THE DARK VALLEY

Blue clouds turn into greyhounds; the gentle superior is

The lovely sun in winter, the winter tonic breaking back

The tiger in the spring. "To be absent minded and transformed" 

Thought Zhou, "the arrow from the bow that never returns,

White horses and the plain cars passing by, the haunter of

The wild." Across the silver river, he remembered the short-

Cut to officialdom, the ups and downs of an official career.

Let the producers be many and the consumers be few, Zhou

Wondered if the brisk trade extended rather to the Four Seas

Whilst rich resources flooded the Three Rivers; then gone

Like winterinsect, summer weed, down the eastward-

Flowing streams to a jewelled palace in elf-lands hills.

Zhou waited. Then, darting along an amazing pavement

Of fact, it came out of the dark valley to move into the woods.

THE COOL HOUR

I once flew past it in a mailcoach

Insofar as he had anything to do with it,
It consisted of days of pleasure and revenge.
But for you, visteur du soir, rising

From your bed and working in the evening,
Being dangerous, and bound upon the day,
This is the cool hour.
                                      He, looking up

At the sky, imperishable and starry,
Getting wider until daybreak, when
Nobody is to blame,
                                  (for the man who listens

Closely sees this form in that form:
Still, considers he might be quite
Wrong after all), he cannot assume

This here. Nor can he capture that 
Dreadful predicate: the blueness of the sky.

THE GOLDEN

Certain words of the surgeon came back to my memory

Thought Zhou. I used to hunt after dawn, in a sad way.

Why be concerned about mountains now, when

The flat lands stretch out so far round that life will be lived

Traveling them; sometimes through eternal and shadowy

Ceremonies, by devious and uncertain paths -

Like those times in the cities where my nights

Were generally restless, dark and entangled and difficult -

Since dreams were dictated to me in something very like

A classroom setting with sea clouds sun moon desert mountains

Lakes in the room; in short a world in the lamplight, not cold and

Diseased and thus sinister, but magnetic that singular commotion,

That natural easy connexion with the rest of the universe removed

From the golden? They did not look up when a carriage passed by.

PARFUM, DONC SOUVENIR

 Absolutely no surgical instruments fireworks conjuring gear

 Mechanical models miniature constructions etc. Unhygienic,

 But within this place of enchantment, this deepening background, 

 Space, tiny signals flashed in the sunset
                                                                            pointing to things

 Hidden from the prurient who, with their dark entangled difficult

 And beastly chemical combinations, mathematical, optical,

 Astronomical, electrical, meteorological, pneumatic, mechanical,

 Hydraulic and mineralogical thoughts, stared at the sun with a

 Strange morbidity of glance. And now, into the winding rivers of

The landscape’s skies and horizons, perspectives of various kinds

Reveal themselves to Zhou: water clouds silence night the setting

Here a sudden city evening, where coquettes sailors pederasts cadets

In uniform lesbians red- cross sisters, youthful and bright late in

The evening, glow; the moon accidentally shining over the earth.

ADHUC NOX EST

Zhou looks forward to the frozen river in dreams,

To the enormous charm of this unity

Which does not dazzle, but slays.

 

He said nothing to anyone for he was afraid,

Thinking: the scarcity of good, and the secret police…

Still night it is when I put out my hands this way

 

And that. Pleasures and days protected by the hangman

Indeed: When I stop being puzzled and persuade you

To do something different I dream of words,

 

The independently conceived effect of one upon another:

Radio slogans: Benzedrine. An account perhaps of other

Rhythms of earthly human history in this fateful

 

Philosophical world: laws of the state.

Laws of the Underworld. Well, it all needs thinking about.

 

WHITE MOUNTAIN AND BLACK WATER

It was as if he was looking at the view from nowhere.

The strange animal collecting other animals and putting them

In gardens strange (this stage is turbulent and troublesome).

 

The gaze of the snake however dark and luminous he is

Is adorned with these adorable defects: all things are full

Of gods, thought Zhou; an odd kind of poem, an odd kind

 

Of technical manual. He, Zhou, in the summer night had this

Thought, again: A white horse is not a horse and there

 Are no ghosts, and everything that ever happened on this  

 

So fruitful earth is no mystery. And no wish to reveal mystery

He had. Physicians soothsayers craftsmen merchants,

The power of the secret; the five colours blind the eye.

 

As when burying the white blade he pulled out the red one, then
Pondered narcotics and powders pouring into the crystal stream.

 

ONLY THE DEAD HAVE SEEN THE END OF WAR

They do not know it but are doing it.

By the curious sea always over the green rise

Or in the evening or at night they are patients. 
 

The verdugo remains a puzzle; his way leads through the

Entrance to the ghost train, peculiarities not known

To us in detail. This undiscovered connection is in 
 

 

Reality continuous, the complete determination

Of such movement; form not required of us.

Food shortages. Bad luck; dreaming the grand rational drama, 
 

The ever interesting topic; whilst the mouthpiece from an

Impertinent beyond regales the most important sector in the universe,

Glass and iron. I say: stay for the signe, for when the glare of the day has gone
 

 

Reading these late summer nights in Vespertilia; arcadian blues,

Source of relatively pleasant thoughts, growing scarlet with greater agency.