plights & gripes

The weight of the world        is love. Under the burden        of solitude, under the burden        of dissatisfaction

       the weight, the weight we carry        is love.

Who can deny?        In dreams it touches        the body, in thought        constructs a miracle,        in imagination anguishes        till born in human— looks out of the heart        burning with purity— for the burden of life        is love,

but we carry the weight        wearily, and so must rest in the arms of love        at last, must rest in the arms        of love.

No rest        without love, no sleep        without dreams of love—        be mad or chill obsessed with angels        or machines, the final wish        is love —cannot be bitter,        cannot deny, cannot withhold        if denied:

the weight is too heavy

       —must give for no return        as thought is given        in solitude in all the excellence        of its excess.

The warm bodies        shine together in the darkness,        the hand moves to the center        of the flesh, the skin trembles        in happiness and the soul comes        joyful to the eye—

yes, yes,        that’s what I wanted,        I always wanted, I always wanted,        to return to the body        where I was born.

Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up.

The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche   

Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho ... The dump is full   

Of images. Days pass like papers from a press.   

The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun,   

And so the moon, both come, and the janitor’s poems   

Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears,   

The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box

From Esthonia: the tiger chest, for tea.

The freshness of night has been fresh a long time.

The freshness of morning, the blowing of day, one says   

That it puffs as Cornelius Nepos reads, it puffs   

More than, less than or it puffs like this or that.   

The green smacks in the eye, the dew in the green   

Smacks like fresh water in a can, like the sea

On a cocoanut—how many men have copied dew   

For buttons, how many women have covered themselves

With dew, dew dresses, stones and chains of dew, heads   

Of the floweriest flowers dewed with the dewiest dew.   

One grows to hate these things except on the dump.

Now, in the time of spring (azaleas, trilliums,   

Myrtle, viburnums, daffodils, blue phlox),   

Between that disgust and this, between the things   

That are on the dump (azaleas and so on)   

And those that will be (azaleas and so on),   

One feels the purifying change. One rejects   

The trash.

               That’s the moment when the moon creeps up   

To the bubbling of bassoons. That’s the time

One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires.   

Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon   

(All its images are in the dump) and you see

As a man (not like an image of a man),

You see the moon rise in the empty sky.

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.

One beats and beats for that which one believes.   

That’s what one wants to get near. Could it after all

Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear

To a crow’s voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,   

Peck the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear   

Solace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,

Is it a philosopher’s honeymoon, one finds

On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,   

Bottles, pots, shoes and grass and murmur aptest eve:   

Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say

Invisible priest; is it to eject, to pull

The day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?

Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.