More Notes Towards an Anatomy of Poetry

I

Poetry must be philosophical:
A king said
Edicts, written in gold and silver
What gold?
Glimmering lakes of midnight?
Silver? Horses, streams of mist:
Streams and oceans, lakes, rivers,
A partage of mountains and land.
So we have:
Earth, heaven, and hell, joined
By the lapping water
(Solitary diadem of crowns)
Under the open sky. The open sky?
Universe extending to eternal
And eternity. What? Shore and sea
If you understand: no rhymes,
Philosophy dissecting the anatomy of life.

II

Of a life. Now we have the dramatic.
Not the dramatic per se.
The paratactic; when we say
Synechdoche, none of that:

On the lamp-lit stage
By the falling rush of angels
Three rolling eyes hit the cue
Of the pool balls.

It was felt all along! Now see
How misperceptions can disturb you?
Unrest, unrest, and the cities of gold!

III

We mention gold again:
Golden crowns, golden thrones, golden stones:
As if they were all assembling
Into some elaborate apparatus, in which
The combined pilgrims of joyous exclamation
(Make no mistake about it
Dressed in red)
Might wash their hands in the holy streams.

IV

Streams, rock; sky, earth, and the mixing reflections
Of clouds. All a singular benediction.
Poetry must be literate, and not beyond but above
All human beings. Pleasure!
The eternal poetry, how can it have one writer?
Puns ruin the justice of it, and when the sky, collapsing
Pours forth past the cracks of the jewel encrusted firmament
The floods of "Noele sur la terre" (so to speak)
And not the last deluge, where will the holocaust be?

V

It really does come running back
All to the Jews, the solitary garden,
The twilight of the midnight Torah.
When will there be a poetry without mysticism?
We said a poetry of pure philosophy?
You know if space is boundless
The words echo eternally.