and half
Asia, Asia
moons dangling from the trellis dome
on hempen ropes and mourn by night in crazed cities
Asia, Asia
provinces of mustard, aging eagles and improvisations
Asia, Asia
Adam’s apple is stabbed by thirty prophets
and eleven stars
no room for the birds of freckle
in the jungles of tar.
no place for the hand of high industry to fall
on the haft of the plough pulled by Hammurabi’s ox
for we write what we know not
we proceed in the festivities of speech.
Asia, is words born on the lips
fields rising up to the scythe’s edge
and tilting.
Asia she only saw her mien as war,
erasing her features and proceeding in the personal
history to ashes
for the war is war no more.
the shots a carnation, which died in the ecstasy
and marble grows on flanks
here we are, in the first year before naught.
the sun of Asia has bared her body and gone
on to the sea:
brides of oak evergreen
quagmires of wisdom
linden hearts
dangling on the curve of dryness
pebbles
shining in the water-wheel’s jaw
children gather dung.
to cook well the continent of bread.^21The reader may trace in the poem a dense register of ancient times, records of
wars, daily life, dreams and aspirations. Yet, the divided voice reads the old
and the new recollections and intimations as they unfold now in this solitary
moment. The perceiving mind recognizes an invading change and a mixture
of futility, absurdity, will, and power in the old lifestyles. The accumulated
detail builds a register that moves back and forth between the ancient ode,
the war poem, the real Bedouin life, and the recapitulations of a new sensibility
that sees through change. The mere fact that the divided voice traces the
CONCLUSION: DEVIATIONAL AND REVERSAL POETICS