Paul Perry
Winter 2023 | Poetry
Two Poems
Drowned City
I was coming home from the end of the world
somehow lovable when the wine beckoned
to mortify such downgoing men and the devil
no doubt the feat of my own blood
said nothing uninterrupted
in the acts of this austere life—gin when alone
on one of these rambles
the surplus of grains in coquetry
even on Sunday empty of passage
like a fire in a forest
with its freshly painted shutters
a blind forehead of discolored wall
empty as a church
I am ashamed of my long tongue
& according to the sawbones
I am what sort of a man?
•
on this night however, a disappearance
still, as a lover of the sane and the fanciful
I went soberly and gratefully to bed
but meantime Henry Jekyll’s shoes
began to go wrong
it is nothing worse than that!
the bells of the church
digging
the great field of lamps
dreaming haunted
through sleeping houses
all the hours of solitude
be Mr Seek
light and shadow
•
How did you know me
set out homeward
ghost of some old sin
blameless Jack-in-the-Box
impatient to inherit
those black secrets
but let (me)
•
a fog rolled over the city
come within speech
in the neighboring gutter
broken and battered
passing out
key in hand
to have a morning glass
umber and photographed
why, money is life
a pile of grey ashes
•
a door covered with red baize
a means of escape
—O God
above the drowned city
that mystery
scarce read so strange
a murderer’s autograph
•
carried down
time ran on
the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola
cheval-glass
three dusty windows barred with iron
disquieted and fearful
these mysteries
suffer me to go my own dark way
house of voluntary bondage
respect my silence
after I am dead
•
the court was
full of premature twilight
in silence, too
stay down
found out
the very blood
I feel
I dare
come now
forgive us
•
the body of a man
of a self-destroyer
full of wind and dust
wanted bitter bad
what matters hand of write
whisper recovery
& gather about the fire
put your heart in your ears
the cellar is filled with crazy lumber
•
as if
summoned to the bedside of an emperor
take a cab
unless your carriage should be actually at the door
look
a paper book
the shipwreck of my reason
a farrago of un-spoken enigmas
ebullition
let me say this:
I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard
•
in the eye of day
mystic-hazard
the mistlike transience
of disordered agencies
like a millrace in my fancy
I write
for transformations
knit closer than an eye
burning letters
a box of light
or like a man of stone
with a song upon his lips
in unsleeping vigilance
I cross the yard
Spiders in the Summer House—
Wasps and flies, and heat.
Widowed from light in
Sunset welcoming silence: love as need.
Never sated, hunting
Out secrets from the shadows.
Wrapped treasure,
Like diaries where daughters
Tell of their loathing.
And . . . the impossibility of living,
The absurdity of every small thing.
Like the sadness of the rain,
Or of the autumn which teems like leaves
Swallowed by the earth.
What’s left to say of suffering.
I counted the spots on the stone—
Ladybird you made at camp
All those years ago.
Ten long years. Talisman in my pocket.
Tomatoes in a bowl on the windowsill soften.
Silk wraps itself about your fingers.
Not a child’s.
These are pointing to another world
Where we can meet again . . .
What is it you want?
What is it you need?
There is more love here for you.