Suddenly stripped -
the others still in leaf
the cherry poses, 
tense, articulate, 
a model.

(So, among 
fine clothes, men's music, 
the women's nudity 
by definition stuns, 
illuminates.)
 
 

The Obscure Enemy

The glass-clear blaze of burnt September 
          towers cool above the silent throat: 
          ghosts line the full, travelled air, 
fragrant, secret, unquoted.

Delight breathes in the prevention of memory,
          a hired piano calling in its unpaid notes.
          Play up the gay sliding premiums
.on the private policy of passive existence.

Pay up and look present; keep out of death. 
          Suppose I dry, the light from your bright palate, 
          frame the dumb, dumb censor of common projects 
what sum will you realize at death's store?

Time bites the miles from unknown, unchained hands. 
          Tears, withered day-nails in the hour-grass, 
          suck through the last European straw 
the blood that blinds all music, all passion.

We stood cloud-eyed, sea-cold, shop-rivetted,
          filling the warm, laus-haunted streets
          with painless sculpture, money's architecture, 
memorials of Spring, of the immortal worm.

Let us commemorate accidental culture, 
           build us a monument more lasting than air. 
           Sing us a deathless song! 
(Sing us a deathless song, Joe.)