Soleil et Chair

La chair est triste, et j'ai lu tous les livres

A mixture, she said, broods in the depths
Of the cauldron, brews over the green slime,
Emerald by the color of turquoise, steadfast liquor
Of the ethers. The rosy hues of the sun
Already danced and carped, frenicking the reins, the walls'.

Etude of a clear study in purple, a lamp and a table,
Grey, a picture of the moon setting in blue
On a distant planet. What are the consequences?
Following the evening, all the day's seems to stretch
Like the pale shadow of a lampshade, and the nights recline
Into the same dull silhouettes: give me a lease
Of wonderful powders, tease me out among the primal flowers.

There are no primal fires, in turn, only the turning
Of the ladle, only the bubbling liquid, only the glum surrounding,
Hidden in the depths. Such an ordinary thing conceals madness?
Wine is the night to him that beholds it, the sparkling day for partakers:
A pill of whiteness the color of snow, the suds of soap, conceals
Hidden realities, depths of conscience. Take, she said,
Take on silver spoonfuls, take with vinegared brine, seep
The honey to your skull -- mixed with honey even bitter things
Are poisons, and helpful remedies conjugate themselves
Into a myriad of shadows, spectrums. Do you hear the long yellow
Hull of a cry, the pitched pitchers of waterfalls cataclimbing
Up symbols? The first thing: the gray is the symbol of dawn:
Now learn, set forth in crystal quantities, the Doric lays of the grey day --
Transmutations and transformations with a little liquor.

I shudder to remember. First the night turned in on itself like a bladder
Sucked inside out, and the sensitive membranes quivered at the touch:

The bladder is close to the sexual organs, the organs play
Such a quiver of piercing shards, and next it was my heart!
Dull little boy limbing in the shadows (it's always the shadows)
Is that a gold gleam? Even her pale freckled age is a revetment,
An invention or investment in a new body of beauty, being:
If the whole sinews of being were like a cobweb, and everyone of them
Tangled, then the next step would be the breaking or the trap. Greedy maws
Guzzle blood and the roar is like a leaf
In nature.

Hum, the good taste is becoming sound, hum
The journey is the soul of a tapering candle.
Last lakes, the chocolates of darkness,
Repeated metaphors I sing.
Where are you climbing on the ladder of beauty?
Never hold more true: I worship you.

But flames scatter in the winds
Leading to holocausts or death.

The fall began sharply, the ether
Sucked in a breath, which was a beat, and the drums fell a tat, tat, like patters of pain.
Other voices, other rooms poked through the marrow, divestments
Flocked cruelly, and the angels were confused patches of green silk.

C'etait mon bijou, mon enfant,
Mes ames because things were multiplying into little new
Shudders of wings, a million pale things were a million delicate buds
Unfolding or closing, but it was a vertiginous pale of rejuvenations,
Dressing itself again into the ethers of time. What were the ethers?
The pale cloud of a mist awaking, scattering, spreading
Into the same old celestial rays: chair-dust, chaise.