Like radiant lively Adolescence rejecting joy or sorrow, shrewd
with bright glance Innocent, albescent limbs ruddy and smooth in Sea-Wrack Firelight
Proud with centuries of learning in New-woke brain and boyish limbs, so stood the young messenger.
Startled, the wool-wrapped bard looked up at eyes mocking shining into his own:
Looked down at the boy’s neck unwrinkled white unlike his own: the breast
thin muscled unawakened silken flesh: the belly with a corse of tawny hair
rosed round the pricked virgin-budding genitals, shining in hearth light,
thighs ready and careless like a strong Child’s, playful walking & dancing tho awkward,
Thick calves with new hair light to the foot long as a man’s.
Humbled, bewilderment Touching his tongue, heart beating his ribs rewakened
The bard mused on this mortal beauty, remembering dead bodies he’d embraced in rough and silken beds
Years, years, and years of loves ago—his breast grew light, eyes lost
in dream—Then in his forehead Time gapped all youthful-imaged bodies there
Devouring their Shadows, as the sea surged out the rocky door.
The stars inclined thru cold air, moved so slow blue shining past
he saw them barely touch the ocean wave and rise and blink and glimmer silently engulfed—
Then to the Prophesied Task his inner eyes returned to their dim outward orbs:
Saw the gloom in his own stony shell: stone letters wavering on chill walls,
Iron Pots carbon black on shelves, old seaweed clothes in a stone closet, folded green
for Holiday Solitude at Vernal Equinox and full Moon face—brass fire tongs
from old Paumanok City bought with gold gleaming strong at the hearth’s light—
The hearth seat was moved, the porphyry throne worn smooth by the sea’s muscles
His eyes fell down to the messenger’s foot, toes spread firm on the runed lintel:
THE RUNE
Where the years have gone, where the clouds have flown
Where the rainbow shone
We vanish, and we make no moan
Where the sun will blind the delighting mind
in a diamond wind
We appear, our beauty refined.
Icy intellect, fi’ry Beauty wreck
but Love’s castled speck
of Moonbeam, nor is Truth correct.
Wise bodies leave here with the mind’s false cheer,
Eternity near
as Beauty, where we disappear.
When sufferings come, when all tongues lie dumb
when Bliss is all numb
with knowledge, a bony white sum,
We die neither blest nor with curse confessed
wanting Earth’s worst Best:
But return, where all Beauties rest.
January 17–22, 1977
The Rune
II
THE ARGUMENT: The Rune having been discovered by the Boy to the Man, the messenger commands the Hermit Sage to go out into the world with him, seek the ancient unearthly Beauty the riddle indicated. The old man gets mad, he says he’s near death, has lost Desire. The boy reads his mind and lies down with the sage to make love. At dawn he gets up says he’s disgusted with the body, condemns the sage to Chastity, demands the hermit leave his cell forever, and promises to lead him to the land of Poetry in the Sky. Exasperated, the old bard reveals the secret of the mysterious riddle.
And the old man silver bearded gold faced bald kneeling at his black cave’s ruddy fireplace
Read the airy verses, humming them to himself, hands to the cold floor to support his aching spine
watery eyed, one palsied cheek the muscles of the eyelid weak
dripped with empty tears, unsorrowful soul’d, conning & eyeing the bright rhymes’ No Truth
Unfrowning, pondering old thought arisen on a breath from Meditation’s hour—
Inspirations drawing populous-hued tides of living plasm thru seaweed pipes
from breast to brain, phantasms of interior ocean freshening the surface of the eyeball,
old breath familiar exhaling into starry space that held shore & heaven
where sat his tiny stone house, lost in black winds lapped by black waters fishy eyed
oft phosphorescent when jellied monster sprites floated to the golden sand,
wet bubbles of vehemence mouth’d by a ripple, tiny translucent spirits
dried in the eyebeams of the frowning Face o’ the moon, with the tip of a planet
beaming twinkled deeper in Blackness washed by deep waves in the ear.
Dead bearded propped on his knees the old bard stared thru his beating mind’s universe
At sharp stanza’d riddles chiseled with thought & filled with wise gold
at the bright colored foot of the boy, reddened by light of driftwood afire.
“What is your mind?” yelled the youth, his proud contention shaped on red little lips
beardless, ready to argue & instruct for he had dreamed well clear accurate
Each stony word, each flame of the hearth fire, each tear in the eyelid of the elder Sage,
each silver lock of hair, each worried frown wrinkling that skull, each conscious smile
that crept along the prophet’s thick lips involuntary, who knelt still
at the young teacher’s knees—“What Beauty’s stopped your Poetry! old speaker-forth
of Naked Thoughts?” the ruddy legged messenger laughed down, skillfultongued, black eye beaming merry—
“Will you obey my will and follow me through a riot of cities, to delicateporched countryhouses
& rich polished-marble mansions, where we’ll sport with Princes & Millionaires
and make fun of the world’s kings and Presidents Pomps & Limousines all present in their Unbeauty?
Come leave your stupid business of seashells & seawrack, gathering wrinkles of the sea?
Come with your pearls and banks of Ambergris hidden under yr bed & in yr stone closets?
Come wrapped with seaweed round your belly & Neptunic laurel moist on yr skull’s half century?
Carry yr vowelic conch & give blast midnights in Midcity canyons Wall Street to Washington,
Granite Pillars echoing ocean mouthed pearly syllables along Chicago’s Lakeshore
& reverberating in Pittsburgh’s National Banks—Dance with the golden Trident of Fame in Hollywood
Lift the Inspired Lyre to Strike the Ears of hotels in Los Angeles?”
The old man changed his thought, and stared in the boy’s eye, interrupting his beauty—
His voice grown wrathful, he lifted himself up on his haunches & glared
at the childish youth’s face till it paled, brow furrowed in self consideration
small mouth open breathing doubtful thoughts, and tiny sighs uttered to match his listening.
“Innocent!” the squinting bearded palsied resentful Shaman yelled,
“Come over sunshine colored hills naked thru suburbs boasting
Your beauty intelligence and sexual joy O Delicate Skulled Youth,
You bring news of old prophecy! You wake my wrathful Desires!
old lust for mental power and vain body’d joy! Blind craving for Bliss
of Breast and Loins! Shadow Conquest! Uncompassionate Angel!
Know th’ emptiness your own Soul? Think you’re a king in oceans of Thought?
Neptune himself with his Crown of drown’d gold over a beardless face
pale ivory with vanity! Re-waken ignorant desires no mortal boy can satisfy?
I go to a death you never dreamed, in iron oceans! homeless skull
washed underwave with octopus and seahorse, flicked by soft wings of pink fish my eyelids!
Teeth a silver wormhouse on the sandy bottom, polypus & green-suckered squid in my ribs, wavy
snake-tailed insensible kelp and water-cactus footed in watery loins! c
lams breathe
their cold valved zephyrs where my heart ached on translucent shelves! Typhoons carry my voice away!
There is no God or Beauty suffering on earth nor starred in nebulous blue heaven
but only Dream that floats vast as an Ocean under the moon—
The moon, the cold full moon, boy, fills the window—look at the sea
waving with lunar glitter like your eye—out there’s the moon
Mirror to give back cold pure cheer light on us, fade these Plutonian Images.
There’s a clear light without soul or vanity shining thru the stone window
shafting square on that rune uncovered at the hearth—the fire’s down but we can read it still—
Hermetic years’ve passed me by here, Cooled my anger like this moonlight cools the eye
—my loves & all desires burnt away, like this hearth’s wood to ash.”
“Behind the ashes of your face your mind wanders strongly—what your mind was
I knew as a young boy of books and dreams” the messenger replied calm voiced
speaking carefully, piping his thoughts intellectual clear in the old bard’s ear—
He settled down on the tiger, deer & sheep-skin covered floor, where the old man lay
with bearded head uplifted on the gold haird neck of a Lion amber eyed
Staring silent at the moon, huge pelt outstretched four-legged with yellow claws
and hard tail laid out on white lamb fleece toward the new discovered hearth-Rune.
Shivering in moonlight musing at the fire, the messenger put his nakedness against the white robed Elder’s
Giant form, slow-breathed resting back on the soft floor, silent eyes awake—
“I know your present mind, old heart, I’ll satisfy that as you wish
Unspoken, I know your work & nature beyond the wildest daydream
Y’ever had naked in hot sunshine summer noon ecstatic far from mankind
or downy-bearded in your animal bed embraced with glad phantom heroes
in midnight reverie down below Orion’s belt, right hand clasped in the heat of Creaturehood,
I saw your hard revelry with bodiless immortal companions,” the messenger cajoled,
laying his mournful sweet visage on the silenced Sage’s shoulder, drawing his right arm down his nippled thin-ribbed chest.
He shook & trembled chill, for the low moon paled over green ocean waves
and cold bright sun-fire passed upward whitening the long horizon—
The cloud-glory’d orange Orb arc’d living in blue still space, then lifting its bulk aflame
circled slowly over the breathing earth, while tiny oil tankers moved thru dawn
floating across the widespread ocean’s far edge silently going from world to world.
The boy took wrinkled years on his flesh, the snow whiskered bard trembled and touched
his breast, embracing, adoring from nipple to pink kneecap
and kissing behind him and before, using his form as a girl’s.
The youth of colored hills closed his eyes in virgin pleasure, uttered small moans
of merciful-limbed ecstasy in his throat, ah tremorous daydream pleasure,
body tingling delicate, made tender, open’d flower-soft, skull top to sole-skin touched.
The messenger, young and cold as the sun, sad face turned up to his earth-worn host
shuddered then as morning warmed the chill world, shuddered with more than world’s chill
drawing his old Companion closer face to face embraced, silent thoughted, calm and still.
The boy looked in his elder’s eyes, which gazed in his while bare branches on the hillside stood trembling in sky
blue dawn light. Honey bees woke under heaven inland and sought the lilac, Honeysuckle, rose,
pale dew dript from day-lily leaf to leaf, green lamps went out in windows on Minneapolis avenues,
Lovers rose to work in subways, buses ground down empty streets in early light, the country
robin lit from the maple leaf whistling, cat scratched the farmhouse door bulls groaned in barns, the aluminum pail clanked on cement by wooden stools in steaming flop
& stainless-steel mouths sucked milk from millions of cows into shining vats,
Black nannygoats whinnied nubian complaints to the stinking spotted dog
whose clump’d hair hung from his belly tangled with thistle, Church organs sang,
Radios Chattered the nasal weather from barn to barn, the last snow patch slipped from the tarpaper roof of the tractor lean-to,
Ice melted in the willow bog, stars vanished from the sky over gravestones stained with water melt,
The White House shined near pillared Courts on electric-lit avenues wide roaring with cars.
The messenger remembered his dream vision, the Rune discovered by the bright fire,
the Hermit’s startled wrath, magnificent and vainly noised all night,
his softness now, his careful fear, the wrinkle that remained around his eye
still watery with emotionless tears tho he held love in his arms, a silent thinking boy.
The naked messenger returned his thought. “I came for Love, old bard, tho you mistook
my youth for Innocence; I came for love, Old Prophet, and I brought you Prophecy,
Though you knew all; I came from Beauty, I came to Beauty, and I brought more beauty.
I knew the Beauty here; not your ass on your stone seat but under your prophetic throne,
older Beauty than your own, that laughs at wrinkled or smooth loins:
thus I have proved pure Beauty to your empty heart—and now you sigh.
It is that Beauty that I love in you, & not your intestinal self—
A Babe I saw more horror than your smoky ocean holds, your empty heaven,
& your tattered Earth. Follow the Prophecy I showed on your floor
Follow the Ancient Command, chase diamonds in the wind, chase years, chase clouds
chase this rainbow I brought you, chase Beauty again—
chase wrinkled lust away or chase a moonbeam, chase the rising Sun and then Chase setting sun
chase off your Mind thru ocean, chase mind Under the World,
Chase your body down to the grave & rejoice, Chase Chastity at last!
Chaste virgin suffering for you now old bony lecherous Poet.”
The boy raged on, with tongue caught fire from the dawn sun lifted now over the heavy
skulled rafters of the hermitage long-haired with sea moss barnacled at foot, stone girders snailed and starfish stinking, sea sperm rotten in kelp masses at the porch stone. “Your door’s the musty stone door of a tomb, old man, corpses of corrupted loves’re buried under the smooth stone bed we lie on, pitted with yr fearful tears! What animal skins you vulgarize your bed with, boorish stained with creepy-handed dream stuff jacked out of your Impotent loins in Pain—
This toothless lion, stuffed head, ear bit off by sea moths, this your love?
Deerskin stol’n from a Dead Buddha, snatched from wanderings in your boring Buddhafields?
A gutless Lamb for a pillow I hear you baah & bleat your Terrified Love—
Naked I have you now, bared, wrinkled, heaving heavy breaths on me you brought to your bed, and covered with hides of deskeletoned sheep.”
Wondering between shame and Longing the old Bard lay thick bellied open eyed
Bewilderment at heart, chill-loined, urgent to press that Cherry raving angel mouth a soft kiss,
tie down the juvenile prophet on the stone bed back upturned to slap his shamed white cheeks
in furious sexual punishment, pubescent weakling pale with anger,
rouse his virgin blood to blush thin buttocks ruddy tingling, humiliated
cock hard pink with desire, heart tamed submissive, soft lipped, tearful.
The kid-like messenger laughed in the bed Despairing and looked the old man in the eye:
“Now slap my face, I want to Feel! Hard with
all your Love’s strength coward Bard!
Show your Power!” Bold mute the Bard hit once, and then hit hard—
Cold faced, the Boy complained, “Now hit again, I want to feel an honest hand!” The old man struck
his naked cheek with a rough palm, thrice shocked by harsh joy, pain enough!
“Now!” said the Changeling boy, “We prove the last verse of this Prophecy—
Yes the Prophecy old & Confounded Fool, that rune on your floor you never beheld before
I forced your gaze to my foot, the prophecy some Elder Mysterious Forebear Bard Magician left us—
that prophecy I dreamed & made real before your eyes, renewing your Beauty
thru suffering dumb knowledge, yourself roused at my Beauteous Command—
All but the Last verse I understand, thick rhymed with senses and nonsenses of worst Beauty
no man or boy can interpret in this stupid dank closed cell
Under this Skull that hides the Sun, behind walls covered with yr chill laborious decipherings,
your 30 years moony babbling fishy solitude—one verse remains undeciphered,
Magical worthy our mutual war thru Society & Nations, Bards at large on the planet
seeking to answer the Text! old man of Love I give you my virgin mind—
You read my youthful Beauty, tender lip and merry eye or Changeling glance
and love you think this silken muscular body, red hair even-parted curling round my skull—
Sir I do love you, but hate this earth and myself in it and the ignorance
creeping in this house! Sir I do love your beard which you know is Beautiful to me,
as beardless my tender-muscled abdomen to you: But my Beauty you love most
is that of the aethereal Changeling of Poesy, the same I love in you
which Frightens you; then know yourself slave of Immortality, Master of Unearthly Beauty
nothing less, not God nor Empty Gurus of Thibet not Meditation’s quiet starlit hour
nor aching prostration to the Dharma King nor realms of human poetry
washed at your doorstep everymorn by the sea, stamp’d with gold sand dollars
licked by scummy wavelets, nor all the old beloved ghost boys dead
made famous by your Immortality. Here’s rotten Fish, Leviathan honor stinks your shore!
and makes this hermit house no more habitable! Leave your wordy life behind!