No Second Eden. Turner Cassity
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Watching the Stopwatch Stopping
The Ultimate National Monument
NO SECOND EDEN
A Member of the Mystik Krewe
For reasons having partially
To do with Carnival as it
Runs out of steam just off of St.
Charles Avenue in March of nineteen
forty-six, an Ole Miss end
Has Celestine the Oyster Girl’s
Assistant’s former girlfriend’s breast
Entirely out, and to the mild
Approval of the bar, is, with
A ballpoint pen, inscribing there.
I’m seventeen; I’m underage.
It is the first time I have seen
A ballpoint pen. And now that boob
(The football player) hands to each
And all, as though it were his cast
To autograph, the fragrant globe,
The white geography. I have at hand
The offered whole. What shall I write?
Another writer, not yet I,
Takes hold, and for a moment knows.
The pen is cold; a hot skin tight.
The flesh is there. What shall I write?
The Metrist at the Operetta
By tuning somewhat low the second violins
And somewhat high the first, the two-faced Viennese
Attain the sound of sugar, just as, hurrying
The second beat, they CPR three-quarter time.
Exactitude is not a way to animate,
And, although honesty may be a policy,
It’s not a beat to dance to. Face it: in the arts
It is the tricks that are the trade. The firm head snap
That holds at bay a ballet dancer’s vertigo;
Perspective (false perspective being no more false
Than any); make-up and impersonation; trope.
A metronome confirms clockmakers’ art, not this.
Stylization and Its Failures
The vulture, at the least, has not the look
Of flying money, or a Seal of State
Become a Frisbee. Eagles on a coin
Or on a flag, or on a Roman standard,
Look more real than in real life, so strong
Has been convention. Formula and frame
Do not apply at roadkill, which is why
No march from any empire has been called
Under the Double Buzzard. One death’s-head
Is quite enough. Upon a currency
It would suggest the god who is not mocked
Is Moloch, and on specie make it clear
All gold is in a sense fool’s gold. Not, there,
A logo to encourage free exchange;
Reminder, rather, that we barter life
In kind, to have corruption as return.
Ambitious Scout whose merit badges mass,
Would you continue if you knew the end
Is Court of Honor for a scavenger?
Bald Eagle, Vulture of the Naked Neck,
Are both of you one bird? One carrier
To whose one message there is one reply?
It was mere chance that a Samaritan
Should happen by; mere chance that he was good.
The body by the roadside nonetheless
Would have received attention, in due time.
WTC
Against the best advice,
We put up Babel twice:
Twin towers of such forms
As might be student dorms
For robots—angles right
And tolerances tight;
Barred, perfect as a trap
And for the flame to wrap.
The end in Genesis
Was different in this:
Incomprehension came
To halt the work, not maim.
The last time, possibly,
That language could rely
On making some effect,
If as an anti-act.
Our tongues so long confused
Must fail and be recused
In face of terror. Base
To summit, be its place
The Plain of Shinar, Main
Street, Wall, the Tower vain
If glorious is downed
By envy; goes to ground
With its automatons
Unschooled as to response.
Cities of the Plain and Fancy
Tarred with the brush, and soon to be
Inflicted with the tars themselves,
That is to say, brimstone, Gomorrah
Has the worst of both its worlds.
Too second-city, too remote
To christen, as it were, a vice,
Too metro-area, too close
And too “me too” to miss the fire,
The unpreferred metropolis,
An early Oakland, binds its wounds.
If guests, the Angels of the Lord
Or Lot’s leftovers, do not here
Apply for rooms at any inn,
Still, locals have their cakes and ale,
If not enough self-confidence
To say to any watchful host,
“Bring out the men unto us, that …
That we may introduce ourselves.”
None bargained here for one good man,
Though who can say we could have not
Provided ten,