Surly, mean, mysteriously solemn,
Exuberant, they raised their glasses,
Sang venomous, sang sad.
Two women live here, one man
And mysel£ The libido hymn, the anthem
Oflamentation - Dad's infidelity
Is the melody. The Mojo gangs
Roamed the beer factories ,
And the night blossomed like an avalanche,
Burying you under the weight ofVenus,
Under a dome of visible stars.
A.
F. MORITZ
Founders
Beautiful in its distance
the day burning down and flight of stars,
quiet in your eyes, disaster so far away
it is still forgotten music, ancient peace.
Incomparable, this human world: the vast
plain of black roofs,
light and music at the quiet crossing where five streets join.
Full ofjoyous prophecy is the flight of heraldic sparrows
in shifting rivers, childish, self-willed
flocks unravelling among elms at dusk. Women decay,
and houses stand open, orange light
streams from the torn eyes and mouths. Others are dark
as though ruined, abandoned last century
or this afternoon: in the distant day of the founders.
Hidden in a moist culvert with booming frogs,
tracks gleam bronze in the low sun and cattails
flow with white molten flax congealing.
Dusky slag. Purple thistle. Empty flowering fields,
guardian lights and chain-link fence. Decades, rust
made lace of black factory hangars on the river flats
and the red west burns through: pattern and quiet glory,
steel decomposing, new fire.
