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Collecte Works

Page 4

by Lorine Niedecker


  What's the play? The sensitive lawyer would have told

  any woman her hands were as beautiful as if gloved

  but for fear of having been quoted.

  At the Capitol, cheese legislation only sets silk hats

  tipping, rats divine, toward feline waistbands.

  At home, it's blizzard or a curved banana-moon

  on a window sash, soap flakes on wash day

  and door knobs wet; hornets' nests in tobacco pipes.

  I must possess myself, get back into pure duration,

  or I should like to be an orator and rise

  to my full height, or now that roads are closed

  stop quietly in print the one available weather:

  how the head hums, men of Ireland, and it goes

  the next log on the hearth from violins to harlequins

  to modern women and violins again, and the last

  determination coincides with the first, and so then

  summer has not been since the bliss and doll's house lady

  and all that waxing of the lily and sweet care

  of people on the stem…. I remember a garden:

  exigential, or violet, I've forgotten, but delphinium

  with suspect of turquoise, formulosos deterred

  at the start from interval form by trick of eye

  or soul or sun and since by whom…you

  swinging your cape too far to the left, the effect

  is blue, not periwinkle; you triumphant over cauliflower

  polonaise; you full of principles; and you crying

  crush infamy when you should be shaking hands

  with the Cardinal. The most public-cant-and-cabbage-

  interruption comes, however, from circles where

  the farm question is discussed,—a white dome logic

  no wayside strabismic house, rafters owling out

  the night would recognize; no talk there, none,

  of why there's nothing like a good warm cow

  when the wind's in the west.

  V

  It comes out in March by the back fence, the full

  and true Relation of the present State of new country

  and the coming of the world green. Some believed

  she was immune from such a Thing being they had adopted

  a youngster in dispare, most persons, you find,

  peck and peck and seldom really lay any eggs, red

  though suns set for windy to-morrows. Spring looms also

  in phonographic deep song on a level with the water

  and in spoken acknowledgment of carved humidor

  so calm what is this woman a man should say: woman.

  Complaints differ: trees have their roots in China;

  it was tried there three thousand years ago and failed.

  April a silver symbol is of rain and universal love;

  April ergo lost integral if not grey gone. New

  reviews use the dusking nounal (how do you die, thrush,

  this afternoon) with a lamp and aluminum forecast

  (light gets mooned in a clouded river, and frogs

  are out scouring, one ratchet ahead of cracked piccolos).

  My dear May: I should like to buy myself flowers,

  arrive at the door and give them to you. May, again,

  I believe to have seen in my best swooning moments,

  but I might easily have been prejudiced by a slow heart

  or what the porcelain painter said in that nerve-ray

  or by the Slumbrous my shadow spoke, going by. This swale

  can only be the mode by which we condense all exposition

  to a green blood-beat and bleach intact. Let no man say

  from grass to grass he never to himself has sunk

  is the first tremble of an old vibration orioled

  at dandelion heat. In Swalery I forget my face,

  beyond that it's something to have under a sunbonnet

  when aphorists and haymakers meet. And doctor,

  nothing so good I know for intricate rhyme schemes

  in six-syllable lines within ten-syllable lines

  of an evangelical staple as bug-sing and carrot seed,

  observe now, while perspective is the next show

  in the gallery, it's a fervid shade, and there'll be

  stricken areas in the throat waiting for the blowing.

  A touch of noon? Try then: each man to his own sleep

  in the night skies. Gaspaciousness enmillions

  dread-centric introspectres. Future studies

  will throw much darkness on the home-talk.

  VI

  Meanwhile surviving burial and the garden with too many

  tall stones entails backroads, berries and what is socialism.

  If I had two pigs, said the farmer, and you hadn't any,

  I'd have to give you one, and the gardener said, fist

  to mahogany, no more petals would fall from the silver vased

  red poppy than enough. Meanwhile coming in the afternoon,

  one wakes about the beaches long-summering. A girl's hair

  lies in a neat droll along the back of the neck, a man

  can't rest unless he's tired; another eats between dinner

  and tea to stimulate the circulation, this class of ideas

  brown bodied, pistoned and cogged and nowhere dissembled.

  To retire to the wood out of glaring might mean freedom

  from the blue pressure of my fellow magnetoes, and nothing

  less to lift: plants from the habits of their whorls

  than a storm passage in the strings, the brass being silent

  for many bars. I should say the social behavior of the individual

  should be thoroughly rained on, and in the same rheumatism

  the Introspect's Umbrella Mender waved good-bye. Of course,

  I shall meet people here, my antecedents perhaps. But how

  shall I know them? If I am fernal, it's fern country, then;

  fern fever has been spread by mono-men I shall pass in the air

  of my time and whose main frond cuts I shall have to regret.

  Someone has said: rapid lighted pimperly advanced; I've forgotten

  who. A little false for a person in my position: gloom-elmed,

  gloam-owned, retreating. (Cuckoo, that juggling of hollow nuts)

  Memory is blue in the head? Heads are easily taken off.

  Move on from brown laterals of the same day, ascertain oneself

  center of climatic being and fall all energy gone yellow.

  For the emotion of fall has its seat in the acoustic gland;

  wind: strong distance in closest places. On the life side then,

  I stand out in the open again as do houses and barns.

  I hear it from hand to hand there's been death on the road,

  he, not finding where the flowers were, seized a tree.

  If this is a game there must be refreshments, but if

  dessert be fragile sky, trees pink-rust, crisp as a pie

  with a butter-crust, I ought to be going home.

  VII

  I must have been washed in listenably across the landscape

  to merge with bitterns unheard but pumping, and saw

  and hammer a hill away; sounds, then whatsound, then

  by church bell or locomotive volubility, what, so unto

  the one constriction: what am I and why not. That

  was my start in life, and to this day I touch things

  with a fear they'll break. A cricket and poplar tradition

  has me standing instead of running. Of course, no one cares

  about my troubles except those who let themselves fall

  into the determinism I've been so careful to create.

  (Having fallen, cease to care—blue jay variants

  have their own mode of call.) But who am I to observe

  myself? Dynamist for being out of dream?

  It'
s what comes of looking way back on the upper right

  shelf of the lower left cupboard; never be witty

  with any finality. From here, it takes so many stamps

  to post the most modern researches.

  VIII

  Close the door and come to the crack quickly.

  To jesticulate in the rainacular or novembrood

  in the sunconscious…as though there were fs

  and no ings, freighter of geese without wings.

  I know an ill for closing in, a detriment to tie-ups.

  They pop practical in a greyfold, bibbler and dub—

  one atmosnoric pressure for the thick of us.

  Hurry, godunk, we have an effort to wilt.

  I shall put everything away, some day,

  get me a murmurous contention, and rest.

  Canvass1

  Unrefractory petalbent

  prognosticate

  halfvent purloined

  adark

  vicissitudes of one-tenth

  steel-tin

  bluent, specifically unjust

  cream redbronze

  attempt salmon egress

  masked eggs

  ovoid

  anodyne lament

  metal bluegreen

  drying

  smoke dent

  exceptional retard

  bald out

  affidavit

  flat grey shoulder.

  carrions eats its call, waste it.

  He: she knows how

  for a testament to Sundays.

  For exhibition2

  for round

  of or

  in the young beautiful of life

  hat laid away, done for . .

  help a doorlight undergo

  monotones

  faily

  refervid

  emotionally

  or coral on black velvet

  gumdrops and proletarian fiction . .

  fast whaler

  formaldehyde

  backline reversed

  no ageratum

  mine might blast the nose

  impectinal . .

  a

  jellying

  If you

  Denmark

  whisper

  I can't quite notify

  an extreme time.

  Tea3

  dilemma

  my suit, continuous

  dear hind button off . .

  the velocities with which different

  fluents change

  Newton's

  compose in the mass

  wander

  anent

  anyone

  (negress certainly not)

  sidewheeler

  painted:

  on the next moon

  be still: we are near life

  focus your face to a

  then oh, divers lanterns in

  I meet

  sworn

  thick

  think

  shuffles o loud foot.

  to come to the end and pass it

  but I am having

  Beyond what1

  decapitated areas

  momently to the constant removal

  liquidating aftermath

  inspired marksmanship

  Devil the ash trays show it

  instant with glee

  black winged lazuli

  beets redden and revert

  I heard2

  too far for me to see

  lest we forget

  no fan thank you

  peonies

  if only one could

  I was born on a farm

  I watched arrive in spring

  city your faith in arches

  Memorial Day3

  Thou hast

  not foreign aggression

  but world disillusionment

  dedicated to the proposition

  of an ice cream cone

  and the stars and stripes forever

  over the factories and hills of our country

  for the soldier dead

  Stage Directions

  The window woman whose dress has been hung and draped

  looks out. There's a wax-wing on every leaf, hay background,

  statecraft, salve smell and lavish retort. Shh…

  the man with the juniper growth to his beard,—bankers

  leave their wives to their safes and redouble openings.

  They walk around the oblong and Oh is the heart of the modern

  furniture. Once out the knock is on the other side.

  I seem to take un ciel, a circle in another tongue.

  Have we experienced a cycle from which we are likely

  to recover, or have we seen the death of an era? A loop

  of blue light shows white organdie ruffles herself.

  My hat—it was taken for a flight—too sad for my face

  to assume. Young escort bows. I can't pick a thing up

  and bring it to successive stages. Yet for what we see

  the mind has to sink down out of sight—perhaps not possible

  for us. But think how paultry: the common black and white,

  the breakfast table and then all the rest of the meals.

  We have our limberger but we mustn't bring it to the table.

  Have you been married? Yes, I've been attacked.

  The ring of light flames as on comes the night scene

  from Tremulus Asps. Somebody sleeps under the oatshed

  and resets his pudding. Ticci Tape-over's buttons shine.

  He points. I wish there was something to listen to

  particularly. Wuzz or whir. His wife says he used to work

  in a factory; now he's a gentleman—runs a beer tavern.

  But he doesn't exercise enough. If only he could

  make himself tired. Blackness soughs as a matter

  of lighting. Fanatic acid. Constructions gleam—

  triangles and verbal arra. Inimical Pop-its down front

  kneeling in swift, strange prayers assure the world

  they're dangerous. See how it brings the red swing closer.

  Synamism

  Berceuse, mediphala

  and the continent. German and therefore unidentified.

  Cricket night, seismograph and stitch. All tongues backed

  by a difference. Likelihood without of left-overs cooling,

  weatheroid and furor occult, functionary tri-mundane. And

  the scientific equiptical left nerves on the floor.

  Most

  people have to have an attachment. It's all very tiresome.

  To wag addenda. Add and add and you'll see it,

  and there's nothing less.

  The most famous resort

  should know better than develop a scene around the face

  of its beholder. Speaking of why a cherry orchard

  has to become a world, why become a gabbling humanity?

  Nobody attests a grove of titles. Are you an emblem

  of discount? Superhoned? Assumptions taxed are most related

  when untangled, the horn playing a thread, cows untended.

  The best always stays where it is. Others have to break it

  down to see it. Why dig when the dug is present? That holds

  for silence. Light facades its works, ambulates in a single

  area, tension regold. If you forget, remember: a wire fence

  conceals a tree if it came first to the eye. Judgement:

  a menstrualoid broke its shell, I was born.

  It must be

  not just a synamism between black and retreat but

  a savage displacement in silk centre, these roundings

  where a flower pulls embattlements down, displeasure

  enlightens great eagles. Dancing the blood rim. Could hope

  make it thinner? Reverse it and you have my offer to pay.

  Galactic numena, eye floats and recitative. Pepitte,

  this papering evening I want a the
atre.

  Will You Write Me a Christmas Poem?

  Will I!

  The mad stimulus of Gay Gaunt Day

  meet to put holly on a tree

  and trim green bells

  and trim green bells

  Now candles come to faces.

  You are wrong to-day

  you are wrong to-day,

  my dear. My dear—

  One translucent morning

  in the development of winter

  one fog to move a city backward—

  Backward, backwards, backward!

  You see the objects and the movable fingers,

  Candy dripping from branches,

  Horoscopes of summer

  and you don't have Christmas ultimately—

  Ultima Thule ultimately!

  Spreads and whimpets

  Good to the cherry drops,

  Whom for a splendor

  Whom for a splendor

  I'm going off the paper I'm going off the pap-

  Send two birds out

  Send two birds out

  And carol them in,

  Cookies go round.

  What a scandal is Christmas,

  What a scandle Christmas is,

  a red stick-up

  to a lily.

  You flagellate my woes, you flagellate,

  I interpret yours,

  holly is a care divine

  holly is a care divine

  and where are we all from here.

  Drink for there is nothing else to do

  but pray,

  And where are we all from here.

  Throw out the ribbons

  and tie your people in

  All spans dissever

  once the New Year opens

  and snow derides

  a doorway,

  its spasms dissever

  All spans dissever,

  Wherefore we, for instance, recuperate

  no grief to modulate

  no grief to modulate

  Wherefore we, Free instance

  The Christmas cacophony

  one word to another,

  sound of gilt trailing the world

  slippers to presume,

  postludes, homicles, sweet tenses

  imbecile and corrupt,—

  failing the whirled, trailing the whirlled

  This great eventual heyday

  to plenty the hour thereof,

  fidelius.

  Heyday! Hey-day! Hey-day!

  I fade the color of my wine

  that an afternoon might live

  foiled with shine and brittle

  I fade the color of my wine

  Harmony in Egypt,

  representative birthday.

  Christ what a destiny

  What a destiny's Christ's, Christ!

 

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