We Go to the Night to See Who We Truly Are

 

Orpheus was as a poet

nearly perfect as the myth

attests but he failed his Hades

exit test that showed that he didn’t

learn what many a woman can do—

watching the road while seeing all behind.

But then again how many a woman was Orpheus?

 

The dénouement of the nu

is what the night, la nuit,

often brings about…

but why then in the dark

 

—if the dark descent

lets you see much less

what dishabille reveals?

 

Unless in the floating no

of a gently nudging nu

hides a muted yes,

 

one which turns around

norms of hackneyed days

along with the eyes—

hence how we see or even live?

Both Poetry and Music Were Born Along with Light Finnicky Touch (On the Ancient, Classic Idea)

 

A butterfly’s spot check—

so deceptively random

and yet exceedingly exact

for butterflies may feed only

on the strictly chosen plants.

 

And that’s how the soul

does effect its golden touch—

picky, precious, polished,

and finely honed and light.

Just right to link earth and sky.

La « poésie » brutaliste est à la fois grosse et grasse

 

“You did well to leave, Arthur Rimbaud!

… You were right to abandon the boulevard

of the lazybones, the taverns of pisse-lyres …

for the commerce of the cunning…”

René Char

 

Still in clothes they cloud themselves

like the women of the bygone past:

but would you say with me—how

but few still have a musician’s gift

 

to tell apart a fine and clear measure

from the fausses notes & which of them

one should or shouldn’t want to hitch?

Or is it because wholly line by line

 

that grew like well-off woman’s shopping list

poesy turned (after good old baroque clouds)

angels into maudits Cupidons et putti gras

 

que Saturne, « le Père », ne laisse pas dépasser

sa faux—then with no Heaven above or within

doomed to shrink—into Jimmy Riddle’s piss?