12. Ode to Fresh Parsley

 

Goddess! Take your fresh green parsley, hung
In these emissions, for red roses dear,
And pardon for that skeleton had sung,
Even so, your own scarce partridge mere –
Surely, I slept last night; or did I free
The conch ocean with my half-shut eyes?
I wandered the streets more purposefully,
Then, on a sudden, fainting at sunrise,
Saw two naked children, side by side,
Taking the hose, beneath the slanted roof,
Of eaves and brass nail fittings, where they splashed,
In puddles, and were denied:

Those leaves in kind are pupal eyed,
Speckled willow beauties, and yellow moth,
That lay uncared for on the tarp,
With hands wrung out, and their fingers, too,
Should you emboss, would be brand new:
As if knowing not this winter’s slumber,
Would therefore plant kisses out of number,
As ink-dyed morn is either rosy sky,
Or child that says, “Adieu!”
And how could he?
Oh struggle, struggle, fly?
Fresh parsley, true.

O yet second after cabbage you wert,
Even in Elysian, heaven’s woodland,
Fairer in Phoebe’s blue sky’s market cart,
Or Vesper of dark factory brand,
Fairer than these, your epithet begun,
And alter heaped with flowers,
(A cloven foot who makes terrific groan
Upon the morning hours)
Take Voice, take lute, take pipe, take incense sweet,
From chain-swung censer gleaning,
For shrine, for grove, for oracle, for heat,
Shall not mistake your meaning.

O Parsley! In good time for modern vows,
Many, many, play on this jarring lyre,
And never near those orgiastic rows,
Holy was air, and water, and the fire,
Yet even in those days long since retired,
Without satiety, nor full-hand spans,
A child would find his fair Olympians,
(I ate, and slept, for my own horse attired
But, for once quit that choir, for I just groan
Upon those morning hours)

No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet,
Of chain-swung censer gleaning,
No Shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat,
And you can stake my meaning.

Yet who shall be our priest, to build that fane,
Herein untrodden regions of the mind?
Where memory, now grown to some refrain,
Has led these leaves to scatter in the wind.
Far, far, around in these dark closet streets,
Fledge wide-eyed dreamers, each step by step,
And there in unions, clubs, or markets meet,
Could you, soaking naiad, be lulled from sleep?
And in the midst of late-eve acquiesce,
If scarlet-clad woman should embarrass,
For wreathed in round roast, in the flourished reign,
Of prayers, of bells, of a light taken flame,
And then for matters Reason canst explain,
Since having no pheasant, for would have that crane.
Was pit a thousand thunders in the night,
Then victory was wan,
Candelabras in casements brought forth night,
And fin-de-siècle began.