the first strains of
three to get ready
saw the other two go
to sleep because
and me awake from the
multiple conversational bumps
and these sounds Brubeckish
I scribble to definitions
not unlike bullets to the moon
in hopes of irrefutable inanity
and maybe you'll just
kill some unsuspecting
life
and then in the near future
you bite it
makes sense
longsy'allspeakittoo
The Nimbus
To dive for the nimbus on the sea-floor
Or seek it in the sun
Calls for a plucky steeplejack
Scaling the sky's giddy ocean
Or dolphin-hearted journeyman
To swim from the foundered sunburst's roar
With lost treasure on his back.
Ocean that slovens and sidles in vast
Indifference, hides
In its sludge a wreath of drowning bells.
Who in those tricky tides
Or up the slippery daybreak's sides
Can grapple the spices of mornings fast
That waste on the listless swells?
Smothered beneath a lowering ceiling
All cock-crow crispness dies.
Bleary hordes are afraid to wake
Into the mists that rise
From a palsied swamp where a marsh-bird cries.
Stranger, reconquer the source of feeling
For an anxious people's sake.
Plunder the mind's aerial cages
Or the heart's deep catacombs.
O daring's virtuoso, tossed
Where the furious sunlight foams
Or through the instinct's twilit glooms,
Return with the sunburst's glistering pledges
As a garland for the lost.
A bittern rusting in the reeds
Is startled, and through the mist
Whirs screaming. Now, if now only, come
With the nimbus in your fist.
Strike, strike the rust like a rhapsodist
And burnish gold each throat that pleads
For dawn's encomium.
Poem 1: "the World's FAIR" Robert Lescatre
Poem 2: "The Nimbus" Douglas Le Pan
Photo: JG
John Ashbery: Words to Live By
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