64

Battle scene from Debbie; an epic PARDON ME IF I THROW MYSELF absolutely outside of my sex for I was between the wall and love, a dreaming brevity in dazzled font diverted, If my sense of my body can include both dog and owning arm’s daft glitter, I’ll graft soft logics to myself and shall send for either. Please Frank, up towards the grapes and fleece, quote something kind about a decent use for the passions and speak to me of weariness Frank in soft iambic since on torn apart sleeve of my darling purple dress, the tethered part twists from servility to dreck - ah, terrific girls, idiolects, avenues, proofs, the ramps and the glimpses, even the elevator and the morbidity of sex say some- thing sort of nice about opulence and majesty, like my Nurses always said - No bees no honey. No ambition no money. No master no metre. No soul no rigour. No adage no axis. So I am going behind the arena to get some pleasure - and all the civic ornaments of my clever flesh: Borrowed from rivals. Roman I, I father my subservience the sententious thrill the organ public in magnificence I will have borrowed what animal and dire humour outwore Ponderous Ponderous Charismatics! I shall continue preening for how long? - alas I’ll bite into ferocity’s proper structural pinkness the rolling lank and blue languor of her wither, stroke the sexual face with gorgeous meaning as a good shield embraces ineluctably so

‘The Romans were honest, they

thought it was all girls, grapes and

snow. ’ Frank O‘Hara

65

by the demotic pads of the fingers I shall open an item, by supple lucite turn on embroglioed pivot with fatal garland decorate public catalogues which I won’t repudiate since by such precise ambition some have tumbled into glamour and human wit - clear Nurses caught in long feral witness if fauns and narcissists hate eternity why did I not also - ambitious decorative - hate eternity who wore the toxic hair of the season at the cool shore in happiness less con- trite than economic - or practise doubt - a dainty thorn had I not posed wishes against frugal will o stiffened spine of snow, sure, I thought (softly) scaffold in erudite bucolic - if by that tracing more sweetness could be possible. Sometimes reddened, I would try to feel palatial or some such quasi-horror. Yes perhaps I stack these auguries, expedient as speculative heart in cry: I am the middle one. I was present at nothing. I maintained certain memories. I was both a man. I was fated. I did not relax. I stay where I always stay. I am the last to take part. I was its absentee. I should not know. I am afraid. I get thankful for sleep. I was made responsible. I feel certain. I stayed where I sleep. I was no small part. I will begin. I fear I have no place. I fulfil its proper duty. I I begin. I fear I have no place. I call your names. I get it to witness. I both ascend. I will even to forget. I have made no wall. ’Human!’ How shall it call out so that you will pity me? Good evening modernism.

LISA ROBERTSON