The Islands of Africa
to Rimbaud
Two pages to a grape fable
dangles the swan of samite blood
shaping sand from thistle covered fog
Over sacred lakes of fever
(polished mouths of the vegetable frog
rolling to my iron venus)
I drop the chiseled pear
Standing in smoke filled valleys
(great domains of wingless flight
and the angel’s fleshy gun)
I stamp the houses of withering wax
Bells of siren-teeth (singing to our tomb
refusal’s last becoming)
await the approach of the incendiary children
lighting the moon-shaped beast
Every twisted river pulls down my torn-out hair
to ratless columns by the pyramid’s ghost
(watered basin of the temple stink)
and all the mud clocks in haste
draw their mermaid-feather swords
(wrapped by Dust) to nail them
into the tears of the sea-gull child
The winter web minute
flutters beneath the spider’s goblet
and the whores of all the fathers
bleed for my delight.
From The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia (University of California Press, 2013) by Philip Lamantia. Copyright © 2013 by the Regents of the University of California. Used with permission of University of California Press Books.