BOURGEOIS POET
I seek the entrance of the rabbit hole. Maybe it's the door that has
no name.
My century, take savagery to your heart. Take wooden idols, walk
them through the streets. Bow down to Science.
My century that boils history to a pulp for newspaper, my century
of the million dollar portrait, century of the decipherment of
Linear B and the old scrolls, century of the dream of penultimate
man (he wanders among the abandoned skyscrapers of Kansas;
he has already forgotten language), century of the turning-point
of time, the human wolf-pack and the killing light.
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Crazy-clean, our armies and bodies. Crazy-clean the institutions of
the mind. Crazy-clean Washington, D.C.
The generals say: mop up, no sweat, cordon sanitaire, liquidate,
flush, wipe out.
How many have escaped the prison of Art? Who has not been extra–
dited? Through the blue grid of technique we read the wild
faces.
Stanza means room, with bars on it. Form means shape, beaten and
maimed. It is done, ingeniously done, immortally done. For a
century or two it pleases and instructs.
Now and again, one of the slaves escapes. His eyes are put out with
platinum hat-pins.
To escape to America. How is it there? Do the blue-coats smile?
The little ones file into the classroom. The giggling dies down. They
salute the flag. They bow their heads. Childhood is over. When
the air-raid sounds they crouch on the floor like Moslems. It's
only for practice of course.
I tell the secret of the starving artist. A day after he died the
chauffeurs knocked at the door.
Poets of early death, who overturned the boat? Physician John
Keats, cure thyself!
Lists of the mad and bibles of the damned. Dictionaries of suicide,
card indexes of the compulsive revolutionaries, Protestant ceme–
teries of sacred remains. Beatification of the Dutchman's ear.
Dnder the dome of poetry an array of saints as broken as
christological glass. Martyrology of prosodists. Mariolatry of
Hebrews. Every twilight of the mind for sale.
