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Intensively self-mythologized over the years
though an archaic element could not be shaped
he wormed his way into grim confidence
with none of the achieved serenity of the Sun-god Apollo.
In a kind of alchemical storm, all life escapes
as a viscous secretion, fetid smoke, and boiling refuse
wispy hair blown / by the clouds
the word affectionate carefully crossed out
eroded by exchange in the wet mouths of users
as in this thicket, selva oscura
invisible spheres formed in fright of contact in dreams
with the father-image both ghost and corpse
through the dockland and the wide streets of the modern city
there on the uplands going down to the marsh
a love for slowly moving things
a desire to feel the movement of time
of the singular though not unique advent into existence
the place without place of an intimate gaping
or gawping as if time itself could be fixed
sensing the blood flow inside as if watching a stream
the lines like ploughing a field / definitive break with song
fragments in the vernacular figura morta
‘cruel as the tigers of Ircania’ though a kind of lived substance
may emerge for the subject in such access of mind.