resist it. It is like the garbage river through a city: beautiful by day and beautiful by night, but always unfit for bathing.
There were beautiful rules: a way to hear thunder,
praise a wise man, watch a rainbow, learn of tragedy.
All my family were priests, from Aaron to my father. It
was my honour to close the eyes of my famous teacher.
Prayer makes speech a ceremony. To observe this ritual
in the absence of arks, altars, a listening sky: this is a rich
discipline.
I stare dumbfounded at the trees. I imagine the scar in
a thousand crowned letters. Let me never speak casually.
Inscription for the family spice-box:
Make my body
a pomander for worms
and my soul
the fragrance of cloves.
Let the spoiled Sabbath
leave no scent.
Keep my mouth
from foul speech.
Lead your priest
from grave to vineyard.
Lay him down
where air is sweet.
III / Flowers for Hitler
W H A T I ' M D O I N G H E R E
I do not know if the world has lied
I have lied
I do not know if the world has conspired against love
I have conspired against love
The atmosphere of torture is no comfort
I have tortured
Even without the mushroom cloud
still I would have hated
Listen
I would have done the same things
even if there were no death
I will not be held like a drunkard
under the cold tap of facts
I refuse the universal alibi
Like an empty telephone booth passed at night
and remembered
like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted
only on the way out
like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand
into strange brotherhood
I wait
for each one of you to confess
T H E H E A R T H
The day wasn't exactly my own
since I checked
and found it on a public calendar.
Tripping over many pairs of legs
as I walked down the park
I also learned my lust
was not so rare a masterpiece.
Buildings actually built
wars planned with blood and fought
men who rose to generals
deserved an honest thought
as I walked down the park.
I came back quietly to your house
which has a place on a street.
Not a single other house
disappeared when I came back.
You said some suffering
had taught me that.
I'm slow to learn I began
to speak of stars and hurricanes.
Come here little Galileoyou undressed my vision-
it's happier and easier by far
or cities wouldn't be so big.
Later you worked over lace
and I numbered many things
your fingers and all fingers did.
88 1
As if to pay me a sweet
for my ardour on the rug
you wondered in the middle of a stitch:
Now what about those stars and hurricanes?
T H E D R A W E R ' S C O N D I T I O N
O N N O V E M B E R 2 8 , 1 9 6 1
Is there anything emptier
than the drawer where
you used to store your opium?
How like a black-eyed susan
blinded into ordinary daisy
is my pretty kitchen drawer!
How like a nose sans nostrils
is my bare wooden drawer!
How like an eggless basket!
How like a pool sans tortoise!
My hand has explored
my drawer like a rat
in an experiment of mazes.
Reader, I may safely say
there's not an emptier drawer
in all of Christendom!
I Sg
T H E S U I T
I am locked in a very expensive suit
old elegant and enduring
Only my hair has been able to get free
but someone has been leaving
their dandruff in it
Now I will tell you
all there is to know about optimism
Each day in hubcap mirror
in soup reflection
in other people's spectacles
I check my hair
for an army of Alpinists
for Indian rope trick masters
for tangled aviators
for dove and albatross
for insect suicides
for abominable snowmen
I check my hair
for aerialists of every kind
Dedicated as an automatic elevator
I comb my hair for possibilities
I stick my neck out
I lean illegally from locomotive windows
and only for the barber
do I wear a hat
go I
I N D I C T M E N T O F T H E B L U E H O L E
January 28 1 962
You must have heard me tonight
I mentioned you Boo times
January 28 1 962
My abandoned narcotics have
abandoned me
January 28 1962
7 : 30 must have dug its
pikes into your blue wrist
January 28 1 962
I shoved the transistor up my ear
And putting down
3 loaves of suicide (?)
2 razorblade pies
1 De Quincey hairnet
(sic)
a collection of oil
(sic)
6 lysol eye foods
he said with considerable charm and travail:
Is this all I give?
One lousy reprieve
at 2 in the morning?
This?
I'd rather have a job.
I 9'
I W A N T E D T O B E A D O C T O R
The famous doctor held up Grandma's stomach.
Cancer! Cancer! he cried out.
The theatre was brought low.
None of the internes thought about ambition.
Cancer! They all looked the other way.
They thought Cancer would leap out
and get them. They hated to be near.
This happened in Vilna in the Medical School.
Nobody could sit still.
They might be sitting beside Cancer.
Cancer was present.
Cancer had been let out of its bottle.
I was looking in the skylight.
I wanted to be a doctor.
All the internes ran outside.
The famous doctor held on to the stomach.
He was alone with Cancer.
Cancer!
