1. ON THE FREEWAY
It has the strength of the seducing thought.
It is the road: one passion early taught,
One method once achieved and after sought.
Escape, the competence we soonest learn,
Abstractly beckons at the latest turn,
Confirming, “Rather travel than to burn.”
Coiling seduction, thrust, St. Paul’s own way,
The interchange coerces toward the Bay.
Behold the serpent, who devours the day.
Sun where the jaws divide, gold egg of prey,
Survive in us who are the shining back.
A little more than scales, if by some lack
A little less than knowledge. Be, warm sack
Of promise, all the life we shall not have:
The goldest, stillest fruit guile ever gave.
Clear future tangent on the western wave,
Blood sluggish where the off-ramp trumpets, nears,
We shed or straighten. As the rattle slurs
The patterns of the diamond disperse.
No other exit. Drive on who prefers.
II. OFF THE FREEWAY
The all night station, vertical as noon,
To all that shades returns the shadow. Moon
And planet, other moons, above the pumps
The lettered globes shine on the garbage dumps,
To make of No-Knock and of New Lead-Free
Their Ptolemaic, fixed astronomy.
Born to the signs and system closed, the neo
Magus trapped here would, if Galileo
Rose again to threaten now his franchise,
Cry “Lynch the socialist” to save the ranch house.
It is not paid for, but one has for hope
The closing stock quotes, crosswords, horoscope.
One dozes, letting fall the loan shark’s pencil.
Outside, wind chimes the advertising tinsel.
The vended foods are going brightly rotten;
Two empty pumps seem Frauen ohne Schatten.
In the dreams of enterprise still free
No bell for service sounds, no horns decree.
And what one does not see need never mock
This past, this present, where one does not look:
The turning tinsel, brilliantly awake;
The young attendant, frankly on the make.
III. SHIP OF FOOLS
This is—for all its studied dark, stale air,
Price-annex of the beach. That salty glare
Glows still upon the cheekbones; how the ocean
Surges on the scent of suntan lotion!
So, the bar’s façade, the dummy prow,
Suggesting beaches have what style they know
From waterfronts and indoor sorts of sin,
Creates a queer (well, queerer) Spouter Inn.
The sounding wall is Jericho to Rahab;
Two dancers have the grace of Captain Ahab.
Made up like a tall, Max Factor Queequeg,
Cuts-in one more, lisping, “Dance with me-queg.”
Luckless Craig, last summer’s lifeguard, ego
Bruised, submits, though rather as Tashtego
Helmets Heaven on the sinking mast.
The force of symbol sends us under. Vast
And arbitrary, irresistible,
The ultimate in Spouters casts its spell–
The ever re-anticipated fluke,
The perilous, brute surfacing we seek;
All prey, no certain color: here Nairobi,
There White Highland; He, the big wet Moby.
IV. WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN
Greta Garbo would have been supremely suited to play Ellida;
why did nobody ever think of making a film of it with her?
MICHAEL MEYER, Henrik Ibsen
High M.G.M.; the Troll-King Louis B.
Discusses for the Press his Lady from the Sea.
“The author,” he informs, “will do the script.”
His fee established, Ibsen tells the crypt:
“I resurrect to fight the heirs of Scribe.”
Those heirs, a board room sitting as in sleep,
Dismiss to contemplate, far past his ground stage,
The resurrected sitting on the sound stage.
Presentations in brief; the lights in Klieg.
“Herb Stothart. What we have instead of Grieg.”
Blue eyes behind the granny glasses smoulder. “And this is?”
“Adrian.”
“Your Button-Moulder?”
“Rick, is it true,” inquires Louella Parsons,
“Your plays all deal with syphilis and arsons?”
“What about Sonja Henie,” breaks in Hedda.
“Will you date her?” Silence. Enter Greta.
“We should like to be alone,” says Ibsen.
“Send us Aquavit.”
“I vant a Gibson.”
Age and youth, Norway and Sweden, arm
In arm they leave forever the broken charm,
The circle and the jungle of her beauty sleep.
The Kliegs go out; the other light will keep,
In Mrs. Alving’s lamp. “Fantastic, Irv.
Buy,” Mayer says to Thalberg, “all the oeuvre.
Eyolf the Man! A musical. Don’t stint;
Get Judy Garland: Little Miss Peer Gynt.
Then Captain Alving, starring Wallace Beery.”
“Error.
Back to the Doll House, starring Norma Shearer.”
V. VICINITY OF THE TEMPLE
For Charles Gullans, where he lives
In watered gardens west the long trek ends:
Duplexes, and the single being razed.
Origins, obscure in this clippered ease,
Seem comfortably some past of other selves —
Sealed, whole, whose future, too, is sealed, apart.
Moroni, Angel of the Tardy Trumpet,
Look at last on West Los Angeles.
If, of that future and its far encroachments,
Negroes and the coffee shop precede,
Of a shared past, community and thrift
Arm yet the leaguered later days. Draw on,
Ye Saints, the seamless garment of your faith:
The Angel faces backward into Zion;
The sprinkler spreads on air its partial helix.
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