of the deep sea full of portents of sundown and islands, beat upon my forehead beat upon my face and neck glisten on my outstretched hands, run bright lilac streams through the clogged channels of my brain corrode the clicking cogs the little angles the small mistrustful mirrors scatter the shrill tiny creaking of mustnot darenot cannot spatter the varnish off me that I may stand up my face to the wet wind and feel my body and drenched salty palpitant April reborn in my flesh.

I would spit the dust out of my mouth burst out of these stiff wire webs supple incautious like the crocuses that spurt up too soon their saffron flames and die gloriously in late blizzards and leave no seed.

 Off Pico

XII

Out of the unquiet town seep jagged barkings lean broken cries unimaginable silent writhing of muscles taut against strangling heavy fetters of darkness.

On the pool of moonlight clots and festers a great scum of worn-out sound.

 (Elagabalus, Alexander looked too long at the full moon; hot blood drowned them cold rivers drowned them.)

 Float like pondflowers on the dead face of darkness cold stubs of lusts names that glimmer ghostly adrift on the slow tide of old moons waned.

 (Lais of Corinth that Holbein drew drank the moon in a cup of wine; with the flame of all her lovers' pain she seared a sign on the tombs of the years.)

 Out of the voiceless wrestle of the night flesh rasping harsh on flesh a tune on a shrill pipe shimmers up like a rocket blurred in the fog of lives curdled in the moon's glare, staggering up like a rocket into the steely star-sharpened night above the stagnant moon-marshes the song throbs soaring and dies.

(Semiramis, Zenobia lay too long in the moon's glare; their yearning grew sere and they died and the flesh of their empires died.)

On the pool of moonlight clots and festers a great scum of worn-out lives.

 

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