> This is wonderful Stephen!
>
> -Peter Ciccariello
Thanks, as always, Peter.
This is one more in the "Jack Spicer in Glasgow" series - my translations of
his book "Language" that started in Scotland.
I am still wondering if this one diverts to too many places.
But I appreciate your comment the more cause I sense the poetryetc list has
not cottoned much to this series at all - indeed it's down in there, I
think, in a 'heavy metal' psychic world which isn't necessarily easy, and
formally, for some, even some 50 years after Spicer's death, still a
challenge.
Be well with your own work which continues to intrigue me. Assuming you like
Philip Guston's later work, too.
Stephen
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>
> On 10/10/06, Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Michael before Stephen before David
>>
>> Chris the afterthought. Brothers kept separate
>>
>> The salt in Tebtunis about the mummyıs mouth
>>
>> The Civil Service circa 242 BC stuffed
>>
>> Into the belly of the once crocodile. An homage
>>
>> To the god (Crocodile). The Civil Service
>>
>> Taped shut its own papyri. The proper burial
>>
>> Of proper verdicts. Who lost, who regained
>>
>> Such and such property. Who made the suit
>>
>> And who paid the fine. Unrolled, the crocodile god
>>
>> Spoke, still speaks through the lips of the judges:
>>
>> The bookkeepers own no genders
>>
>> The Pacific breaks up. Those waves go flat
>>
>> Under the basalt bluff. He climbs under with his camera:
>>
>> An acknowledgement of curves, the disturbance
>>
>> In the lava, the salt in the enduring crust:
>>
>> The Civil Service rarely pleasures the curve
>>
>> Nor the sad divisions, even a death
>>
>> Among the brothers. I am here where
>>
>> The Columbia bends wide into the Pacific.
>>
>> Awe struck, Lewis and Clark did not live long enough
>>
>> To fathom loggers, mills, those shredded forests
>>
>> The long saw, truck, track and flatcar
>>
>> Decade by decade into this moment:
>>
>> Those brothers - the fallen - one by one, after them.
>>
>>
>> Stephen Vincent
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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