From Seine

Kenneth Koch

Hounded by Central Islip till the end
Of pyrethmetic days, and onward wishing
Oh that he like me and she like me too,
And the green arboretum bush waving
And the elephant in his noose waving
And the deaths saying goodbye-
Hello to the Death Family!
Here is mother, father, and here is Nell:
She is looking very bright and pretty in her nasturtiums
And the sea wall caves down-
Exit Roland with Angelica in braccia: Come?
Says Orlando, you expect to find a bathroom
In these mountains? Come on, now, father, now.
And the Greece temperature change index that day
Floogled all the way bottom to a chortled bottom,
I began to rain confidence on the eastern shore
When the Egyptian confidence room opened, she looked pretty
She had him eating nasturtiums out of a symbolic tube
Of yesterday's restored brush-stroke emblems, whose
Pie only God could call a "more than gift".
There were selected ways and "island gift"
And "party pris" and all other conduct emblems
Toward a future and then toward a future
And then her neck toward a future-if you call "the limited
 way".
And maybe after all that is right. Maybe the alert dock hound
Scimitar evening is "frigolescent"-I think you look pretty
With me; she had him call in hallways


With busted floors, and when he gave the album
Of wasted flowers to her mother, she
Began to dance, as if Okie's Delicatessen were shifted Paris.
But cannot come easily to the true meaning,
Which is "he topped her puberty"? No,
Another bale to want about Ann Jeffries.
Then she began to slip up, down the beaches
Where cookies had been laid. To her the colonel
Was just a human mattress, but the sea
Was dialectic brilliance. They all lived family
Style in a huge straw hut in the Barbados
Where Dad worked out fifteen hours a day as a steward
In a psychiatric shipping firm
Down St. Louis Avenue. Melanie took up the fluffy powder
And smashed it into the clothesline towel. Damn Bernie,
She said. And the ocean keeps flashing
Signs of hope, or "perfection is a bottle of iced tea"
As the lost ranger said, when Uncle Ernie
Was smashed to doom beside the oceanic cave
And Martha came back to her babies above land, with this
  sad news.
Come on, Ariel, I'm tired of dippy
Parties and your slow-down repartee.
There is only one great comic born every five million "an-
 tons", said Uncle Ernie,
But Pam said, "You're the ivory lord, of me."
And the balls were hit out into the infield
And the outfield, and Bernie kept looking for the
Ball which Bettie had hit which had a white necktie painted
  on it
And he said There is only one great comic born every five
Million "epons", it was impossible to see the Mediterranean
In her waving bush, since Fred had deleted the ikons
From the coffee machine. I began to catch on at last, and
  opened,

Myself, a King Kong Fruit Store. We have
A great comic among us, Beirut Radio said-
You who are truly my friend would never welcome
A personal appearance that betrayed me like this one
For no sooner had the beautiful wolfhound princess entered
 the Microbe Hotel
But that Dr. Factory began to strut and scratch. He said, Wel-
 come
To fruit-bar, but Edna was so cold
From being in the bottle plant, and the Ant Riviera was closed
For feeding period, so there was nothing
To do but come out clothed as ducks,
Which is what we did, and which caused the trouble
You are hearing about now in the radio report
From Radio Free Biarritz which I have on my cufflinks
As a kind of "Sunday emblem", which you are,
In fact, committed to no more than lightning,
But lightning which populates the future
Still can leave a frigid old cow in Banff
And so I say Let all the images stored up by the flashing towels
Be a passionate party to that ship's constant loneliness
As it triples its fuels by emptying one pale guitar-
Unless you are synthetic and can drop silver from gold.
The Medicine Man told me. As a cow drops into the future
From the past. He smiles. The bettered ivory on the keys
Begins to braise her eyes with some Smetana,
And she turns toward the grizzled orphan with a cussword
Standing on the lips of the cornflakes which she has brought
 you from the mountains
Where the answer was found, by one old goat, in her lipstick.
Smear, smear, said the old Bavarian gush-hound;
And let us too smear the ways
Of this dachshund hemorrhage Rapunzel ivory princess
Who promises everything and does everything for the profit
Of two long ivory staves, which she finds in the mountains
So that when after the sun has set the ship is still there


 And all preparations are being made for the werewolf to col-
  lapse in a movie,
 Still there is the dead stock still response of the whispering
 Of the sea, and the flat land past desire. America
 Remembers it, an orange, pubescent with desire. The old
 Doctor disremembers it, and pulses with a swallow-tail re-
  cuperation. "Day is yet nigh!"
"The night is yet harmless!" "Nameless, oh you, all-absorbent!"

 The spoons, though puzzled, in surprise mentioned the bacca-
  laureate
To the weak Mexican town, who, immediately nestling
 With a coccyx-less elephant, defied them to repeat it on the
 Horse, which they did next day, unrelenting,
 Until Venice had to be thoroughly searched for a powder to
  dry
 When their noggins began to wink, stirred by the future ex-
  cellence
 Of tiled oil-catchers, which, when they were ferreting
The priests kept dumping into their unused viola da gambas
Notched for excellence, and purple violins when they went
  prinking
About the outskirts for these reeds pure notices of choice
To the intelligences of the Rapunzels of another era;
My own selection from the feed of heaven is climate,
Choice, and the feed of these heavenly bars
Which the oysters strafed all night above the climate
Which was making these bars drive crazy, and apes and chim-
  panzees
Also into the reputed gulf which-here he was interrupted
By a change of powder. Nutmeg Carson has gotten in the
  game!
These jewels which the boat slips through the water
And which are reputed "nephew" "palfrey" and "hem"
 Still could have been manufactured by a greater
 Emblem than your poor dope of a cloud.

If these passionate sleeves fondled colors in choices
Until the civics absolutely went another way
Then there are ices and sleeps and aloes-
The dwarf is a greater man; but the heap is a greater.

Now one old general comes here to say
His prayers above the city. Someone is dropped into a crater
And here someone Egyptian goes to sleep. An idiot is born in
  Parigi,
And an ivory stove is wheezed about in Paris. A man begins
  to cry
At the thought of the baby, and a woman begins to grieve
At the formation of an intelligence without a nerve.
Closer together, the humorless blossoms can signify
Only the return peanut of a mateless tennis match-
How curious to be dead beneath a sky
In which everything remarkable is hidden-except for the
  flocks
Of the birds, and an occasional Numa
(Someone's name), blue jewels, and the raucousness of grass-
  hoppers
Closing the jalousies into Olga Park
Where the bunnies lie about like extreme craters
Strewn by the cashiered parallax of jolting
When there were no more tears in the canal.
And now a baby brings an apple. The rabbi sleeps.
The hirsute rainbucket of phosphorescence is decapitated
By the coolness of a sigh-or by the cruelty of a lamb.
It is right, but the secret was before
On the left, and before the end of last month
She played with a jewel. Now, in the winter, it is removed
  from her mouth
Where an ice hockey game dropped the calves of the girls' legs
So far below freezing the defilade deprived me of the right to
  wish that it was not my chopper
But the sea that was going down.


Maybe it is a land of oblongs
For which you have been pining all your days
Next to the stove museum where Ann brought Henry
And said Look at the clouds, Henry; see how the sky plays
Tricks with the ordinary person's vision; and Henry's okeys
Surprised the madam because they were so sheer,
So useless, finally, for understanding
If he liked the glass dales or not, because he had been tempted
Previously to renounce the bluish black top hat which she had
Purchased for him Saturday midnight the Giudecca
He said I needn't look so good in that
As you suppose, or as chiffon supposes. The sea
Was turgid with fuming tumescence; it was squealing
Like an itemized tribune of flatulent glass dolls and kisses
Through a chimney, in the skyway, or lip outline mark
Where the dollar bills first established their mastery
Always coming down on the fir tree seeking white bread
Which the farmer had promised them in some distant time
Before the pure colonnades existed, at the left was the laundry
And on the right was the sty-there was a continual va et vient
Between the two columns of porphyry,
A nicety for when the purple-coated monster apples did come
Bearing a pension for the silence, which she hated.

 It is moonlight now
 Over the bears.
 Father Bear is tired, and he says to Mother Bear,
"The island is becoming too small for our twelve little fishing
  boats;
 I would like to establish a concession on the mainland, which
  would like
 To concede me oblongs." Mother Bear hopped about in the
  silence
 Of the fresh blue air, and she glanced at Father
 Over her shoulder. He looks like a Catholic priest, she imag-
  ined,

 Or, as when I first saw him dancing in Yugoslavia,
 He looks like Judas Priest. And Mamma Bear said, "Wor-
  thington,
 Worthington, you have been on the island too long;
It is time for us to think about the little ones,
The everpresent and omnivorous baby bears,
Who are coming up every year as a result of our screwing,
 Of them we must think and of bear job opportunities
 Which I agree would be greater on the mainland."

 I grow tired of this absurd simplicity as quickly as you do,
 But it represents the truth. If bears' concerns
 Are not exactly identical with human ones,
 Yet it's only by human analogies that we can understand them.
 She placed a red hot mocassin on the table and was gone.

 A difference between me and you-
 You are abjectly hopeful in a steamy kind of way,
 Whereas I am pure flawed crystal, able to share my light
 With a universe which is pure flawed eyeball. I wonder at
 The exaggerations to which occasions force
 You; and I marvel
 At the bracelet which you bring
 Into the charmed circle of the bull-fight when you say:
"The test of prudence is a life of need
 To spend outside the Bauhaus. It is kind,
 But not imprudent, to attack with a certain variety of orange
  rind
The devastate vicinity canals-I've got that wrong-
 The deadly fascination of canals-no, that's wrong either-
 Devastating vicinity of canals
Is what I meant, but that is not right anyway
 Since 'what I mean' is never what I meant
Except in some inferior phosphorous sense
 Which includes the twelve meanings of the verb 'to be'. Are
  you still listening-?"


And you go on and on and on
And I am still listening because I marvel at what you say,
They are my own thoughts exactly, I have been dead for six
 years
And you have been bearing high the red torch of tradition,
You alone are doing it, there is no one else-
Well, put it down, I am coming back to life,
I am tired of living in the earth and dishes
A little blue rabbit has been doing the dishes
And I am longing for the turtles,
The turtles of fascination which I once saw on the plates,
And the rabbit hearts that vanished from the piers.

Perhaps it is the wrong word, kindness,
For the revolting way we treat each other
On Fridays and Sundays, though on Saturday night
All seems to be going well, the doorbell the incinerator
The childish rat; and you lean over a parking bench to say,
It is well, that the clouds smeared with ugliest cinnamon mirror
An "exuberant" sky, then said that was the wrong word,
Shyness, for the way we act about the dwarf
In the white suit, who is always going into the coast
Food station as if it were a mixture
Of paradise and the seven brassieres' hell. A mystery to awaken
Some morning would be this fluting, which is constantly im-
 perceptible
Although the roofs do their insane best not to resist it,
And you at last are well away on the trail
Which you love. Even the little pears could not prevent it
Nor the giant apples lying across the trail. They said, You
 need a building,
A large one, a canoe hut diverged with apple blossoms;
We smiled at the old wet men and went our way
Toward the wet women; each had been alive at least thirty
 years;
The parking beach was deserted; a kind of crisscross
Of flags and passageways could doubt the trees' maturity;
 A single person could never become transparent on that beach;
 The days shove under; a millionaire leaves his legs
 For the benefit of science; the car fashion institute is roped in
 By delicate oblongs. Some slow marble clickings drift uncon-
  sciously toward the sea
 Of idiotic markings, made by a change
 In the weather, from red to chlorine swill. My aunt,
The Countess of Freitagen, always used to call it
"The cruellest animal", because of the way it behaved
In a stiff collar, although the dirtiest water
 Could never find it to put its foot in it in the silly
 Repeating islands. There at least we had a chance to gasp
 And sunbathe for fifteen seconds, just then the monsoon
 Began to collect its annual tariff of ptomaine animals and tea-
  cups
 Which the frizzled breeze was flinging into the channels
 Of a poodle's heart, whose master was a mistress
 Of fortunate clouds-that day, lay pink and white and
  chuckled
 Out, the sweet men of the sea. To harm this legion
Jessica accounted a heinous crime, but Beo-grime was redun-
  dant
 With ectoplasmic gripes. Look, he said, this whole silence of
  the tundra
 As measured with a fish's thigh, sheer global
 Different actimony-how high can you go in a canoe? And
  Julian said,
That would depend on your astronomy. Both brothers leaped
  into the Please Me
And rose high over the lumps of dough which Fish-Bath had
  left spread about the co-stars
Whose names Tim took rapidly writing down-Amos, Ben,
  and Sandy, which one is the girl?
Tim kept pondering the question all day long;
Then, that night, the hugest egg was laid
That ever Parma's vegetables had witnessed.


My cheese came down from the fuel-indoctrinating moun-
  tains to witness
For itself the enticing event of pure white docks above the
  habitable
Tennis shoes, ever tired of renouncing.
Then, suddenly, the sea began to play for assembly
And even the dunce was astonished. Long previously, the white
  fantastic ballroom
Had been imperceptibly vanishing from the cookies' carnival
Of dishwatered kisses, and then she replied The canal.
It was cook's water and old light feeding the empire
Once again, beside the faded bricks. She took a peacock's tail
  and set sail
Up to the dormitory window, where Peter
Had left the emulsion to savagely rest. Juliet, who had been
  wintering by the phosphate,
Then crushed Olson with a dream. Her purse opens.
In it we see sea monsters of every variety
And this includes the fabulously terrifying sea apples
Which the district attorney of cloud beds was so studiously re-
  furbishing
Above the lacy dormer windows when I cried in bed
About the horror of the flowers and the flies. Jules said: The
  infection
Will not last past morning; the defeated island
Now brings its crazy promise to the head-rows of the sea. A
  boat slapped
Against the knee-farmer's tail. It was summer. The glass cloud-
  burst
Had finished by breaking the records of the first clouds-
Of which these islands proudly led the way into the tea shop.

Inside every animal is a beleaguered Shanghai man,
Said Frederick the First of Prussia. We in our modern day
Are fond of the brushwork quotation. We think that protects
  us from the apples.

 It was Gabriel d'Annunzio, was it not,
 At the time of his tragic love affair with Sarah Bernhardt-
 Unless it was with some other great star that he had this affair,
   Duse?
 It was d'Annunzio who said-I have forgot
 Whate'er d'Annunzio said. The night is hot.
 Come, let's go out into its feverish breeze.
 We wandered into a hay station and bar. You had a gin and
  orange.
 I looked at the stable part of the atmosphere disconsolately.
 This ambience, I said, 's no ambiance-aye, there's a difference,
  let me tell it to you,
 Aye, there's a difference to the heart again.
 The summer foamed with released past time memories and
   golden heart-attack fundromes
 Where the egregious eagles could play at shibboleth and night's
  pastime violin.
 The crushing night was sounding
 As if the sea were full of air,
 And as if some boat came pounding
 Along the entire coast looking for a single hair.
 A wiry one, I'll warrant; better clues
 They make, those wiry ones. He put his shoes
 Into the dashboard refrigerator and cleft Yugoslavia
 Into the shape of a sloe-eyed button. You must not go there,
  she said
 With a college horse; take along a necktie for his button.
 In the winter the clouds gave the heart attack a purse
 Of wishes-one of the wisest of these was to play the guitar
 With an ikon's shrieking delight. But summer, spring, and
  fall met at once, with great plans for rebellion.
"Oblongs will never be our treat tonight,"
 Villa said; but Harry saith,
"Oblongs are going to be our treat tonight."