Post by job on Jan 24, 2009 12:03:02 GMT -5
It might look something like this...
(since we're in the political mood these late days of January)
Although I'd written this some time ago, I think this would be the poem I'd read (or maybe it would be an inaugural speech in verse?) - either way, the voice is that of a poet aspiring to be a tyrant... or would-be tyrant aspiring to be a poet, or possible just a poet-tyrant, who, if he had half a chance could cultivate his personality to win smoothly and celebrate his own rise by the shallow experience of freshman victories...
Comments welcomed.
JOB
Inaugural: Ars Politica
for Joseph Keating
I speak to solemn shadows resting there behind the glass -
And that's a bad way to start a thing, you know.
I: the worst ethic in the world is one that's based solely
On the solipsism of performance.
Must there not be some blanched spot in one's vision, some cataract
Somewhere that swells and resorts to commandments
Or a manifesto even as a crowd multiply
Numbers of black umbrellas tunneling
Through a hard rain? A funeral is ego's last performance,
Played out between drops. But just because the rain
Never touches a soul doesn't mean no one is ever there
To mourn the silence, doesn't mean the rain
Only touches corpses. After the funeral, the rain
Continues to fall. Survivors speak to it.
Speak: but the universe does not move an inch either way
When one relies strictly on strength of voice.
It is then that commentary is a shadow across
One's fate, or the reverse. Speaking of voice,
Not of the world, one utters well and fine but not only
Of images. The mirror could reply
With a quick wit via cologne-scented literati.
The shifting frames of poets' pictures lease
Punctuation and capitalization and usage
For those famous pictures per thousand-words-worth,
More or less tossed off, thoughtlessly perhaps, captured by a wind,
Until snagged on, pressed against and wrapped a-
Round a tyrant's tall booted foot, the same ubiquitous boot
Grinding history down to shadows.
To shadows: Some of these are frankly the dead, the dead, that is,
And gone, others the imagined living
That go on, slipped beneath busy paperwork, buried alive,
The living that accomplish small miracles
Of elementary beginnings, middles and ends -
Even as rubber stamps accomplish
Exercises in the same beginnings, middles and ends'
More perfect motion never found wholly quite.
I speak to solemn shadows resting there behind the gas
And that's an indifferent bridge to things,
You know, clearing life from sealed rooms, counting teeth and buttons,
Accountant-like, held accountable to
Zero. But each day feels like day six of this business,
Tomorrow, we may be resting from our toils.
Resting: Alas, a day's work is never really complete.
Softer hands have nothing to show for themselves.
The division of labor and pleasure is unfair,
Left and right. The common cry goes up:
Who will pay for these slogans once they are rendered obsolete?
Who should condition the people's consciousness
That history completes? See - resting is right, is a right,
And is the right wrong attitude at this
Altitude. But with the whole weight of the Siberian tundra,
The question remains to press us: where is here?
Where? Because the antecedents and inflections carry
The day, and the cipher that is remaining,
Only serves as a funnel between the urge to love
And the perfect beigeness of a day
In these mountains, where some of us can't help but feel the time
And times while others only remark it
As the sun moves cautiously between the shadows and
Behind the glass. There you see a full mop-up
Of words, brilliantly bristling in evening gowns and high heels,
Suited to proper romantic objectives;
Or each, like a diva at her debut, eloquent with mid-
Night, begins to undress to the sheer beauty
Of her ambiguity, the sensual delight of
Her sound, the entertaining perversity
Of her reversals. Afterwards, the base meaning remains
Like the jagged breathings of Cyrillic
Syllables after the party for the revolution
Is over, crapulent and almost aware
Of what the cold air of a noon clenched among Irkutsk's teeth
Could possibly mean to an individual.
Here, the hard labor of smoothing out latrine ditches
Like old society ladies smoothing
Bedcovers before sleep, or states running magic hands over
A flowing list of names, changing them into
An ebb of graveyards. One of these forgotten libraries
Glistens in the dim grin of a winter field.
It is history's index, the directory that you
Never find your own name in,
Partly in relief, partly fear. These tablets gleam book covers
Ancient stories catalogued in capitals,
Asterixes marking pages ripped out for editing
And never replaced. Is imagination,
Then, the canon of graveyards? Is it history’s short list
For invitations to the royal ball
Where glass slippers tap threateningly on the glass ceiling?
Or is it a long list, a boring epic
Of banal and budgeted items, the yawning measures
Of politicians’ pure poetry?
But the regime waits out winter to bury its corpses
And some laws are not open to revision.
And the top drawer of the bureaucrat holds no packet of verse.
Names are words that pass into disuse.
And names are words that also manage to pass into abuse.
And words are words that pass into the blood.
Still, if poetry teaches anything to the demagogues,
It is that each moment revises time:
I speak to solemn shadows resting there behind the grass.
And that's a good way to end things up, you know -
With the stinging feel of words planted with a pick's tine when
The national soil is frozen stiff more than six feet down.
(since we're in the political mood these late days of January)
Although I'd written this some time ago, I think this would be the poem I'd read (or maybe it would be an inaugural speech in verse?) - either way, the voice is that of a poet aspiring to be a tyrant... or would-be tyrant aspiring to be a poet, or possible just a poet-tyrant, who, if he had half a chance could cultivate his personality to win smoothly and celebrate his own rise by the shallow experience of freshman victories...
Comments welcomed.
JOB
Inaugural: Ars Politica
for Joseph Keating
I speak to solemn shadows resting there behind the glass -
And that's a bad way to start a thing, you know.
I: the worst ethic in the world is one that's based solely
On the solipsism of performance.
Must there not be some blanched spot in one's vision, some cataract
Somewhere that swells and resorts to commandments
Or a manifesto even as a crowd multiply
Numbers of black umbrellas tunneling
Through a hard rain? A funeral is ego's last performance,
Played out between drops. But just because the rain
Never touches a soul doesn't mean no one is ever there
To mourn the silence, doesn't mean the rain
Only touches corpses. After the funeral, the rain
Continues to fall. Survivors speak to it.
Speak: but the universe does not move an inch either way
When one relies strictly on strength of voice.
It is then that commentary is a shadow across
One's fate, or the reverse. Speaking of voice,
Not of the world, one utters well and fine but not only
Of images. The mirror could reply
With a quick wit via cologne-scented literati.
The shifting frames of poets' pictures lease
Punctuation and capitalization and usage
For those famous pictures per thousand-words-worth,
More or less tossed off, thoughtlessly perhaps, captured by a wind,
Until snagged on, pressed against and wrapped a-
Round a tyrant's tall booted foot, the same ubiquitous boot
Grinding history down to shadows.
To shadows: Some of these are frankly the dead, the dead, that is,
And gone, others the imagined living
That go on, slipped beneath busy paperwork, buried alive,
The living that accomplish small miracles
Of elementary beginnings, middles and ends -
Even as rubber stamps accomplish
Exercises in the same beginnings, middles and ends'
More perfect motion never found wholly quite.
I speak to solemn shadows resting there behind the gas
And that's an indifferent bridge to things,
You know, clearing life from sealed rooms, counting teeth and buttons,
Accountant-like, held accountable to
Zero. But each day feels like day six of this business,
Tomorrow, we may be resting from our toils.
Resting: Alas, a day's work is never really complete.
Softer hands have nothing to show for themselves.
The division of labor and pleasure is unfair,
Left and right. The common cry goes up:
Who will pay for these slogans once they are rendered obsolete?
Who should condition the people's consciousness
That history completes? See - resting is right, is a right,
And is the right wrong attitude at this
Altitude. But with the whole weight of the Siberian tundra,
The question remains to press us: where is here?
Where? Because the antecedents and inflections carry
The day, and the cipher that is remaining,
Only serves as a funnel between the urge to love
And the perfect beigeness of a day
In these mountains, where some of us can't help but feel the time
And times while others only remark it
As the sun moves cautiously between the shadows and
Behind the glass. There you see a full mop-up
Of words, brilliantly bristling in evening gowns and high heels,
Suited to proper romantic objectives;
Or each, like a diva at her debut, eloquent with mid-
Night, begins to undress to the sheer beauty
Of her ambiguity, the sensual delight of
Her sound, the entertaining perversity
Of her reversals. Afterwards, the base meaning remains
Like the jagged breathings of Cyrillic
Syllables after the party for the revolution
Is over, crapulent and almost aware
Of what the cold air of a noon clenched among Irkutsk's teeth
Could possibly mean to an individual.
Here, the hard labor of smoothing out latrine ditches
Like old society ladies smoothing
Bedcovers before sleep, or states running magic hands over
A flowing list of names, changing them into
An ebb of graveyards. One of these forgotten libraries
Glistens in the dim grin of a winter field.
It is history's index, the directory that you
Never find your own name in,
Partly in relief, partly fear. These tablets gleam book covers
Ancient stories catalogued in capitals,
Asterixes marking pages ripped out for editing
And never replaced. Is imagination,
Then, the canon of graveyards? Is it history’s short list
For invitations to the royal ball
Where glass slippers tap threateningly on the glass ceiling?
Or is it a long list, a boring epic
Of banal and budgeted items, the yawning measures
Of politicians’ pure poetry?
But the regime waits out winter to bury its corpses
And some laws are not open to revision.
And the top drawer of the bureaucrat holds no packet of verse.
Names are words that pass into disuse.
And names are words that also manage to pass into abuse.
And words are words that pass into the blood.
Still, if poetry teaches anything to the demagogues,
It is that each moment revises time:
I speak to solemn shadows resting there behind the grass.
And that's a good way to end things up, you know -
With the stinging feel of words planted with a pick's tine when
The national soil is frozen stiff more than six feet down.
