Lunar Baedeker

- 1882-1966
A silver Lucifer
serves
cocaine in cornucopia

To some somnambulists
of adolescent thighs
draped
in satirical draperies

Peris in livery
prepare
Lethe
for posthumous parvenues

Delirious Avenues
lit
with the chandelier souls
of infusoria
from Pharoah's tombstones

lead
to mercurial doomsdays
Odious oasis
in furrowed phosphorous---

the eye-white sky-light
white-light district
of lunar lusts

---Stellectric signs
"Wing shows on Starway"
"Zodiac carrousel"

Cyclones
of ecstatic dust
and ashes whirl
crusaders
from hallucinatory citadels
of shattered glass
into evacuate craters

A flock of dreams 
browse on Necropolis

From the shores
of oval oceans
in the oxidized Orient

Onyx-eyed Odalisques
and ornithologists
observe
the flight
of Eros obsolete

And "Immortality"
mildews...
in the museums of the moon

"Nocturnal cyclops"
"Crystal concubine"
-------
Pocked with personification
the fossil virgin of the skies
waxes and wanes----

The Black Virginity

Baby Priests	
On green sward	
Yew-closed	
Silk beaver	
Rhythm of redemption	        
Fluttering of Breviaries	
 
Fluted black silk cloaks	
Hung square from shoulders	
Troncated juvenility	
Uniform segration	        
Union in severity	
Modulation	
Intimidation	
Pride of misapprehended preparation	
Ebony statues training for immobility	        
Anæmic jawed	
Wise saw to one another	
 
Prettily the little ones	
Gesticulate benignly upon one another in the sun buzz—	
Finger and thumb circles postulate pulpits	        
Profiles forsworn to Donatello	
Munching tall talk vestral shop	
Evangelical snobs	
Uneasy dreaming	
In hermetically-sealed dormitories	        
Not of me or you Sister Saraminta	
Of no more or less	
Than the fit of Pope's mitres	
 
It is an old religion that put us in our places	
Here am I in lilac print	        
Preposterously no less than the world flesh and devil	
Having no more idea what those are	
What I am	
Than Baby Priests of what "He" is	
or they are—	        
Messianic mites tripping measured latin ring-a-roses	
Subjugated adolescence	
Retraces loose steps to furling of Breviaries	
In broiling shadows	
The last with apostolic lurch	        
Tries for a high hung fruit	
And misses	
Any way it is inedible	
It is always thus	
In the Public Garden.	        
 
Parallel lines	
An old man	
Eyeing a white muslin girl's school	
And all this	
As pleasant as bewildering	        
Would not eventually meet	
I am for ever bewildered	
Old men are often grown greedy—	
What nonsense	
It is noon	        
And salvation's seedlings	
Are headed off for the refectory.

Songs to Joannes, V

Midnight empties the street
Of all but us
Three
I am undecided which way back
                        To the left a boy
—One wing has been washed in the rain
    The other will never be clean any more—
Pulling door-bells to remind
Those that are snug
                        To the right a haloed ascetic
                        Threading houses
Probes wounds for souls
—The poor can’t wash in hot water—
And I don’t know which turning to take
Since you got home to yourself—first

The Dead

We have flowed out of ourselves	
Beginning on the outside	
That shrivvable skin	
Where you leave off	
 
Of infinite elastic	        
Walking the ceiling	
Our eyelashes polish stars	
 
Curled close in the youngest corpuscle	
Of a descendant	
We spit up our passions in our grand-dams	        
 
Fixing the extension of your reactions	
Our shadow lengthens	
In your fear	

You are so old	
Born in our immortality	        
Stuck fast as Life	
In one impalpable	
Omniprevalent Dimension	
 
We are turned inside out	
Your cities lie digesting in our stomachs	        
Street lights footle in our ocular darkness	
 
Having swallowed your irate hungers	
Satisfied before bread-breaking	
To your dissolution	
We splinter into Wholes	        
Stirring the remorses of your tomorrow	
Among the refuse of your unborn centuries	
In our busy ashbins	
Stink the melodies	
Of your	        
So easily reducible	
Adolescences	
 
Our tissue is of that which escapes you	
Birth-Breaths and orgasms	
The shattering tremor of the static	        
The far-shore of an instant	
The unsurpassable openness of the circle	
Legerdemain of God	
 
Only in the segregated angles of Lunatic Asylums	
Do those who have strained to exceeding themselves	        
Break on our edgeless contours	
 
The mouthed echoes of what	
has exuded to our companionship	
Is horrible to the ear	
Of the half that is left inside them.

Related Poems

Moonrise

Will you glimmer on the sea?	
Will you fling your spear-head	
On the shore?	
What note shall we pitch?	
 
We have a song,	        
On the bank we share our arrows—	
The loosed string tells our note:	
 
O flight,	
Bring her swiftly to our song.	
She is great,	        
We measure her by the pine-trees.