CANTO 52 Our newest emanation

 

Our newest emanation, whose name is STANCE,

is not so much stumped as bemused, hung-up

in a nexus of negative capability, dead-end duende.

He hopes against hope his new poem

whose subject is the union of subject and object

to have such integrity that it will be a separate object,

in spite of his conviction the objective world is unreachable

(if it exists). This poem will reach from that nebulous

realm of the presumably tangible trailing sparks

to infuse the wan and lonely thing in the mind

with clouds of quarks! Stance trembling, frangible,

clutches the mike and launches his new poem

entitled "The Key":

Some days the dead hobble the drudge

and the droll troll snares the nascent dragonfly

with a swift slurp of his igneous net.

No child dare cross this bridge.

When the radioactive firefly goes log-rolling

on the ripe rapids of the Saskatchewan,

the paper-mill churns out luminous splinters

and the greeting-card gives off a comforting glow.

Only the sublime bumblebee redeems

the hooded hobgoblins: dry salvage wasp

and bloodsucking mystic mosquito.

Laws broken lawfully: that’s the key!

He’s in the back room of

the Cafe Carpe,

a small-town coffee-house on the banks of the Rock River,

in the beer garden bright with dirndls and overalls

where the mossy banks are brightly lit

the carp line up mad for poetry, eagerly holding their gills.