"A"22: Part II

LOUIS ZUKOFSKY

"A"_22

PART II

Centuries (place) telescope Sun rule

over star sea moon: ink

a Veery Coach uncreated creator

instructs Sun with His effects-

leading His slain dog immortal.

New knots renewed ink anew:

without wheel, coin-paved gold,

couriers mountain streams land tie

Sun's echo of song, innocence

works no need empire mines.

A goblet of prase, gems

shade light of a shrine

till a simplest mouth pierces

the meaning-the devotion of

craft ground fine before hero-

itself longs the taper right,

fare, light, for delight not

raising false hopes above nature,

miracle confirms only the possible

the eyes redeem while justice

monkies mischievous life, if she's

beautiful they'll see: action's end

is to finish. A beast |

in a dream warns not

to kill in all languages:

maps, graved carved stones, musical

strings-blesses willow shoots shy

at dawn, still no buds.

Old scourge on whitenosed horse

you said pilgrims to one

shrine mistake sky's place thruout

earth. Gray tamarisk in black

wind survives you, no shrine

under your birthday tree lost

in thickening forest. White summit

of higher ranges hang golden

kaki, pomegranate that slaked thirst-

birds, conquered river take pleasure,

the boy's wise you said

his rose and pink flower

a deeper shade-gone timorous:

a single sunbeam enough to

drive away many shadows, now

stands still, not time beginning

to measure-verdant foliate pure

more mated. Brightness. Discriminates minutely,

eye looks to arch to

the Letter-Poverty the Fool's

Rod on his own back-

why deny what you've not

tried: read, not into, it:

desire until all be bright.

Called angelic instantly to resume

its humanity, it is not

enough to be happy: camel

suffers birth hardest-desert nomad

her midwife, few defiled names

resound again. Bought cheap, sold

dear-rite, high riser, alchemical

authority of men who'd make

men in alembic, consonants with-without

vowels quaver larynx and syrinx

rills work least with ideas-

history a plant that dies

tho the angel's messenger cry

war's trickery, forced labor's ruins,

gold's not the Prophet of

Work. Red-maple leaves a rush

of rich robes skyborne seamless

completed with breath of a

yawn what can divination teach-

venture here, venture lambent sidereal

foliage prevailing yet not impassable

new people's arrow weakens, call

us ethereal gentlest, birds echoed

this this November, their men's

magnanimity strips itself naked, each

stays, loves his first love:

needle's West seas urge East,

today shouldn't err, hard hearts.

Primitive: hurtless snail horn, painting

Order without Ordainer, cleaning ports,

troubled sea: virgule-a coach

seahorses draw home or one

dissonance winked conceived acting together

eyes fixed in their attention

even the stained wall vanquished:

one time the other: borne

with metal letters for all

nations, mirroring not with reed

penned notes lion chest opened

inventing lilies: if there's good

in sin depravation's hated, the

genial worse: let the deaf

judge with eyes, the blind

with ears, nearness and distance

motion and rest, the light

not limned by lines graces

face; the body figures, not

clamor, eddies of notes destroy

argument, eternize silence of stone

dim as it may-tell

me if ever-compare bones

of horse to man's tiptoe.

Nailed eon in the second

hour a child knew better

asleep-for old age stone

thinks, judges no dust will

raise men of two mouths,

they spoiled the great world:

pitiful piety their fatuous fantasy

my art makes me their

idol: was there ever time

work did not convene endurer

modesty not cheap or foolish

a lovable woman's unpainted white

of her cambric forming her

landscape or portrait: confronted with

militia's tower ancient buildings stand.

Peaceable woods elude paradox desire

their uses thru the world

mine coals crystallize in earth.

Hats on scrape your boots

laugh it off, abstracter of

quintessence, speak mother tongue stonechat

click eternity cant love lacks

what it hasn't a Case

of One House-less ink

governing others, blind mole perswaded

any beast can see. Brained

mule, light heart, trumpet full

of vines mercy no merchandise,

art tracking music: loose as

the old beachcomber's gripe-the

folly .. . craving for power . . . circumnavigating

to read music into plumage-

eye den hearing-'hungry I

climb'd to eat grass'-envy.

In the flagrate of cold

theatre of the world the

wren and hindsight nest-an

architecture honors a people's obstinate

valor ages thru infinite changes,

cold, caldron run over, scattered

congregate, their sanctuary the Land:

the blood's motion-arteries to

veins and back to the

heart: come at last into

ample fields sip every cup

a great book great mischief

perched dwarf on a giant

may see horse race or

hidebound calves out to pasture:

poet living tomb of his

games-a quiet life for

an ocean: the emphatical decussation

quincunx chiasma of s-leafed, s-

blossom, and of olive orchards |

5 fingers of a hand

crossed X of bird merrythought:

conjugal or wedding number: all

things began in Order to

end in Ordainer, yet always

few genera rule without exception,

make their worst use of

time's shortness conceding the fletcher's

mark-our ballads care little

who makes the laws: the

higher geometry dividing a circle

by 5 radii which concur

not to make diameters: not

necessary that the things a

sceptic proposes be consonant,

only that the abler speak

plainer, solid as the illiterate

seeing water boiling, hissing at

the ends of burning logs:

to fare soul not bothering

my son's the world paroles

with words, pleasing Justice-

a meridian decides. To guard

the glories of a face...

the senses are too gross

and he'll contrive a Sixth

to contradict the other Five-

still the same as each

other without loss of truth

life knits: Health's one Thing,

moving the Earth . . . a proposal...

Ox world needs put on

the Furniture of a Horse...

who can make Shadows, no

thanks to Sun? 4 tones

teen blood's tide to think

or panser, dress wounds or

groom. No, one cannot play

everything at first sight (Old

Peruke-Sir, a piper?) Hardly

hell wit's use: I prefer

people say 'it isn't so

crazy as you might think-

we're different species.' An historian's

vindication: minute particulars of little

moment to whom they belong;

doesn't pretend to have read

all Authority . . . factions . . . disturbed happiness

in this world for the

sake of the next . . . request

they forget my vindication. Bawling

inhuman unison-study affinity, ciliate

animal strains-the angel philosophizes

paths bordered with nevergreen.

Scrimshaw: taste bud savors go

of a thing-mort trumpets

whale has its louse-the

tragic multiplies farce; value is

simple, heartened in water crystallizing

pure crystal, céntent beyond phase.

Between grape bay and hungry

bay wind song and sea

foam, reef (stone beeves)-struck

green, kelp waves arms, dips

tons my only eyes fear:

merely-ocean blued windows sweat

between soused bitten cliff and

that-we're freed by silence,

anger lights windflower, tears': or

a mad gist always glad?

sun burns thru the roars

dear eyes, all eyes, pageant

bay inlet, garden casuarina, spittle-spawn

(not laurel) nameless we name

it, and sorrows dissolve-human:

behind terrace boat plant under

back wall pear tree hugged,

its twigs paired axile thorns

crossways opposite leaves thought quincunx

urged all day in town

walked past wild narcissus of

another cottage areaway, fan palm's

purple date across the road

downhill to lily-turf (snakebeard-Once)

shag bordered arboretum banyan, shadow

rooted above ground-mazed alien

gazeless stare seeled pulse. In

town mid-ocean shoppers, fiscal lunchers

at the marina breezing, discount

banking an obstinacy of continuity.

Idlers of extinct volcanic island

thinking quincunx when a flash

hurricane bid early tea-trees

undiscerned from sea exemplified them

comedians bowing out of the

theatre incommoding others, 'that was

quick . . . drying'-birds homing twilight

the arboretum plants light green

only against darker, darkest green

lumens of viburnum, sea-fig aloe-

(be my gardens to be)

uphill one road-shoulder lower, night

haste, first heavenly dark, wind

and the roar louder divining

boat plant and pear tree

behind the door-the cable

thought shuns thinking ahead of

grief waited: better not see

death as every body goes,

sister . . . beyond the laboratory brain... .

that alive longed for friends,

had's misery's not to have

when our lack enjoins them

death vying with their lives.

Another place, another time: timeless.

Mist, summit disembodied lake, moonlighter

hours a ferry ghosts the

pier: these our actors... Ayre...

it isn't true 'if I

met that voice I'd die

of fear'-too easy said,

rather fear should die: a

good hour's wait then color-

peaks, snow, red, sapphire, prase

Leo'd hear again 100 forearms

perpendicularly fuming milk noise down,

ride horses look straight between

their ears, do like the

man next to you, resurrect

ruins: two-branch lake looks up:

higher than the belvedere the

promontory heads past terraced ledge

fief rockfalls into higher woods

sun-snowgust gales' interchange flowers favor

on New Year's: black hellebore

(or winter rose) white literally

(botanically not a rose) leaves

evergreen almost stemless entwined in

rocks' creviced snow: ages gently

a peasant gardener's attentions, blossoms

he greets by ancient names

'iberis prefers limestone-evonymus prospers'

no twenty-two reasons argue them-

unurged aptness untallied sunned the

comedy's divine, tragic a Thought:

a nerve's aching respond to

energies not itself: old in

a greenhouse the stabled horse

sings sometimes, thoughts' template

somehow furthers a cento reading:

oval stairs, diminished steps, wings

either side... in my mind

a dream of named history

content with still-vext Bermoothes . . . where

once thou call'dst me up

... to fetch dew . . . tears: there

she's hid an arm embraces.