Classic Poem

Achtung!
Herr Kapellmeister Bach!
Achtung!

Das Kapital ist nichts, die Angst ist nichts,
Und Kafka, Rilke, Lorca, Polka, Mazurka —
Nichts nichts nichts nichts nichts —
the row of zeroes
Gooseeggs wall to wall and sea to whining sea,
An oriental scoreboard passing westward.

Or: say a skull — a proper personage
Bald as an egg of bone — sings what I sing
Who sings what Bach sang, one Fuss in the Grabe .

It is a skull attached to its house of bones
By many string, tubes, wires, ligaments,
Among whose reds and blues one grey prevails
Much like a tragic title, " Untitled Fragment
Left Unfinished or Abandoned Because — "

It is not in the cards — in any cards —
For the tenor skull to flesh out that last clause.

The pelvis, welded from three nameless bones,
Endures, becomes a basin, a birdbath;
But the tongue becomes a nothing, like the penis.

Farewell, alas, my old eupeptic self.

Eupepsia! And . . . what's that other phrase?
The one I love . . . oh, yes: presence of mind.