What eyes do cities wear
when all the horns proclaim
that beauty is mere guff,
an overrated surplus?
And what, meanwhile,
do all the scholars of war do
on such a pleasant May weekend
with their Argus Panoptes eyes,
after spending breath and brain
fanning those gyrating mills
that grind whole harvests
of human seed
into mortar
for posthumous pedestals?
In the backs of rooms I used to listen
as, juggling one contrary against another,
they reduced truth
to a clever gag,
relying on the lethargy
and impoverishment of eyes
already hollowed out—
eyes denied the apples
distributed by the same exclusive growers
with the same certified grip.
For truly it is said:
where bliss abides,
fruit reveals mutual nakedness—
even that of the Emperor himself,
a nakedness starved
of its madness
and its furious, unending
Sisyphean fixation,
which turns even pharaohs and kings
into busy dung beetles,
dragging the world and its sun
downward into the nigredo pit.
How else could they burn away
the ancient heavenly bond
in exchange for a supernatural darkness
that “bears all to El”—
as does the Don-El Motel
in Ohio’s Cuyahoga Falls?
Thus the ghost drifts
across its old aqueous flats,
forever anxious, forever jealous
of someone else
baring it all
in verse or jazz.
No comments:
Post a Comment