SILK

the slime of all my yesterdays rots in the hollow of my skull and if my stomach would contract because of some explicable phenomenon such as pregnancy or constipation I would not remember you or that because of sleep infrequent as a moon of greencheese that because of food nourishing as violet leaves that because of these and in a few fatal yards of grass in a few spaces of sky and treetops a future was lost yesterday as easily and irretrievably as a tennis ball at twilight

Revolving in oval loops of solar speed, Couched in cauls of clay as in holy robes, Dead men render love and war no heed, Lulled in the ample womb of the full-tilt globe. No spiritual Caesars are these dead; They want no proud paternal kingdom come; And when at last they blunder into bed World-wrecked, they seek only oblivion. Rolled round with goodly loam and cradled deep, These bone shanks will not wake immaculate To trumpet-toppling dawn of doomstruck day : They loll forever in colossal sleep; Nor can God's stern, shocked angels cry them up From their fond, final, infamous decay.

Two, of course there are two. It seems perfectly natural now --- The one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded And balled? like Blake's. Who exhibits The birthmarks that are his trademark --- The scald scar of water, The nude Verdigris of the condor. I am red meat. His beak Claps sidewise: I am not his yet. He tells me how badly I photograph. He tells me how sweet The babies look in their hospital Icebox, a simple Frill at the neck Then the flutings of their Ionian Death-gowns. Then two little feet. He does not smile or smoke. The other does that His hair long and plausive Bastard Masturbating a glitter He wants to be loved. I do not stir. The frost makes a flower, The dew makes a star, The dead bell, The dead bell. Somebody's done for.

In darkroom of your eye the moonly mind someraults to couterfeit eclipse; bright angels black out over logic's land under shutter of their handicaps. Commanding that corkscrew comet jet forth ink to pitch the white world down in swiveling flood, you overcast all order's noonday rank and turn god's radiant photograph to shade. Steepling snake in that contrary light invades the dilate lens of genesis to print your flaming image in birthspot with characters no cockcrow can deface. O maker of proud planet's negative, obscure the scalding sun till no clocks move.