Awakened

 
              (seven American photographers plod across
 
                                                   the Cambodian border 1971,
 
pink fumes distending auditorium doors as G. C. Scott recites
   the death hymn of the polis,
 
 
–xeroxed FBI files shredded
                     to plump rice on sun-white sheets of aluminum)
 
 
no snow survives where vicious drunks repose beneath
 
 
                      the beautiful light & architects
                      whisper in brass hives, hunting overturned
                        Doric palisades
                      on a real precipice of centuries–
 
offering                                                 intelligence up–
 
          stumbling in darkness–           corridors like water or 
                                                                      winter,
 
 
untranslated before your God, jubilate jubilate jubilate irae
awakened from a sleep–
flung to useless moonlight in your unequaled
                                                 lassitude, disjoined, seared–
chewing cigarettes like dandelion stems–
                    your unreadable editions of granular silica
     eroded in the homicidal brilliance of symmetries–scent of 
               metal, disintegrator–
     apparition of Luxor’s summer palm leaves
& the breeze-blown hammocks of Athens–
 
                   clumsy human arms row
          the black waters of Hades–frightened swans,
devastated
                   sunset floors
                                     brought to the insect shores of
                            deserts, scorches, aroused–
awakened from a desperate sleep–
pondering & babbling of cold meat & Chinese puzzles &
Mo-
          roccan landscapes–
 
             snoring between ancient blurred 
                   wheels
of two enormous suns seeping into blue
like bright yellow pastels or smeared chalk–
          cocaine & whiskey in Coney Island dusks,
wooden rollercoasters black with silhouettes like immense 
    skeletons in starlight
 
deported & sedated & detained
                    in government rooms, WONDERING IF 15 
    CAN BE ENOUGH ANYMORE,
but still you wait on the soda & disfigurement
they promised, expert witness, exile–
             recalling unmapped cities in August,
       spools of silk & sinking veins,
    heels sticking like the roots of coffee-black dunghills in
    Tunis–
awakened all from a diseased sleep of reason–
 
walls shrink on my sides–
                         once to have had the strength
                                        to press them away or to sob–
 
& bladed wings shriek off of my back in the coliseum–
     abandoned, pleading toward
     vacant benches, molten 
coinages slipping from oiled fingers–
 
 
     even echoes detonating in foam–emptied & silent as
          Mayan stone–
 
                                              you will see amphitheaters
 
 
everywhere.