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.