Keep away, son, these lakes are salt. These flowers

Eat insects. Here private lunatics

Yell and skip in a very dry country.

Or where some haywire monument

Some badfaced daddy of fear

Commands an unintelligent rite.

To dance on the unlucky mountain,

To dance they go, and shake the sin

Out of their feet and hands,

Frenzied until the sudden night

Falls very quiet, and magic sin

Creeps, secret, back again.

Badlands echo with omens of ruin:

Seven are very satisfied, regaining possession:

(Bring a little mescaline, you’ll get along!)

There’s something in your bones,

There’s someone dirty in your critical skin,

There’s a tradition in your cruel misdirected finger

Which you must obey, and scribble in the hot sand:

“Let everybody come and attend

Where lights and airs are fixed

To teach and entertain. O watch the sandy people

Hopping in the naked bull’s-eye,

Shake the wildness out of their limbs,

Try to make peace like John in skins

Elijah in the timid air

or Anthony in tombs:

Pluck the imaginary trigger, brothers.

Shoot the devil: he’ll be back again!”

America needs these fatal friends

Of God and country, to grovel in mystical ashes,

Pretty big prophets whose words don’t burn,

Fighting the strenuous imago all day long.

Only these lunatics, (O happy chance)

Only these are sent. Only this anaemic thunder

Grumbles on the salt flats, in rainless night:

O go home, brother, go home!

The devil’s back again,

And magic Hell is swallowing flies.