needles
The old lady has a daughter
Who has been spent
In chasing moments from one room to another
When the essence of an hour
Was in its passing
With the passionate breath
Of the bronchitis kettle
And her last little lust
Lost itself in a saucer of gruel
But all this moribund stuff
Is not wasted
For there is always Nature
So its expensive upkeep
Goes to support
The loves
Of head-waiters
The Costa San Giorgio
We English make a tepid blot
On the messiness
Of the passionate Italian life-traffic
Throbbing the street up steep
Up up to the porta
Culminating
In the stained fresco of the dragon-slayer
The hips of women sway
Among the crawling children they produce
And the church hits the barracks
Where
The greyness of marching men
Falls through the greyness of stone
Oranges half-rotten are sold at a reduction
Hoarsely advertised as broken heads
Broken heads and the barber
Has an imitation mirror
And Mary preserve our mistresses from seeing us as we see ourselves
Shaving
Ice cream
Licking is larger than mouths
Boots than feet
Slip Slap and the string dragging
And the angle of the sun
Cuts the whole lot in half
And warms the folded hands
Of a consumptive
Left outside her chair is broken
And she wonders how we feel
For we walk very quickly
The noonday cannon
Having scattered the neighbour’s pigeons
The smell of small cooking
From luckier houses
Is cruel to the maimed cat
Hiding
Among carpenter’s shavings
From three boys
—One holding a bar—
Who nevertheless
Born of human parents
Cry when locked in the dark
Fluidic blots of sky
Shift among roofs
Between bandy legs
Jerk patches of street
Interrupted by clacking
Of all the green shutters
From which
Bits of bodies
Variously leaning
Mingle eyes with the commotion
For there is little to do
The false pillow-spreads
Hugely initialed
Already adjusted
On matrimonial beds
And the glint on the china virgin
Consummately dusted
Having been thrown
Anything or something
That might have contaminated intimacy
Out
Onto the middle of the street
Costa Magic
Her father
Indisposed to her marriage
And a rabid man at that
My most sympathetic daughter — — —
Make yourself a conception
As large as this one
Here
But with yellow hair
From the house
Issuing Sunday dressed
Combed precisely
Splosh!
Pours something
Viscuous
Malefic
Unfamiliar
While listening up I hear my husband
Mumbling Mumbling
Mumbling at the window
Malediction
Incantation
Under an hour
Her hand to her side pressing
Suffering
Being bewitched
Cesira fading
Daily daily feeble softer
The doctor — — — “Phthisis”
The wise woman says to take her
So we following her instruction
I and the neighbour
Take her—
The glass rattling
The rain slipping
I and the neighbour and her aunt
Bunched together
And Cesira
Droops across the cab
Fields and houses
Pass like the pulling out
Of sweetmeat ribbon
From a rascal’s mouth
Till
A wheel in a rut
Jerks back my girl on the padding
And the hedges into the sky
Coming to the magic tree
Cesira becomes as a wild beast
A tree of age
“If Cesira should not become as a wild beast
It is merely Phthisis”
This being the wise woman’s instruction
Knowing she has to die
We drive home
To wait
She certainly does in time
It is unnatural in a Father
Bewitching a daughter
Whose hair down covers her thighs.
Three Moments in Paris
One O’Clock at Night
Though you had never possessed me
I had belonged to you since the beginning of time
And sleepily I sat on your chair beside you
Leaning against your shoulder
And your careless arm across my back gesticulated
As your indisputable male voice roared
Through my brain and my body
Arguing dynamic decomposition
Of which I was understanding nothing
Sleepily
And the only less male voice of your brother pugilist of the intellect
Boomed as it seemed to me so sleepy
Across an interval of a thousand miles
An interim of a thousand years
But you who make more noise than any man in the world when you clear your throat
Deafening woke me
And I caught the thread of the argument
Immediately assuming my personal mental attitude
And ceased to be a woman
Beautiful half-hour of being a mere woman
The animal woman
Understanding nothing of man
But mastery and the security of imparted physical heat
Indifferent to cerebral gymnastics
Or regarding them as the self-indulgent play of children
Or the thunder of alien gods
But you woke me up
Anyhow who am I that I should criticize your theories of plastic velocity
“Let us go home she is tired and wants to go to bed.”
Café du Néant
Little tapers lighted leaning diagonally
Stuck in coffin tables of the Café du Néant
Leaning to the breath of baited bodies
Like young poplars fringing the Loire
Eyes that are full of love
And eyes that are full of kohl
Projecting light across the fulsome ambiente
Trailing the rest of the animal behind them
Telling of tales without words
And lies of no consequence
One way or another
The young lovers hermetically buttoned up in black
To black cravat
To the blue powder edge dusting the yellow throat
What color could have been your bodies
When last you put them away
Nostalgic youth
Holding your mistress’s pricked finger
In the indifferent flame of the taper
Synthetic symbol of life
In this factitious chamber of death
The woman
As usual
Is smiling as bravely
As it is given to her to be brave
While the brandy cherries
In winking glasses
Are decomposing
Harmoniously
With the flesh of spectators
And at a given spot
There is one
Who
Having the concentric lighting focused precisely upon her
Prophetically blossoms in perfect putrefaction
Yet there are cabs outside the door.
Magasins du Louvre
All the virgin eyes in the world are made of glass
Long lines of boxes
Of dolls
Propped against banisters
Walls and pillars
Huddled on shelves
And composite babies with arms extended
Hang from the ceiling
Beckoning
Smiling
In a profound silence
Which the shop walker left trailing behind him
When he ambled to the further end of the gallery
To annoy the shop-girl
All the virgin eyes in the world are made of glass
They alone have the effrontery to
Stare through the human soul
Seeing nothing
Between parted fringes
One cocotte wears a bowler hat and a sham camellia
And one an iridescent boa
For there are two of them
Passing
And the solicitous mouth of one is straight
The other curved to a static smile
They see the dolls
And for a moment their eyes relax
To a flicker of elements unconditionally primeval
And now averted
Seek each other’s surreptitiously
To know if the other has seen
While mine are inextricably entangled with the pattern of the carpet
As eyes are apt to be
In their shame
Having surprised a gesture that is ultimately intimate
All the virgin eyes in the world are made of glass.
Sketch of a Man on a Platform
Man of absolute physical equilibrium
You stand so straight on your legs
Every plank or clod you plant your feet on
Becomes roots for those limbs
Among the men you accrete to yourself
You are more heavy
And more light
Force being most equitably disposed
Is easiest to lift from the ground
So at the same time
Your movements
Unassailable
Savor of the airy-fairy of the ballet
The essence of a Mademoiselle Genée
Winks in the to-and-fro of your cuff-links
Your projectile nose
Has meddled in
