Classic Poem

What about all this writing?

O " Kiki "
O Miss Margaret Jarvis
The backhandspring

I: clean
clean
clean: yes . . New-York

Wrigley's, appendicitis, John Marin:
skyscraper soup —

Either that or a bullet!

Once
anything might have happened
You lay relaxed on my knees —
the starry night
spread out warm and blind
above the hospital —

Pah!

It is unclean
which is not straight to the mark —

In my life the furniture eats me

the chairs, the floor
the walls
which heard your sobs
drank up my emotion —
they which alone know everything

and snitched on us in the morning —

What to want?

Drunk we go forward surely
Not I

beds, beds, beds
elevators, fruit, night-tables
breasts to see, white and blue —
to hold in the hand, to nozzle

It is not onion soup
Your sobs soaked through the walls
breaking the hospital to pieces

Everything
— windows, chairs
obscenely drunk, spinning —
white, blue, orange
— hot with our passion

wild tears, desperate rejoinders
my legs, turning slowly
end over end in the air!

But what would you have?

All I said was:
there, you see, it is broken

stockings, shoes, hairpins
your bed, I wrapped myself round you —

I watched.

You sobbed, you beat your pillow
you tore your hair
you dug your nails into your sides

I was your nightgown
I watched!

Clean is he alone
after whom stream

the broken pieces of the city —
flying apart at his approaches

but I merely
caress you curiously

fifteen years ago and you still
go about the city, they say
patching up sick school children

What about all this writing?

O " Kiki "
O Miss Margaret Jarvis
The backhandspring
I: clean
clean
clean: yes . . New York

Wrigley's, appendicitis, John Marin:
skyscraper soup —
Either that or a bullet!

Once
anything might have happened
You lay relaxed on my knees —
the starry night
spread out warm and blind
above the hospital —

Pah!

It is unclean
which is not straight to the mark —

In my life the furniture eats me

the chairs, the floor
the walls
which heard your sobs
drank up my emotion —
they which alone know everything

and snitched on us in the morning —

What to want?

Drunk we go forward surely
Not I

beds, beds, beds
elevators, fruit, night-tables
breasts to see, white and blue —
to hold in the hand, to nozzle

It is not onion soup
Your sobs soaked through the walls
breaking the hospital to pieces
Everything
— windows, chairs
obscenely drunk, spinning —
white, blue, orange
— hot with our passion
wild tears, desperate rejoinders
my legs, turning slowly
end over end in the air!

But what would you have?

All I said was:
there, you see, it is broken
stockings, shoes, hairpins
your bed, I wrapped myself round you —

I watched.

You sobbed, you beat your pillow
you tore your hair
you dug your nails into your sides

I was your nightgown
I watched!

Clean is he alone
after whom stream
the broken pieces of the city —
flying apart at his approaches

but I merely
caressed you curiously
fifteen years ago and you still
go about the city, they say
patching up sick school children