From Seine

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."