For Susan O'Neill Roe
#Americans #Suicide #Women #XXCentury
Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. God’s lioness, How one we grow,
O half moon— Half-brain, luminosity— Negro, masked like a white, Your dark Amputations crawl and appall—
Gerd sits spindle—shaped in her da… Lean face gone tawn with seasons, Skin worn down to the knucklebones At her tough trade; without time’s… The burnished ball hangs fire in h…
I’m a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf’s big with its yeasty ri…
You will be aware of an absence, p… Growing beside you, like a tree, A death tree, color gone, an Aust… Balding, gelded by lightning—an il… And a sky like a pig’s backside, a…
Old man, you surface seldom. Then you come in with the tide’s coming When seas wash cold, foam— Capped: white hair, white beard,
Through portico of my elegant hous… With your wild furies, disturbing… And the fabulous lutes and peacock… Of all decorum which holds the whi… Now, rich order of walls is fallen…
“I shut my eyes and all the world… I lift my lids and all is born aga… (I think I made you up inside my… The stars go waltzing out in blue… And arbitrary blackness gallops in…
This is winter, this is night, sma… A sort of black horsehair, A rough, dumb country stuff Steeled with the sheen Of what green stars can make it to…
Always in the middle of a kiss Came the profane stimulus to cough… Always from teh pulpit during serv… Leaned the devil prompting you to… Behind mock—ceremony of your grief
The horizons ring me like faggots, Tilted and disparate, and always u… Touched by a match, they might war… And their fine lines singe The air to orange
With white frost gone And all green dreams not worth muc… After a lean day’s work Time comes round for that foul slu… Mere bruit of her takes our street
Who are these people at the bridge… The rector, the midwife, the sexto… In my sleeveless summery dress I… And they are all gloved and covere… They are smiling and taking out ve…
This man makes a pseudonym And crawls behind it like a worm. This woman on the telephone Says she is a man, not a woman. The mask increases, eats the worm,
The abstracts hover like dull ange… Nothing so vulgar as a nose or an… Bossing the ethereal blanks of the… Their whiteness bears no relation… Snow, chalk or suchlike. They’re