House of Leaves (72 page)

—
For
Katharina
the flute
player. Hamburg. July
22, 1988

The
Present
1815
Cala
mi
ty of Conscience

Rise the brobdingnag

to the Lion’s ball
pawed fair

where,

If all accords to plan

Warlord Waterloo will claw

the hem with grace.

“I trembled at the sound

of footsteps, my conscience

turned aghast:

Melonbrick returning?”

Stavishly amok running

at the mouth: Pelican thinks

ce
champ sinistre

la fuite des geants.

Come now cats and mice

will play

(and scamper exceedingly loud

down the hail)

Infidels of thought

blinder than,

o
yes much much blinder than

bats.

— For Said in Bruxelles.

July
25, 1988

Melonology On A Melon

Is
this
melon right

Pelican
demanded

of
himself.

Indeed it seems to

hold the
curve,

seems right in the palm

(How would Easle read?)

It reminds me

of sorry days in Spain.

Funny they didn’t

have melons there.

— Written on a melon. Paris.

July
26,
1988

When Unguarded Thoughts
Returned Over Breakfast

—He needs to
eat

and so opens the fridge
to
retrieve

along with bread

a brick of butter.

— [illegible). Paris,

July 26, 1988

Peli
can Transpires By Hi
s Cup of
Tea and Decides
to Try His Hand at Conjuring

Is the ambiance of style

elegant ambivalence?

“There”
sighed Patter

and
Pelican felt an

easing
away.

He relished
the
thought

He turned over the thought

He gave it up,

and in an evening dress

she appeared
behind his

dosing eyes.

—
For Lucy in Carcassonne.

August
3, 1988

An
Elegant Prancing of an Indolent Pale Over Revision

Ragged and
towed

in a misfortunate

step,

torn to a spindoil

in
returning
a [illegible]

[illegible)

the alteration:

“Grammatical
metempsychosis”

[illegible]

though Pelican claims

he saw more
through that
[illegible]

behind the
matador’s cape.

— For Becky
after a bullfight in Madrid. August 7, 1988

The Stave Principle in
Regards to
Pelican’s Principles—Or Something
Like That

A
criminal’s
attention

is Stave’s at
hand
gestures

for intimidation

when it comes to
questions

of personal and
inter-personal

balance.

“I’ve gone to the edge

and
found I could do more

than just
peer
over.”

And
he
blinks
like Waterloo

(slowly now)

while
ahead of the game

Pelican wonders if

he could think
that
way.

If he could
relish
closure.

Does Stave stall?

Is tomorrow’s wonder

only
yesterday’s remembrance?

Pelican discovers himself
annoyed.

— Left
at the Peraz Hostel in Madrid.

August
11, 1988

The Ploy
That Put Syllab
ic Stress Differentiation Over a
rt

Pelican stuttered

for
stuttering
is the

hindrance
of
speech

and Pelican stuttered
on purpose

because that’s what he wanted to do

—to hinder.

“You’re a wretch”
Easle
said,
placing

a hair on her palm
.

Stave felt completely
annoyed

by the intention.

Pelican continued on

and
in between enjoyments

he fragmented letters

like he fragmented his friend’s

sense.

— For
Stefan in Toledo.

August
11, 1988

October’s
Tapestry Sale

Perhaps there’s
the
stitch

potential
to consider
—

Quisling’s
adjournment

(which follows)

reflects his invariant gate

—from Pelican’s perspective

you understand.

“Get to the remount
and

head south and settle east.”

Quisling loses
himself
with a compass,

a
fault
of antiquated polarities

when
he was young.

Pelican shreds
away at it
all.

But it’s nothing
new

Quisling is
history’s
name,

— For
strangers met on a train to Nice.

Jul
y
26, 1988

The Wednesday Which Pelican Mistook to be a
Sunday and Caused Easle to Lose her Cards

Amuck
in annular
thoughts

reminiscent of
mango tree roots—

“Are these circular?”

“They
are from
my
angle”

and
mango
tree roots sound—

Pelican confounds his own
imagination

by trying
transubstantiation

on the
evening sea
tide

rising
inside his morning cup.

Easle
throws her tarots

and with
hanging men
and a spotted
moon up In
the air

commands a Taxi
uptown.

The
driver grins
ala St.
John.

“O
Pelican

(portentously
or
pre..replete)

—the turning forms what,

a bird, a plane,
no…

the paraclete?”

—
Sent to [
illegible].

August
1, 1988

Pelican’s Ratiocination
of
Erring Recurrence In
Correspondence He just Left Behind

With forgetful ease

the forgotten tease

of shapeless days

pass by

and
I feel them hesitate

sometimes

and
whisper
their concordance

of
slight
gestures in
glass.

They are mine

and drift still with the irregularity

of
wine and doors

in constructed mythologies

of evening
reflections

long
since
gone by.

—
For
Johanna in Rome.

August 14, 1988

Singing Lesson
When Beethoven Caine to Stroll

The colors
steal

a
glimpse
of praise

and
subdue orchestrated humor

with
tropes.

“I have forgotten to read.”

Easle is
annoyed with the tricode
stitching on a courtesan’s hem—the outlay see.

‘And
when I learned to read again

what I read wasn’t what I’d read

before.”

Pelican’s
not listening,
only

watching the pastoral

unfold in shades of

plaid.

— For
a Dutch
girl
wearing a

Fransican
cross
who
spoke Italian

with a
southern
accent. She gave

me a sandwich on a train to

Brindisi.
August 15, 1988

When
the Excavation
Proffered
up a
Pause and
at
Twenty
To
the
Angel
Passed Right
By

Here
in
the
scape

of trumpeters
poised

before a
curfew
of miracles

we collide into a communal tonic

of words, of silence.

“Well”
and
she said more

than well, but this is the
getting
around,

the circling Bacchanal in four
time,

The
wine
has
dropped
to the cloth:

one season

two seasons

three reasons

(There is
not time enough to count
all

the

way)

sounds
the chorus

sounds
Pelican

sounds the
notes
that brought a

wall
of
conversation tumbling down.

—
For
Claire. Paxos,
Greece.

August
20, 1988

The Parable (I)

It
’s fortunate

you laughed

because
I would have lost

my way.

These
are
the notes recorded

These
are the
lines reflecting

what one
evening had
to say

to another.

“1
walk, see

and 1 believe
a gentleman

passes
by

and
what catches my
eye

are his cuf
f
links.

He is my brother. He is my
father.”

This, a Pelican
inmate declared,

is
the
way.