V

[Behind the mirror, once upon a time,

Titles

Part I   Notes I
Part II   Notes II
Part III   Notes III
Part IV   Notes IV
Part V   Notes V
Part VI   Notes VI
Part VII   Notes VII
Part VIII   Notes VIII
Part IX   Notes IX
Part X   Notes X
Part XI   Notes XI
Part XII   Notes XII

©, Acknowledgments
The Author

Of reconstructing artificially

The sluggish species homo sapiens!

[Gunshots from the forest.] Forward, through

Collective dynamic subordination to Will!"

The botched trail of bloodsplats through the woods

Clotted, was picked away by vultures. Bare

Verbs (to have been taken--shoved--to have been killed)

Crunch passively beneath my treading feet.

Each breath of air, exhaled, is history

(A bad dream, Jim, no one awakens from

Without a hangover); each history

Forgives the last, desiring the next.

No state grows, green and dripping, wild law;

But falsified, imposed without consent

(No choice, no change, all dismal waste and cold

Impacted thought, thwarted need, rote pain),

Synthetic order is unbearable.

Fit bone to iron? Skin to steel clamps?

Mouth to marble, crotch to rubber knobs?

A dream within a dream within a dream,

Those old machines, heavily collapsed

In thesis, synthesis, antithesis,

Sprawl on the ground in parts and sink among

Hairthin intricate nets of living root,

Pebbles, chunks of bottleglass, old bone.

(Through white, eyeclustered trunks, a lookingglass

Of puddle shimmered up, rewriting trees

In mercury; bright brittle glitterpatch.)

The damp wind turns away, then turns to where

(Crowbars on bronze; a hollow hammering

Over a diamond-dusted city square)

Some workers with a crane make cables fast.

Blank banners, silk silver, flutter, mirrory,

Canceling scythe and hammer: only air,

A crowd of people and their mixing breaths.

The statue, winched up from its pedestal,

Continues its dumb salute in comedy

As, turning, rifle ape becomes reap life.

My expertise is not mirology

(Science of mirrors and mirages used

By politicians to achieve their ends),

But big bronze hands, enormous concrete caps

Held humbly on great trousers of cement,

Huge metal mustaches, mummified men,

Gigantic ikons of iconoclasts,

Seem to be out. The statue's dragged away

Down dangerously raw and sloppy paths

By a grinding, rust-picked tractor: chain taut: go.

I set my thermos on a patch of snow;

Enormous boulders, plastered with fallen leaves

The color of old clippings, loomed ahead,

Each gripped exactly by a coat of ice.

A snail-pearl track led back into the weeds,

The barren wood. I groped along the shore's

Picket of unfamiliar winter limbs,

Hoping I hadn't missed a turn. The bank

Was steep and brambly but there was a path,

Old and overgrown. A verst away

Through rustic superessives, unparsed limbs,

I stopped to rest, astride a downed tree.

Beneath my boots, trapped in transparent ice,

The flattened scraps of yellowing old leaves

Read Homer Pushkin's African great-grand...

LINCOLN FREES SLAVS. In books today,

E. A. Gogol'sMasque of the Red Death

and Twice-Told Tales... ENERGY CZAR DEPOSED.

Peter Michailoff visits New York,

Noted incognito -- SPUTNIK LAUNCHED;
 
MEN WALK ON MOON. Weehawken, Novgorod--

Some duel. Patent advertisements!The

Government of the USSA moved

To Petersburg, District of Columbia...
 
FOUR BROTHERS STEAL DR. BOTKIN'S TEETH. 
 
...Planned capitol, with cast-iron onion dome...

GREENSBOROGRAD-REFUSENIKS "SITTING IN" 
 
AT WOOLWORTH'S LUNCHEONETTE. A backwards R?

Chernobyl, Pennsylvania--Spokesmen for

All-Union Edison disavow...
 
STATESMAN ASSASSINATED. PAIR FLEE. 
 
I must be reading wrong. This awful glare,

The veins of one leaf bulging through the next,

Impossible to tell if what you read
 
(PLESSY VS. THE IMPERIAL TSAR 
 
OF MUSCOVY AND IF ALL RUSSIA, FALLS 
 
MORTALLY WOUNDED: DUEL WITH BARON D.; 
 
PUSHKIN MUST RIDE IN BACK OF BUS, JUDGE SAYS;  
  
BROWN V. BOYARS; WHITE HOUSE: BEZGLASNOST'; 
 
COLD WAR CRUMBLES: BERLIN WALL COMES DOWN; 
 
BORIS GODUNOV IS PRESIDENT) 
 
Is not another subject showing through,

With old stories wrinkling through the news

In a slop of contexts-sodden history

Sticking to a contemporary--Wait:

What is this, Russia, or America?

I shivered, stood, resumed. After a mile

Of Arctic solitude, I heard a rush

Of distant traffic: glimmering ahead

Beyond a screen of trees, the Interstate's

Dark asphalt, glare ice. Whoosh! A Peterbilt

Eighteen-wheeler--black, glossy cab

With on the door in script,

Hauling a Wabash trailer (marked PODVIG,

St. Petersburg, Florida, in crimson paint)--

Flashed through birches; at the wheel, a lean

Georgian man (white teeshirt, faded red

Plaid jacket, and a stiff new pair

Of dungarees) lets blue eyes peruse

Long passages of highway from beneath

His sunbleached gimmie-cap (AMERICAN

By Birth, SOUTHERN by the Grace of God,

With bronze pistol pin); Las Vegas bound

With a load of Bibles. Liking silences

Of long roads, he shuns the radio,

Preferring interstation static, space

Between congested towns; black coffee slops

Cold and steamless from his thermos cup--

--A blanked, bright siding flashes off,

Leaving only vaporous exhaust.

America. It couldn't happen here.

So sharpen your wits--(file! pare!)--life moves ahead

By work, by luck, by getting out of bed.

"Advice is easy! Difficult is bread,"

Ice whisks and whispers. Elsewhere, as we walk

(Musing on systems, testing hasp and hinge

Of failing puddles), down some grimy steps

A clerk emerges from her token-booth

To empty a turnstile: tokens showering.

Reenters the public cubicle, and lifts

The weighty, dented bucket up, and dumps

(Fare pile) the tokens out (free pail).

A shaken pinelimb rattles off its hail--

--A disappearing blur of squirrel tail.

The wood is gone. I'm sitting at my desk:

A sentence skates across an empty page.