'Tryna get to sunny Californy' -
Boom. It's the awful raincoat
making me look like a selfdefeated self-murdering imaginary gangster, an idiot in a rueful coat, how can they understand my damp packs - my mud packs -
„Look John, a hitchhiker'
„He looks like he's got a gun underneath that I. R. A. coat'
'Look Fred, that man by the road' „Some sexfiend got in print in 1938 in Sex Magazine' –
„You found his blue corpse in a greenshade edition, with axe blots'

There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,
and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like
insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,
says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too.
"I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are
at work."

Cry "Murder" in the market-place, and each
Will turn upon his neighbour anxious eyes
Asking: "Art thou the man?" We hunted Cain
Some centuries ago across the world.
This bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain
To-day.

But twelve short years you lived, my son,
Just twelve short years, and then you died:
And now your life's brief course is run,
This grave a father's hopes doth hide.

His Holiness the Abbot
is shitting
in the withered fields.


Translated by Robert Hass

1034

His Bill an Auger is,
His Head, a Cap and Frill.
He laboreth at every Tree
A Worm, His utmost Goal.

He that will sow his field with hopefull seed,
Must every bramble, every thistle weed;
And when each hindrance to the graine is gone,
A fruitfull crop shall rise of corn alone.

High diddle, diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jump'd over the moon;
The little dog laugh'd
To see such craft,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Hieroglyphic
mystery in ancient stone
wisdom old as Time


(Previously published in Borders and Time, March 2000)

Hi! Handsome hunting man,
Fire your little gun,
Bang! Now that animal
Is dead and dumb and done.
Never more to peep again, creep again, leap again,
Eat or sleep or drink again, oh, what fun!