77 Dream Songs Read online

  smiled into his mirror, a murderer’s

  (at Stillwater), at himself alone

  and said across a plink to that desolate fellow

  said a little hail & buck-you-up

  upon his triumph

  20

  The Secret of the Wisdom

  When worst got things, how was you? Steady on?

  Wheedling, or shockt her &

  you have been bad to your friend,

  whom not you writing to. You have not listened.

  A pelican of lies

  you loosed: where are you?

  Down weeks of evenings of longing

  by hours, NOW, a stoned bell,

  you did somebody: others you hurt short:

  anyone ever did you do good?

  You licking your own old hurt,

  what?

  An evil kneel & adore.

  This is human. Hurl, God who found

  us in this, down

  something … We hear the more

  sin has increast, the more

  grace has been caused to abound.

  21

  Some good people, daring & subtle voices

  and their tense faces, as I think of it

  I see sank underground.

  I see. My radar digs. I do not dig.

  Cool their flushing blood, them eyes is shut—

  eyes?

  Appalled: by all the dead: Henry brooded.

  Without exception! All.

  ALL.

  The senior population waits. Come down! come down!

  A ghastly & flashing pause, clothed,

  life called; us do.

  In a madhouse heard I an ancient man

  tube-fed who had not said for fifteen years

  (they said) one canny word,

  senile forever, who a heart might pierce,

  mutter ‘O come on down. O come on down.’

  Clear whom he meant.

  22

  Of 1826

  I am the little man who smokes & smokes.

  I am the girl who does know better but.

  I am the king of the pool.

  I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.

  I am a government official & a goddamned fool.

  I am a lady who takes jokes.

  I am the enemy of the mind.

  I am the auto salesman and lóve you.

  I am a teenage cancer, with a plan.

  I am the blackt-out man.

  I am the woman powerful as a zoo.

  I am two eyes screwed to my set, whose blind—

  It is the Fourth of July.

  Collect: while the dying man,

  forgone by you creator, who forgives,

  is gasping ‘Thomas Jefferson still lives’

  in vain, in vain, in vain.

  I am Henry Pussy-cat! My whiskers fly.

  23

  The Lay of Ike

  This is the lay of Ike.

  Here’s to the glory of the Great White—awk—

  who has been running—er—er—things in recent—ech—

  in the United—If your screen is black,

  ladies & gentlemen, we—I like—

  at the Point he was already terrific—sick

  to a second term, having done no wrong—

  no right—no right—having let the Army—bang—

  defend itself from Joe, let venom’ Strauss

  bile Oppenheimer out of use—use Robb,

  who’ll later fend for Goldfine—Breaking no laws,

  he lay in the White House—sob!!—

  who never understood his own strategy—whee—

  so Monty’s memoirs—nor any strategy,

  wanting the ball bulled thro’ all parts of the line

  at once—proving, by his refusal to take Berlin,

  he misread even Clauswitz—wide empty grin

  that never lost a vote (O Adlai mine).

  24

  Oh servant Henry lectured till

  the crows commenced and then

  he bulbed his voice & lectured on some more.

  This happened again & again, like war,—

  the Indian p.a.’s, such as they were,

  a weapon on his side, for the birds.

  Vexations held a field-monsoon.

  He was Introduced, and then he was Summed-up.

  He was put questions on race bigotry;

  he put no questions on race bigotry

  constantly.

  The mad sun rose though on the ghats

  & the saddhu in maha mudra, the great River,

  and Henry was happy & beside him with excitement.

  Beside himself, his possibilities;

  salaaming hours of a half-blind morning

  while the rainy lepers salaamed back,

  smiles & a passion of their & his eyes flew

  in feelings not ever accorded solely to oneself.

  25

  Henry, edged, decidedly, made up stories

  lighting the past of Henry, of his glorious

  present, and his hoaries,

  all the bight heals he tamped— —Euphoria,

  Mr Bones, euphoria. Fate clobber all.

  —Hand me back my crawl,

  condign Heaven. Tighten into a ball

  elongate & valved Henry. Tuck him peace.

  Render him sightless,

  or ruin at high rate his crampon focus,

  wipe out his need. Reduce him to the rest of us.

  —But, Bones, you is that.

  —I cannot remember. I am going away.

  There was something in my dream about a Cat,

  which fought and sang.

  Something about a lyre, an island. Unstrung.

  Linked to the land at low tide. Cables fray.

  Thank you for everything.

  26

  The glories of the world struck me, made me aria, once.

  —What happen then, Mr Bones?

  if be you cares to say.

  —Henry. Henry became interested in women’s bodies,

  his loins were & were the scene of stupendous achievement.

  Stupor. Knees, dear. Pray.

  All the knobs & softnesses of, my God,

  the ducking & trouble it swarm on Henry,

  at one time.

  —What happen then, Mr Bones?

  you seems excited-like.

  —Fell Henry back into the original crime: art, rime

  besides a sense of others, my God, my God,

  and a jealousy for the honour (alive) of his country,

  what can get more odd?

  and discontent with the thriving gangs & pride.

  —What happen then, Mr Bones?

  —I had a most marvellous piece of luck. I died.

  II

  27

  The greens of the Ganges delta foliate.

  Of heartless youth made late aware he pled:

  Brownies, please come.

  To Henry in his sparest times sometimes

  the little people spread, & did friendly things;

  then he was glad.

  Pleased, at the worst, except with man, he shook

  the brightest winter sun.

  All the green lives

  of the great delta, hours, hurt his migrant heart

  in a safety of the steady ’plane. Please, please

  come.

  My friends,—he has been known to mourn,—I’ll die;

  live you, in the most wild, kindly, green

  partly forgiving wood,

  sort of forever and all those human sings

  close not your better ears to, while good Spring

  returns with a dance and a sigh.

  28

  Snow Line

  It was wet & white & swift and where I am

  we don’t know. It was dark and then

  it isn’t.

  I wish the barker would come. There seems to be to eat

  nothing. I am unusually tired.

  I’m alone too.<
br />
  If only the strange one with so few legs would come,

  I’d say my prayers out of my mouth, as usual.

  Where are his notes I loved?

  There may be horribles; it’s hard to tell.

  The barker nips me but somehow I feel

  he too is on my side.

  I’m too alone. I see no end. If we could all

  run, even that would be better. I am hungry.

  The sun is not hot.

  It’s not a good position I am in.

  If I had to do the whole thing over again

  I wouldn’t.

  29

  There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart

  só heavy, if he had a hundred years

  & more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time

  Henry could not make good.

  Starts again always in Henry’s ears

  the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

  And there is another thing he has in mind

  like a grave Sienese face a thousand years

  would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,

  with open eyes, he attends, blind.

  All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;

  thinking.

  But never did Henry, as he thought he did,

  end anyone and hacks her body up

  and hide the pieces, where they may be found.

  He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.

  Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.

  Nobody is ever missing.

  30

  Collating bones: I would have liked to do.

  Henry would have been hot at that.

  I missed his profession.

  As a little boy I always thought

  ‘I’m an archeologist’; who

  could be more respected peaceful serious than that?

  Hell talkt my brain awake.

  Bluffed to the ends of me pain

  & I took up a pencil;

  like this I’m longing with. One sign

  would snow me back, back.

  Is there anyone in the audience who has lived in vain?

  A Chinese tooth! African jaw!

  Drool, says a nervous system,

  for a joyous replacing. Heat burns off dew.

  Between the Ices (Mindel-Würm)

  in a world I ever saw

  some of my dying people indexed: “Warm.”

  31

  Henry Hankovitch, con guítar,

  did a short Zen pray,

  on his tatami in a relaxed lotos

  fixin his mind on nuffin, rose-blue breasts,

  and gave his parnel one French kiss;

  enslaving himself he withdrew from his blue

  Florentine leather case an Egyptian black

  & flickt a zippo.

  Henry & Phoebe happy as cockroaches

  in the world-kitchen woofed, with all away.

  The international flame, like despair, rose

  or like the foolish Paks or Sudanese

  Henry Hankovitch, con guítar,

  did a praying mantis pray

  who even more obviously than the increasingly fanatical Americans

  cannot govern themselves. Swedes don’t exist,

  Scandinavians in general do not exist,

  take it from there.

  32

  And where, friend Quo, lay you hiding

  across malignant half my years or so?

  One evil faery

  it was workt night, with amoroso pleasing

  menace, the panes shake

  where Lie-by-the-fire is waiting for his cream.

  A tiger by a torrent in rain, wind,

  narrows fiend’s eyes for grief

  in an old ink-on-silk,

  reminding me of Delphi, and,

  friend Quo, once was safe

  imagination as sweet milk.

  Let all flowers wither like a party.

  And now you have abandoned

  own your young & old, the oldest, people

  to a solitudinem of mournful communes,

  mournful communes.

  Status, Status, come home.

  33

  An apple arc’d toward Kleitos; whose great King

  wroth & of wine did study where his sword,

  sneaked away, might be …

  with swollen lids staggered up and clung

  dim to the cloth of gold. An un-Greek word

  blister, to him his guard,

  and the trumpeter would not sound, fisted. Ha,

  they hustle Clitus out; by another door,

  loaded, crowds he back in

  who now must, chopped, fall to the spear-ax ah

  grabbed from an extra by the boy-god, sore

  for weapons. For the sin:

  little it is gross Henry has to say.

  The King heaved. Pluckt out, the ax-end would

  he jab in his sole throat.

  As if an end. A baby, the guard may

  squire him to his apartments. Weeping & blood

  wound round his one friend.

  34

  My mother has your shotgun. One man, wide

  in the mind, and tendoned like a grizzly, pried

  to his trigger-digit, pal.

  He should not have done that, but, I guess,

  he didn’t feel the best, Sister,—felt less

  and more about less than us…?

  Now—tell me, my love, if you recall

  the dove light after dawn at the island and all—

  here is the story, Jack:

  he verbed for forty years, very enough,

  & shot & buckt—and, baby, there was of

  schist but small there (some).

  Why should I tell a truth? when in the crack

  of the dooming & emptying news I did hold back—

  in the taxi too, sick—

  silent—it’s so I broke down here, in his mind

  whose sire as mine one same way— I refuse,

  hoping the guy go home.

  35

  MLA

  Hey, out there!—assistant professors, full,

  associates,—instructors—others—any—

  I have a sing to shay.

  We are assembled here in the capital

  city for Dull—and one professor’s wife is Mary—

  at Christmastide, hey!

  and all of you did theses or are doing

  and the moral history of what we were up to

  thrives in Sir Wilson’s hands—

  who I don’t see here—only deals go screwing

  some of you out, some up—the chairmen too

  are nervous, little friends—

  a chairman’s not a chairman, son, forever,

  and hurts with his appointments; ha, but circle—

  take my word for it—

  though maybe Frost is dying—around Mary;

  forget your footnotes on the old gentleman;

  dance around Mary.

  36

  The high ones die, die. They die. You look up and who’s there?

  —Easy, easy, Mr Bones. I is on your side.

  I smell your grief.

  —I sent my grief away. I cannot care

  forever. With them all again & again I died

  and cried, and I have to live.

  —Now there you exaggerate, Sah. We hafta die.

  That is our ’pointed task. Love & die.

  —Yes; that makes sense.

  But what makes sense between, then? What if I

  roiling & babbling & braining, brood on why and

  just sat on the fence?

  —I doubts you did or do. De choice is lost.

  —It’s fool’s gold. But I go in for that.

  The boy & the bear

  looked at each other. Man all is tossed

  & lost with groin-wounds by the grand bulls, cat.

  William Faulkner’s where?

  (Frost bein
g still around.)

  37

  Three around the Old Gentleman

  His malice was a pimple down his good

  big face, with its sly eyes. I must be sorry

  Mr Frost has left:

  I like it so less I don’t understood—

  he couldn’t hear or see well—all we sift—

  but this is a bad story.

  He had fine stories and was another man

  in private; difficult, always. Courteous,

  on the whole, in private.

  He apologize to Henry, off & on,

  for two blue slanders; which was good of him.

  I don’t know how he made it.

  Quickly, off stage with all but kindness, now.

  I can’t say what I have in mind. Bless Frost,

  any odd god around.

  Gentle his shift, I decussate & command,

  stoic deity. For a while here we possessed

  an unusual man.

  38

  The Russian grin bellows his condolence

  tó the family: ah but it’s Kay,

  & Ted, & Chis & Anne,

  Henry thinks of: who eased his fearful way

  from here, in here, to there. This wants thought.

  I won’t make it out.

  Maybe the source of noble such may come

  clearer to dazzled Henry. It may come.

  I’d say it will come with pain,

  in mystery. I’d rather leave it alone.

  I do leave it alone.

  And down with the listener.

  Now he has become, abrupt, an industry.

  Professional-Friends-Of-Robert-Frost all over

  gap wide their mouths

  while the quirky medium of so many truths

  is quiet. Let’s be quiet. Let us listen:

  —What for, Mr Bones?

  —while he begins to have it out with Horace.

  39

  Goodbye, sir, & fare well. You’re in the clear.

  ‘Nobody’ (Mark says you said) ‘is ever found out.’

  I figure you were right,

  having as Henry got away with murder

  for long. Some jarred clock tell me it’s late,

  not for you who went straight

  but for the lorn. Our roof is lefted off

  lately: the shooter, and the bourbon man,