Sleep, padded like a vacuum where we sink-
The movie, noble robber of our consciousness
As with horse, dog, we go west to ramshackle
Old ranges, we go west to old mortality
Where grandma in her bonnet calls the changes;
Sleep, suction, and the limitless derangers
Let us go west where ports are new like barges
And moose, taller than men, stalk in the bay.
O whiskey bar, broad as leviathan
Where men submit their restlessness to cups
And swill the fiery stuff like solvent water:
Let us go west where home is with the horses
And clap the bar with hand as broad as boards.
What if the town is painted on like eyebrows?
A wind could blow the clapboards off,
The grey, dejected, slapdash buildings fold
Like jackknife bridges and all be lumber
Where nails of wormy boards stand up askew
To bruise the nose of unsuspecting dogs?
Still, talk of childhood’s here, where errors began:
As well: attractive freedom, riding into town
After a long winter among the cows.
Then peril lurks, convenient as the hills
From whence help cometh if you ride to them:
The old big-gut who slouches on the porch
Eager as nemesis to track you down
The old judge, dressed like cavalry, made fat
On flies he’s swallowed in his sleep:
Well, these are figures in the human plot
And tell the sum of action like a book.
If action is the man, the man’s declared
Like trophies to the customs judge.
Yet we’re uneasy, we do not know all,
The trifle, that is, that has crooked his heart,
The trifle, perhaps, that would set him straight.
This is the movie where we track the past
As western bailiffs stalk the rustler down.
O double-action cast in shadows there!
So freed by actions immigrant to us
(The cowboy’s romance with his horse)
We set ourselves before this silver screen
To track oblivions to their lair
And dream we’ve dreamed a childhood sloth away.
To set the body down in images
That is what we strive, we struggle for,
To render from an ideality
The lust of senators and buffaloes
While cattle bellow out who’re pent in night
And faithful, sick-eyed dogs wait in the cold
Visibly thin and shivering off more weight.
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