We Welcomed Our Poor Hackneyed Christ, Sad Bastard, Croaking of Pestilence - the Basement Holds Him Now

• Since 2003 that DC United shield anchored my keys. I don't want to compare my happy disenchantment and disassociation from United with my unhappy disenchantment and disassociation from motherfucking professional Democrats. The former involves meh, the latter hate: I am still small. The car I bought a year and a half ago never had a United sticker, and the United stickers on the house's front door Earthgirl took down once she knew I didn't care, and all my United shirts and scarves and hats are boxed and basemented, but yesterday, after the vet came to the house for the cats' annual check-up and shots I removed the United shield from key ring and replaced with rabies bells. Fine metaphors DO NOT always abound although I always try to make them.
• Cornel West's impermissible opinions. And a follow-up.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• BTW, TPP is the leverage Triskelions have chosen to apply to Corporate, Democratic Division, re: Hillary's coronation.
• An argument for argument.
• The Dinosauran Critique of Philosophy.
• This week in water.
• Monsters.
• The limitations in constituting a universal human subject.
• Tom Raworth, for those of you who do.
• On Lerner's Atocha Station. Which I remember liking when I read a year ago but remember not a thing about the novel.
• Randel Jarrell interviews Robert Frost.
• Ten stories of Beethoven's Ninth.
• The Disappearing Poet: whatever happened to Weldon Kees. 
• I knew as I snapped that photo yesterday there would be a Weldon Kees poem here today, and as soon as I thought of my United shit now boxed in basement I thought of today's poem.
• I haven't on Saturday stolen songs from Bryce's Friday show recently, so today.

EIGHT VARIATIONS

Weldon Kees

1.

         Prurient tapirs gamboled on our lawns,   

         But that was quite some time ago.

         Now one is accosted by asthmatic bulldogs,   

         Sluggish in the hedges, ruminant.

         Moving through ivy in the park

         Near drying waterfalls, we open every gate;   

         But that grave, shell-white unicorn is gone.   

         The path is strewn with papers to the street.

         Numbers that once were various

         Regarded us, were thought significant, significant   

         Enough to bring reporters to the scene.

         But now the bell strikes one, strikes one,

         Strikes one—monotonous and tired.

         Or clicks like a sad valise.

    2. Note to Be Left on the Table

    This ghost of yours, padding about the upper halls,   

    Given to fright-wigs Burbage might have worn,   

    Moaning in doorways, jumping out at maids,   

    Has not convinced me even yet. Can this be you?   

    Your life was frightening enough, but this   

    Poor pallid counterpart who fuddles in its role   

    Is inexcusable. Go haunt the houses of the girls   

    You once infected, or the men who bore   

    Your company far oftener than I; annoy the others   

    For a change. Is this, my house, the medieval hell

    You took to at the grave’s edge, years ago,

    After a dozen other hells had burned themselves away,   

    Or are we purgatory here? If not,

    You make it one. I give you until noon.

3.

Ruined travelers in sad trousseaux

Roost on my doorstep, indolent and worn.   

Not one of them fulfills despised Rousseau’s   

Predictions. Perhaps they are waiting to be born.   

If so, the spot’s been badly chosen.

This is a site for posthumous investigations,   

Pillows stuffed with nettles, charnal notions:   

Apoplectic executioners, bungled incisions.   

Indeed, our solitary midwife fondles the hemlock.

We welcomed one poor hackneyed Christ,

Sad bastard, croaking of pestilence. The basement

Holds him now. He has not as yet arisen.

The tickets are ready; the line forms on the right.

Justice and virtue, you will find, have been amazingly preserved.

         4.

         As water from a dwindling reservoir

         Uncovers mossy stones, new banks of silt,

         So every minute that I spend with you reveals   

         New flaws, new features, new intangibles.   

         We have been sitting here for hours—

         “I spent that summer in Madrid,

         The winter on the coast of France—

         The Millotsons were there, and Farnsworth.

         My work has perished with the rest

         Of Europe, gone, all gone. We will not see the end.”

         You said goodbye, and your perfume   

         Lingered for hours. At first it seemed

         Like summer dying there, then rank and sharp.

         And yet I did not air the room.

      5.

      Among Victorian beadwork and the smell of plush,   

      The owls, stuffed and marvelously sinister,

      Glare from dark corners, waiting for the night.   

      High up, the moose’s passive eyes explore

      Candles, unlit, within cut-glass. A door

      Is opened, and you enter with a look

      You might have saved for Pliny or the Pope.

      The furniture has shrunk now thirty years

      Have passed (with talent thinning out, and words   

      Gone dead), and mouths of friends in photographs   

      Display their hopeful and outmoded smiles.   

      You counted on at least a sputter of nostalgia,   

      However fretful. That was a mistake. Even the moose   

      Regards you with a tired, uncomprehending stare.

         6.

         Signboards commemorate their resting place.   

         The graveless of another century

         Came and were conquered; now their bones   

         Are dust where idiot highways run.

         Land in their eyes, unquiet ancestors

         (On fences yellow signs clang in the wind)

         Unstirred by suns drying the brown weeds   

         Above them now in parched and caking land.

         But when they speak of you, they feel the need   

         Of voices polished and revised by history,   

         The martial note, words framed in capitals.

         It is good to be deaf in a deafening time   

         With the sky gone colorless, while the dead   

         Thunder breaks, a cracked dish, out of the mind.

      7.

      The eye no longer single: where the bowl,

      Dead in the thickened darkness, swelled with light,   

      Transformed the images and moved the artist’s hand,   

      Becomes a framework for our mania.

      And haunts the stairway. Friends depart,   

      Taking their last look from the roof,   

      Saying goodnight and carrying their view   

      Of grapes the model ate in Paris years ago.

      Blue in the morning, green some afternoons;   

      The night, ambiguous, forgets the signature.

      The dust in attics settled and his stove

      Grew cold. About the model nothing much is known.

      It ends the wall and complements the view   

      Of chimneys. And it hides a stain.

         8.

         And when your beauty, washed away   

         In impure streams with my desire,

         Is only topic for ill-mannered minds,

         Gifted and glassy with exact recall,

         Gossip and rancid footnotes, or remote despair,   

         Let ruined weather perish in the streets   

         And let the world’s black lying flag come down.

         Only in calendars that mark no Spring

         Can there be weather in the mind

         That moves to you again as you are now:

         Tired after love and silent in this house,

         Your back turned to me, quite alone,

         Standing with one hand raised to smooth your hair,   

         At a small window, green with rain.