FAME IN RETROSPECT

This bard matter, like baldric the ruff thick midriff of curtain material
and Tony Medlin’s forehead a bulge from orbic makeup, this
over blue eyes makes like being in a room with Shakespeare
raising always presence, being there for and a human existent
what he ate (recorders and a painted chair, but no pies). Take
how (the elephant balloons in trunk in the glass globe) only a presence can be encapsulated
mannikins in the Frankenstein film, the old magician like Bertrand Russell
back to Bloomsbury, jars aging on shelves there as used pots don’t age
Zeus of the double hatchet a photographer’s model, you pick them
up, little stone Maltese crosses.
Rust linen on a dhow, rather nicely imagined Venetians have no knowing
where the mailboxes are, light thrown up as through portholes in a boat
that lapping. Barber striped mooring poles, taint desirable for Britons.
It is less than mythic, object in a snowstorm crystal. Enact ourselves
(crossed out, expunged by swirl of particles), cities we blaze like trees.
Roseate light on a carved stone ornament: damask hip puff’s shop light.
Woollcott saved to print a Dickens conjuring programme, names for
the die in its metal lattice through the hat, egg and
pillar will have had great charm, so arranged his hair and box cape
between boulevardier and cabby. Maybe like the Emerson bronze what’s
affecting is the shoes, their creases (no reason except authenticity, in a statue,
to crease them.)

8.19.84