ANABASIS
Over your ridge of
shaded securities & settled
conquests, bursting with inner-
Victory,
amongst your slaves:
be careful of th'One False Step: Th'One color
of th'greenest (dead-end Origin's
agents of despair
grown out of th'buzzing flames
all around you, from amongst th'hours
made wild free birds one after th'other one
or the monotonies that clutter your head
sporting Significance's gaudy disguises,
your head for Tomorrow, pouncing
upon th'Since (peopled grey, or phosphorous
phantoms, or those opulent demons, those all-
quenching Aprils that play within Silence's
less & less, with th'famished witches
of snow at its infancy, or th'dappled
tides that lick us down
--We, inmates of th'Scene
within th'vermil Perhaps' hap piety--We 217
Impossibility's mariners, aged to th'sonorous,
denizens of the Adventurous, always shoveling
th'Symbols out of our all-bloodied loins
into Oblivion's giddy sails of strange velvets,
Anguish's internal lavenders, Contradiction's
reddest sympathies, Reason's most uproaring
bluest Explanation's last layer (th'least bright)
circled by clusters of less than (green) hues, all
only, alone, & parts of many an all, th'edging
atoms of universes on top of each other
trying to put to bed your cares' clever contents,
your too ornate collaborations with Summer's
sultry, your honest sweat's widely intervening
divisions unjust, your motives all bantered
down their trivial lengths, your sleepy evil
that covers, of late, Decay's circumference
trying to plagiarize th'incisive Autumn's disheveled
manuscript, or trying to pluck eternity's
prophetic Never from th'Sudden's swarms, to
store it in th'null of your values like vaults
incorruptible, but only insistent blushes
which fade at th'least touch of Nothing, at
Affirmations' untold conflicts, trying to disturb
Nature's wilderness (to disturb
th'highest culture beyond Man--out of which
your words are full of letters (only), of syllables'
null decibels (only), lacking all sense: You
stricken to death or worse with those jolts (Yesterday's
Truths & Meanings--now but abandoned memories), these
mere particles of infinitesimal specks (of
th'once brutal, in Now's peacefully untravelled ways
through the ornate, colossal he-
mispheres of kindness & concern
towards th'conical Cannot
go those tiny objects that think
like lamps down the dark intervals
towards th'gaping mouth of mouthing their self-
cornucopianed lives wafting in th'immense & boundless
crudest sea of Imagination: raising up a stink
(kicking all kinds-a crap) in a pygmies' pageantry
in front of th'tall tyrants of their own Affront
done an ode, building up an army in th'blunt
points of their militant prose
resilient as September, down th'deprived spasms
of civilization
... we march, baffling
Progress' good aims & mercies with our chills
deployed to deform Th'Norm, arrayed deep in
th'groves of Melancholy (after being swept off
Th'Ugly plains by Beauty
in th'Thereby, we rogues like roses--there
attempting our last stand
like shams so haughty in th'husk our fright:
th'bait--our pointless positions of late
--Here comes th'Enemy: Patience's dripping
pen, lobbed eloquence, amidst our gusts of groans
the Wintering winds' all-wilting twills
& all-dialectical alien splendors & oracles
fanged with drastic blooms, wreathes
of th'forevermore round their heads
of ethereal thunders, packing
foliage's all-grasping pages, flowers
of all facets fanned & fuming like Penance,
Wisdom self-wrapped in its frost-biting
bursting in th'faint dew like emerald ambers
Triumph's piping harps, solemn
perfumes
--A stand-
ard of hand-to-hand-
ling Fate intricate-
armorial: Wait! Th'refugees (of
Spring), giggling down their hair-lines,
grumbling bamboo volunteers by Jasper light
hurrying from Nature's maturest mercies
discover by their old nests, abandoned--how long
life is! ... Then, one color of th'smallest
significance to th'universe, confined
to a chill in th'spine, in th'momentary
shock of an ape's nerves, who rocks
back & forth self-huddled in th'Warmth of
One! rocks in hand... making ready to kill
Time--with a shot at th'heart of th'blank
cosmos (about him:
perhaps but th'scum
that always comes well-knuckled, th'wan cobwebs
that trap th'Heart's celestial colts
at liberty, th'Mind's hellish birds (our
belongings), the non-destructive Genius (of
a Bach), to try to splash th'Black
perhaps with a singular mud-dab, maybe
a monumental rumor he starts, maybe...
in th'Bright: th'Grave's baying most grey
--At last: Conspiracy's nude gun!
... which
justifies his military intervention, his re-
writing of all Nature's noncommittal mottoes
(to make them take on his god-gasping Egad, his ivy-
lulled) walls, a self-defense dynamo we are
All of Us: flinging blind, blinding handfuls
of th'mud around us at the snow's warden,
at credit's careful traps, at th'Gem's
light stratagems, at Time's Church
Monumental, at dear, beloved, old
Nanny Nuisance, her forehead Redemption,
her looks' mauling beauty, her shiftless eye-
lashes all over our defenseless
Alarm! Alarm! ...
--the moon's manikins in th'Sun
cocks th'hammer of his ghastly sight
... perhaps a ragged color th'least bright
his bullet, th'least colorful, telling,
th'least expressive, self-revealing, least
descriptive
--meaningless--
Th'least likely to betray
th'thrower, Destroyer--Yet, to him:
Th'Most Important Color
of all: Th'One that makes him, marks
him--from all he is not--th'One
that paints all he is
on all he is --All that dull stuff
that's colorfully maddened in th'Gradual's
shrink--All of them--by thus
painting them his