enough

now to go about

like a Provençal ravi

(which comes up

on the crib-side sign as ‘ecstatic’),

 

unstilled, always

praising unseen; heading allward

out of my districts with arms out,

and so making the circuit

just beneath the upstream;

 

singing

into the noise,

just to check the current data

for us, to Christ-Of-The-Excess

 

+

 

you became fed up,

or so the dominant dating pattern dictates,

with your exes:

so many sets of pairs

of compasses, bite-marks, locks

of hair who decay in waves

slightly slower than the body

 

except they’re fed back

here, processed and purposely turned in

the textured sheets:

the tendency to shape

just enough to keep impact

once you’ve lost all weight

is engaged by us in the transept

 

+

 

reaching this shore gives a festal excuse

for old stripes, just as it permits more shell,

ceramic, brick with RAM imprinted

on it than stone

 

Casella’s polyphony makes you start

but, mind, can’t last, as the tide alone won’t

get us from cider glass to anywhere

in the region of Osiris

 

it offers instead an accidental

half-human cubist, enough

to be getting on, reason

and string yourself with

Marsyas

over the hill

 

+

 

man suspends himself, is

suspended; many see,

have axes to grind, talk

of the thoughtless or sacrifice;

grievance swings against grief

and bodies fall

 

all far enough in the past, it is vain

tonight to fit this monument and

the acts into dispassionate, released

words that allow no access, to

 

let them go over my head where the

hard and gold

steadfast constellations

west