Flowers for Hitler Read online

  for TV knobs;

  but how could I get there?

  The books were gone

  my address lists –

  My good demon said again:

  “Lay off documents!

  You know how to get there!”

  And suddenly I did!

  I remembered it from memory!

  I found her

  pouring over the royal family tree,

  “Grandma,”

  I almost said,

  “you’ve got it upside down –”

  “Take a look,” she said,

  “it only goes to George V.”

  “That’s far enough

  you sweet old blood!”

  “You’re right!” she sang

  and burned the

  London Illustrated Souvenir

  I did not understand

  the day it was

  till I looked outside

  and saw a fire in every

  window on the street

  and crowds of humans

  crazy to talk

  and cats and dogs and birds

  smiling at each other!

  HITLER THE BRAIN-MOLE

  Hitler the brain-mole looks out of my eyes

  Goering boils ingots of gold in my bowels

  My Adam’s Apple bulges with the whole head of Goebbels

  No use to tell a man he’s a Jew

  I’m making a lampshade out of your kiss

  Confess! confess!

  is what you demand

  although you believe you’re giving me everything

  DEATH OF A LEADER

  Anxious to break a journey’s back,

  dismiss itself in ash,

  the sun invaded noon:

  like a bomb seen

  falling from below

  it widened its circumference

  in the middle of the sky.

  He stood on his shadow

  Like a dead sundial.

  Children hunting a balloon

  beside a monument

  blended with the figures

  striving on the pedestal.

  Clash of gold and light

  etched the Capitol dome in black.

  His speeches returned,

  his hours of applause,

  weight of foreign medals,

  white clothes of too many summers,

  girls with whom he shared his power

  now old and powerful.

  His strategies returned

  diagrammed like a geodesic sphere,

  He balanced them on his forehead

  weaving like a seal.

  He was heavy and hot.

  He’d had enough.

  Let his colleagues

  balance the state.

  They were so distinguished

  eagle-like, silver-grey.

  Let him fall where his shoes were,

  where his striped trousers led,

  where the dove-coloured waistcoat pointed:

  let him fall down in the sun.

  He fell near the balloon.

  Children hushed back

  as if their toy

  could catch the disease.

  Secret Service men,

  ex-athletes chosen for their height,

  made a ring around the body.

  At attention they stood

  while their shadows began as pools,

  lengthened into spikes.

  At any moment you thought

  they might join hands and dance.

  The city attended, still at its monuments.

  Everyone was waiting.

  They knew it was being prepared,

  polished, painted gleaming white.

  But when was it coming?

  When was it coming?

  The ambulance!

  Havana

  April 1961

  ALEXANDER TROCCHI, PUBLIC JUNKIE, PRIEZ POUR NOUS

  Who is purer

  more simple than you?

  Priests play poker with the burghers,

  police in underwear

  leave Crime at the office,

  our poets work bankers’ hours

  retire to wives and fame-reports.

  The spike flashes in your blood

  permanent as a silver lighthouse.

  I’m apt to loaf

  in a coma of newspapers,

  avoid the second-hand bodies

  which cry to be catalogued.

  I dream I’m

  a divine right Prime Minister,

  I abandon plans for bloodshed in Canada,

  I accept an O.B.E.

  Under hard lights

  with doctors’ instruments

  you are at work

  in the bathrooms of the city,

  changing The Law.

  I tend to get distracted

  by hydrogen bombs,

  by Uncle’s disapproval

  of my treachery

  to the men’s clothing industry.

  I find myself

  believing public clocks,

  taking advice

  from the Dachau generation.

  The spike hunts

  constant as a compass.

  You smile like a Navajo

  discovering American oil

  on his official slum wilderness,

  a surprise every half hour.

  I’m afraid I sometimes forget

  my lady’s pretty little blonde package

  is an amateur time-bomb

  set to fizzle in my middle-age.

  I forget the Ice Cap, the pea-minds,

  the heaps of expensive teeth.

  You don a false nose

  line up twice for the Demerol dole;

  you step out of a tourist group

  shoot yourself on the steps of the White House,

  you try to shoot the big arms

  of the Lincoln Memorial;

  through a flaw in their lead houses

  you spy on scientists,

  stumble on a cure for scabies;

  you drop pamphlets from a stolen jet:

  “The Truth about Junk”;

  you pirate a national tv commercial

  shove your face against

  the window of the living-room

  insist that healthy skin is grey.

  A little blood in the sink

  Red cog-wheels

  shaken from your arm

  punctures inflamed

  like a roadmap showing cities

  over 10,000 pop.

  four arms tell me

  you have been reaching into the coke machine

  for strawberries,

  you have been humping the thorny crucifix

  you have been piloting Mickey Mouse balloons

  through the briar patch,

  you have been digging for grins in the tooth-pile.

  Bonnie Queen Alex Eludes Montreal Hounds

  Famous Local Love Scribe Implicated

  Your purity drives me to work.

  I must get back to lust and microscopes,

  experiments in enbalming,

  resume the census of my address book.

  You leave behind you a fanatic

  to answer RCMP questions.

  THREE GOOD NIGHTS

  Out of some simple part of me

  which I cannot use up

  I took a blessing for the flowers

  tightening in the night

  like fists of jealous love

  like knots

  no one can undo without destroying

  The new morning gathered me

  in blue mist

  like dust under a wedding gown

  Then I followed the day

  like a cloud of heavy sheep

  after the judas

  up a blood-ringed ramp

  into the terror of every black building

  Ten years sealed journeys unearned dreams

  Laughter meant to tempt me into old age

  spilled for friends stars unknown flesh mul
es Sea

  Instant knowledge of bodies material and spirit

  which slowly learned would have made death smile

  Stories turning into theories

  which begged only for the telling and retelling

  Girls sailing over the blooms of my mouth

  with a muscular triangular kiss

  ordinary mouth to secret mouth

  Nevertheless my homage sticky flowers

  rabbis green and red serving the sun like platters

  In the end you offered me the dogma you taught

  me to disdain and I good pupil disdained it

  I fell under the diagrammed fields like the fragment

  of a perfect statue layers of cities build upon

  I saw you powerful and I saw you happy

  that I could not live only for harvesting

  that I was a true citizen of the slow earth

  Light and Splendour

  in the sleeping orchards

  entering the trees

  like a silent movie wedding procession

  entering the arches of branches

  for the sake of love only

  From a hill I watched

  the apple blossoms breathe

  the silver out of the night

  like fish eating the spheres

  of air out of the river

  So the illumined night fed

  the sleeping orchards

  entering the vaults of branches

  like a holy procession

  Long live the Power of Eyes

  Long live the invisible steps

  men can read on a mountain

  Long live the unknown machine

  or heart

  which by will or accident

  pours with victor’s grace

  endlessly perfect weather

  on the perfect creatures

  the world grows

  Montreal

  July 1964

  TO A MAN WHO THINKS HE IS MAKING AN ANGEL

  Drop the angel out of your silver spoon

  You’ll never get it to your mouth

  You’re not dealing with the moon anymore

  or corkscrew unicorns

  The moon you kept in a cup

  herds of magic beasts in your pocket

  but this real angel knocks down factories

  with a wisp of hair

  Do you think your arms are wide enough

  to cramp her in your heritage

  you with your iron maidens

  brimstone ponds where only sufferers sing

  Do you think she’s from Chartres you turd

  From Notre Dame out of any church you know

  or even out of some humble inflamed mystic’s mind

  She is from a service you have never heard

  Ah but she stops my mouth from further curses

  covering my whole heaving body with one of her molecules

  ON THE SICKNESS OF MY LOVE

  Poems! break out!

  break my head!

  What good’s a skull?

  Help! help!

  I need you!

  She is getting old.

  Her body tells her everything.

  She has put aside cosmetics.

  She is a prison of truth.

  Make her get up!

  dance the seven veils!

  Poems! silence her body!

  Make her friend of mirrors!

  Do I have to put on my cape?

  wander like the moon

  over skies & skies of flesh

  to depart again in the morning?

  Can’t I pretend

  she grows prettier?

  be a convict?

  Can’t my power fool me?

  Can’t I live in poems?

  Hurry up! poems! lies!

  Damn your weak music!

  You’ve let arthritis in!

  You’re no poem

  you’re a visa.

  CRUEL BABY

  Where did you learn mouthfuls for everything,

  O Dweller in Childsmelling Cloakrooms?

  Chief, do I have to come down and identify

  the bodies I loved?

  I forget, I said I forget which breast it was.

  Hers? Yes. Good. Ask her many questions,

  find out, do her horoscope.

  Hooray! she has a family name.

  Hooray! she looks like her grandmother.

  Doctor Reich call surgery:

  show anal slides of blue come.

  Cruel Baby, you lost the world:

  you ate dictionaries of flowers:

  you fell for particular beauty.

  FOR MARIANNE

  It’s so simple

  to wake up beside your ears

  and count the pearls

  with my two heads

  It takes me back to blackboards

  and I’m running with Jane

  and seeing the dog run

  It makes it so easy

  to govern this country

  I’ve already thought up the laws

  I’ll work hard all day

  in Parliament

  Then let’s go to bed

  right after supper

  Let’s sleep and wake up

  all night

  THE FAILURE OF A SECULAR LIFE

  The pain-monger came home

  from a hard day’s torture.

  He came home with his tongs.

  He put down his black bag.

  His wife hit him with an open nerve

  and a cry the trade never heard.

  He watched her real-life Dachau,

  knew his career was ruined.

  Was there anything else to do?

  He sold his bag and tongs,

  went to pieces. A man’s got to be able

  to bring his wife something.

  MY MENTORS

  My rabbi has a silver buddha,

  my priest has a jade talisman.

  My doctor sees a marvellous omen

  in our prolonged Indian summer.

  My rabbi, my priest stole their trinkets

  from shelves in the holy of holies.

  The trinkets cannot be eaten.

  They wonder what to do with them.

  My doctor is happy as a pig

  although he is dying of exposure.

  He has finished his big book

  on the phallus as a phallic symbol.

  My zen master is a grand old fool.

  I caught him worshipping me yesterday,

  so I made him stand in a foul corner

  with my rabbi, my priest, and my doctor.

  HYDRA 1960

  Anything that moves is white,

  a gull, a wave, a sail,

  and moves too purely to be aped.

  Smash the pain.

  Never pretend peace.

  The consolumentum has not,

  never will be kissed. Pain

  cannot compromise this light.

  Do violence to the pain,

  ruin the easy vision,

  the easy warning, water

  for those who need to burn.

  These are ruthless: rooster shriek,

  bleached goat skull.

  Scalpels grow with poppies

  if you see them truly red.

  LEVIATHAN

  I learn nothing

  because my mind is stuffed with bodies:

  blurred parades, hosts of soft lead wings,

  tragic heaped holes of the starved,

  the tangled closer than snakes,

  swarming gymnasiums,

  refuse of hospitals compose my mind:

  no neat cells,

  limbs, rumps, fetuses compose my mind.

  It reels like Leviathan in oldtime cuts,

  a nation writhing:

  mothers, statues, madonnas, ruins –

  I’m stripped, suckled, weaned,

  I leap, love, anonymous as insect.

  There is no beauty to choose here:

  some m
utilated, some whole, some perfect severed thighs

  embryos, dried skin:

  the mass so vast some scales, some liquid never meeting.

  Language is gone,

  squeezed out in food, kisses.

  Arithmetic, power, cities never were.

  God knows what they’ve built today.

  Only the echo I cast in world offices

  returns to damn me ignorant –

  as if I can hear in the screech of flesh

  or talk back with mouth of hair.

  HEIRLOOM

  The torture scene developed under a glass bell

  such as might protect an expensive clock.

  I almost expected a chime to sound

  as the tongs were applied

  and the body jerked and fainted calm.

  All the people were tiny and rosy-cheeked

  and if I could have heard a cry of triumph or pain

  it would have been tiny as the mouth that made it

  or one single note of a music box.

  The drama bell was mounted

  like a gigantic baroque pearl

  on a wedding ring or brooch or locket.

  I know you feel naked, little darling.

  I know you hate living in the country

  and can’t wait until the shiny magazines

  come every week and every month.

  Look through your grandmother’s house again.

  There is an heirloom somewhere.

  PROMISE

  Your blond hair

  is the way I live –

  smashed by light!

  Your mouth-print

  is the birthmark

  on my power.

  To love you

  is to live

  my ideal diary

  which I have

  promised my body

  I will never write!

  SKY

  The great ones pass

  they pass without touching

  they pass without looking