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Lyrics

You probably won't need whatever It is you thought to bring, and besides You won't be judged by the baggage you Carry. You have to get out of here fast Becoming a poet, and poets will often Deceive you about it, hasn't to do with Grandiloquent symbols. Some strut about The decks obscurely, awaiting the call Like halfwit neurasthenics on vacation Every time they talk, the word outlives The idea, its tentative size diminished and Taken apart like a shipwreck, waste You sit alone and worry your oar, intense Accommodation, an alien mystic fallen Among chance captains. Wayward tribes Have settled these rural borders badly Fastening trivial tents in regular rows We will not have it. We are a runaway Crowd, I assure you, ranging in barbarous Places, vanished then, to begin with The quest, if that is what it is, is differently Laid out than balladeers have mentioned You're walking outdoors with a friend, avoiding Your letters. It could happen to anyone Something, a beetle, a snake sliding out Of the shrubbery bites him. Maybe you call For help, but the bridges are out or the road's Dismantled, and nobody's coming for hours You prop him up, talk about meaningless Things and thus conspire against the dazes And wildering spell of dying. Ply him with Insular legends and omens and obsolete Miracles. You'll not outwit its imminent Looming, yet play for an hour its secluded Music, done with time. There is where you are Going. All men are finally Stricken. The poison Takes, the agreeable faces shrivel. In the best Of their snakebite songs, we've delivered The vision intact, keep watch for the singular Passage. Be casual out of sight of land And about to surrender. You arrive without warning At a language shoreline and smile as if Nothing at all had ended. Olives crown The headlands and a raging orchid carpet Rings these slopes like arrogant starfire Ambiguous phrases that blur in the tropical air Like spice and pollen order themselves superbly Your most precipitous guesses are pooled and cycled In seconds as epic and rhyme besides. You can Do anything. The surf will, as usual, prosper Its lift and leisurely slap continue That's all anyone knows of the rhythm of things Go scout a more subtle system in the sea Ignore for once its predictable singing. Myself I hallowed beach fruit for hours the first morning Watching its colorless meat disperse like phallic daylight Or lower your barrels and mine the shallows For ancient loot. Or relish the marvelous Shapes of the floor. The words will come later The pipe-stem fish come hollering for you now The direst insects zing on the green riches Giving on the page is automatic and you risk A small sorrow. If no one will believe you You may be stranded by fevers and foolish Jewels in that still harbor, but never mind Go anyway. Just wear castaway harmonies Listen, I would be lying if I said that critics Will not matter, but if you travel faster Believe it, and take care. One does not ask Why we do it. The words our lips could master Would make us all human if we knew them That and the pain