The Lost Lunar Baedeker Read online

  GINA AND MIOVANNI

  The door was an absurd thing

  Yet it was passable

  They quotidienly passed through it

  It was this shape

  Gina and Miovanni who they were God knows

  They knew it was important to them

  This being of who they were

  They were themselves

  Corporeally transcendentally consecutively

  conjunctively and they were quite complete

  In the evening they looked out of their two windows

  Miovanni out of his library window

  Gina from the kitchen window

  From among his pots and pans

  Where he so kindly kept her

  Where she so wisely busied herself

  Pots and Pans she cooked in them

  All sorts of sialagogues

  Some say that happy women are immaterial

  So here we might dispense with her

  Gina being a female

  But she was more than that

  Being an incipience a correlative

  an instigation of the reaction of man

  From the palpable to the transcendent

  Mollescent irritant of his fantasy

  Gina had her use Being useful

  contentedly conscious

  She flowered in Empyrean

  From which no well-mated woman ever returns

  Sundays a warm light in the parlor

  From the gritty road on the white wall

  anybody could see it

  Shimmered a composite effigy

  Madonna crinolined a man

  hidden beneath her hoop

  Ho for the blue and red of her

  The silent eyelids of her

  The shiny smile of her

  Ding dong said the bell

  Miovanni Gina called

  Would it be fitting for you to tell

  the time for supper

  Pooh said Miovanni I am

  Outside time and space

  Patience said Gina is an attribute

  And she learned at any hour to offer

  The dish appropriately delectable

  What had Miovanni made of his ego

  In his library

  What had Gina wondered among the pots and pans

  One never asked the other

  So they the wise ones eat their suppers in peace

  Of what their peace consisted

  We cannot say

  Only that he was magnificently man

  She insignificantly a woman who understood

  Understanding what is that

  To Each his entity to others

  their idiosyncrasies to the free expansion

  to the annexed their liberty

  To man his work

  To woman her love

  Succulent meals and an occasional caress

  So be it

  It so seldom is

  While Miovanni thought alone in the dark

  Gina supposed that peeping she might see

  A round light shining where his mind was

  She never opened the door

  Fearing that this might blind her

  Or even

  That she should see Nothing at all

  So while he thought

  She hung out of the window

  Watching for falling stars

  And when a star fell

  She wished that still

  Miovanni would love her to-morrow

  And as Miovanni

  Never gave any heed to the matter

  He did

  Gina was a woman

  Who wanted everything

  To be everything in woman

  Everything everyway at once

  Diurnally variegate

  Miovanni always knew her

  She was Gina

  Gina who lent monogamy

  With her fluctuant aspirations

  A changeant consistency

  Unexpected intangibilities

  Miovanni remained

  Monumentally the same

  The same Miovanni

  If he had become anything else

  Gina’s world would have been at an end

  Gina with no axis to revolve on

  Must have dwindled to a full stop

  In the mornings she dropped

  Cool crystals

  Through devotional fingers

  Saccharine for his cup

  And marketed

  With a Basket

  Trimmed with a red flannel flower

  When she was lazy

  She wrote a poem on the milk bill

  The first strophe Good morning

  The second Good night

  Something not too difficult to

  Learn by heart

  The scrubbed smell of the white-wood table

  Greasy cleanliness of the chopper board

  The coloured vegetables

  Intuited quality of flour

  Crickly sparks of straw-fanned charcoal

  Ranged themselves among her audacious happinesses

  Pet simplicities of her Universe

  Where circles were only round

  Having no vices.

  (This narrative halted when I learned that the house which inspired it was the home of a mad woman.

  —Forte dei Marmi)

  Human Cylinders

  The human cylinders

  Revolving in the enervating dust

  That wraps each closer in the mystery

  Of singularity

  Among the litter of a sunless afternoon

  Having eaten without tasting

  Talked without communion

  And at least two of us

  Loved a very little

  Without seeking

  To know if our two miseries

  In the lucid rush-together of automatons

  Could form one opulent well-being

  Simplifications of men

  In the enervating dusk

  Your indistinctness

  Serves me the core of the kernel of you

  When in the frenzied reaching-out of intellect to intellect

  Leaning brow to brow communicative

  Over the abyss of the potential

  Concordance of respiration

  Shames

  Absence of corresponding between the verbal sensory

  And reciprocity

  Of conception

  And expression

  Where each extrudes beyond the tangible

  One thin pale trail of speculation

  From among us we have sent out

  Into the enervating dusk

  One little whining beast

  Whose longing

  Is to slink back to antediluvian burrow

  And one elastic tentacle of intuition

  To quiver among the stars

  The impartiality of the absolute

  Routs the polemic

  Or which of us

  Would not

  Receiving the holy-ghost

  Catch it and caging

  Lose it

  Or in the problematic

  Destroy the Universe

  With a solution.

  The Black Virginity

  Baby Priests

  On green sward

  Yew-closed

  Scuttle to sunbeams

  Silk beaver

  Rhythm of redemption

  Fluttering of Breviaries

  Fluted black silk cloaks

  Hung square from shoulders

  Truncated juvenility

  Uniform segregation

  Union in severity

  Modulation

  Intimidation

  Pride of misapprehended preparation

  Ebony statues training for immobility

  Anaemic jawed

  Wise saw to one another

  Prettily the little ones

  Gesticulate benignly upon one another in the sun buzz—

  Finger and thumb circles postulat
e pulpits

  Profiles forsworn to Donatello

  Munching tall talk vestral shop

  Evangelical snobs

  Uneasy dreaming

  In hermetically-sealed dormitories

  Not of me or you Sister Saraminta

  Of no more or less

  Than the fit of Pope’s mitres

  It is an old religion that put us in our places

  Here am I in lilac print

  Preposterously no less than the world flesh and devil

  Having no more idea what those are

  What I am

  Than Baby Priests of what “He” is

  or they are—

  Messianic mites tripping measured latin ring-a-roses

  Subjugated adolescence

  Retraces loose steps to furling of Breviaries

  In broiling shadows

  The last with apostolic lurch

  Tries for a high hung fruit

  And misses

  Any way it is inedible

  It is always thus

  In the Public Garden.

  Parallel lines

  An old man

  Eyeing a white muslin girl’s school

  And all this

  As pleasant as bewildering

  Would not eventually meet

  I am for ever bewildered

  Old men are often grown greedy—

  What nonsense

  It is noon

  And salvation’s seedlings

  Are headed off for the refectory.

  Ignoramus

  Shut it up

  Sing silence

  To destiny

  Give half-a-crown

  To a magician

  Half a glance

  To window-eclipse

  And count the glumes

  Of your day’s bargaining

  Lying

  In the lining

  Of your pocket

  While compromising

  Between the perpendicular and horizontal

  Some other tramp

  Leans against

  The night-nursery of trams

  Puffs of black night

  Quiver the neck

  Of the Clown of Fortune

  Dribble out of his trouser-ends

  In dust-to-dust

  Till cock-kingdom-come-crow

  You can hear the heart-beating

  Accoupling

  of the masculine and feminine

  Universal principles

  Mating

  And the martyrdom of morning

  Caged with the love of houseflies

  The avidity of youth

  And incommensuration.

  Day-spring

  Bursting on repetition

  “My friend the Sun

  You have probably met before”

  Or breakfasting on rain

  You hurry

  To interpolate

  The over-growth

  Of vegetation

  With a walking-stick

  Or smear a friend

  With a greasy residuum

  From boiling your soul down

  You can walk to Empyrean to-gether

  Under the same

  Oil-silk umbrella

  “I must have you

  Count stars for me

  Out of their numeral excess

  Please keep the brightest

  For the last

  Lions’ Jaws

  O FAR away on the Benign Peninsular

  . . . . .

  That automatic fancier of lyrical birds

  Danriel Gabrunzio

  with melodious magnolia

  perfumes his mise en scène

  where impotent neurotics

  wince at the dusk

  The national arch-angel

  loved

  several countesses

  in a bath full of tuberoses

  soothed by the orchestra

  at the ‘Hotel Majestic Palace’

  . . . the sobbing

  from the psycho-pathic wards

  of his abandoned harem

  purveys amusement for ‘High Life’

  The comet conquerer

  showers upon continental libraries

  translated stars . . .

  accusations of the alcove

  where

  with a pomaded complaisance

  he trims rococo liaisons . . .

  . . . a tooth-tattoo of an Elvira

  into a Maria’s flesh

  And every noon

  bare virgins riding alabaster donkeys

  receive Danriel Gabrunzio

  from the Adriatic

  in a golden bath-towel

  signed with the zodiac

  in pink chenille

  * * * *

  Defiance of old idolatries

  inspires new schools

  . . . .

  Danriel Gabrunzio’s compatriots

  concoct new courtships

  to intrigue

  the myriad-fleshed Mistress

  of “the Celebrated”

  The antique envious thunder

  of Latin littérateurs

  rivaling Gabrunzio’s satiety

  burst in a manifesto

  notifying women’s wombs

  of Man’s immediate agamogenesis

  . . . Insurance

  of his spiritual integrity

  against the carnivorous courtesan

  . . . Manifesto

  of the flabbergast movement

  hurled by the leader Raminetti

  to crash upon the audacious lightning

  of Gabrunzio’s fashions in lechery

  . . . and wheedle its inevitable way

  to the “excepted” woman’s heart

  her cautious pride

  extorting betrayal

  of Woman wholesale

  to warrant her surrender

  with a sense of . . . Victory

  Raminetti

  cracked the whip of the circus-master

  astride a prismatic locomotive

  ramping the tottering platform

  of the Arts

  of which this conjuring commercial traveller

  imported some novelties from

  Paris in his pocket . . .

  souvenirs for his disciples

  to flaunt

  at his dynamic carnival

  The erudite Bapini

  experimenting

  in auto-hypnotic God-head

  on a mountain

  rolls off as Raminetti’s plastic velocity

  explodes his crust

  of library dust

  and hurrying threatening nakedness

  to a vermilion ambush

  in flabbergastism

  . . . he kisses Raminetti

  full on his oratory

  in the arena

  rather fancying Himself

  in the awesome proportions

  of an eclectic mother-in-law

  to a raw ménage.

  Thus academically chaperoned

  the flabbergasts

  blaze from obscurity

  to deny their creed in cosy corners

  to every feminine opportunity

  and Raminetti

  anxious to get a move on this beating-Gabrunzio-business

  possesses the women of two generations

  except a few

  who jump the train at the next station . . .

  . . . while the competitive Bapini

  publishes a pretty comment

  involving woman in the plumber’s art

  and advertises

  his ugliness as an excellent aphrodisiac

  * * * *

  Shall manoeuvres in the new manner

  pass unremarked?

  . . .

  These amusing men

  discover in their mail

  duplicate petitions

  to be the lurid mother of “their” flabbergast child

  from Nima Lyo, alias Anim Yol, alias


  Imna Oly

  (secret service buffoon to the Woman’s Cause)

  . . . .

  While flabbergastism boils over

  and Ram: and Bap:

  avoid each other’s sounds

  This Duplex-Conquest

  claims a “sort of success”

  for the Gabrunzio resisters.

  Envoi

  Raminetti gets short sentences

  for obstructing public thoroughfares

  Bapini is popular in “Vanity Fair”

  As for Imna Oly . . .

  I agree with Mrs. Krar Standing Hail

  She is not quite a lady. . . .

  . . . . .

  Riding the sunset

  DANRIEL GABRUNZIO

  corrects

  the lewd precocity

  of Raminetti and Bapini

  with his sonorous violation of Fiume

  and drops his eye

  into the fatal lap

  of Italy.

  II

  SONGS TO JOANNES

  (1917)

  Loy in Florence, ca. 1909, Stephen Haweis photograph (Collection Roger L. Conover)

  Songs to Joannes

  I

  Spawn of Fantasies

  Silting the appraisable

  Pig Cupid his rosy snout

  Rooting erotic garbage

  “Once upon a time”

  Pulls a weed white star-topped

  Among wild oats sown in mucous-membrane

  I would an eye in a Bengal light

  Eternity in a sky-rocket

  Constellations in an ocean

  Whose rivers run no fresher

  Than a trickle of saliva

  These are suspect places

  I must live in my lantern

  Trimming subliminal flicker

  Virginal to the bellows

  Of Experience

  Coloured glass

  II

  The skin-sack

  In which a wanton duality

  Packed

  All the completion of my infructuous impulses

  Something the shape of a man

  To the casual vulgarity of the merely observant

  More of a clock-work mechanism

  Running down against time

  To which I am not paced

  My finger-tips are numb from fretting your hair

  A God’s door-mat

  On the threshold of your mind

  III

  We might have coupled

  In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment

  Or broken flesh with one another

  At the profane communion table

  Where wine is spill’d on promiscuous lips

  We might have given birth to a butterfly

  With the daily news

  Printed in blood on its wings

  IV

  Once in a mezzanino

  The starry ceiling

  Vaulted an unimaginable family

  Bird-like abortions

  With human throats

  And Wisdom’s eyes

  Who wore lamp-shade red dresses

  And woolen hair

  One bore a baby

  In a padded porte-enfant

  Tied with a sarsenet ribbon

  To her goose’s wings