening arches. The intensity of minor acts. As skaters elaborate their distances,
	Taking a separate line to its end. Returning to the mass, they join each other
	Blotted in an indescribable exceptional mess of dark colors, and again reappearing to take the theme
	Some little distance, like fishing boats developing from the land different parabolas,
	Taking the exquisite theme far, into farness, to Land's End, to the very ends of the earth!.

C

	But the livery of the year, changing air
	Brings each to his turn. Leaving phrases unfinished
	Gestures half-sketched against woodsmoke.Now oozes the abundant sap
	And in girls' throats the sticky words, half-uttered, half undesired
	Spreads XX annual unction. A blanket unbelief
	Quickly supplanted by idle questions that fade in turn.
	Slowly the moods turns to look at itself in the mirror of an urchin
	Left by some road-bed... New schemes are gotten up, new taxes,
	Earthworks spring up apace. Now all-conquering Sol
	gilds each new found reason with the celluloid coating of truth
	And girls wake up in it.
	For these reasons
	It is best not leave the house. Because there is
	Error in the exactness of air. As flames are fanned, so the wishful thinking arises
	That bears its own prophets, pointed refusals. And as a wish
	Settles down at the end of along spring day, over smudged heather and watered shoot, and dried rush field
	So fatal error gushes, ap ap XXXXXXXXXXXXXX is plaited into thoughts still unborn.
	The pose must be resumed. Is it being falsified
	To be forever involved, tragically, with one's own image?
	WithtXXXXX

7

c

	But the year XXXXX livery of the year, {the} changing air
	Brings each to his turn end. Leaving phrases unfinished
	Gestures half-sketched against woodsmoke. The abundant sap
	Oozes in girls' throats, the sticky words, half-uttered, unwished for,
	A blanket disbelief, quickly supplanted by idle questions that fade in turn.
# ?
	Slowly the mood turns to look at itself as some urchin
	Forgotten by a road-bed. the roadside. New schemes are gotten up, new taxes,
	Earthworks. And the hour becomes light again.
	Girls wake up in it.
	For these reasons
	For these reasons It is best to remain indoors. B, because there is error
	In so much precision. As flames are fanned, wishful thinking arises
	Bearing its own prophets, its pointed refusals ignoring. And just as a desire
	Settles down at the end of a long spring day, over heather and watered shoot and dried rush field
	So {fatal} error is plaited into thoughtXXXXXXX desires not yet born.
	Therefore the post must be resumed (is being falsified
	To be forever involved, tragically, with one's own image?)
	The cooler studio light suddenly invaded by theXXX a long casement--values were the one
	She knows now. But the floor is pulled a part byXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX being gradually pulled apart
	Like elastic under those limpid feet.                   slowly
	straw

{	The most you can say is that she does return.}
{	And that the added time for thoughtsXXXXXXXX long thoughts,"a bed of nails," could not, in any case, have been avoided.}
{	The skaters waltz. She had been asked not to participate that day}

D

	But is the egg suggesting the quietness
	Of its forms. And sleep is beams
	For its {patronizing} dome.unshucked     "Oh shucks!"
	Skaters'Waltz
	The Waldteufel disc is volume, geometrical beauty
	Its slabs cannot keep up with the hungering into breath
	And final dreams.

	But XXXX                But an architecture
	But an architecture Made like us of rain commands a view
	Of its plain, steered away, Parnassus viewed through a windshieldXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX harmonious like the sea or the tops of trees.
	But when you get closer its sadness is small and appreciable.

	Also the feeling of being lived, looking for people,
	And the gradual peace and relaxation
	That boils down, through rings of cold and fatigue
	Smearing much of the day into fatigue fear
	At finding you not in, bloody from beating doors in
	And incomprehensible.

	And mouth of sea applied to your case
	Forever at odds with, and yet draining.
	Triggered to a partial coneXXXX zone of understanding
	Of the myths of fading daylightXXXXX (Six o'clock again.)
	Time     The birds
	one           double.
	The sea, each time, has no rhyme.
	It can be held in your hand.
	All this must go into a letter:
	At once the kindness and friendly clause

	Beating, turbulent on the stalls of death.
	The roofs quickly returned what you had
	Thought of them before. Day with a violet awl,
Or	A chisel, in that land of dust and dreams.

	But tThere is no personal involvement: leaves of the gingko tree
	Mad a frame for the photo. A woman advances out of the thicket woods
	Holding a book, for which her hand is too small, and whose title
	Although printed in large letters, cannot be distinguished.

	That is all, except a spot of white or black in the bottom corner
	Like phantom poodles, and a jagged row of gray at the top,             violet
Melting	Extending a little down one side,;and she is slightly turned inside her dress.
	As watching at something
	The color of death promulgated to the rank of blossoms

	Is drawing breath again for fear
	And its implements, and would enter the transparent years of life
	Which is carelessness, is
	Mind drifted from its triple cannon, to the starting line.

8

the importance of        alabaster beetles

E

	(And Helga, in the minuscule apartment in Jersey City
	Is wearing the same kind of violet dress, the color of death
	Promulgated to the rank of blossoms, is drawing breath again
	Against the dark fires of the city, fear and its implements
	Pursuing, once and for all, all chance of rest. And would enter
	The quiet years, a transparent block set down in the middle of life
	As in a suburb. But alas, life is carelessness.
	And the violet, colorless depths of that cube but repeated
	As though by accident, in fringes here and there,
	On some sudden ledge. Or in the faded backs of a musical album
	On the piano rack, raft of the winds

	And Helga, in the miserable apartment in Jersey City
	Is reacting violet to the same kind of dress, is drawing death
	Again in blossoms against the reactionary fire.. pulsing
	and knowing nothing to superb violet distances that intercalate
	This city. Is the death of the cube repeated. Or in the musical album.

	It is time now for a general understanding of
	The meaning of all this. The meaning of Helga, importance of the setting, etc.
	A description of passionate blues, etc. Labels on bottles
	And all kinds of discarded objects that ought to be described.
	But can one ever be sure of which ones?
	Isn't this a death-trap, wanting to put too much in
	So the floor sags, as under the weight of a piano, or piano-legged girl
	And the whole house of cards comes dinning down around one's ears!

	But this is an important aspect of the question
	Which I am not ready to discuss, am not at all ready too
	This leaving-out business. On it hinges the very importance of what's novel
	Or autocratic, or dense or silly. It is as well to call attention
	To it by exaggeration, perhaps. But calling attention
	Isn't the same thing as explaining, and as I said I am not reday
	To line phrases with the costly stuff of explanation, and shall not
	Will not do so just at the moment. Except to say that the carnivorous
	Way of these lines is to devour their own nature, leaving
	Nothing but a bitter impression of absence, which as we know involves presence, but still.
	Nevertheless these are fundamental absences, struggling to get up and be off themselves.

	And this, thus, is a portion of the subject of this poems
	Which takes the form of a snow storm XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX is in the form of falling snow
	That is, that the individual flakes are not essential to the importance of the whole's becoming so much of a truism
	That their importance is again put i XXXXXX called in question, to be denied further out, and again and again like this.
	Hence, neither the importance of the individual flake,
	Or the importance of the whole impression of the storm, if it has any, is what it is
	But the rhythm of the series of the repeated jumps, from abstract into positive and back into a slightly less diluted abstract.

Mild effects are the result.

	I cannot think any more of going out into all that, will stay here
	With my mild schmerzen. Besides the storm is almost over.
	Having frozen the face of the bust into a strange style with the lips
	An the teeth the most distinct part of the whole mess.

It is this madness to explain...

8   9    F Where, exactly, is the sky?

	What is the matter with plain old-fashioned cause-and-effect?
	Leaving one alone with romantic impressions of the trees, the sky?
	Who, actually, is going to be fooled one instant by these phoney explanations,
	think them important? So back we go to the old imprecise, feelings, the
	common knowledge, the importance of duly suffering and the occasional glimpses
	of some balmy felicity. The world of Schubert's lieder. I am fascinated
	though by the urge to get out of it all,and the urge to return to XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX by going
	Further in and correcting the whole mismanaged mess. But am afraid I'll
	Be of no help to you. Goodbye.

	As balloons are to the poet, so to the ground
	Its varied assortment of trees. The more assorted they are, the
	Vaster his experience. Sometimes
	You catch sight of them on a level with the top story of a house,
	Strung up their for publicity purposes. Or like those bubbles
	Children make with a kind of ring, not a pipe, and probably using some detergent
	Rather than old fashioned soap and water. Where was I? The balloons
	Drift thoughtfully over the land, not exactly commenting on it,
	These are the range of the poet's experience. He can hide in trees
	Like a hamadryad, but wisely prefers not too, letting the balloons
	Idle him out of existence, as a car idles. Traveling faster
	And more furiously across unknown horizons, belted into the night
	Wishing more and more to be unlike someone, getting the whole thing
	(so he believes) out of his system. Inventing systems.
	We are a part of of some system, thinks he, just as the sun is part of
	The solar system. Trees brake his approach. And he seems to be wearing but
	Half a coat, viewed from one side. A "half-man" tlook inspiring the disgust of honest folk
	Returning from chores, frozen milk, the pump heaped high with a chapeau of snow,
	the "No Skating" sign as well. But it is here that he is best
	Face to face with the unsmiling alternatives of his nerve-wracking existence
	Places squarely in front of his dilemma, on all four before the lamentable spec- tacle of the unknown.                         this
	Yet knowning where men are coming from. It is this, to hold a candle up to the album.

II-A

Part II

Pyrography. Running Amok. The West Wind.XXXXXXXXXXXXXX Solitude '63. The Windward and Leeward Islands. Lines Written during a Period of Insanity. Loving You? Election Day. La Glu.XXXXXXX On a Separate Dying. The Sentimental Image. TheXXX A Fork in the Road. Poor People. His Own Invention. In Which All Ends Badly. The Chase. Iris Becomes a Mother Father. In Which All Ends Badly. An Invention: the Telephone. Waking and Felt there a Certain Rightness. A Well of Fire The Flame Fighters. A Well of Fire The Avalanche. But Sort of the Sleeves.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The New Job. The Bluff

Under the window marked "General Delivery"...

{	And didn't mind that being too warm like that, waking up to
	The new rules, exploited almost as soon as planted.} In this hutmentXXXXXXX
	Hutment or abode I'll invoke "mitred domes" and suchlike
	Awaking to this penitential psalm now
	That purgatory's ways have ended
	In sleep and satisfaction for each one.

	I have decided to write you this poem of misdemeanors
	This volume is geometrical beauty,
	Its slabs cannot keep up with the hungering into breath
	And final dreams

	But is [?] the egg suggesting the quietness
	Of its forms. And sleep is beams
	For its retracted dome.

	But, as we saw, sleep is all fours
	A beautifully written but inaccurate
	Directive charged with savage lisping
	A personal memento engraved in the sidewalk
	Tormenting the absolute future into lines of acceptance.
	Ready to dispatch the elegant part of this
	And all ears for the equation you remain on the sill:
	Nothing to be prepared for this sleep.

	At once the kindness and friendly clause
	And mouth of sea applied to your case
	Forever at odds with, and yet draining.

	This should be a letter telling you of changes
	At once the kindness and friendly clause
	Throwing you a minute to one side
	Of how this tossing looks harmonious from a distance
	Like sea or the tops of trees, and how
	Only when one gets closer is its sadness small and appreciable.
	It can be held in the hand

II-B

(no space here)

[	All this must go into a letter.]
	Also the feeling of being lived, looking for people,
	And the gradual peace and relaxation
	That boil down, through rings of cold and fatigue
	Smearing much of the day into fear
	At find you not in, bloody from beating down doors, and incomprehensible

	But an architecure
	Made of us like rain commands a view
	Of its plain. There's nothing leading to its footman's empathy. It is the attraction of this mucus
	But there's no personal involvement
	These sudden bursts of hot and cold
	Are wreathed in shadowless intensity
	Whose moment saps them of all characteristics
	Thus beginning to rest you at once know.

	Once there was a point in these islands,
	Coming to see where the rock has rotted away,
	Buying milk, and becoming a poiXXX tiny point in the distance.

	But war's savagery... Even the most patient scholar, now
	Could hardly reconstruct the old fort exactly as it was
	That trees continue to wave over it. That there is also a small museum somewhere inside
	That the history of costume is a no less fascinating study than the history of great migrations.
	I'd like to bugger you all up
	Deliberately falsify all your old suck-ass notions
	Of how chivalry is being lived. What goes on in beehives.
	But the whole nasty rotten mess, deliberate XXXXXXXXXXX misunderstandings included
	Problems about the tunic button etc. How much of any one person is there.

	Still, after bananas and spoonbread in the shadow of the old walls
	It is cooling to return to the shadow of eaves in the shower
	That probably fell while we were inside, examining bowknots
	Old light-bulb sockets, places where the whitewash had begun to flake
	With here and there an old map or illustration. Here's one for instance--
	Looks like a weather map... or a coiled bit of wallpaper with a design
	Of faded hollyhocks, or abstract fruit and gumdrops in chains

	The wind soughs carefully in the umbrella pines.
	How nice to lie on one's back, looking up
	Into that worlXXXX bird-hopping world of flecked sunlight and shadow.
	But how is it you are always indoors, looking through at too-heavilyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX peering at too-heavily cancelled stamps through a greasy fingerprinted magnifying glass?
	And slowly the incoherencies of day melt in
	A general wishful thinking of night
	To peruse certain stars over the bay.
	Cataracts of peace pour from the poised heavens
	And only fear of snakes prevents us from passing the night in the open air.
	The day is definitely at an end.

II-C

	Old heavens, you used to tweak us above us
	Standing like rain whenever a salvo... Old heavens
	You lying there above the old, but not ruined, fort,
	Can you hear, there, what I am saying?

	For it is you I am parodying
	Your invisible denials. And the almost correct impressions
	Corroborated by newsprint, which is so fine.
	I call to you there, but I do not think that you will answer me.

	For I am condemned to drum my fingers
	On the closed lid of this piano, this tedious planet, earth
	As it winks to you through the aspiring, growing distances
	A last spark before the night.

	There was much to be said in favor of storms
	But you seem to have abandoned them in favor of endless light.
	I cannot say that I think the change much of an improvement.
	There is something half-fearful in these summer nights that go on forever...

	We are nearing the Moorish coast, I think, in a bateau
	I wonder if I will have any friends there
	Whether the future will be kinder to me than the past, for example,
	And am all set to be put out, finding it is notXXXXXX to be not.

	Still, I am prepared for this voyage, and for anything else you may care to mention
	Not that I am not afraid, but there is very little time left
	You have probably made travel arrangements, and know the feeling.
	Suddenly, one morning, the little train arrives in the station, but oh, so big,

	It is! Much bigger and much faster than anyone told you.
	A bewhiskered student in an old baggy over coat much too big for him is waiting to take it.
	"Why do you want to go there" they all say. It is better in the other direction
	And so it is. There people are free, at any rate. But where you are going nobody is.

	Still there are parks and libraries to be visited "la Bibliotheque Municipale"
	Hotel reservations and all that rot. Old American films dubbed into the foreign language
	Coffee and whiskey and cigar stubs butts. Nobody minds. And rain on the bristly wool of your topcoat.
	I realize now that I never knew why I wanted to come.

	Yet I shall never return to the past, that attic.
	Its sailboats are perhaps more beautiful than these, these I am leaning against,
	Spangled with diamonds and orange and purple stains             life
	Bearing me once again in quest of the unknown. These sails are like itself to me.

	I heard a girl say this once, and cried, and brought her fresh fruit and fishes,
	Olives and golden baked loaves. She dried her tears and thanked me.
	Now we are both setting sail into the purplish evening.
	I love it! This cruise can never last long enough for me.

	But once more, office desks, radiators--No! That is behind me.
	No more dullness, only movies and love and s XX laughter, sex and fun.
	The ticket seller is blowing isXX his little horn--hurry before the window slams down
	The train we are getting onto is a boat train, and the boats are really boats this time.

II-D

	But I heard the heavens say--Is it right? This continual changing back and forth?
	Laughter and tears and so on? Mightn't just plain sadness be sufficient for him?
	No! I'll not accept that any more, you bewhiskered old caverns of blue!
	This is just right for me. I am cozily ensconced in the balcony of my face

	Looking out over the whole darn countryside a beacon of satisfaction
	I am. I'll not trade places with a king. Here I am then, continuing yet ever beginning
	My perennial voyage, into new memories, new hope and flowers
	The way the coasts glide past you. I shall never forget this moment

	Because it consists of purest ecstasy. I am happier now than I ever dared believe
	Anyone could be. And we finger down the dog-eared coasts...
	It is all passing! It is past! No, I am here,
	Bellow the coasts, and heCC even the heavens roar their assent

	As we pick up a lemon colored light horizontally
	Projected into the night, the night that heaven
	Was kind enough to send, and I launch into the happiest dreams
	Happier once again, because tomorrow is already here!

	Yet certain kernels remain. Clouds that drift past sheds —
	Read it once in the official bulletin. We shan't be putting out today.
	The old stove smoked worse than ever because rain was coming down its chimney.
	Only the bleary eye of the fog accosted one through the mended pane.

	Outside the swamp water lapped the broken wood step.
	Nearby a rowboat was moored in the alligator-infested swamp.
	Somewhere, from deep in the interior of the jungle, a groan was heard.
	Could it be...? Anyway, a rainy day--wet weather.

	The whole voyage will have to be cancelled.
	It would be possiXXXXX impossible to make connectio XXXXXXXXXX different connections.
	Anyway the hotels are all full at this season. The junks packed with refugees
	Returning from the islands. Sea-bream and flounder abound in the muddied waters...

	bone
	They areXXX in fact represent the background of the island economy.
	That, and cigar rolling. Please leave your papers at the desk as you pass out,
	You know. "The Wedding March." Ah yes, that's the way. The couple descend
	The churXXXX steps of the little old church. Ribbons are flung, ribbons of cloud

	And the sun seems to be coming out. But there have been so many false alarms...
	No, it's happened! The storm is over. Again the weather is fine and clear.
	And the voyage? It's on! Listen everybody, the ship is starting,
	I can hear its whistle's roar! We have just time to make it to the dock!

	And away they pour, in the sulfoursXXXX urous sunlight
	To the aqua and silver waters where stands the glistening white ship
	And into the great vessel they pour, a motley and happy crowd
	Chanting and pouring down hymns on the surface of the ocean...

II-E

	Pulling, tugging us along with them, by means of streamers
	Golden and silver confetti. Smiling, we laugh and sing with the revelers
	But are not quite certain that we want to go--the dock is so sunny and warm
	That majestic ship will pull up anchor who knows where?

	And full of laughter and tears, we sidle once again with the other passengers
	The ground is heaving underfoot. Is it the ship? It could be the dock...
	And with a great whoosh all the sails go up... Hideous black smoke belches forth from the funnels
	Staining the gold carnival costumes with the gaiety of its jet-black soot
	Smudging

	And, as into a tunnel the voyage starts
	Only, as I said, to be continued. The eyes of those left standing on the dockare wet
	But ours are dry. Into the secretive, vaprous night with all of us!
	Into the unknown, the unknown that loves us, the great unknown!

	So man nightly
	Sparingly descends

	The birches and the hay         all of him
	Pruned, erect for vital contact. As the separate mists of day slip
	Uncomplainingly into the atmosphere. Loving you? The question sinks into

	That mazy business
	About writing or to have read it in some book
	To silently move away. At Gonnosfanadiga the pumps
	Working, argent in the thickening sunset, like boys' shoulders

	And you return to the question as to a calendar of November
	Again and again consulting the surface of that enormous affair
	I think not to have loved you          but the music
	Petting the enameled             slow-imagined stars
hornpipe?
fireworks?	A concert of dissatisfaction whereby            gutter and dust seep
	To engross the slowXXXX mirrored image and its landscape.
	City in dirt, favorable mirth.

II-F

	As when
	through darkness and mist
	the pole-bringer
	am convinced that                                 demandingly watches
	I thinkXXXXX these things are of some importance.

	Firstly, it is a preparing to go outward
	Of no planet limiting the enjoyment
	Of motion--hips free of embarrassment etc.

	The figure 8 is a perfect symbol
	Of the freedom to be gained in this kind of activity
	The perspective lines of the barn are another and different kind of example
	(Viz."Rigg's Farm, near Aysgarth, Wensleydale", or the "Sketch at Norton")
	In which we escape ourselves--putrefying mass of prevarications etc.--
	In remaining close to the limitations imposed.

	Another example is this separate dying
	Still keeping in mind the coachmen, servant girls, duchesses, etc. (cf. Jeremy Taylor)
	Falling away, rhythm of too-wet snow, but parallel
	With the kind of rhythm substituting for "meaning."

	Looked at from this angle the problem of death and survival
	Ages slightly. For the solutions are millionfold, like waves of wild geese returning
	Scarcely we know where to turn to avoid suffering, I mean {in} spring
	There are so many places.
	As a man will leave his wife

	The question of separation--"corps et biens"--is rapidly answered
	By movement, parallel, unwinding movement, in the nicest sense.
	It is the balance between strings and winds, between winds and percussion, that provides the overture.

So, coachman-servile, or scullion-slatternly, but each place is taken.

	The lines that draw nearer together are said to "vanish."
	The point where they meet is their vanishing point.

* * *

	Parallel lines, as they recede, vanish to a point.
	Horizontal, receding lines, if they are below the level of the eyes, appear to rise.
	Horizontal, receding lines, if they are above the level of the eyes, appear to descend

Spaces, as they recede, appear to become smaller.

	But another, more urgent question imposes itesleXXXXXX itself--that of poverty.
	How to excuse it to oneself? The wetness and coldness? Dirt and grime?
	Uncomfortable, unsuitablemXlodgings, with a depressing view?
	The peeled geranium flowering in a rusted tomato can,
	Framed in a sickly ray of sunlight, a tragic chromo?

	A broken mirror nailed up over a chipped enamel basin, whose turgid waters
	Reflect the fly-specked calendar--with ecstatic Dutch girl clasping tulips--
	On the far wall. Hanging from one nail, an hoXXld old velvet hat with a tattered bit of veiling--last remnant of former finery.
	The bed well-made. The whole place scrupulously made clean, but cold and damp.

All this, wedged into a pyramidal ray of light, is my own invention.

II-G

***

	Under a reddish-brown and greenish picture of excited beagles and calm huntsmen
	A mass of squalling and retching arose from the messed-up crib.
	The newborn offspring was given the name of Charles.
It	He grew up to become a successful business executive.

	But to return to our tomato can--those spared by the goats
	Can be made into a practical telephone, the two halves being connected by a length of wire.
	You can talk to your friend in the next room, or around corners.
	An American inventor made a fortune with just such an invention.X XXXXXXXXXX contraption.

The branches tear at the sky--

	fuzz
	The blight is on the snow of inert space
	Footage to dig under you    so
	Things too tiny to be remembered in recorded history--the backfiring of a bus
In a	On a certainXXXXXXXXXXXX {street} in Paris {street} in 1932, and all the clumsy seductions and amateur paintings done
	Clamber to join in the awakening (the levee with its chocolate)
	To take a further role in my determination. These clown-shapes
	Filling up the available space for miles, like acres of red and mustard pom-poms
	Dusted with a pollen which we call "an air of truth." Massed mounds
	Of Hades it is true. I propose a general housecleaning
	Of these true and valueless shapes which pester us with their raisons d'etre
	Whom no one (that is their weakness) can ever get to like.
	kidnappers
	(On with the parade: the killers had poacedXXXXXX parked their automobile behind some black shrubbery.
	Meanwhile Doris all unsuspecting was walking in the backyard with her lover.
	Her father, the fire-chief, had told her he refused to have him inside the house
	But he was off battling flames that day, a mysterious fire having broken out
	In the Jones & Co. warehouse, the latest in a mysterious ofXXXXXXXXXXXXX series of fires
	Which had the nerves of the whole town on edge. Hearing a noise behind some bushes, Arthur
	(that was the name of Lois' boyfriend) dashed into the side yard. Returning
	Around the edge of the clapboard house he was suXX astonished to note Lois' disappearance
	Already , behind the ragged foliage, on the back seat of the black Pontiac,
	Not wanting the gag to be thrust into her mouth).

	There are moving parts to get out of order,
	However in the flame fountain. Add gradually one ounce, by measure, of sulphuric acid
	to five or six ounces of water in an earthenware basin. andXXXX add to it,X also gradually, about three-
	Quarters of an ounce of graunulated zinc.
	A rapid production of hyrdrogen gas will instantly take place. Then add,
	From time to time, a few pieces of phosphorus of the size of a pea.
	A multitude of gas bubbles will be produced, which will fire on the surface of the effervescing liquid.
	The whole surface of the liquid will become luminous, and fire balls, with jets of fire,
	Will dart from the bottom, through the fluid with great rapidity and a hissing noise.

Sure, but a simple shelter from this or other phenomena is easily contrived.

II-H

	But how luminous the fountain! Its sparks seem to aspire to reach the sky!
	And so much energy in those bubbles. A wise man could contemplate his face in them
	With impunity, but fools would surely do better not to approach too close
	Because any intense physical activity like that implies danger for the unwary and the uneducated. Great balls of fire!
	In my day we used to make "fire designs",takeXXXX using a saturated solution of nitrate of potash.
	Then we used to take a smooth stick, and using the solution as ink, draw with it on sheets of white tissue paper.
	Once it was thoroughly dry, the writing would be invisible.
	By means of a spark from a mouXXX smouldering match ignite the potassium nitrate at any part of the drawing,
	First laying the paper on a plate or tray in a darkned room.
	The fire will smoulder along the line of the invisible drawing until the design is complete.

	Meanwhile the fire fountain is still smouldering and welling
	Casting off a hellish stink and wild fumes of pitch
	Acrid as jealousy. And it might be
	That flame-writing might be visible right there, in the gaps in the smoke
	Without going through the bother of the solution-writing.
	A word here and there--"promised" or "beware"--you have to go the long way round before you find that the entrance to that side is closed.
	The phorphorecent liquid is still heaving and boiling, however.
	And what if this insane activity were akind of d XXXXXXXXXXX itself a kind of drawing

	Of April sidewalks, and young trees bursting into timid leaf
	And dogs sniffing hydrants, the fyry of spring beginning to back up along their veins?

	Yonder stand a young boy and a girl leaning against a bicycle.
	The iron lamppost next to them isXX disappear into the feathery, unborn leaves that suffocate its top.

	A postman is coming up the walk, a letter held in his outstretched hand.
	This is his first day on the new job, and he looks warily around
	Alas not seeing the hideous bulldog bearing down on him like sixty, its hellish eyes fixed on the seat of his pants, jowls a-slaver.
	Nearby a young woman is fixing her stocking. Watching her, a fellow chap with a hat
	Is about to walk into the path of a speeding j XX hackney cabriolet. The line of lampposts
	Marches up the street in strict array, but the lamp parts
	Are lost in feathery bloom, in which hidden faces can be spotted, for this is a puzzle scene.
	The sky is white, yet full of outlined stars--it must be night,
	Or an early springtime evening, with just a hint of dampness and chill in the air
	Memory of winter, hint of the autumn to come,
	Yet the lovers congregate anyway, the lights twinkle slowly on.
	Cars move steadily along the street.
	It is a scene worthy of a poet's pen, yet it is the fire-demon
	Who has created it, throwing it up on the dubious surface of a phosphorecent fountain
	For all the world like a poet. But love can appropriate it,
	Use or mis-use it for its own ends. Love is stronger than fire.

	The proof of this is that already the heaving, sucking fountain is paling away
	Yet the fire-lines of the lovers remain fixed, as if permanently, on the air of the lab.

II-I

	though ?
	Not for long now. And {now} they too collapse
	Giving, as they pass away, the impression of a bluff
	Its craggy headlands outlined in sparks, Its top crowned with a zigzag
	Of grass and shrubs, pebbled beach at the bottom, with flat sea                   glides ?
	Holding a few horizontal lines. Then this vision, too, {passes slowly} {slowly passes} away.

Part III

	After the Lesson. The Widows. The Portuguese Man-of-War. Loan Sharks.
	"Frei aber Einsam." The West Wind.XXXXXXXXXXXXXX If at All. The West Wind. Someone
	You Have never Seen. Dressed in the Dull Reds and Grays of the Eleventh FHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDHDDD
	Century. The Exile. The Study. The Book of Caverns. La Glu. Une CCCC
La	MereX de plus en plus agitee. Golf. Nine. Shadow Buff. The Boat Race.
	Bommerangs. Saved! The Divine Helmet. Poetry likened to a Bommerang.
	The Course of Time. Magazine Subscriptions. Card Tricks. How to tell
	a Card Thought of. Youth, Old Age and Death. Servitude. Only the crater
	of becoming--a Sealed Consciousness. Kraut und Ruben. In Stilled Pieces.
	A Decorative Frieze. Gonnosfonadiga. Going Home a Different Way. The Storm Fiend. Cast Adrift.
	"Par une Mere de plus en plus agitee."XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Storm Signals. An Egg-Cup Fountain. The Avalanche.
	The Rainbow. The Relapse.

	Now you must shield with your body if necessary (you
	Remind me of some lummox I used to know) the secret your body is.
	Yes, you are a secret and you must NEVER tell it--the freezing vapor
	Of the stars would quickly freeze you to death, like a tear-stiffened handkechief
	In some liquid air. No, but this secret is in some way the fuel of
	Your living apart. A hearth-fire picked up in the glow of the polished
	Wooden furniture and picture frames, something to turn away from and move back to--
	Understand? This is all a part of you and the only part of you.

	Here comes the answer: is it because apples grow
	On the tree, or because it is green? An average day you may never know
indent	How much is pushed into the night, nor what may return
	To sulk contentedly, half asleep and half awake
	By the arm of a chair pointed into
	The painting of fire, or reach, in a coma
	Out of the garden for foreign students.
	Be sure the giant would know falling asleep, but the frozen droplets reveal
	A mixed situation in which the penis
	Scored the offer by fixed marches into what is.
	One black spot remained.

	If I should... if I said you were there
	The... towering peace about us might
	Hold up the way it breaks--the monsoon
	Move a pebble, to the plumbing contract, cataract.
	There has got to be only-- there is going to be
	An accent on the portable bunch of grapes
	The time the mildewed seas cast the
	Hygrometer too far away. You read into it
	The meaning of tears, the survey of our civilization.

III-B

		Only one thing exists: the fear of death. As widows are a prey to loan sharks
		And Cape Hatteras to hurricanoes, so man to the fear of dying, to the
		Certainty of falling. AND JUST SOXXXXXXXXXXX And just so it permits him to escape from time to time
		Amid fields of boarded-up posters: "Objects, as they recede, appear to become smaller
		And all horizontal receding lines have their vanishing point upon the line of sight,"
		Which is some comfort after all, for our volition to see must after all condition these phenomena to a certain degree.
		But it would be rash to derive too much confidence from a situation which, in the last analysis, scarcely warrants it.
		What I said first goes: sleep, death and hollyhocks
		And a new twilight stained, perhaps, a slightly unearthlier periwinkle blue,
		But no dramatic arguments for survival, and please no magic justification of results.

	Uh.... stupid song... that weather bonnet protected
	It is all gone now. But
	The apothecary biscuits dwindled. All must pay.
	In wedge-shaped zinc compartments, where a little spectral
	Cliffs, teeming over into irony's
	Gotten silently inflicted on the passes
	Morning undermines, the daughter is.

		Its oval armor
		Protects it then and the poisonous filaments hanging down
		Are armor as well or are they the creature itself, screaming
		To protect itself? An aggressive weapon, as well as a plan of defense?
		Nature is still liable to pull a few fast ones, which is why I can't emphasize enough
		The importance of adherence to my original planXXXX program. Remember,
		No hope is to be authorized, except in exceptional cases
		To be decided on by me. In the meantime, back to dreaming
		Your only important activity. Last night I dreamt of a wayside fen.
		Full of leaves, such as the strawberry, potentilla, goose-grass, buttercup, dandelion and many wayside plants.
		When the stalk or principal vein is too succulent or thick, it would be well to pare it down, to permit of easier rubbing.

	"The most difficult of all is an arrangement of hawthorn leaves
	In different tones of colour, and intended for a title-page or elaborate mount,"
	But the sawing motion of desire, throwing you a minute to one side
	And then the other, will, I think, forgXXXX permit you to forget your dreams for a little while.
	In reality you place far too much importance on them. "Free but Alone"
	Ought to be your motto. If you dream at all, place a cloth over your face:
	TheXXX Its expression of satisfied desire might be too much for some spectators.

		The west wind grazes my cheek, the droplets come pattering down
		What matter now, whether I wake or sleep?
		The west wind grazes my cheek, the droplets come pattering down
		A vast design shows in the meadows parched and trampled grasses
		In reality a game of "fox and geese" has been played there, but the real reality,
		Beyond truer imaginings, is that it is a mystical design, full of a certain signficance,

III-C

Burning, sealing its way into my consciousness.

III-C

		Burning, sealing its way into my consciousness.
		Smooth out the sad sand flowers, pick up where you left off
		But leave me immersed in dreams of sexual imagery:
		Now that the homecoming geese unfurl in waves on the west wind
		And cock covers hen, the farmhouse dog slavers over his bitch, and horse and mare go screwing through the meadow!
		A pure scream of things arises from these various sights and smells
		As steam arises from a wet shingle, and I am happy once again
		Walking among these phenomena that seem familiar to me from my earliest childhood.

	We put everything in order.
	A museum of thought was the result.

		The page ended just at the burnt edge,
		The reader's puckered lips. He is looking for "milk"
		In the directory, but this volume ends with the "MI"'s.
		Another time will do as well, at school last year
		Or elsewhere, in praise of bushes or wandering.

	And someone I have never seen
	Is thinking of me right now.

		Perhaps she, in her way
		By the day's "last rays", reads my letter.
		I promised and never sent.
		On flat landscapes the projections occur.

	And one wishes to escape civilization.
	A world of alien diseases is best,
	Tyrant fruits, and big-voiced birds
	Bespeaking the awe of peace in orange groves
	By seaweed fires.

		At home the bespectacled
		Reader of newsprint shuns the baroque kiosk.
		Dirt darkness and destruction abound
		In the so-called modern "paradise"--he thinks
		As the trolley draws closer--a sheaf of newsprint
		Perpendicular to the thorax--is the one you draw close to
		And say goodbye to, and wait for and return to
		And hunger for inspiration from, in leafy enchantment
		Of urban dusk. But somehow the mirth of everything rolls us along
		Laughing and tired, and commenting on our journey
		Before it happens, and leaves us at the end.

III-D

	That one day
	It was a question of me, or that people may
	Have spoken of me, is one and the same.
	An exile from the life of city streets
	For firmly than if placed on some desert island
	In the middle of nowhere, in the Pacific's vast anonymous stretches.

	The gray wastes of water surround
	My puny little shoal. Sometimes storms roll
	Tremendous billows far up on the gray sand beach, and the morning
	After, odd tusked monsters lie stinking in the tropic sun.
	They are inedible. For food, there is only
	Breadfruit, and berries garnishedXXXXXXXXX garnered in the jungle's inner reaches,
	Wrested from scorpion and poisonous snake. Fresh water is a problem.
	After a rain you will find some nestling in the hollow trunk of a tree, or in hollow stones.

	One's only form of distraction is really
	To climb to the top of the one tall cliff to scan the distances.
	Not for a ship, of course--this island is far from all the trade routes--
	But in hopes of an unusual sight, such as a school of dophins at play,
	A whale spouting, or a cormorant bearing down on its pray.
	So high this cliff is that the pebble beach far below seems made of gravel.
	Halfway down, the chaffs and crows look like bees.
	Nearby are the nests of vultures, cu XX they cluck sympathetically in my direction
	(Which will not prevent them from rending me limb from limb once I have kicked off
	Further down, and way over to one side, are nests of eagles,
	Always fussing, fouling their bigs nests, they always seem to manage to turn their backs to you.
	The glass is low; no doubt we are in for a storm.

	Sure enough; in the pale gray nand orange distances, to the left, a
	Waterspout is becoming distinctly visible. Beautiful, but terrifying;
	Delicate, transparent, like a watercolor by that 19th century Englishman whose name I forget
	(I am beginning to forget everything on this island; if only I had been allowed to bring my ten favorite books with me--
	But a weathered child's alphabet is my only reading material--luckily,
	some of the birds and animals on the island are pictured in it--the albatross, for instance--that's a name I never would have remembered)

	It looks as though the storm-fiend were planning to kick up quite a ruckus
	For this evening. I had better be getting back to the tent,
	Make sure everything is shipshape, weight down the canvas with extra stones,
	Bank the fire, and prepare myself a little hard-tack and tea
	For the evening's repast. Still, it is rather beautiful up here

III-E

	Watching the oncoming storm. Now the big cloud that was in front of the water-spout
	Seems to be lurching forward so that the waterspout, behind it, looks more like a three-dimensional perspective photograph.
	Above me the sky is a luminous, silver gray. Yet rain, like silver porcupine quills, has begun to be thrown down. All the lightning is still contained in the big black cloud however. Now thunder claps belch forth from it,
	Causing the startled vultures to fly forth from their nests. I really had better be getting back down, I suppose.

	Still it is rather fun to linger on in the wet,
	Letting your clothes get damXXX soaked. What difference does it make? No one Will scold me for it,
	Or look askance. Supposing I catch cold? It hardly matters; there are no nurses or infirmeries here
	To make an ass of one. A really serious case of pneumonia would suit me fine.
	Ker-choo! There, now I'm being punished for saying so. Aw, what's the use.
	I really am starting down now. Goodbye, Storm-fiend. Goodbye, vultures.

	In reality of course the bourgeois apartment I live in is unlike a desert island.
	Cozy and warm it is, with a good library and record collection. The fridge stacked with toothsome victuals; the medecine chest with the latest wonder drugs.
	Yet I feel cut off from the life in the streets.
	Automobiles and trucks plow by me, spr XXXX spattering filthy slush on my garments.
	The man in the street turns his face away. Another island-dweller, no doubt.
	In a store or a crowded cafe, you get a momentary impression of warmth:
	Steam belches out of the expresso machine, fogging the panes with their modern lettering
	Of a type that has only been available for about a year. The headlines offer you
	In giant type, news that is so new you can't realize it yet. A revolution in Brazil! Think of it! Bullets flying through the air, men on the move;
	Great passions inciting to massive expenditures of energy, changing the lives of many individuals. Yet it is all offered as "today's news," as if we somehow had a right to it, as though it were a part of our lives
	That we'd be silly to refuse. Here, have another--crime or revolution? Take your pick.

	None of this makes any difference to professional exiles like me, and that includes everybody in the place.
	We go on sipping our coffee, thinking dark or transparent thoughts...
	Excuse me, may I have the sugar. Why certainly--pardon me for not having passed it to you.
	A lot of bunk, none of them really care whether you get any sugar or not.
	Just try asking for something a little more difficult and see how far it gets you
	Not that I care anyway, being an exile. Nope, the motley spectacle offers nointerest whatever for me--
	And yet-- and yet I feel myself caught up in its coils--
	Its imperfectuo f XXXXXXXXXXXXXX defectuous movement is that of my reasoning powers--
	The main point has already changed, but the masses continue to tread the water
	Of backward opinion, living out their mandate as though nothing had happened.
	We step out into the street, not realizing that the street is different
	And so it shall be all our lives; only, from this moment on, nothing will ever be the same again. Fortunately our small pleasures and the monotony of daily existence
	Are safe. You will wear the same clothes, and your friends will still want to see you for the same reasons--you fill a definite place in their lives, and they would be sorry to see you go.

III-F

	There has, however, been this change, so complete as to be invisible;
	You might call it... "passion" might be a good word,
	I think we will call it that for easy reference. This room, now, for instance, is all blue, instead of blb v XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX black and white instead of blue.

	A few snowflakes are sinking in the airshaft, across the way
	The sun was sinking, casting gray
	Shadows on the front of the buildings.

	Lower your left shoulder.
	Stand still and do not see-saw with your body.

Any more golfing hints, Charlie?

	Plant your feet squarely. Grasp your club lightly but firmly in the hollow of your fingers.
	Slowly swing well back and complete your stroke well through, pushing to the very end

When putting, grasp the club firmly, swing back very slowly, and go well through with the stroke.

	"All up and down de whole creation"
	Like magic lantern slides projected on the wall of a cavern--castles, enchanted gardens, etc.
	I am slowly coming round. But please don't ask for any news.

	The traditional anagrams of moonlight
	Projected on those walls--chunks of meaning in them--
	A Your story that subsides quietly into plain historical fact.
	You have, in fact, chosen the traditional images of youth, old age, and death
	To keep harping on this traditional imagery.

	For childhood you chose a wreath of roses
	As fitting the season and the general mood.
	Maturity is symbolized by a shepherd's crook
	To bring errant sheep back to the path.

	Later life is a clock with the hands magnetized at noon
	Unable to go back or forward, in the surprise of pain
	And its amaze. Hips of trees that protect noon squatters
	looking for flowers in the grass.

	With death an angry fist
	Summoning the injured family home
	After a lifetime of errata. In these four pictures
	The total history of mankind is enchained. The reader

	Will not have been taken in.
	He will have managed to find out all about it, the way people do.
so	The moonlight congress backs out then. And with a cry
	He throws the whole business into the flames: books, notes, pencil diagrams, everything.

	No, the only thing that interests him is day
	And its problems. Freiheit, freiheit!
	To be out of these dusty cells once and for all
	Has been the dream of mankind ever since the beginning of the universe.

III-H G

	His  day is breaking over the eastern mountains, at least that's the way he tells it.
	Only the crater of becoming--a sealed consciousness--resists the profaning mess of the sun.
	You who automatically sneer at everything that comes along, except your own work, of course,
	Now feel the curious force of the invasion; its soldiers, all and some,

	A part of you the minute they appear. It is as though workmen in blue overalls
	Were constantly bringing on new props and taking others away: that is how you feel the drama going past you, powerless to act in it.
	To have it all be past! To wake suddenly on a hillside
	With a valley far below--the clouds--the kind that are flat on the bottom, with long tails,
	Roll away, leaving a plastron of ill feeling...
	As
	AndXXX in some bright environment daft
	Imaginary cohorts join the fray

	The cuisine of this place has driven me mad
	I shall have to run away--I been so long away from you--
	There is a cheaper figure, however, called "The Talking Hand."
	Quite a number of these make a good decorative frieze.

	You might try interspersing them with separate flowers--
	Peonies and violets are good to begin with--oh I know
	You don't want to hear the rest of it--Sardinia violets
	especially those from the region of Gonnosfanadiga, rapturously
	snatched from the surrounding slopes talk more about the storms inhabitants,
	charcteristics--loving to go out at night--etc.)
	--how the storm fiends lie in wait in mid-summer, athirst for calamity.
	When through soft air calling
	Distant day resounds to this cry: Postpone the evil! underlining
	The reply you feel sweating out a dream

	That the fragments are castrated, caught up in tunnels
	And spat out like commands. And the whole thing definitely turns on itself
	To return exactly to you.

	That is the penance you have already done;
	January, March, February. We are living toward a definition
	Of the peacefullest appetite, then you see
	Them standing around limp and hungry like adjacent clouds.

	Soon there is to be exchange of ideas and
	Far more beautiful handshake, under the coat of
	Weather is undecided right now.
	Postpone the explanation.
	The election is to be held tomorrow, under the trees.

	You felt the months keep coming up
	And it is December again,
	The snow outside. Or is it June full of sun
	And the prudent benefits of sun, but still the postman comes.
	The true meaning of some of his letters is slight--

III-H

	Another time I thought I could see myself.
	This too proved illusion, but I could deal with the way
	I keep returning on myself like a plank
	Like a small boat blown away from the wind.

	It all ends in a smile somewhere.
	Notes to be taken on all this,
	And you can see in the dark, of which the night
	Is the continuation of your ecstasy and apprehension.

IV

The Stamp Album. From Pagoda Land. A Bird Brain. Youth and Shrubbery.

	I love staying in igh s XXXXXX at night
	To take down the stamp album
	Weeping over the dry holes
	And those where only a printed drawing of the stamp is
	Like this New Zealand number coated with poisonous
	Reptiles--what color could it be? Possibly
	A pale cabbage green
	Or this Hungarian one with two heads
	Of founders of the Communist party in pale blue
	With the eyebrows inked in in deeper blue

IV

The Stamp Album

	Though certain of my eyes
	Final meeting with you, the way we live through
	These silent periods without fear or surprise
	I believe I shall write you (here a red bird breathes,
	a little red ink bleeds onto the page; you see
	The mildness does go on) to tell you what your brother has done.

	Looking through some of my old poems
	To get inspiration for things to talk to you about
	I had lost track of the time. It was only
	With a secret feeling of delight
	I realized tho XXXX all those around me had long since gone to bed
	And I all alone in the eye of darkness.

	These moments, one catches
	As they come along, afraid to believe too much
	In the happiness that might result
	Or confide too much of one's love and fear, even in
	Oneself. It was thus that I turned to the dark
	As to a mirror, an enchanted smile.

	These moments of the "population"
	Of the night by the body are not wasted:
	The next day the body returns
	In costumes "of all nations" holding hands
	In a chain of freedom. And,
	As one might back a car into a garage
	I remained in my chair, steady with sleep, with the desire of sleep.

	I think sometimes the things you take up in your hands
	Mean all of you, and the proof of this
	Is that you are always part of me
	In my nearest dreams. In the forest of unknowledge,
	Sege overtopping the canyon of unproved reality
	Deeper thanm XX man's soul, and the tremendous sun, rising,

	That is the proof of everything
	And, in reality, proves so little. Why is it then,
	We are obliged to turn sideways
	Facing each other in the tremendous, but embraceable,
	Glare that subdues everything around us?
	This is space in which only we may stand.

	With still the madness
	Of everything harking back through the years.
	Perhaps sleep is only another thing, a piece of bark
	You bent to XXXXXXXX stooped to pick up long ago.
	Shortly after that the red bird flew quietly away.
	Or a crumb of moss, too tiny to be clearly seen.

IV

The Stamp Album

	Though certain of my eyes'
	Final meeting with you: how we move through
	Certain events without fear or surprise
	I believe I shall write you (here a red bird breathes,
	A little red bleeds onto the page,
	The mildness does go on). The distant, purple

	Stamp album:'s my image of you.
	So many dried, torn, utterly uninteresting images you both conceal:
	Of work, play and piety; centennial expositions,
	Of the 75th anniversary of a state, or the founding of the Hungarian Communist Party
	I believe it is time we had a look at them.

	And so it is with a secret feeling of delight I realize I am
	All alone once again in the skittish darkness,
	Leaning toward the magnifying glass, or the tweezers, or the little glass of water.

	One seizes these moments as they come along, afraid
	To believe too much in the happiness that might result
	Or confide too much of one's love and fear, even in

	Oneself. Thus it was, once, long ago         (an enthusiastic?)
	I oXXX In our former period, I turned to the dark and enchanted smile.
	These moments of "population"

	Of the night by the body are not wasted:
	The next day the body returns,

	A multitude of bodies, dressed in the costumes of many lands
	And holding a chain of freedom in their hands.

	The first few links are a theme the stamps never tire CCCCCCCCCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLL
	Of repeating. Take this Iranian track star, for instance, DKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKD
	Breaking theXXXXXXXXXXXX whose shattered the poisonous

	I think sometimes the things you take up in your hands
	Mean all of you, and the proof of this
	Is that you are always a part of me, even in my dreams.
	When I pick up some humble object
	From my desk, turning it between two fingers, carelessly
	It means you. In a moment the pane