ODE

ON THE OUTSIDE

Coming along in neckcurls

continually the Dust
of Man's ambitions Here is filtered

with the Busts & Beasts
through The Great Waist
of The White Wide Awakenings

uniting Itself once more to the root Ash
at the bottom of the Cosmic Hourglass

O comfortable's
our measure of Old Age, my love,

when burning wools/manias
& knowledges denied

bloomings & pledges

& th'overhead Spirals
of meaningless fanning martial
yet all so impartial emptiness
becometh crystal Brightness!

which, growing defiantly Softly & Pliant
with th'ripening May/unimportant (quick-

ly forgotten) Words
then The Soothing Wings
now The monumental

Summers & infinite Springs
building their fluttering Immortal

flowers & maddening greens!
so unfailingly brittle Variations

treasonable curtains over the cushions of
Ambush: Th'inviolate Winters
& converging Falls weaving their layered textures
of Timeless Inversions

into the covering Intoxication of Verbs
strung ungainly together sung amongst
the fallen sands

in mountains & rivers & forests & fountains
linking th'listening exotic in-

formalities, O storms/uncertainties!
into our Sureness/Hardness/Softness

dying to be alive

Dog tests his rope So Many Times
& then: No More!

Then he resigns himself to the hard floor
baked to a rock by Time

& chokes all Hope

--Turn back, My Youth,
turn back till Father-Flames

upon its savage Love/Life
river spills! out of its clear/crisp Path

(turn) on a Wave, all things turn
back by a wave

of bells knelling Th'Figurative
movements of your lips & touches
of your everywhere-

body! and then... the trembling, slight
sentimentalities/articulations of the lightly

sour/sweet flow-pitched Voice
so sighing words once slashing

at The Blood of Morning...
the once Surmising--Sunset dies,

dripping its hues into The Greyest sea
so wise,
& this window which winks

occasionally at The Dirge
Sands quick-sifting All That Dark

winks The Dirge Rain

of a mortal tear obeying the nigh nisus
of the season slain, O my love:

The only place, only
place in which Th'Past stays
always, ever remains, is there:
within The Issues of our brains,
my youth,        
    gone
            are

The Miracles of marble Rage,

honeybrown hair & April eyes

--Here but the mouthings-Moth only
& th'minutes of midmorning's yawning Sun

still at his highest & undone!

there but An Image (like some painted swan
wrapped in the soarings it had shone )

expiating Th'Enchanted Youth
yet still the truant Hope is such

that one small leaf (falling) can be
The Monologue of All

of life which forever falls faster & faster than
your touch, O Love, & then

suppose we drink to welcomed Silver Death
the moonlight licking over The Sands

& talk by our most earnest Past
meaning of This, suggesting That

      ... No, no!

Togetherness was all there was,
Love, so it's All we have!

(The One workable Reality
in this White-washed
Since)...     

Let us never seek to deny
th'pearled Selfsameness of Winter's cold world

& even in honor of those frozen dreams
let our vain language like ghosts whisper now
upon The While outliving the tombstone!

Words which had fired us
with their temperate cutting Madness

coldly (then such Style! now but nostalgic,
once so tragic, now so many puns

singing with such chilling sadness
that they lull us ever
to Th'Crumbling edge of Gladness

corrupting into dullness The Cosmic Justice
of our fullness)...            
        Love,  
                  Youth,  

distracting with their bluntness

Winter's fasting Quiteness,

Autumn's moment Elastic

(ever in relapse,
my youth,
my love), and,

Morals which have bowed to Glory,

Time which has become but Now,

World which has become mere Worry,

Means which have become so meaningless,

Life that has turned into Mood,

Innocence that has turned into

Consciousness,

but

Knowing that has not turned to Good--