LE BASTON

LE BASTON

We know so much in the dark

early hours assassinations plans deals

silk sleeves brush silently

across tables railings: coup on Nineveh 

called housecleaning or touch things

before the sun gets them, you can hear its slaves 

whipping the house awake. End first movement Bartok Concerto for Orchestra.

It gets worse and worse Venus over the Parliament 

devastating competition in textiles– are they still listening?

this is a story about the green mist that made us, magicians all

made our city islands mountain and a language

no one knows: speak it anyway hide your cimbalom 

from the day-watch, put it all under the obvious

let them think we have jobs but it’s all cardboard Night planning

its great coup on Day we’ve been holding this card

for three thousand years or since the well ran dry

takes so little to be happy again, just one step

out of line, a little murder here and there, 

because crazy means to murder the state

I say comrade take this umbrella aim

straight up only one shot and 

down the sky. End movement two, ibid. 

That was a picture of a hand holding LE BASTON.

Looks like a club but means every story has a hole in it.

Don’t look out the window there’s words out there,

just waiting for a nice girl like you to say them, words with knives

in their teeth waiting to murder the story like those

old motor cars each one leading you down a fateful street

in Sarajevo, the club is a scissors and your driver cuts the string

carriage nothing but doves and you too. So much for that

but the old bell-tower doesn’t need to make noise anymore

and the hunchback knows it too, he eats doves.

(Why should that bother you?) His life is a sad story

the wind told me, no bells, just soft feet padding along

stone, slap of skin like branches. See me and die, I heard

him say. End Miraculous Mandarin. Ibid. 

He’s a man without skin (that’s what eyes are),

a transparent tree: no shadows just thoughts. Shadow of night

of rain, or the sound of someone listening.