The Lost Lunar Baedeker (6 page)

Of the Clown of Fortune

                             Dribble out of his trouser-ends

In dust-to-dust

Till cock-kingdom-come-crow

You can hear the heart-beating

Accoupling

of the masculine and feminine

Universal principles

Mating

And the martyrdom of morning

Caged with the love of houseflies

The avidity of youth

And incommensuration.

Day-spring

Bursting on repetition

                     “My friend the Sun

                     You have probably met before”

Or breakfasting on rain

You hurry

To interpolate

The over-growth

Of vegetation

With a walking-stick

Or smear a friend

With a greasy residuum

From boiling your soul down

                         You can walk to Empyrean to-gether

Under the same

Oil-silk umbrella

“I must have you

Count stars for me

Out of their numeral excess

Please keep the brightest

For the last

Lions' Jaws

O FAR away on the Benign Peninsular

            .            .            .            .            .

    That automatic fancier of lyrical birds

            Danriel Gabrunzio

with melodious magnolia

perfumes his mise en scène

where impotent neurotics

wince at the dusk

The national arch-angel

loved

several countesses

in a bath full of tuberoses

soothed by the orchestra

at the ‘Hotel Majestic Palace'

.                 .                 .                 the sobbing

from the psycho-pathic wards

of his abandoned harem

purveys amusement for ‘High Life'

The comet conquerer

showers upon continental libraries

translated stars                 .                 .                 .

accusations of the alcove

where

with a pomaded complaisance

he trims rococo liaisons                 .                 .                 .

.       .       .        a tooth-tattoo of an Elvira

into a Maria's flesh

And every noon

bare virgins riding alabaster donkeys

receive Danriel Gabrunzio

from the Adriatic

in a golden bath-towel

signed with the zodiac

in pink chenille

*      *      *      *

Defiance of old idolatries

inspires new schools

            .            .            .            .

Danriel Gabrunzio's compatriots

concoct new courtships

to intrigue

the myriad-fleshed Mistress

of “the Celebrated”

The antique envious thunder

of Latin littérateurs

rivaling Gabrunzio's satiety

burst in a manifesto

notifying women's wombs

of Man's immediate agamogenesis

.                 .                 .                 Insurance

of his spiritual integrity

against the carnivorous courtesan

.                 .                 .                 Manifesto

of the flabbergast movement

hurled by the leader Raminetti

to crash upon the audacious lightning

of Gabrunzio's fashions in lechery

.       .       .      and wheedle its inevitable way

to the “excepted” woman's heart

her cautious pride

extorting betrayal

of Woman wholesale

to warrant her surrender

with a sense of        .        .        .        Victory

Raminetti

cracked the whip of the circus-master

astride a prismatic locomotive

ramping the tottering platform

of the Arts

of which this conjuring commercial traveller

imported some novelties from

Paris in his pocket            .            .            .

souvenirs for his disciples

to flaunt

at his dynamic carnival

The erudite Bapini

experimenting

in auto-hypnotic God-head

on a mountain

rolls off as Raminetti's plastic velocity

explodes his crust

of library dust

and hurrying threatening nakedness

to a vermilion ambush

in flabbergastism

.       .       .       he kisses Raminetti

full on his oratory

in the arena

rather fancying Himself

in the awesome proportions

of an eclectic mother-in-law

to a raw ménage.

Thus academically chaperoned

the flabbergasts

blaze from obscurity

to deny their creed in cosy corners

to every feminine opportunity

and Raminetti

anxious to get a move on this beating-Gabrunzio-business

possesses the women of two generations

except a few

who jump the train at the next station            .            .            .

.       .       .       while the competitive Bapini

publishes a pretty comment

involving woman in the plumber's art

and advertises

his ugliness as an excellent aphrodisiac

*      *      *      *

Shall manoeuvres in the new manner

pass unremarked?

          .          .          .

These amusing men

discover in their mail

duplicate petitions

to be the lurid mother of “their” flabbergast child

from Nima Lyo, alias Anim Yol, alias

Imna Oly

(secret service buffoon to the Woman's Cause)

          .          .          .          .

While flabbergastism boils over

and Ram: and Bap:

avoid each other's sounds

This Duplex-Conquest

claims a “sort of success”

for the Gabrunzio resisters.

Envoi

Raminetti gets short sentences

for obstructing public thoroughfares

Bapini is popular in “Vanity Fair”

As for Imna Oly            .            .            .

I agree with Mrs. Krar Standing Hail

She is not quite a lady.            .            .            .

.            .            .            .            .

Riding the sunset

DANRIEL GABRUNZIO

corrects

the lewd precocity

of Raminetti and Bapini

with his sonorous violation of Fiume

and drops his eye

into the fatal lap

of Italy.

II

SONGS TO JOANNES
 (1917) 

Loy in Florence, ca. 1909, Stephen Haweis photograph
(
Collection Roger L. Conover
)

Songs to Joannes

I

Spawn   of   Fantasies

Silting the appraisable

Pig Cupid     his rosy snout

Rooting erotic garbage

“Once upon a time”

Pulls a weed     white star-topped

Among wild oats     sown in mucous-membrane

I would    an    eye in a Bengal light

Eternity in a sky-rocket

Constellations in an ocean

Whose rivers run no fresher

Than a trickle of saliva

These   are suspect places

I must live in my lantern

Trimming subliminal flicker

Virginal       to the bellows

Of Experience

                                  Coloured   glass

II

                                    The skin-sack

In which a wanton duality

Packed

All the completion of my infructuous impulses

Something the shape of a man

To the casual vulgarity of the merely observant

More of a clock-work mechanism

Running down against time

To which I am not paced

         My finger-tips are numb from fretting your hair

A God's door-mat

                                    On the threshold of your mind

III

We might have coupled

In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment

Or broken flesh with one another

At the profane communion table

Where wine is spill'd on promiscuous lips

We might have given birth to a butterfly

With the daily news

Printed in blood on its wings

IV

Once in a mezzanino

The starry ceiling

Vaulted an unimaginable family

Bird-like abortions

With human throats

And Wisdom's eyes

Who wore lamp-shade red dresses

And woolen hair

One bore a baby

In a padded porte-enfant

Tied with a sarsenet ribbon

To her goose's wings

But for the abominable shadows

I would have lived

Among their fearful furniture

To teach them to tell me their secrets

Before I guessed

—Sweeping the brood clean out

V

Midnight empties the street

Of all but us

Three

I am undecided which way back

                           To the left a boy

—One wing has been washed in the rain

      The other will never be clean any more—

Pulling door-bells to remind

Those that are snug

                         To the right a haloed ascetic

                         Threading houses

Probes wounds for souls

—The poor can't wash in hot water—

And I don't know which turning to take

Since you got home to yourself—first

VI

I know the Wire-Puller intimately

And if it were not for the people

On whom you keep one eye

You could look straight at me

And Time would be set back

VII

My pair of feet

Smack the flag-stones

That are something left over from your walking

The wind stuffs the scum of the white street

Into my lungs and my nostrils

Exhilarated birds

Prolonging flight into the night

Never reaching— — — — — — —

VIII

I am the jealous store-house of the candle-ends

That lit your adolescent learning

— — — — — — — — — —

Behind God's eyes

There might

Be other lights

IX

When we lifted

Our eye-lids on Love

A cosmos

Of coloured voices

And laughing honey

And spermatozoa

At the core of Nothing

In the milk of the Moon

X

Shuttle-cock and battle-door

A little pink-love

And feathers are strewn

XI

Dear one   at your mercy

Our Universe

Is only

A colorless onion

You derobe

Sheath by sheath

                   Remaining

A disheartening odour

About your nervy hands

XII

Voices break on the confines of passion

Desire   Suspicion      Man   Woman

Solve in the humid carnage

Flesh from flesh

Draws the inseparable delight

Kissing at gasps    to catch it

Is it true

That I have set you apart

Inviolate in an utter crystallization

Of all     the jolting of the crowd

Taught me willingly to live to share

Or are you

Only the other half

Of an ego's necessity

Scourging pride with compassion

To the shallow sound of dissonance

And boom of escaping breath

XIII

Come to me   There is something

I have got to tell you   and I can't tell

Something taking shape

Something that has a new name

A new dimension

A new use

A new illusion