The Leaders

four poems j

THE LEADERS

So in that dream's dark orpheum

Isaw them meet:

like a closet of coats

Like a conference of mayors,

A Sabbath under the EL

Oh I cried the warning syllable

Stiff as a buckle-waken.

Lifted my hand like an adze.

But the tall one rose

With his high photographer,

The lean dull alcoholic

Moved on his isolated errand,

And the murderers arrived

By clockwork, smiling.

At the iron table

Their heads turned on their axles,

Surgical,

The guests stood

Shutting out the light,

But I looked at the clock in a serious love declaration.

In the unused gun room could not cease

From looking at the time.

I heard a voice then, called like an old retriever,

Calling the names of armies.

And the Shadrachs arose and departed,

The Sunday emperor rode high

His teams and ferrises,

The umpires howled in the afternoon.

I heard in caverns and among diseases

The crows locate the innocent.

The thieves sang sweetly on their rafters.

But I was awakened by a stipulation of doorbells,

By uncertainty among an army of invaders.

Oh I turned like a hinge of bristol,

Cried out in tongues

Not known to me, or none,

Or half forgotten: I rose up nameless,

And paralyzed, with bones like locks,

Or chloroformed, or blind rode clockwise

Down a mill of anvils.

Across the square in that ceremony of sticks

I crept forever like a minotaur.

I saw the trellis or forest faces turn,

Heard the drums fly over in squadrons with loud wings.