“CANZONE

Until the first chill
No door sat on the clay.
When Billy brought on the chill
He began to chill.
No hand can
Point to the chill
It brought. Where a chill
Was, the grass grows.
See how it grows.
Acts punish the chill
Showing summer in the grass.
The acts are grass.

Acts of our grass
Transporting chill
Over brazen grass
That retorts as grass
Leave the clay,
The grass,
And that which is grass.
The far formal forest can,
Used doubts can
Sit on the grass.
Hark! The sadness grows
In pain. The shadow grows.
All that grows
In deep shadow or grass
Is lifted to what grows.
Walking, a space grows.
Beyond, weeds chill
Toward night which grows.
Looking about, nothing grows.
Now a whiff of clay
Respecting clay
Or that which grows
Brings on what can.
And no one can.

The sprinkling can
Slumbered on the dock. Clay
Leaked from a can.
Normal heads can
Touch barbed-wire grass
If they can
Sing the old song of can
Waiting for a chill
In the chill
That without a can
Is painting less clay
Therapeutic colors of clay.
We got out into the clay
As a boy can.
Yet there’s another kind of clay
Not arguing clay,
As time grows
Not getting larger, but mad clay
Looked for for clay,
And grass
Begun seeming, grass
Struggling up out of clay
Into the first chill
To be quiet and raucous in the chill.

The chill
Flows over burning grass.
Not time grows.
So odd lights can
Fall on sinking clay.”

--John Ashb*ry, Som* Tr**s (1956)

“Frisk Not”

A stark fist of approval nails you
Snail acid crystal in mansions of charcoal.

Hamtaro garmonbosia
Through night to thing frith.

And it’s hard
Mutiny has its argot:

I want to down cold grow crystal scorch
If a moon say aught, Altair,

In its cold pallor;
In its astroturf and solitary church.