PREVIOUS NEXT FIRST What passions the hills have known...
CCXCVI
Rembrandt's The Little Children Being Brought To Jesus
What passions the hills have known
of Dust or tides, or April rains

what Knowledge Will's owned
of snowflakes falling

from the Mind of God whichever (way) landing
spelling th'destiny of a man

(what lips complaining
walked O miles) to reach
Life's Purpose
kneeling at The Altar of Dominion
singing Authority's supremest
Praise lips touch each other

against both--The Dark reflecting
upon th'Coldness humanity employs
to kiss back the warmth
of tact
individual

eyes cannot see (that)
in The Darkness dead ahead

Lips have but kissed their own on-coming
Reflection on the cold
piece of so shattering
objective glass):

Hands thrust thus forward
to shake th'hand of Th'Following men are
rudely spurned by a human bluff
such as nothing
can understand
enough to feel

Kronos devouring his own many self-
imagined
children swallowed across Th'Thousand
Portals which stretch over the Mind (Time-

traveling)... God sitting under th'legs
of Destiny watching the Spectacle much, much
too horrified to be any good

I climb
the hills of passions unknown

Renoir's Rocky Crags at l'Estaque
leading up to the unspoken-of
place of Peace (everlasting) from where

I may see the secret view
I believe
's the most beautiful view of all

this being

My Favorite One--while Time's devouring
(up) my face, I sit upon Th'Scintillant
Moment keeping watch over my favorite view
below the hills' passions of Dust
or tides in April rains

God takes the grey offensive then
and manages to take Time down for an eight-
count, while cobwebs of Th'Pleasurable stance

at any time wrinkle my brow with th'passions
the hills've known

... mountain goats mistake me for a corpse
and rainbow me like a holy saint

God struggling against Th'Giant Endlessness

on my very behalf Sin He commits

creating Mortality
so gloriously th'fodder of Time

& calling it His sacrifice (to have to live
love & drink wine), I die

& everything that's tapping feet

to Th'Unheard-
of Melody (beats spluttering in the rhythmic

rendition Time) leading with his unseen finger
the orchestra of his passionless inner Peace

above the hills: all my passions are shaping
a too beautiful Freshness from Th'Rottenness

or: A Sum across whose fields of substances
a mule moves slowly over as if it were still

sowing its Time's whims (th'whistlings
of the many winds)
           

   ... We have arrived (a mindless
beast, bred for the sweat) already at Th'Bush
burning (with) Passions the hills have known

and set up: our sensitive microphones
trying to catch the rare cry
of the Innocence-
breasted red-
faced business/working class die-hard ( against Time--

Man kneeling before The) Altar ambition

as the tapping of the feet
provide A Flourish O harmonious-
ly Light (passions) by which to watch
Th'Beating of His many-wings

(out of step) to the Passions
The Hills 've known
, of Dust
or tides of April rains --here's
evidence --that, tuxedoed, have I walked
too blind A Yawn, stretched on the non-

perspective idleness of poems (living
but in desperate passions) the dust-hills've
known by The Distance of --A violin
Voice: There have I grazed,
kneeling animal-like (I am) Th'Streams

O glaze well-punctuated,
seeing but th'Flection of a stammered row
of days leading me down in-

to: th'plundered Retrospection of all
my ill-defined (Past of Passions)

well-measured the hills have known

disguised, half as Life's brief approximations
to The Dust, disfigured, knight

of (my) Dreams took a castle
upon the most distant and boundless shore

until at last it woke
to O th'thunderous applause (which turns out

to be just th'midnight madness (mindless)
darkling accidental dropping
of so many pins) ever-returning...

Ah! my doing proposes
that A Vote forbidden be taken NOW

solemnly cast the odd smile Clown pains
upon The Hills playing a game of pangs

Passions like paints!

We are The Captives (of our Splendid
crowns): Kings! all but name

... Peace but th'baubles glimmering
along their weary & haphazardous Ways

of th'capricious shabby Reigns of Chance
th'passions that th'hills have known

whistling bitterly, "What is our sweet
taste for?" but that by its yield we are beguiled

into believing that th'small wine we've sipped (of
th'Heavens!) 's lulled the pulses

of Th'Feet tapping the rhythms which push upon
The Quiet (Paradise)... as if upon th'Hell-riddled

Conscience all astir,
thinking: of "What purpose Inertia?"
th'Space which Obvious Marks seeks

in such Emptiness runs The Wheel down all
the angles whatever & degrees

(make sheer Illusion of our lives
rollercoaster
) Time--Darkness

lingering not merely at its dips ( but
unfortunate, forgivingly unfair):

"How do we know we fall,
except we fall?"

And so we climb passionless upon th'hills
from Dust or tides, in April

rains outside men's spheres of Influence
kneeling at no (Altar

The Valley) whose World-inundating
Sense
drowns Man hiding within his Depths

trying to make himself believe
it's from his Thought shoots out

The Light of The World over Th'World

just to agree upon most sympathetic arrogance
(of human feet tapping to Strange Chances)

while petals forgotten, staggering down Th'World
witnesses of Passions The Hills've known

fester upon Th'Breeze the moist rust perfumes
clamoring: "The hills have known!

The hills have known!"
Passions the hills
have known
--If things such as things must die
a mercilessly moving language

beautiful things at Peace perish
farthest from Passions

Song shapes The Valley
where-to Mind dips

whose words (shepherds) laid from
the Evening's clashing tongues...

fill all th'mountains
(vowels onto vowels

the echoing Songbirds soaring with mortal gowns
of their strangest Unknown silks crying

passionless) from hills to hills!

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