CANTO 23 Strophe: And thus shall I
S
trophe: And thus shall I body forthas if from clear ancient sight
such visions as open from paradigms all around,
from starbursts of the ecstasy of being
caught up in the swings of the heavenly bodies which are ours,
Anti-strophe: though swirls of entropy emissions darken the swerving spirit
bewildered in bursts of chlorinated phenols
and the mixed blessings of intelligence.
Strophe: Thus I approach with rattling keys
the lingering flickers and the chipmunks sunning
over nut-filled burrows where radiant light streams
through space vacated by curled leaves that clutter downward
in brisk whispers.
Anti-strophe: Embody! Embody! sings this bewhiskered body
while a hawk screams nada over machinery in the meadow
that crushes corn-flakes to a powder dusty as a steel-mill dawn!
Were it not better to flirt with tathagata in the shade
and like Annie’s Lover watch the whole thing come
tumbling down, leave it to the poets to sing
their own magnificence, let all the world’s sermons
grind themselves to a pulpit?
Strophe: I am sworn to embody
out of the nothingness of sitting
the somethingness of the poem
arriving at magnificence
because of the honesty of my rigorousness
in the generation of visons
which are in fact quite meaningless
from the viewpoint of the state of suchness
which nevertheless I am sworn to embody!
Anti-strophe: Scalpels of the practical sphere
spin across my poet’s flesh and flay me
minion to make this a better world by going into politics
or plying my profession more seemly wise
or by fixing things up around the house.
Were it not better to live well in the shade
and be a liberal activist while saving up
for a CD-ROM Internet that would keep track
of my checking account so I’d have more time with the family?
Vacation? Fishing? United Way? Give blood?
Adopt a baby saved from abortion
by racist right-to-lifers?
In the acid rain
of these thoughts my poet’s guts
lay scattered and dried like these October leaves
and the song itself is bath-house,
sauna of self-indulgence.