Same Puddle
‘So much straw’
Is how Aquinas
Put it, writing
Provender to naught,
And the death-
Bed astink with
The harrying autochthonous
Devils of inapproachable
Night. So it
Is—stumpy meanderings,
Runt conjectures, meddle-
Some aerial ecliptics.
A yellow willow’s
Ropery adjusts its
Branches to rub
The arbitrary earth,
Unfussy mistress, tag
To a bandying
Prevaricant. A slag
Heap of misfired
Longings, torrid tootings,
Goose marasmuses, and
Bawling. (The hilarity
Of earthly needs.)
So it is.
Writing out a
Discrepant plaint, a
Measure inharmonious, a
Truckle torch’d by
The official weight
Of its burthen.
Naples and Etna,
Console and chock.
A ledge traversing
A life, ligature
And ‘swarte byndynge.’
The straw I’s
Collapsible and hardy,
Writ big into
Landscape’s own largesse,
The lavender balling
Up under sun-
Slant, black horse-
Leech stretch of
Lee-shadow where
I put down
My sack. All
Night my pen,
Shirt-pocket’d, leaks—
A pendicule of
Ink the shape
Of Corsica soaks
The cambric. I
Nod into residuum,
Simple and thin,
A theriomorph made
Of cloud-canter
Splay’d out across
The field. Nothing
Amassing at a
Regular abridgeable docket
Pace, blowing off
Into copses and
Corridors, nothing writ
In indigestible doggèd
Musickings dug out
Of the air’s
Most valiant denials,
Straw-chafery, ‘a
Kodpese like a
Pokett.’ So sewn,
So sown, doubting
Thomas Aquinas fever-
Tree-rack’d, pester’d
By the scurrilous
Droll ‘daunce’ of
What the wind
Carries off, chaff
Of mandibula, speech
Put down for
Naught, the ‘severall
Fallaxes and elenches
Of them.’ So it
Be, writ city
Word-fluvial, its
Misshapen escarpments, its
Hoist and drivel.
One pounds together
A momentary mayhem,
And goes off.
