( via / via )

Vuelve.

Baudelaire: Brumes et pluies

in the mire-drenched · dregs of the year
vegetating days · you i am avid for

for so enfolding · this buzzing beehive
with a cloud’s cloak · & blur-mausoleum.

on the vast savannah · Blue Northers gambol
as the hours crawl · vanes are sent creaking

my mood more · than in childbed-tepidness
fans out fully · its wide crow wings

nothing’s more needful · to a flagfallen wretch
& on whom heavily · frosts have been fastening

(O wan weeks · our sky-estate’s starkest!)
than the final form · of your shadowy failing

--unless one might win · paired in the neonpall
surcease of sorrow · on a sordid cot

Consecration of the ancestral mind farms.

" 'Naturally, the poets are the most honored among us. Why should they not be? do they not lead the world in a far deeper sense than any statesmen? And so an ancient custom prescribes that they shall be honored wherever they go.'

'But surely down here--' I gasped, too bewildered to control my words, 'down here poets are not--'

'Yes, even here the old tradition rules, and men pay their respects to poets, as you can see--though it may be that the inner light is so dull that the worshippers act only out of habit and without any actual feeling of reverence.' "

--Into Plutonian Depths

The Names of the Hare.