Michael Palmer - Eighth Sky
It is scribbled along the body <br />Impossible even to say a word <br /> <br />An alphabet has been stored beneath the ground <br />It is a practice alphabet, work of the hand <br /> <br />Yet not, not marks inside a box <br />For example, this is a mirror box <br /> <br />Spinoza designed such a box <br />and called it the Eighth Sky <br /> <br />called it the Nevercadabra House <br />as a joke <br /> <br />Yet not, not so much a joke <br />not Notes for Electronic Harp <br /> <br />on a day free of sounds <br />(but I meant to write "clouds") <br /> <br />At night these same boulevards fill with snow <br />Lancers and dancers pass a poisoned syringe, <br /> <br />as you wrote, writing of death in the snow, <br />Patroclus and a Pharaoh on Rue Ravignan <br /> <br />It is scribbled across each body <br />Impossible even to name a word <br /> <br />Look, you would say, how the sky falls <br />at first gently, then not at all <br /> <br />Two chemicals within the firefly are the cause <br />Twin ships, twin nemeses <br /> <br />preparing to metamorphose <br />into an alphabet in stone <br /> <br /> <br />St.-Benoît-sur-Loire <br /> to Max Jacob<br /><br />Michael Palmer<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/eighth-sky/