CANTO 90 oh this is good

 

Oh this is good

this casting about for a voice

parrot from the perch of no voice

having fluttered up there knowing home

singing Polly-rhythms

or all voices at once

 

meaning here not the deconstruction

of the launch-tower of Babel-onia

or even Apollonia crabbed and flowering

nebulae cloudy bursts of language

but the song from interstellar

 

static a voice like Voyager

coming 3.5 billion miles syllables

of what it finds there

unlike Voyager this parroting

comes de-programmed

 

gaping at the opening cage door

shifting from one claw to another

oh this parrot is ready to spring

full of May full of May full of May

let all caged birds sing

 

one could write the poem

of language freed from itself,

not the language poem but the un-language poem

that Polly sings a while, something like this:

 

Up from the hive the dying Toynbee spins

while doomed workers break-dance

all the way to Pollen-esia.

 

Blue guitarists fret

umbilical strings (who would say chords)

while baby fastens to causal nipples.

 

Nothing shines brighter

than the thing-in-itself

while ragged beggars description.

 

The spas must fill with bodhi-builders

while technicians chariot the sun.

The only way we’ll get here

is if none of us (say all of us) go.