CANTO 69 I am sitting in a tent

(for Alvin Lucier)

I am sitting in a tent, different from the room you are in now.

In fact I am sitting in a

macadamia nut. I must make a poem

to get out. I am allowed only the letters

of these two words, "macadamia nut," along with a few amenities:

articles, prepositions, pronouns,

conjunctions, auxiliaries, apostrophes, dashes.

The shell will not crack until I use all

almost all of the word permutations, oscillations, if you will,

of the specified letters.

THE WORDS

can unit anima nit mica

antic ant mint id manic main mat

Adam ‘mid cad manta aim mind acid mania

tin anti- tan act tun tuna amain madam aid

mantic Canada tam ain’t imam adamant

tad naiad dim maid dint timid

dun can’t macadam maim

mad cam tic

THE POEM

Can this nit of an ant,

this manic adam, this cad,

mind a tin of the tan tuna of Canada?

Can this man admit his mama to the mud,

dam the duct where data become dicta?

Let his aunt daunt his tumid tunic!

Ain’t he a tad dim, by dint of his

dun macadam, his mad cam,

his tic to maim?

Where’s a unit of his mica id?

It’s on the mat, or manta, an acid act!

Or amain, in the mantic tam of an imam!

Can’t a timid maid or naiad,

or an adamant madam,

with the aid

of a tun of anti-mania,

aim him mid the main,

mint him to the antic anima?

In the studio Al the engineer cracks a walnut in front of the mike.

The poet cries out, "I’m free!"

Little does he know a bit of software lurking in his future

will pump up that anagram to three hundred and sixteen terms,

counting acronyms, dialects, exotic words. He should have burrowed

into that random mass as if it were the earth itself

and mined more clever stanzas. Faint kudos for the ditty

he managed, but he’ll need directions to get this job done:

Poet, your nut

is now THE PLANET

and you’re trapped inside.

The good news is you don’t have to do acronyms or abbreviations.

Got a sharp pick and shovel? Let me get you started:

 

prop up the adit of that anagram, dig all the way

to Acadia or Actium, or Ada in Oklahoma, or Ica where Incas

once lived, or tunnel to Turkey where Adana sits,

or stretch to Amman, why not Cana while you’re at it, or dig under rocky

Candia on Crete, or scrape under the peak of Ida if you please,

then just a short hop beneath the cobblestones of Catania,

swing under Mantua to Dante country. You may find some warm

rocks, leftovers, a bit of Purgatorio, perhaps.

Then scratch your way to what was once Dacia (make this

a scholarly dig, pick up some Thracian bones),

make Daman on the Gulf of Cambay, or swing under the island of Diu

off the coast of what used to be Bombay, or swim to Macau

in the South China sea (guess what’ll happen in 1999?)

and you’re still inside the words macadamia nut,

presumptuous one! Keep digging: Manama in Bahrain, grab the whale-road

to Maui, (yes, you can swim for variety, minimum depth fifty feet)

then flipper to Nam, look up secret agent Orange,

tunnel again to bump bones with some Tai,

dig north to the Sea of Azov and Taman, swing back to Tana

where the Blue Nile starts, detour to Tacna in Chile

and bore all the way to Utica, not those

few ruins in Tunisia, but back in the states where the troops

of old Fort Schuyler shoved the Iriquois out.

You’ll be (not very far) under the Utican sewer system.

 

We know it’s been strenuous, but you’re not free yet. Sorry.

You must be thinking we’re the Marpa to your Milarepa!

Nothing for it but to set up camp among the trenchant odors

filtering down to where you riffle through this word-hoard.

What’s your strategy? You could take all the place-names

and contrive a picaresque world tour. You could begin,

"Now I enter the adit of this anagram," etc., and then—

but you figure it out—make a witty and yet profound opus

of the remaining words:

 

ain, Ainu, ait, ama, amanita, Amati, amnia, ana, ani, anta, antacid, anti, ataman, atman, audit, Aum, cadmium, caiman, Cain, Cam, cami, canid, cat, Cid, Cnut, cud, cum, cumin, cunt, cut, cut in, cutin, Dam, dam, Daman, dammit, damn, dan, Dan, Dana, Danu, Diana, dictum, din, dit, ducat, Duma, duma, induct, Mac, mac, Macau, madman, maia, Maia, Maidu, mana, Mani, maniac, manitu, mantid, Mantua, mantua, manumit, mat, matin, maund, Mic, min, mina, mucin, mum, muni, Naidu, Nama, nim, Tacna, tain, tamandua, Tamm, Tan, tau, Tiu, Tuan, Tucana, tui, tunica, umm, unai, Unami, unci, Uniat!

Sorry. So sorry. Regrets. Beg your pardon. Apologies. Demurs. A thousand, thousand....