Роджер Желязны - To Spin Is Miracle Cat

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.

TRYPTYCH

Sapho

"The moist flowers along Acheron

open as my eyes' close.

Let me lie and call death lovely."

Li Po

"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."

Rimbaud

"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."

NIGHT OF FISTING

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.

RODIN'S 'THE KISS'

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.

CHORUS MYSTICUS

Beginning with a snort and ending with a sigh,

time cannot raze nor confusion alter

this monument we rear against the gods.

SPINNING THE DAY THROUGH MY HEAD

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.

FRIEND

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.

NAMELESS GRAVE BY A NAMELESS SEA, PROBABLY GREEK

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.

SHADOWS

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.

SENTIMENTS WITH NUMBERS

I.

The veil you have rent

with every strained skill

of hungry fingers

hid either Medusa or emptiness,

else would you not

ever mirror it.

II.

The idle idols wait

the non-idyllic day.

III.

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.

IV.

Beat your way to chaos, then!

I would rather destroy

a library of worlds in my mind

than build one

I believed in.

V.

And even must the final word

be walking,

as my blood footsteps

now even

my brain

toward blacking day.

More Recent

I WALKED BEYOND THE MIRROR

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.

DREAMSCAPE

Graham crackers on the patio

and peace in the afternoon.

It was a two-piano Sunday

under the darkness trees.

Lady high on the mountaintop

let down your auburn hair ...

Cathedral bells in the city,

coffee in crystal cups ...

The greenness of lawn

beneath unfurling cloud ...

The notes have reached the dancer

at the center of the earth ...

The train bearing dead relatives

will come ...

Rainbows dance

on tread and riser,

the coffee steams in the cup.

High in the noon of June

a lopsided moon

drips venom

to the vectored eye.

The woods decay,

the rivers halt.

The world falls to the dancer,

Sunday apple,

earthdance cadenced, Mountain Lady,

blindeyed watcher,

falls, silent, Lady,

in ellipse and default -

I heard the bells expel.

Down then like diamond dominos

the stairway shuffled, fell.

Lady, Lady, let down your hair ...

The train is coming, an eye

behind every bullet hole,

from out the vanishing point,

on tracks of gleaming bones.

The scapulae of buffalo

lie in the right of way.

... in ropes of auburn mercy.

Sacrifices pianos

and shattered cups

upon the fading lawn ...

The ghost wind sings

thundersong.

One strand down the

firmament, Lady,

to world awake away ...

And crumbled Graham crackers

feed the black birds ...

The train fills

up the sky, mechanic

throb and eyes

like coded bullets ...

I cannot see

the mountaintop. The

shadow grows before

the engine. The world