Roger Zelazny: To Spin Is Miracle Cat

O
why
the sky
so tortured
today? one says
aloud, quick finger
uncoiled sudden up over
their heads. They touch at
them then with meaning, so that
is all there was to vision this day
so blue and taut, that spotless lay
under stone fingers, which the play
of steel muscle tore brittly at
and beat, while a blind cat
amid the snow grew her—
self an extra, fur—
less tail, laid
in cannoned
chimney
lea

Tower and weep,
o steeple.
The flashing phalanx
waves
its ton of fist.

Each nettle shreds a silence,
needling in furrows
of forehead seeming shine
to setting pins
in passioned gallery.

Ferocious moment,
written on the eye when
movements writhe to incandescence
the hour,
dynamiting sight to detour sleep.

Self-tracing, everything apart and wholly
scribbles this inaugurated mud
to its own exaltation.
The sight is upon me now,
though I lid myself,
lapping my mind within pillows.

The glowing room,
shameless at this retreat, pencils
prayers of fire on my skin.

“The moist flowers along Acheron
open as my eyes’ close.

Let me lie and call death lovely.”

“The terrace of darkness is drenched
by the sun of sobering morning.
My friend the mountain laughs
as the Emperor bids my words follow him
along the garden walks.”

“Purer than absinthe and stronger than love is the disease of my hand,
wearing as it were the motions of manhood and touching to fire the banalities.”

Fragments of dimness cling in corners;
center is a bonfire of flesh and time
where rushing orients of limb
ride hide hammers, glistening
behind thrown turmoil;

heavy hacks pierce frenzied prayer,
removed in gloom and stench.

The stippled Gispy bows and wipes his nose,
then strong, straight for gut goes,
as Minneapolis Bob cracks
like a brand burnt
through, circles with a poker for the blaze,
and dabs in dimmed excitement down.

The sultanic sentinel makes pixilated crucifix
above the worming ember; corner moth-dances
solicit rages of acclaim.

We learn to warm our hands—fan, stoke, draw
up fires to height of man—
when, from stretched throats,
the croak of chaos
rides in smoky quick wind
that winds the incandescence,
switched, bell-with, off.

The fallen eye of omniscience
shatters with slammed seats;
and we speak, as our hunger
for fearful time
fades to phosphorescence
within the enormous dark.

Stasimonial inquiry and reply
despite stone, where have I seen thee
before, mandala amid the eye?
Guitars, the organ, or one violin
draw but in perpetual anticlimax
thy hewn pause past sound,
and the numbers of no poetry
embrace no thing with such staticies’
armed coherence. Where? I do not know.

Love-locked lips forever,
whose witnessed conversation
secret stays, will not tell me—
unwanted voyeur worshiper—undoing
silences that never can be spelled.

But I, most sure, have seen thee,
before this eye might keep,
or tongue lisp its trilling tribute,
and know thee in a way past memory’s cant:

Something sudden here
exclaims that arch of neck,
and thing-caressing palm below thy bend;
something, like my living blood—
flesh-blinded, swirling visionary;
formless rusher after rushing form—
statuizes seeing’s sympathy.

Beginning with a snort and ending with a sigh,
time cannot raze nor confusion alter
this monument we rear against the gods.

Noting above. Nothing to left.
Nothing below. Nothing to right.
Here is my heart. Here is my song.
Where shall I go? Where is the light?

Nothing behind. There is no door.
Nothing before. There is no light
Here is my brain. Go with the song,
Where is the door? Else all is night.

While it does not blaze,
always sparkles,
the procession of they wit.

While it does not thunder,
always grumbles,
the stomach of thy wrath.

While it does not wing,
always hurries,
the caravan of thy heart.

And like a mountain lake,
art thou a deep, cool,
magnificent swindler of the sun.

Bright air by brighter honor signed,
and wounded things, all left behind,
mean nothing in a travesty of sleep.

The arrows of Thanatos miss no man: Weep.

Bleak disappointments
rage
this coming-together-place:
menace of sights
in jeopardy of time.
Vindication and mortality
meet on the plains of Troy;
and though the dead forget the dead
in the House of Hades, Patroklus,
even there shall he remember thee,
and this day.

But the ember does not burn backward
to timber;
its visible music
shapes the air
to heat,
but the day is no longer.

The veil you have rent
with every strained skill
of hungry fingers
hid either Medusa or emptiness,
else would you not
ever mirror it.

The idle idols wait
the non-idyllic day.

You are crux ansata arms
and standing man behind.
The arms and the man are empty things,
and you, beyond ruin,
the terrible power of position.

Beat your way to chaos, then!
I would rather destroy
a library of worlds in my mind
than build one
I believed in.

And even must the final word
be walking,

as my blood footsteps
now even
my brain
toward blacking day.

I walked beyond the mirror.
I met a mirror-man.
He held a backward walking stick
within his backward hand.
He offered me a reversed smile
and struck a left-right pose.
He spoke a backhand compliment.
I struck him on the nose.
“Oh, East is East and West is West
and ne’er the twain shall meet,”
said he as the full force of things
knocked him from his feet.
“True,” said I, offhandedly,
“and then again reversed.
I offered you the best of both,
It somehow turned out worst.”
“No matter, no matter,” cried he,
“you meant me no left hooks.
I love you like a brother.
Perhaps I like you looks.
We shall embrace and clasp our hands
at the sound of the reversed tone.”
We backed away, we turned away.
We found ourselves alone.