They were putting up the statue
In woods where many rivers run
In a surrealist year
What could she say to the fantastic foolybear
In Golden Gate Park that day
Sometime during eternity
They were putting up the statue of Saint Francis in front of the church of Saint Francis in the city of San Francisco in a little side street just off the Avenue where no birds sang and the sun was coming up on time in its usual fashion and just beginning to shine on the statue of Saint Francis where no birds sang
And a lot of old Italians were standing all around in the little side street just off the Avenue watching the wily workers who were hoisting up the statue with a chain and a crane and other implements And a lot of young reporters in button-down clothes were taking down the words of one young priest who was propping up the statue with all his arguments
And all the while while no birds sang any Saint Francis Passion and while the lookers kept looking up at Saint Francis with his arms outstreched to the birds which weren’t there a very tall and very purely naked young virgin with very long and very straight straw hair and wearing only a very small bird’s nest in a very existential place kept passing thru the crowd all the while and up and down the steps in front of Saint Francis her eyes downcast all the while and singing to herself
In woods where many rivers run among the unbent hills and fields of our childhood where ricks and rainbows mix in memory although our "fields" were streets I see again those myriad mornings rise when every living thing cast its shadow in eternity and all day long the light like early morning with its sharp shadows shadowing a paradise that I had hardly dreamed of nor hardly knew to think of this unshaved today with its derisive rooks that rise above dry trees and caw and cry and question every other spring and thing
In a surrealist year of sandwichmen and sunbathers dead sunflowers and live telephones house-broken politicos with party whips performed as usual in the ring of their sawdust circuses where tumblers and human cannonballs filled the air like cries when some cool clown pressed an inedible mushroom button and an inaudible Sunday bomb fell down catching the president at his prayers on the 19th green
O it was a spring of fur leaves and cobalt flowers when cadillacs fell thru the trees like rain drowning the meadows with madness while out of every imitation cloud dropped myriad wingless crowds of nutless nagasaki survivors And lost teacups full of our ashes floated by
What could she say to the fantastic foolybear and what could she say to brother and what could she say to the cat with future feet and what could she say to mother after that time that she lay lush among the lolly flowers on that hot riverbank where ferns fell away in the broken air of the breath of her lover and birds went mad and threw themselves from trees to taste still hot upon the ground the spilled sperm seed
In Golden Gate Park that day
a man and his wife were coming along
thru the enourmous meadow
which was the meadow of the world
He was wearing green suspenders
and carrying an old beat-up flute
in one hand
while his wife had a bunch of grapes
which she kept handling out
individually
to various squirrels
as if each
were a little joke
And then the two of them came on
thru the enourmous meadow
which was the meadow of the world
and then
at a very still spot where the trees dreamed
and seemed to have been waiting thru all time
for them
they sat down together on the grass
without looking at each other
and ate oranges
without looking at each other
and put the peels
in a basket which they seemed
to have brought for that purpose
without looking at each other
And then
he took his shirt and undershirt off
but kept his hat on
sideways
and without saying anything
fell asleep under it
And his wife just sat there looking
at the birds which flew about
calling to each other
in the stilly air
as if they were questioning existence
or trying to recall something forgotten
But then finally
she too lay down flat
and just lay there looking up
at nothing
yet fingering the old flute
which nobody played
and finally looking over
at him
without any particular expression
except a certain awful look
of terrible depression
Sometime during eternity some guys show up and one of them who shows up real late is a kind of carpenter from some square-type place like Galilee and he starts wailing and claiming he is hep to who made heaven and earth and that the cat who really laid it on us is his Dad
And moreover he adds It’s all writ down on some scroll-type parchments which some henchmen leave lying around the Dead Sea somewheres a long time ago and which you won’t even find for a coupla thousand years or so or at least for nineteen hundred and fortyseven of them to be exact and even then nobody really believes them or me for that matter
You’re hot they tell him
And they cool him
They stretch him on the Tree to cool
And everybody after that is always making models of this Tree with him hung up and always crooning His name and calling Him to come down and sit in on their combo as if he is the king cat who’s got to blow or they can’t quite make it
Only he don’t come down from His Tree
Him just hang there on His Tree looking real Petered out and real cool and also according to a roundup of late world news from the usual unreliable sources real dead