The Sardonic Arm. Maxwell Bodenheim
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Maxwell Bodenheim
The Sardonic Arm
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664187000
Table of Contents
THE INCURABLE MYSTIC ANSWERS WESTERN AMBITIONS
THE SWORD CONVERSES WITH A PHILOSOPHER
I WALK UPON A STREET
Must I see a gutter
In which the hurried machination
Of water carries bits of apple peeling
To some profound, obscure intelligence?
And if the gutter is to me
Merely the masterful travel of brown
Speeding with odds and ends of red,
To lend importance to a dream,
Will this belief decrease my size
When death reproves my inefficient limbs?
I walk upon a street
Where trite deceptions glide
Ceaselessly.
Upon this street the spasmodic revolt
Of color refuses to join
The orderly, substantial lie.
Scattered anarchists of color,
Thin and incorrupt,
Contend against the ponderous devices
Of lust for flesh and gold.
With a spiritual savageness
Colors bring their lucid treason
To ancient, shrouded tyrannies.
The knitted green of this girl’s sweater
Is a badge releasing
A cool republic of desire
Unrelated to earth.
Her famished opaque face
Feeds on sleek anticipations—
Unconscious incongruity.
Color alone is real,
Waving perpetually
Over the graves of thought and emotion.
From the vaster shapes of color
Small and involved broods of thought and emotion
Are born to scorn their distant mothers.
The ruffian dream recedes
Over a span of twenty thousand years,
And color, awake and supreme,
Waits to be once more