On Angels by Czeslaw Milosz

On Angels by Czeslaw Milosz

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seems.

Shorts is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for the humans invented themselves as well.

The voice -- no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with the lightening.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draw near
another one
do what you can.

WHAT'S SUPPRESSED from Disobedience by Alice Notley

WHAT'S SUPPRESSED
from Disobedience
by Alice Notley

---

I dream I'm a detective a man
trying to catch a woman
I'm in a barroom with small reflector-mirrors
high in each corner.
She's in the locked back room.
I pretend to be drunk

to blend in until she comes out?
into this room of the self full
of others and mirrors.

She is the soul.

--------------------------
 
Always trying to find
that back room that being
is there only such a thing as brute form wherewith,
a cheap Chandleresque detection device
a man with a coat and a gun
a room with mirrors because
I can't leave your company, your approval.

I like the mirrors, their silver
small hints of the total reflectiveness,
the litup soul/self I have been
from time to time I can't remember.

--------------------------
 
Down at the real corner car, no one wants
to be here in August.
                     Six men playing cards
and drinking red wine. I stare at thin
hair dyed red
of wizened woman paying
for glass of white bordeaux
she didn't drink it all, she smiles
someone in the habit of trying to be interesting
a former tart, it's horrible that I think like that.

--------------------------
 
Hypnotize self into a fantasy world
a world of caves. (Yes, I do this, I can.)
Sit down before a rock wall with writing on it.
Let whatever   the E's are sharp when I touch them.
That common letter. it's surface everywhere

A shadowy man in a gun-coat has come to find me.
Why do I like these caves so much?
He seems to be asking the question.
Because evidence left in them
is our subject of detection. Is what's lost
to the presumably awakened world

I'm, we're, the result or flower of suppression.
Much of one is suppressed
towards being another kind of one
other colors, petal arrangements, scents
you can only have one scent
I want to know what I've forgotten
for 50,000 years. Think of those ridiculous déesses
so-called Venuses, in French museums.
What do I know. It's so fatiguing to hate you men.
 
--------------------------
 
Define soul: I am soul

Look on the wall: Elelse...

--------------------------
 
I could say that the detective
becomes even more interesting older
wittier drunk a veritable piece
of characterization for you
isn't it marvelous he reads a lot
an amateur critic/philosopher
belongs to a Derridean study group (siècle drags on.)

--------------------------
 
Become more lost in caves...
the caves expand, enclosure dissolves
I want to go to heaven this second
I know I can't stay I've been there before
momentarily
I float alive, larger than history.

Better than history



Pub. May 1998

LAST POEM by Ted Berrigan

---

Before I began life this time
I took a crash course in Counter-Intelligence
Once here I signed in, see name below, and added
Some words remembered from an earlier time,
"The intention of the organism is to survive."
My earliest, & happiest, memories pre-date WWII,
They involve a glass slipper & a helpless blue rose
In a slender blue single-rose vase: Mine
Was a story without a plot. The days of my years
Folded into one another, an easy fit, in which
I made money & spent it, learned to dance & forgot, gave
Blood, regained my poise, & verbalized myself a place
In Society. 101 St. Mark's Place, apt. 12A, NYC 10009
New York. Friends appeared & disappeared, or wigged out,
Or stayed; inspiring strangers sadly died; everyone
I ever knew aged tremendously, except me. I remained
Somewhere between 2 and 9 years old. But frequent
Reification of my own experiences delivered to me
Several new vocabularies, I loved that almost most of all.
I once had the honor of meeting Beckett & I dug him.
The pills kept me going, until now. Love, & work,
Were my great happinesses, that other people die the source
Of my great, terrible, & inarticulate one grief. In my time
I grew tall & huge of frame, obviously possessed
Of a disconnected head, I had a perfect heart. The end
Came quickly & completely without pain, one quiet night as I
Was sitting, writing, next to you in bed, words chosen randomly
From a tired brain, it, like them, suitable, & fitting.
Let none regret my end who called me friend.

BUDDHA ON THE BOUNTY by Ted Berrigan

---

                                      for Merrill Gilfillan

"A little loving can solve a lot of things"
She locates two spatial equivalents in
The same time continuum. "You are lovely. I
am lame." "Now it's me." "If a man is in
Solitude, the world is translated, my world
& wings sprout from the shoulders of 'The Slave' "
Yeah. I like the fiery butterfly puzzles
Of this pilgrimage toward clarities
Of great mud intelligence & feeling.
"The Elephant is the wisest of all animals
The only one who remembers his former lives
& he remains motionless for long periods of time
Meditating thereon." I'm not here, now,
            & it is good, absence.