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Elinor Wylie
This is the bricklayer; hear the thud
Of his heavy load dumped down on stone.
His lustrous bricks are brighter than blood,
His smoking mortar whiter than bone.
Set each sharp-edged, fire-bitten brick
Straight by the plumb-line's shivering length;
Make my marvelous wall so thick
Dead nor living may shake its strength.
Full as a crystal cup with drink
Is my cell with dreams, and quiet, and cool....
Stop, old man! You must leave a chink;
How can I breathe? You can't, you fool!
a rose in a cell
that is truth to the office
where morning
is a done deal
Consider what one might learn
by meditating on a corpse:
how the flesh can crawl, the bones
of a beautiful face break
the crust of fantasy like little moons
out of the ground, vacant snail-shells
still glistening with an off-white rheum.
Or consider swallowing two squares
of LSD & looking in the mirror:
what perfectly disintegrating visions
might be yours, & with what slight effort.
It’s exhilarating, really, to find this
blind matter – that it somehow coheres
despite its utter insensitivity to longing
or loneliness. It gives itself
only half-grudgingly to the chance
my wife and I dine on a heart
nothing but gruel and need
who knows what kind of night
began as a cell
To go to war
is to muster and shut up,
to exchange cheer for a cell.
I stay drunk, a thing
for finishing.
(No hope is to go.)
We part, I and my cell.
And though I have seen it often,
I am more and more pleased
with the street—
a rank home and bed.
slowly
the eye scans the page
the heart
beats steadily
while the mind winces in
in infinitesimal
spasms of
almost pre-natal pleasure
down in the street
it is divided
into three parts:
sidewalk, street proper,
sidewalk, large things
of equally inelastic matter
on either side
these, inhabited
Out the cell window
new year’s snow has melted
lazy bird flies south.
Immured in Heaven!
What a Cell!
Let every Bondage be,
Thou sweetest of the Universe,
Like that which ravished thee!