The Lost Lunar Baedeker (9 page)

of athlete lilies

of the galleries

scoop the facades of space

with spiral curves

of idol substance

in the silence

A colonnade

Apollo haunts Apollo

with the shade

of a lost hand

Gertrude Stein

Curie

of the laboratory

of vocabulary

    she crushed

the tonnage

of consciousness

congealed to phrases

      to extract

a radium of the word

The Widow's Jazz

The white flesh quakes to the negro soul

Chicago! Chicago!

An uninterpretable wail

stirs in a tangle of pale snakes

to the lethargic ecstasy of steps

backing into primeval goal

White man quit his actin' wise

colored folk hab de moon in dere eyes

Haunted by wind instruments

in groves of grace

the maiden saplings

slant to the oboes

and shampooed gigolos

prowl to the sobbing taboos.

An electric crown

crashes the furtive cargoes of the floor.

the pruned contours

dissolve

in the brazen shallows of dissonance

revolving mimes

of the encroaching Eros

in adolescence

The black brute-angels

in their human gloves

bellow through a monstrous growth of metal trunks

and impish musics

crumble the ecstatic loaf

before a swooning flock of doves.

Cravan

colossal absentee

the substitute dark

rolls to the incandescent memory

of love's survivor

on this rich suttee

seared by the flames of sound

the widowed urn

holds impotently

your murdered laughter

Husband

how secretly you cuckold me with death

while this cajoling jazz

blows with its tropic breath

among the echoes of the flesh

a synthesis

of racial caress

The seraph and the ass

in this unerring esperanto

of the earth

converse

of everlit delight

as my desire

receded

to the distance of the dead

searches

the opaque silence

of unpeopled space.

Lady Laura in Bohemia

Trained in a circus of swans

she

proceeds recedingly

Her eliminate flesh of fashion

inseparable from the genealogical tree

columns such towering reticence

of lifted chin

her hiccoughs seem

preparatory to bowing to the Queen

Her somersault descent

into the half-baked underworld

nor the inebriate regret

disturb

her vertical caste

“They drove 'em from the cradle on the curb”

This abbess-prostitute

presides

Jazz-Mass

the gin-fizz eucharist dispenses

—she kisses and curses

in the inconsummate embraces

of a one armed Pittsburger

“Here zip along out of that, Laura!”

“I can't come to Armenonville with you-u

I want to stay here and behave like a grue-u”

Her hell is

Zelli's

Where she floods the bar

with all her curls

in the delirious tears from those bill-poster eyes

plastering ‘court proceedings' on the wall

of her inconsiderable soul

A tempered tool

of an exclusive finishing-school

her velvet larynx

slushes

“Glup—you mustn't speak to me

I'm bad—haven't you heard?

I'm Orful—o—g'lup I'm Horrid”

She gushes

“——know young Detruille?

Isn't he di-vi-ne

Such a sweet nature

that boy has

The other night when he tucked in with me

we talked most seriously

we have the same ideals

My dear he has

the eyes of Buddha

O I think he's simply di-vi-ne

The only man who ever understood

everything—             If I'd liked

he would'a'

married me

O I think he's simply di-vi-ne”

Out of the sentimental slobber

Lady Laura—momentarily sober

“How queer—that Detruille

said that he

once was introduced—

Well, I do wonder

how on earth ever such a bounder

happened to meet
my people
”

Sobs on my shoulder—

the memorable divorcée

and christened by the archbishop of Canterbury

Sixteen co-re—

Well let that pass!

She is yet like a diamond on a heap of broken glass.

The Mediterranean Sea

The monstrous sapphire

             lies in her lavish dowry

Crowned by Casinos

set with Provençal

olives

and spears to the mistral

The prevalent Fair

draws idle tides

over volcanic privacies

frilled with the rouse and hush of drowsing foam

Jewelled on her Adriatic arm

Venice, sarcophagus of sighs

and ghostly merchandise,

Splinters on the opal angle of the sun

and dies to the Angelus

an over purpled peach

swarmed by the flies of dusk

From the green incline

of vengence

the Vesuvian vine

drips lucently

Lacrimae Christi

to drift    imperceptibly

with the lost sob of Shelley

Hewn in the Apuane

Carrara stands

as marble sentinel

beyond the blazing rust

of branches

roofing amphibian babies

as they rise

from the Ligurian gullies

Their polished thighs

armoured with aqueous ashes

of the tinselled sands.

Nancy Cunard

Your eyes diffused with holly lights

of ancient Christmas

helmeted with masks

whose silken nostrils

point the cardinal airs,

The vermilion wall

receding as a sin

beyond your moonstone whiteness,

Your chiffon voice

tears with soft mystery

a lily loaded with a sucrose dew

of vigil carnival,

Your lone fragility

of mythological queens

conjures long-vanished dragons —

— their vast jaws

yawning in disillusion,

Your drifting hands

faint as exotic snow

spread silver silence

as a fondant nun

framed in the facing profiles

of Princess Murat

and George Moore

Jules Pascin

So this is death

to rise to the occasion

a shadow

to a shadowy persuasion

Pascin has passed

with his affectionate swagger

his air

of the Crown in the role of jester.

The side-long derby-slanted Bulgar

cocked his jet eye

in its immaculate leer,

and as a coin,

tossed his destiny

Once a shy ivory boy,

the colour of life

had deepened on his cheek

in a wry irony

Pascin has ceased

to flush with ineffaceable bruises

his innubile Circes

Ceased to dangle

demi-rep angels

in tinsel bordels

Silence bleeds

from his slashed wrists

the dim homunculus

within

cries for the unbirth

The seeds

of his sly spirit

are cast to posterity

in satyric squander

a pigeon-toed populace

whose changeling women

jostle the prodigal son

as swine

Cinderellas awander.

IV

COMPENSATIONS OF POVERTY
 (POEMS 1942–1949) 

Loy in the 1950s

On Third Avenue

1

“You should have disappeared years ago”—

so disappear

on Third Avenue

to share the heedless incognito

of shuffling shadow-bodies

animate with frustration

whose silence'     only potence is

respiration

preceding the eroded bronze contours

of their other aromas

through the monstrous air

of this red-lit thoroughfare.

Here and there

saturnine

neon-signs

set afire

a feature

on their hueless overcast

of down-cast countenances.

For their ornateness

Time, the contortive tailor,

on and off,

clowned with sweat-sculptured cloth

to press

upon these irreparable dummies

an eerie undress

of mummies

half unwound.

2

Such are the compensations of poverty,

to see———

Like an electric fungus

sprung from its own effulgence

of intercircled jewellery

reflected on the pavement,

like a reliquary sedan-chair,

out of a legend, dumped there,

before a ten-cent Cinema,

a sugar-coated box-office

enjail a Goddess

aglitter, in her runt of a tower,

with ritual claustrophobia.

Such are compensations of poverty,

to see———

Transient in the dust,

the brilliancy

of a trolley

loaded with luminous busts;

lovely in anonymity

they vanish

with the mirage

of their passage.

Mass-Production on 14th Street

Ocean in flower

of closing hour

Pedestrian ocean

of whose undertow,

the rosy scissors of hosiery

snip space

to a triangular racing lace

in an iris circus of Industry.

As a commodious bee

the eye

gathers the infinite facets

of the unique unlikeness

of faces;

the diamond flesh of adolescence

sloping toward perception:

flower over flower,

corollas of complexion

craning from hanging-gardens

of the garment-worker.

All this Eros' produce

dressed in audacious

fuschia,

orgies of orchid

or dented dandelion

among a foliage of mass-production:

carnations

tossed at a carnal caravan

for Carnevale.

The consumer,

the statue of a daisy in her hair

jostles her auxiliary creator

the sempstress—on her hip

a tulip—

horticulture

of her hand-labor.

From the conservatories of commerce'

long glass aisles,

idols of style

project a chic paralysis

through mirrored opals

imaging

the cyclamen and azure

of their mobile simulacra's

tidal passing;

while an ironic

furrier, in the air,

combines the live and static

Femina

of the thoroughfare;

a windowed carousel

of girls revolving

idly in an unconcern

of walking dolls

letting their little wrists from under

the short furs of summer,

jolt to their robot turn.

Now, in the sedative descent of dusk

the street returns to stone;

alone

two lovers, crushed

together in their sweet conjecture

as to Fashion's humour,

point at the ecru and ivory

replica of the dress she has on,

doused in a reservoir of ruby neon;

only — — her buttons are clothespins

the mannequin's, harlequins.

Idiot Child on a Fire-Escape

Obedient as a bundle,

parked in your careful shawls,

you will not fall

into the exertions

of the earth under you,

having spilled,

on your way to becoming,

your skill in Being.

Sunlight excessively

illumines your deep eyelids

domed awnings

over the somnolent

reluctance of your sight—

inverted cups

of mortal ivory,

almost emptied.

Aid of the Madonna

Madonnas are everlastingly mothers in ecstacy.

Their alcove arms

retire the Felicity of their conception

from eld and the disorderliness

of peril,

reproving harm.

Madonnas are æon-moments of motherhood

—a moment is Time surrounded by itself—

in perpetuation of the beatitude,

their attitude

of smiling havens,

of sacred shelves.

Omitted omen of Calvary!

Uncarved Crucifixion!