The Sanity (1967-1997)

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             *

     But     what     should     a morning mean
or     winning    seasons

     in    their     pockets?  Or     that     ball
in     the     seared ditch –

     that     ball     in the hand     — when hands
agreed     to the expenses     — to     

     the moods     — as     months     were     let
condition them     — fitted     

     with summit promises?  Faces     the wind
retrieves     — adverbial

     and     young     — remember     themselves
as shoulder-work     / themselves     

     as     customers     — satisfied     to look —
with     less     on their minds

     than cheating traps and massacres.  Faces     
the wind retrieves     — saved

     by     their grips     on     composite stocks    
or foxed-wrapped wheels     — drive

     on     a few hours     sleep     — hammering     
the spiced joe back     — until     

     their minds set up for them     — and     all     
that the business meant     — the ways     

     the catalogs     described it     — the flattened
sea-stones meant     — pointing

     away or toward some hard-done balancing —
adding     to     nothing     / less –

     if only this rearview     headbeams     gain
and climb behind     — these same

     foul strips     and     arresting laminates.  
It’s     thirty years     ( let’s say )     

     cursing the cash-drawers     / castanets —
the     ( imitation )     meat        — and     

     the high-volume autographs.

               *

     And     after     thirty years     — in     all
of the newly made
and     newly     dissolving images —
the visible
trembles its full length     — stirring     in him     
this alien     / apocalyptic
audience     — raised    on     the news
as is     — the views-letters
nobody     thought     to verify
/ the iconoclast cliches     
and     inclinations
whispering.  

     This holiday’s     the most     he’ll have of it —
and     the heart     at stake —
this     singular     and     floating leaf —
seductive     / fluttering —
leaving     a man     like this     — a librettist
wintering     — but     not
what     he’d     had     in mind
/ not     what    he’d     
dreamed he’d
keep

     of genuis     and the price lists     — of
the nights     — clairvoyant     
/ critical     — the     small potatoes
bobbing     — in
their fevered pot of brine     — leaving
the heart
at stake     — and the names
let slip
/ in     symbolic
maximums.

               *

     He thinks how the parlors zoomed.  And thinks
How     the buildings     once     — as     

     old     and     blizzard-scored     as buildings were —
seemed homes    to     all of them –

     the parlors     where voices once     were heard to run     
with company     — sub-dividing Time –

     and     adding     to nothing     / less     — when words     
adventured into cedars.  The visible     

     trembles     its full length     — and the whole length    
( mis-firing )     levels the stories on themselves –

     and     on     the story-tellers     — replicating holidays —
the holiday floats     laid out     

     as the floats were     on     the blue waters     — lost     
as     the moonlight     steps     — as     

     wrong     as     the cedars     were     / as adventures
seemed to be     — and     costly

     as     human     rivalries     / as     solo     guitars
on hills     / in     shell-tempered

     pavilions     — ferrying     clouds     where     
druids     winked     — but

     late     — but    way     too late
          for videos.  

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