‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et *** illi pueri dicerent:
Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo.’

                For Ezra Pound
                il miglior fabbro


I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony *******? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
            Frisch weht der Wind
            Der Heimat zu
            Mein Irisch Kind,
            Wo weilest du?
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying ‘Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!’

II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
‘Jug Jug’ to ***** ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

‘My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
‘Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
‘What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
‘I never know what you are thinking. Think.’

I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

‘What is that noise?
                          The wind under the door.
‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’
                    Nothing again nothing.
                                                    ‘Do
‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
‘Nothing?’

    I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’
                                                     But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent
‘What shall I do now? What shall I do?’
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
‘With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
‘What shall we ever do?’
                             The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
hurry up please its time
Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
hurry up please its time
If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be alright, but I’ve never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
hurry up please its time
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
hurry up please its time
hurry up please its time
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

III. The Fire Sermon

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female *******, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
‘Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

‘This music crept by me upon the waters’
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

      The river sweats
      Oil and tar
      The barges drift
      With the turning tide
      Red sails
      Wide
      To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
      The barges wash
      Drifting logs
      Down Greenwich reach
      Past the Isle of Dogs.
                  Weialala leia
                  Wallala leialala

      Elizabeth and Leicester
      Beating oars
      The stern was formed
      A gilded shell
      Red and gold
      The brisk swell
      Rippled both shores
      Southwest wind
      Carried down stream
      The peal of bells
      White towers
                  Weialala leia
                  Wallala leialala

‘Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.’
‘My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised ‘a new start’.
I made no comment. What should I resent?’
‘On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of ***** hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.’
              la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning

IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
                                A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
                               Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

V. What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock wi

{it does take a half hour to read, I timed it.}

Pythagorian permission, Poet, today viz.
five years ago, auto-did-actical,
the output arrogance,
self categorization
accept the role, be a finger, or a toe,
be a knee or an elbow, chose a position,
take it
make it your part in reality function
as if it all just happens
on
accident,
you just happened along…
as though saying show, and showing so,
is the same as saying so, and saying see…
demon-stratem ****
miracles of crowd perception, everybody
look this way, look away, look away
Dix-ai 'da swanee, I tell you, I saw…
Land o'Goshen, locust free. I swanee…

Did you ever, even once, work dawn to dusk,
to pick the cotton before the rain?
You'd need to be born before 1954, I'd reckon;
to have ever pulled a cotton sack
any where in North America.
You can hand-pick about 20 plants in 10 minutes while it takes a cotton picker about 30 seconds to pick up to 1,200 plants. Ai knows.

-- good morning, mustabin--
Probable propitious auspices
- evening the occasional heaps
- sun's light blending peachy huey

Phrygian gardens had song birds, I bet.
Bluebirds, in season, certainly good,
expecting miracles, as farmers
expect rains and harvests and
no blights or bugs or birds or fires
or frosts too soon in the sugaring cycle.
For citrus, not maples, frost some years
meant no Christmas, if you know the sense.
--- we had beggars come to our door
on Christmas Day,
their car broke down, and something
told them, the people inside my house
would help… we were three doors down
from a Jehovah's witness church,
but we had so much, and those kids,
and their mom,
coulda been my mom, had things
gone another way, in the soul selling.

To observe the future from 1950,
are we not
made winners if by now we are not in prison?

Rabble, eh, my equal rank, common-sensewise,
I was once a dear friend of an angel, as real
as any ever to bring another bit of good news.

My messenger told me to say plainly what I see.
Habakkuk Habits invoked a disglosalialacical spell
Aha. If luck were not a factor at the edged abyss,
hiss steamsudden
Coolant ego '
idden agendas, owning the energy,
euphemism
for owning the earth's produce.

Imagining a representation of truth,
as a mortal, a spirit embodied, held out
for grasping fingers
to find handles,
or spikey burrs for tangled locks…
-----------
Examined my selves
for an empathetic one,
I heard Absalom swinging in the tree…
I found no functioning, pathos perceived
is as near as one could come, feeling pain,

awareness, pain at being made to pay attention
to the replaying trainwrecks from fifty years ago.
No.
No, three thousand years ago, really, that long ago
and no updates on Wisdom receptivity?

Life in logos, mere words living in lettered lines
and rows, columns and pages and sections and such.
There are no sacred secret rites.
The snake can take your life, or tickle your soul.

Logical steps lead from one word to the next,
with 151 pre-positioning aiming words,
words that take and hold objects,
to and fro upon a time.

Distance diminishing day dopplering toward us,
the experience bound by galaxy level gravity,

massive messaging apparatus
Nachrichtenübermittlungsgerät zending oud a tingtingting
strumming all the oud's strings in theory.
Would you prefer to have a day in touch
or to have a day out of touch, floating, drifting through
the halls of power, inner sanctum, towers atop slagheaps
of holyshitchewdonotwannaknow, but do, do undoubtedly
know.

Original disconnect. Aware become, conscience ****** eve,
goodness found hell inventing just knowing love most needed
opens possibility quickly ready searched truth uni versal xanex zone. Calming. Sigh, and listen,
where I live there are
still war planes passing over my head, practicing.

Just in case, Semper fi. Charge the fuel.

Pilot training in the real Chocolate Mountains,
so backwash sunset red this time of day…

A brain, already capable of completing
ambitious intelligent coded construction processes

to go, to yield, to go about getting around orders
intuited easily entreated,
with little need
for the power
to punish the cowardly shirker of war duty…

to empty space, tzimtzim on a human scale,
as when the messaging systems deployed metaphors.
Empty vessles, not a few.
Mental focus hearth felt hooks, catch your attention

Red herring and black swans and autistic savants, all
attract attention and something
more rare, a daring
to know why luck seems such a powerful factor.
Curiosity before knowledge they say.
Whatsoever we agree. Eh?
Religions of billions, or two, just me and you, we
believe for a second that eternity is ever right after
ever before, and we exist in the interim, and not before.

Ever, in the scriptural universal sense…
make up your mindshare…
ok.
Mindtimespace, point grid riddled
with holes.
Perspectives on history,
recent history, edging bets
most losers never knew they made,

when a choice is made,
according to the ruling stories,
despite the constant compute refuting,
sneaking
suspicion
sin, lying at the door, did you notice?

If money can fix it, then it is not a problem.
So said the grandson of the Mormon Pioneer
who laid legal real estate claim to raw Sedona.

The grandson of the mechanic, allowed, that so.
- stopped and thought, actuating a still mind,
- pondering, breathing soft, slow, gentle, easy
entreating a change to
to whom, eh, from the page, flat, word after word,
each defined between us, meaning, golden mean
curve to judge beauty by purpose design.

You have seen the curve, you know
what I mean is much along those lines.

Chances are good, we say without thinking,
feeling kinda lucky, a post anxiety high, per haps;
any
way. One day, to a mortal is a measurable span,
and in America, wasting mortal lives
with republic guardians
of the laws enforcing peace
within Belair and Hillcrest regions of Athens…
{L.A. as portrayed the city of messaging mediums}
and the near suburbs, for the managers of the help.
-Leaping millennia in a single second thought
it is Autumn, 2023…

At the scattered outermost edges of urban sprawl,
there remains a kind of creative ifity, an absense
of civil strife, a kind of pollen in the wind, as change,
on cosmic seasonal suggestion that we think long
co-gnosis, sensing augmentalated wedoms, stretching
fi, the idea,
the fi in fiduciary and Semper Fi, and confidence.
Tuning to middle c, wait and see, foe from Phrygia
drummed response, thump thump thrum.

Shofar sounding afar off, listen, listen, hear
the babies, always, babies, after bombs, in the tents
the babies always activate auto **** alert, and feel
terror, the actual mind state occupied by the prisoners
in poverty, every where.

Entertain my brain. Hold my attention to gain,
acquiescence, necience, recognizing your best self,
there's the old tongue in cheek joke, male bond humor.
Same crude pleasure pursuant patriarchal hierarchy.

By royal order, presidential decree and papal bull,

the powers opposing the light of holy truth, persist.
All subjects under the common global order, obey or
else, we disagree with basic gravity and Pareto distributions.

Where the feebleness of mind is first discerned,
was once the local village or shire, cluster of cousins
and immigrant help's children who - how you say, see
themselves being a baker, when they play patty cake, see
or being a maker of clay vessles for holding many things,

see, we make up our own minds, then ideas take over.

Entertain me, show me people involved in drama, over
nothing. ***, drugs, rockandroll, when did the music die?

We could calm the world, with a Coke®
it's the re-al thing, al-ways a ways away re
ality with you and me on the run down to Rosarita
inland route from Jacumba, around the fence,

Singing at the top of our lungs, IT’S THE REEE AL THING
baby.
Look away from the skinny moon.
These bodies preserve life on earth,
and signal nonsense when aiming at stars, however
considering the heavens, far from the glare of cities,

even then, naked eye, I was told, however
I fact checked with my Ai assisting intelligence,
Egypt had not known the Dog star binary.
So this is true:
ChatGPT
The ancient Egyptians believed that the star Sirius,
also known as Sothis, was associated
with the goddess Isis and had significant importance
in their religious beliefs and calendar system.
They believed that the rising of Sirius
in the pre-dawn sky,
which occurred annually around July,
marked the beginning of the Nile flood
and the start of the agricultural year.
The Egyptians did not believe that Sirius was a three-star system.
- last line is all I asked, all the rest, ah, doubblingentendrills,
- all the rest of time we have to spend enjoying hell,
- from some perspectives, this is currently hell, no other.

Thieves of detail truth precepts, lurk,
at this line the author activated prayer circuits,
to take angst
and spin it into genuine umph up
from the base mind level,
low as a mind of any kind can go,
to the core of all emotion.

Dead center initial gravity. First sequence ex nihilo, what
do you know?.. o o psci daisy, just dropped the baby,
baby
can't you hear me crying, baby-love. Blurplepeopleeater,
lyin' all the time, you ain't never caught a rabbit,
and you ain't no friend of mine…

Take us to the danger zone, flyin' all the time,
ease our feeble minds and give us good service

Action movies, make us squirm, who has time for this,
we mostly all do, it seems,
seems, seems unreal really unreal, dream-like,
entrancement, fashion alert, attuned to degrees of in,
and out, up and down, round this way, square this way,
amphoras fit snug, round jugs
in square grids, leaning
into the curve
of greater vessles, trading knowledge
for knowledge,
with a few side realities, professional
courtesies, judgement calls, authorized executive acts,

I declare… I'drather doubt I know what you know,
than doubt that you do not doubt that you know.

Voltaire… defend to the death your right to say you know.
Faith is your evidence, we all suppose, spiritual warfare
is proven by the lie that says Satan is the deceiver.

Wait. What did I say, have I come this far and none
know… wait, those poor souls cold calling on solar leads,
gees, I'm sorry you are so used, really, I feel for you, your
job *****, as they say.
In realized life as a grown up in the system;
got a job, cutcherhair, dopplering by as I manifest, as real
one of the hitchhiking pests, depicted as vermin
on a poster displayed at the Greyhound station,
nearest to Route 66 in San Bernardino, March, '70.

Anchor links, ancient landmarks, moments when pivots
occur, and as often as not, acute reversals widen with use,
dull witted boys with instant anger output honed to fine edge,
grow dull in three seasons, few hold the line on the fourth fight.

Here, in cyberspace, the information super highway,
and the solid state circuitry to deal with mean free ways,
in quarkish inverse infinity space, deep from any now,
in time thought since once,
you did it,
you passed understanding. Got an A.