With a stick.

The millions of us worthless

To each other or the world

Or selves, the sufferers of the real

Or of the mind—this world

Is but a dream?    Or human life

A nightmare grafted on solidity

Of planet—mental, mental,

Shudder of the sun—praise

Evil submind freedom with de Sade

Or highest Dantean radiance of the God

Or endless Light or Life or Love

Or simple tinsel angel in the

Candy heaven of the poor—

Mental divinity or beauty, all,

Plato, Aquinas, Buddha,

Dionysius of the Cross, all

Pains or pleasures hells or

What in sense or flesh

Logic, eye, music, or

Concoction of all faculties

& thought tend—tend—to this:

This gaudy apartment of the rich.

The comfort of the U.S. for its own.

The shivering pair of girls

Who dyked each other for a show

A thousand yen before us men

—In an icy room—to buy their relatives

A meal. This scramble spawn of

Wire dirt rails tin board blocks

Babies, students, crookt old men.

We live

On the meeting of sun and earth.

We live—we live—and all our lives

Have led to this, this city,

Which is soon the world, this

Hopelessness where love of man

Or hate of man could matter

None, love if you will or

Contemplate or write or teach

But know in your human marrow you

Who read, that all you tread

Is earthquake rot and matter mental

Trembling, freedom is a void,

Peace war religion revolution

Will not help.

27 December 1956

KYOTO FOOTNOTE

She said she lived in Shanghai as a child

And moved to Kobe, then Kyoto, in the war;

While putting on her one thin white brassiere.

She walked me to the stair and all the girls

Gravely and politely said take care,

out of the whorehouse into cool night air.

THE MANICHAEANS

for Joanne

Our portion of fire

at this end of the milky way

(the Tun-huang fragments say, Eternal Light

Two million years from M 31

the galaxy in Andromeda—

My eyes sting with these relics.

Fingers mark time.

semen is everywhere

Two million seeds in a spurt.

Bringing hand close to your belly

a shade off touching,

Until it feels the radiating warmth.

Your far off laughter

Is an earthquake in your thigh.

Coild like Ourabouros

we are the Naga King

This bed is Eternal Chaos

—and wake in a stream of light.

Cable-car cables

Whip over their greast rollers

Two feet underground.

hemmed in by mysteries

all moving in order.

A moment at this wide intersection,

Stoplights change, they are

catastrophes among stars,

A red whorl of minotaurs

gone out.

The trumpet of doom

from a steamship at Pier 41.

Your room is cold,

in the shade-drawn dusk inside

Light the oven, leave it open

Semi transparent jet flames rise

fire,

Together we make eight pounds of

Pure white mineral ash.

Your body is fossil

As you rest with you chin back

—your arms are still flippers