16. To Live for Obedience and Mean

No – processed giggling too much
I think I do, ya
With the ruling elite reimposing power
The new transnational feudal order
All the folkways full fucked
I tell you

 

The sun glitters above
the great shapes of the city
they have no colour or light

 

The sun glitters above this lake
glistens & scintillates
dancing in a crowd
beautiful as alive

 

Oh – luscious darkness too
intensity of purpose
pushing in
then out

 

I’ve never been first class
That’s not fair
– but absolutely
Right

 

“Artists, in old age, should not appear eagerly grateful for belated attention to their work. A decent courtesy is more than sufficient.”

Gilbert Sorrentino, Something Said (Dalkey Archive Press, 2001), p 434 – cited by Jenny Davies, “Well you Needn’t, Motherfucker: Sometimes Underground”, in Armand, p 105.

 

Dangerously personal
– may be less dangerous
than the dangerously
impersonal,
don’t y’think?

 

Ganz ohne groß Umtrieb, wie der liebe Gott tut
Wenn er am Abend noch in seinen Flüssen schwimmt.

Brecht, p 106 “Vom Schwimmen in Seen und Flüssen”

 

To flourish
in the deep summer
when the warmth tends
this good world real

 

How comes it then that earth is filled with slaves?
Millions on millions prostrate in the dust,
Rank are the despots’ weeds which now o’er-run
How comes it then that minds are thus abased?

from Edward Rushton, “Human Debasement: A Fragment” (1793), in ed. Roger Lonsdale, The Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse (OUP, 1987), pp 792-3