Not yet the thirtieth year, the
Station where time reverses his light
To rim both ways, and makes of forward back;
Whose long coordinates are birth and
And zero is the origin of breath:
Not yet the thirtieth year of gratitude,
Not yet suffering but a year's lack,
All thanks that mid-mortality is done,
That the new breath on the invisible
Winds anciently into my father's blood.
In the beginning the irresponsible
Connived with chaos whence I've seen it
Riddles in the head for the nervous
To count its beat on: all beginnings
Like water the easiest way or like
Fly on their cool imponderable flood.
Then suddenly the noon turns
And afternoon like an ill-written
Will fade, until the very stain of
Gathers in all the venom of the night-The equilibrium of the thirtieth age.
The thirtieth, not yet the thirtieth
Of wonders, revelations, whispers, signs:
Impartial dumb truths of sound and
Known beyond speech, immune to common fear.
Already the wind whistles the
Of the time, but I'll go back seventy
And more to the great Administrations:
Yet six had gone and all the public
Whom doctrine and an evil nature
Were only errand boys beaten by the
While Henry Adams fuddled in the shade.
I've heard what they said, in the running
Drawing water, their watery words,
Like a sad harlot's useless lucid pap(I've heard the lion of S Street get his cheer),
I understood it, the general
In a private ear, lost. . . . For who can
What the goat calls to the heifer, or the
Even to the cock her love?
At thirty
The years of the Christ, one will perceive, know,
Report new verity with a certain pen.
In the decade from
Where was Calhoun whose bristled
Sumner the refined one did not admire?
I am convinced 'twas Calhoun who
How the great western star's last race would
Unbridled round our personal defect,
Grinding its ash with engines of its mind."Too Southern and too simple," his death's
Uttered a Dies Irae that last
When Senator Mason in a voice to
Read off his speech; then put Calhoun to bed.
They put him in his grave.
Does the worm
In the close senate of tempestuous
That his intellect makes too
The grave, as his enemies our life?
It's quiet there, for the worm's one
Is not discourtesy (give worms their dues)In case the guest hurried by mortal
Enter the house in muddy overshoes.
It was a time of tributes; let me
Tribute to a man grandfather knew well(Or so 'twas said, but one can never tell),
A stocky man but slight, no
Of face and eye, yet a
Of the poet against the world; he dreamed the
Of the wide world and prodigies to come;
Exemplar of dignity, a
Who raised the black flag of the lower mind;
Hated in life by all; in death praised;
I cannot yet begin to
Why we are proud that an ancestor
The crazy Poe, who was not of our kind-Bats in the belfry that round and round
In vapors not quite wholesome for the mind.
After Calhoun the local
Of nature, tempered to the
Of air and fire, blurred with the public sense,
Diffused, while the Black
Took a short memory to their hot desire,
And honor turned a common
Crying decisions from the evening news.
Yet in a year, at thirty, one shall
The wisdom of history, how she
Each epoch by the neck and, growling,
It like a rat while she faintly mews.
Perhaps at the age of thirty one shall
In the wide world the prodigies to come:
The long-gestating Christ, the
Of time, got in the belly of
By Ambition, a bull of pious use.
O Pasiphael mother of god, lest nature,
Peritonitis or morning sickness
The growth of god in an unwholesome juice,
Eat cannon and cornflakes, that the lamb,
Spaceless as snow, may spare the rational earth(Weary of prodigies and the Holy Runt)A second prodigious, two-legged birth.
The signs and portents screaming in the air,
The nativity in my thirtieth
Will glow in the heavens, the myriad
At the holy hour hovering round the
Will stream in the night like flaming hair,
And man will scurry with averted
Crouching, peering, silent, a drunken mouse.
The orange groves will blossom, the shining
Kindle all night far as Los Angeles;
With a noise, threatening, of wandering
Coining, angry with the air of their carouse,
The lamb through the sandpaper gates of life(Made rougher by the bull's intenser strife)Will leap, while the wild-eyed
By the inscrutable wrath of glory
Hears the Wise Men come swiftly from the sea.
The bull smoothly rolls his powerful tongue.
