My many-windowed room, cupboard of sun
And moontrap too, is larder of all need:
Music lies mineral in the records ore;
In cedar gloom hangs soft the golden tweed.
Often like hail
The branded hands of mad Corona flail:
Covies of frightened meaning soar.
And crimson wool (dream’s hut)- what shall stay
Firm in the fiery changes of this day?
My desk of silver oak the honest plane
Fashioned alone, undyed, simple as sea.
Roll any deep drawer open to the day
Smell the rank vigor of the mountain trec.
Yet we shall part:
You are not made, poor wood, to hold the heart
Or fold it in your files away.
When you succumb to age or furious smoke,
The soul endures, perfect as silver oak.
In coiled séance the radio, squat fakeer,
Broods, as the menace and the unction mass,
Or music captured by a filament ear
Warms the electric blood in glands of glass,
Not mine for long.
The metal parrot, faucet of thick song,
Is migrant, not familiar here.
Should any shot the copper viscera bare,
Feelers of thought decode the electric air.
And ceiling-high like amphoras of wit
The labeled books of wine and acid rise,
Soul’s pharmacy and terrible tavern, deep
With choler and salt and blood that never dries.
They faintly aid:
Soul is no goat, for lead or paper made.
These pages hurricane shall reap,
Bomb make confetti of or looter get.
Skull’s heaven is hung with burning alphabet.
Thought’s all: essential we, that studied wood
And watered orchids in the ferns of print,
That out of air the electric arrow stole,
As little need them now as fire the flint.
Should sudden lead
Havoc the shining diesels of the head,
On seas of blood the swarming soul
(Gold nebula) ferries free to infinite air,
Streaming with dates and regions like bright hair.
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