CANTO 8 How rare

 

How rare is what I seek? To reach

language with fuzzy logic

and music with dangerous odds

farther than music or language can reach?

As rare as a sea-turtle bobbing up to

find a bright ring around its neck.

As rare as that turtle lifting now

out of such a Pacific

showering glistening drops of language

that scatter down to the pitch and rhythm

poets were born for!

 

This gleaming terrapin arcs in air utterly clear.

No more the weighted fear built into the shell.

Now that long neck

stretches beyond the reach of soup,

the sea where everything sways in sorrow.

 

Turtle cranes all around the tide-washed horizon:

a pincer-shaped moon

trails geraniums in a long festoon!

There are verbena stars

and a huge wild calendula comet!

Flying fish thread through

alabaster and emerald hoops!

Porpoises playfully balance planetoids!

Lost caravans of Incas stream across a hurricane!

Flights of chanting condors swerve out of the way

of a blue ’42 Diamond-T dump-truck

with me screaming in the cab!