Four Poems by David Shapiro

14/11/12 08:11

Five Poems
By David Shapiro
For the Evening Land "What causes a death rattle?"--The New York Times If there is a sound before death in America What causes that sound Asks the newspaper For most there is no sound Only a dream of two words: White black Irreversible or the dream without words There is no voice in America Only the finite Reading the voices But let me die singing, like the forefathers Lightning never hits the obtrusive pole, But the animals shrivel in the field. And the obscure observer takes a note. And what is that sound before death-They have banished the death rattle, the rhonchi, the rales. We die elsewhere, of something else. And what is that last sound my mother made Softly made: archaic breathing. And do not call it a dream. Nor is it a game: The child says infinity is a small word We have done away with noise and have left only The agonal respiration like war material. You will paint the Americans but is it The father in a grain of dust, heroic androgyne with honeysuckle Man in a skirt, woman in a flower, faithless but free The child thinks the god's birthday must be every day: He is that old. Fool's gold folly. Crystals slouch out of matrix. While the spider illuminates his influence with a film Of joy, the fly develops his refuge in a shattered theme The dead sunflower almost blocks the sun Like an old poet, an empty eve coerces us Like an old fate, the gods are dipped in water and predict Man is red dust, let there be flesh. There is no sound before death in America You do not see the charred soldier, only pleasure.
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Four Poems by David Shapiro

14/11/12 08:11

We have done away with all noise, but the agony of respiration. And autumn will be the flag of that new nation. Desire Lines I can see I cannot see Keats in surgery in the 19th century I can see I cannot see Mars and Aphrodite dancing in the net while the gods played and laughed at the castanet I can see I cannot see Keats and Fanny Allen Ginsberg in 1953 I can see I cannot see An adult Is a raindrop A raindrop Is an adult I can see I cannot see Lou Andreas Salome and Friedrich Nietzsche Mars and Botticelli Keats and Fanny B Allen and Peter Orlovsky Elizabeth and "and" I can see I cannot see An adult Is just an instrument A landscape pornography That hill is a hole I walk on desire lines You walk on desire I can see I cannot see Sarcophagus for the Silence of God for John Hejduk and Picard Sarcophagus for the still small voice Sarcophagus for the marriage of truth and troth
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Four Poems by David Shapiro

14/11/12 08:11

Sarcophagus for the mother of the hypocritical poet Sarcophagus for the lava of speech the incline of music Sarcophagus for the materials for the messiah without melancholy Sarcophagus for the misidentified corpse of the architect Sarcophagus for the flower beyond flowers Sarcophagus for the suicidal architect for the hand on the edge Sarcophagus for the powerless computer for the traditional book Sarcophagus for the one fairy tale Sarcophagus for the future tense and for the subjunctive in the gloom of the miracle for Thomas Hardy's ox-cart man Sarcophagus for the twins of frozen speech and for the luminous sounds of the surface Sarcophagus for the slave of writing crying help in all languages for wild sound for the twins of frozen speech Sarcophagus for the mistranslators Song for Hannah Arendt Out of being torn apart comes art. Out of being split in two comes me and you. HA HA! Out of being torn in three comes a logical poetry. (She laughed but not at poetry.) Out of the essential mistranslation emerges an illegitimate nation. Better she said the enraged than the impotent slave sunk in the Bay. Out of being split into thirteen parts comes the eccentric knowledge of "hearts." (Out of being torn at all comes the poor-rich rhyme of not knowing, after all.) And out of this war, of having fought comes thinking, comes thought. Voiceless They were right who inveighed against the voice,
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Four Poems by David Shapiro

14/11/12 08:11

too sexual an organ the rabbis whose laryngologists those who stopped a doctor by their side like a singer who refused to listen and put a wall where voice had been they died the lover of branches of fire of the tape recorder used for good or ill your burning hair If we were blind and if we were known to listen we would find one another by your voice alone (what you loved or Lillith loved was you and yes and permission) and we are blind

lingo 4 Books in print by David Shapiro

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