not him
Grandfather, sleepless in a room upstairs,
Seldom came down; so when they tript him down
We wept. The blind light sang about his ears,
Later we heard. Brother had pull. In pairs
He, some, slept upon stone.
Later they stamped him down in mud.
The windlass drew him silly & odd-eyed, blood
Broke from his ears before they quit.
Before they trucked him home they cleaned him up somewhat.
Only the loose eyes’ glaze they could not clean
And soon he died. He howled a night and shook
Our teeth before the end; we breathed again
When he stopt. Abraham, what we have seen
Write, I beg, in your Book.
No more the solemn and high bells
Call to our pall; we crawl or gibber; Hell’s
Irritable & treacherous
Despairs here here (not him) reach now to shatter us.
2.
Luftmenschen dream, the men who live on air,
Of other values, in the blackness watching
Peaceful for gangs or a quick raid,
The ghetto nods a mortal head
Soundless but for a scurry, a sigh, retching,—
No moan of generation fear.
Hands hold each other limper
While the moon lengthens on the sliding river.
Prolong the woolen night—Solomon sang—
And never the soul with its own revenge encumber
But like a cry of cranes dies out,
Ecstatic, faint, a moment float—
ing, fying soul, or flares like August timber
In wild woe vanishing.
Blue grows from grey, towards slaughter.
(An Ashkenazi genius stoned Ivan; a sculptor.)
“Boleslaus brought us here, surnamed the Good,
Whose dust rolls nearly seven hundred years
Towards Sirius: we thank that King
As for the ledge whereto we cling,
Night in the caves under the ruins; stars,
Armbands come off, for which we could
Be glad but the black troops gather.”
So those who kneel in the paling sky and shiver.
Dawn like a rose unfolds—flower of parks—
Alleys of limetrees, villas, ponds, a palace
Down a deserted riverbed,
The Lazienki Gardens’ pride,
Monument to a king able and callous
Who far Vienna from the Turks
Bloodily did deliver.
For foreigners, now, a sort of theatre.
One officer in black demarches here
Cupshot, torn collar by a bitch unwilling
Native & blonde through the debauch
That kept him all night from his couch,
Hurts his head and from the others’ howling
Drove him out for morning air.
Brooding over the water
He reddens suddenly. He went back & shot her.
the will
A frail vague man, in whom our senses ached
With nothing, began to whisper with himself
At line-up, from the rear,—
We trembled for him,—shook the scald that caked
His skull, totting up phantoms none could solve,
Fag-end of a career.
(Shadowless in a cairn, four lights. Farewell,
The legacy trots off,
A swimming moment of the stiff’s desire
Such decades since. Or nothing trots to tell
Intestate once with love
Pain brain stood up a bit out of time’s mire.)
He scrambled one night out
And dodged between their lights far to the wire,
Where he lodged. I suppose he crisped, dying in fire;
A shot or so, a shout;
But certainly, lifting our scalps, well beyond fear,
He suddenly sang, sang, hanging on the wire.
the waiting
Nearer, my heart, to me … My cigarette
Endures an apotheosis; I feel
More for the grey twirl than I mull or whet
God’s promise … probably the butt is real.
Now I seem less so. Than tissue & ash
I am more indistinct, than fire and weed
Yielding to fire, as fire to the weed’s trash:
Do pins & feathers kill? Can a root bleed?
Master my heart will nothing to my side?
Otherwhere, neither broods nor aches for me
Regitive by the iron door unterrified
Foully it leans. That hole, my mystery,
Which once its bolt, the muscle of their State,
Opened to drop me in, cannot keep shut!
Lancet intensities I anticipate!
Feathery movement twires about my thought!
The frontier posts, disfigured sphincters, spill
Invaders home; heart through the ribs returns;
How corn & wine return, transfigured, fill
Sleepy lands, our land. Ice on my brow burns,
Ebbing, blackfellow-dull, when the bolt shoots
Over the tigerish flood may I soar steady
Whither the latched starless & heartless roots
O need blindly night. I am almost ready—