Sequence. Experience.
To their amazement the hyena
could sit and listen to Chopin or Bach—
the Nocturnes, the Preludes,
whatever, even Debussy’s Le Mer—
and see them as ancient maps
full of monsters and mermaids.
Listen to them roar—
Listen to them sing—
the ones who die are the lonely ones,
the ones who carry all your sentences—
not as words of amazement—
but as poems of silent daydreams and silent lies—
poems folded like an old map in an old attic.
Go ahead and listen.
Then eat the lion.
Why, my silent friend, are you still visible?
Even Orpheus, with his nightmare grip on
a hideous truth, satisfies the divisible
In us that wants all pain to be gone.
His silence, friend, is all I can give you.
His news of the underworld—
That it’s there—is a battle cry for only two:
She who believes the truth is a flag unfurled,
And he who thinks the flag unnecessary.
You! Sound the horns! Yes, you! cries Man.
If Hell has leaped into the true beneficiary
Of his true love, he must leave her a plan.
Of escape? No, that would increase the pain.
He must have her hide as something…quite sane.
To whom should I address this verse except
To you, my sleeping voice? For only you
Can sing and still hear its song. Precept
Will follow hard upon a regency too blue
For eyes and ears except your own, that is,
That are mine. Mind and mine are always one,
So philosophers have shown. Orpheus
Always arrives to take control, has fun,
Then leaves. So bestial. So like a man to fuss.
To forget both his song and his duty.
So like a king, his killer’s crib began
With an infancy vowed to futurity.
Yet regency is ended with a chair.
His kingdom is only a dream to share.
