Xli Poems/Portrait 9
IX
at the ferocious phenomenon of 5 o'clock i find myself gently decomposing in the mouth of New York. Between its supple financial teeth deliriously sprouting from complacent gums,a morsel prettily wanders buoyed on the murderous saliva of industry. the morsel is i.
Vast cheeks enclose me.
a gigantic uvula with imperceptible gesticulations threatens the tubular downward blackness occasionally from which detatching itself bumps clumsily into the throat A meticulous vulgarity:
a sodden fastidious normal explosion; a square murmur, a winsome flatulence—
In the soft midst of the tongue sits the Woolworth building a serene pastile-shaped insipid kinesis of frail swooping lozenge. a ruglike sentience whose papille expertly drink the docile perpendicular taste of this squirming cube of undiminished silence, supports while devouring the firm tumult of exquisitely insecure sharp algebraic music. For the first time in sorting from this vast nonchalant inward walk of volume the flat minute gallop of careful hugeness i am conjugated by the sensual mysticism of entire vertical being, i am skilfully construed by a delicately experimenting colossus whose irrefutable spiral antics involve me with the soothings of plastic hypnotism . iam accurately parsed by this gorgeous rush of upward lips. . . .
cleverly
perching on the sudden extremity of one immense tooth myself surveys safely the complete important profane frantic inconsequential gastronomic mysteryof mysteriesof mysteries, life.
Far below myself the lunging leer of horizontal large distinct ecstasy wags and. rages Laughters jostle grins nudge smiles push—.deep into the edgeless gloaming gladness hammers incessant putrid spikes of madness (at
Myself's height these various innocent ferocities are superceded by the sole prostituted ferocity of silence, it is) still 5 o'clockI stare only always into the tremendous canyon the
, tremendous canyon always only exhales a climbing dark exact walloping human noise of digestible millions whose rich slovenly obscene procession always floats through the thin amorous enormous only lips of the evening
And it is 5 o'clock
in the oblong air, from which a singular ribbon of common sunset is hanging,
snow speaks slowly