CANTO 33 Star-flight

 

Star-flight punctuates the devious dialogue

of leather-stained worldlings. Give me a night

where asteroids gargle into a celestial sink.

Dice-shaped diamonds unfurl in windy sailboats.

Always and always in the framework of ice-picks

we have nothing to fear. Only the censors.

Undoubtedly beneath frames of reference lie

abattoirs of pure delight, of utmost goodness

where the only annihilation is abstraction.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgery.

All the lying babies awaken

to pay counterfeit atmans with funny money.

Language procrastinates

in Promethean procrustean beds of handles that falsify

the blundering of our absent-minded senses.

Shove it. Clowns, whores, and punks.

The most delicate instruments stumble into metaphors.

Can it. Drop it.

The best I can do is sling

a rigging of words to bridge the gap.

A provisional structure shored up by apprehensions.

A floundering to formulate essential joy.