Yesterday, to Us

TWO POEMS

YESTERDAY, TO US

With dignity of gongs

towards a vanishing-

point of flags

the political prisoner

is led-Yesterday to

us, unquiet priests of silence, the

hypnotic

doze of power was a

quality of atmosphere

peculiar to

tides columns

seals and famous

boulevards; and the common-

place (without gongs) the only

but not the

reality. The remoteness

of life is usurped now.

The distracted odds and

ends of high

authority have put braid and

uniforms on all the

corner-boys; and the decadent,

the guy who

tried to make the waitress,

had cats and velvet in

his bedroom, he rules now

in stadia

and public squares. And where that happens

the Aristotelians

hold foot-races with the

Platonists

and other connoisseurs

of naves and holy thought

to mop the vomit from

the super-

intellectual shirt. Thus

power and gongs, become

the sole reality, lead us

prisoner

between the flags . .. Oh now

silence comes to us no

more with blooms and carvéd

seas. It brings

no smiling inhalations of

deep music, no crystal

joy. No. It holds terror clawing

at the cables

of man's uneven rise; it

whizzes in our ears

like a jungle taut with

shiverings ;

it is dense with unbelievable

cries . . . We have therefore gone

out to stand watch on the crossings

yesterday

so commonplace and strange.