Authors: Lorine Niedecker
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.
Canvass
1
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 exhibition
2
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.
Tea
3
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 what
1
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 heard
2
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 Day
3
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 theatre.
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