Nachtmusik for Robert Lowell

Writing only in preacher-words,

we who are the opposite

of beauty level guns at the

fractured, scattered sky.

The hunt is desperation—

I feel the throaty bile

in my soul. All or nothing

now, broke-leg, broke-jawed,

soon to die for want of

whatever makes for the

champagne life, where whiskey

bright as wine turns

the eyes all liquor-lucent,

full of God. The poet

of my own country spoke of

casting worm and hook

for Christ; let that stand,

and yet I will go hunting heaven,
and the Word will strike me dead.

Alles Erdreich Ist Österreich Untertan

They called him Charles the Hexed (hechizado,

verhexte), Carlos the Ill-jawed, the sickle-

souled, the king born from tired soil.

He looked for all the world like a wax man
melting on a throne, a changeling of poor

fortune, the royal imbecile in Spain.

            Charles the Penumbra, the tremble 

            of that long shadow cast by

            the grasping hand, a sick and

            waning moon in a solar house.

           

            AEIOU come down to this, down

            to the drooping point of his

            witchcraft chin. Worse, Percy,

            than what your pious mind

            conceived—say this for him,

            our curse-marked Charlie, that

            he was Ozymandias in ruined flesh,

            the ragged edge where we learn

            that we have sinned.

Austria is so very small compared

with the hallowed earth, and

Charles ended in the way
that small things do.

Valley Green (Fragments)

Walking out in the storm’s tattoo

I saw in the night

Fitzgibbon, smoking by the

laundromat. The cloud he said

was sick and sweet as

burning sugar on

the altar in the house.

                        Let the city be a harpsichord

                       

                        Toccata and fugue

                        in Philadelphia, where

                        I went on like a left-eyed

                        stranger with a sidelong

                        ticking in the brain—whir

                        and wobble, catch and shudder.

Across the street in the late-emptied church,

look, Schwarzwalder at the pulpit,

speaking of the desert, of Horeb

where they studied God in fire

(A God as yet unbodied

A world not yet domestic)

“Comfort were no comfort

now, so I am come with fire

for the wound.”

Once more to home,

and see, here’s St-Etienne

in seat, book in mouth
(“It tastes so bitter—

very bitter, unless perhaps

it’s sweet”) and the

jackhammer heel playing paradiddle

on the floor.

Here is Tolstoy in his dotage,

pilgrim from the long-toothed

city, the sun-beat city, the

city in the air.

                        With these riot eyes

                       

to dazzle and deceive,

in you, by you, I

will get fire—I

will beget fire till

the soil of my soul runs thin.

The Frontier Sermon

The circuit-riding preacher

Came to town on back of

A black horse (“I call him

Evangelion, having shod him

With the Gospel”) and, stepping

Down, he called out for water.

He drank and washed and

Shook his golden head. “I

Come to you, Word of God in

Hand and six-gun on my

Belt, ready to declare to you

All the counsel of God

On high, and the mystery

Of his Son. Gather, children,

Sons and daughters, of God

And of the Devil, and hear that

Heavenly Word. Look around,

Look around, at this broad

And fearsome West, fashioned

By God against all wisdom

Not crucified with Christ.”

And again he paused, and again

He called, for whiskey and

Some bread, and blessed them

In Dakota’s dawn. When

He had drunk and ate, he

Opened up his book, he
Cleared his throat, and preached.

A Prayerbook

Listen for the divided word

in the city where

the policeman said

it was his gun against

the thunder, and two

guns against the storm.

An article of faith:

all who build

cities would build

Jerusalem.

            When you sing, you

            sing the summer,

            and you are always

            singing—

                             as for me,

            ursus rusticanus, I

            have December in

            my teeth,

            will show you why

            I stare this way,

            why the thick-tongued

            mutters, why—

All my bones repent,

and the Kyrie of

all my bones goes

reeling on the wind

When we breathe, we breathe confession.

I recall reading somewhere that

breath is a slow fire

in the body, much like

the name of God.

There is a fine epitaph,

and fine enough for me.

The Hunting Night

The word of your mouth
is a tearing knife;
the word of the Lord
is a severing knife:

O Lord, carve me up.
Walking barefoot

on the broken bodies of apostles

Lord,
tear me to pieces.

It is not without reason
that the prophet
saw in Assyria, and in the land
of Egypt, his God fanged and roaring, lionlike.

Fatuus Profanus

You are dusty vinyl to my soul

I see your image
in a factory Matisse
that hangs over me

like a promised judgment,
a voice emphatic
to remind

the shaggy-bear
                          the
                                lumber-lurcher

          the trip-and-stagger
making clumsy groans
upon the earth

                              You leave me only
                              the broken voice of
                              self-reproach, having
                              learned to speak
                              obscurely but not well.