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                    The Sea of Everyplace Else                                                                                
                                                                                    

                    I know the empire will end, but today, lying abed
                    I am perfectly convinced it will not be during my life.
                    I am not indifferent to death. I am expected.
                    My slaves wave their arms to speak, I am unfaithful to my wife.

                    Wishfulness is a vice against God; my poets wish.
                    All in this world is in abundance, joy and pain.
                    When will the store of these vanish?
                    Why should I care of them again?

                    The transport on perfume, the Merveilleuses,
                    the epimethean gardens of the lotos,
                    the public mutilations and the fastuous jewelry,
                    where to sleep, what dearth possess

                    to sharpen on innocence my free desire?
                    If I have nothing to which I am pious,
                    for the mere fables, I’ll fall in with tempters:
                    You’re different from others but not from us.

                    Every departure needs a fortuneteller who
                    hates himself until he’s a perfect lover. I am not proud.
                    I am not kind. I have enough money to
                    purchase death for the crowns of the crowd:

                    The equilibrist who walks the gaps
                    between the cathedrals, the Ice and the bars.
                    Without the town underneath, he collapsed
                    on the brothel stairs.

                    As far from him in every way,
                    in all the quiet, chthonic places we could meet
                    after the venationes, pale Lucullo, like a stray
                    brushes the lions beneath the street.

                    The only world given, for our Apollyon,
                    is between the Baths and rose hotels;
                    even if He could be anyone I want
                    I’d still hear the Sea of Everyplace Else.

                    The waters from that Sea, miles away,
                    are brought to our fountains by the aqueducts
                    under which I have walked at night distrait
                    with perfect fascinations, but

                    the consuming worst is the heart’s renewal.
                    Detach its color, diminish its power
                    I hear as in a shell the parts of its reversal:
                    Begin again this self-same hour.

                    But the bed is soft and I have paid for
                    the girls from each race, the wine, the scents,
                    all this, and I can have so much more.
                    Everything I have been given, I have kept.

                    Let the Chaldeans come and make out three bands
                    the wind, too, as my children feast, in their brother’s house,
                    I have my substance in the cold, virescent land
                    and the idle hours of the Cross.


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                         © Habley Mouse, a Private Press, 2006.  All rights reserved.  (Poetry by William Frank)
                                                                (Also available from Amazon.com)

                        Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
                        distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without
                        the prior written permission of the author.