IX THE PICTURES


Two men in black came out we told them I was out.
No sir, Mr Apol said, no sir, I won't buy that.
We are your true salvation, & we don't expect any.
Tell him he is damned & will not escape. Goodbye.
I went back to writing: if the poem runs long enough then
I thought I might get lost. Winter became tight: wind, rain
but at last, the cold. Attacks came, a big car cruised behind:
we're waiting said the message, for just one slip. Child
of loss: you will not know your true home. Child of a vast abyss
child of the rhyme & of red clay. Child of man: who is
your mother or your father?
                                                          Not you I do believe. The rites
are difficult of access: at each station spirits will await you.
Delusions. You must do it in unbelief. Blake was wrong: no doubt he knew
that everything must be doubted but what you know. He knew so much.
I know nothing. If the rites falter, I shall fall into my perception.
I trust luck as I believe ill-luck. What is seen are what follows:
                                                                                                                            After
the dead are forgotten they don't cease. The light strikes us all, for in
even the mud, the white mud there is life. There isn't any loss nor
any return. It is gratuitous. A line of cowboys. They'll save us, or not
or a black stallion on a white beach. He is the desire. What
old men think under a bright cold sky in Beijing: I have lived it.
Or you, beautiful brownish girl, scratched but clear, delicate
as a woman laughing, scrubbing down, her teeth shine, are big
casual & unplanned for. Trust memory, do
when she sings to you when she wants, not the white nun
offering her crucifix but a laughing daft man suddenly heard. Every Sunday
walk along a metal bridge beside the railway.
Sometimes lie. Sometimes pretend to lie.
When you are that old the past floods into you like disease: die
or don't. Haunt the young & make them crazy.
When you come to a sober man: leave, become a rabbit.
Become nine. Always more. Don't be yourself
or they'll have you kneeling in the desert blind & starved.
Rot into wood rather, & rot beyond. Then you'll live, escape.
When they offer you cities, remember they are full of lines.
Machines are different. You may desire them.
But desire more to play with flesh. Its fierceness
will bring the buildings down. The free fall of brick
or of light & inert beneath the bridges. When you
are ruins, golden, scattered on the bareness
laugh, laugh a thousand times, and you can climb
under some protection down to the shore
& plunge into the moving muddy waters.
Wait for autumn. You will be gold and brown, a little green
like a man, like a woman, like a woman armed
like the poor person throwing the first stone at the passing limousine
like the cripple smiling by the seashore.
When you smile, age.
Change sex. It is yours.
                                                 Mr Apol came back & said
what I had forgotten. The Universe had gone.
There was not a poem. Noise, noise
only. It was removed. In the dark
I'd like something wonderful – only duty
constrains me. I want to turn
& be embraced. Wanting negates: Mr
Apol wants me to want, that I should
want & be in loss. He wins: I am
in this in this one, this one
this one here
there is
in this one
here


































Here is the end of loss, a limit. There is some,