A Muse Amused

A MUSE AMUSED

And I must go with stone feet
Down the staircase of flesh
One moment of daylight let me have
Like a white arm thruist
Out of the dark and self denying wave
All must be synchronized, the jagged
Quartz of vision with the asphalt of human speech.
Ern Malley in The Darkening Ecliptic


I am roused from etherized slumber,
alive, yet so much like the dew that flies
suicidal into the red hot blades
that knife darkness from dawn.
And suddenly I’ve become J. Alfred Prufrock
wearing the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
I am delirium in Fever 103 degrees,
my head a moon of rich, rice
paper burning like a Chinese phoenix.
I am reliquary of unsung hymns,
the cathedral of a thousand hills
sheltering unrepentant Jews & Gentiles.
But you say that I am the sole Arabian bird
perched on a camellia, juxtaposition of
verbal baubles on a string of broken lines,
tattered cloths sitting on barb wires
that weave a canopy of lies.
You say it is all modish, full
of wise saws & modern instances.
Look within the well of your heart,
see that far tunneled reflection
of you that is me, interloper
brighter than 10,000 suns
impinging upon the macula,
louder than the remembered thoughts
of adultery, nearer the jugular
on your neck. I’ve split the infinitive.