Life and Existence

By the terrible incantations of defeats And by the fear that defeats and dreams The whole race is a poet that writes down The eccentric propositions of its fate.

Thus the theory of description matters most. It is the theory of the word for those For whom the word is the making of the world, The buzzing world and lisping firmament. It is a world of words to the end of it, In which nothing solid is its solid self.

And, capable, created in his mind, Eventual victor, out of the martyrs’ bones The ultimate elegance: the imagined land.

He is like a man In the body of a violent beast. Its muscles are his own… The lion sleeps in the sun. Its nose is on its paws. It can kill a man.

One’s grand flights, one’s Sunday baths, One’s tootings at the weddings of the soul Occur as they occur.

A. A violent order is disorder; and B. A great disorder is an order. These Two things are one.

I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks.

Beauty is momentary in the mind— The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.

Beauty is momentary in the mind— The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.

Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings Of those white elders; but, escaping, Left only Death’s ironic scraping. Now, in its immortality, it plays On the clear viol of her memory, And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings Of those white elders; but, escaping, Left only Death’s ironic scraping. Now, in its immortality, it plays On the clear viol of her memory, And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

She says, “But in contentment I still feel The need of some imperishable bliss.” Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams And our desires.

Only, here and there, an old sailor, Drunk and asleep in his boots, Catches tigers In red weather.

Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

And as he came he saw that it was spring, A time abhorrent to the nihilist Or searcher for the fecund minimum.

Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages, Or one man Crossing a single bridge into a village.

The people know the salt of the sea and the strength of the winds lashing the corners of the earth. The people take the earth as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope. Who else speaks for the Family of Man?

The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.

The learning and blundering people will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.

Why is there always a secret singing When a lawyer cashes in? Why does a hearse horse snicker Hauling a lawyer away?

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all.

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs.

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Us the most fleeting of all. Just once, everything, only for once. Once and no more. And we, too, once. And never again. But this having been once, though only once, having been once on earth—can it ever be canceled?