Gods Like Naked Everythings

The eucalyptus leaf’s persistence is fact,
the sarcasm of the kazoo: conjecture.
And like Newton I fiddle with purple nets to catch the Gods
in their own game. An affinity between the language
of alchemy and this Bismarck of my late twenties.
Too much too fast. It is the way of it. A German ship
in the middle of all: the years of the last century, the Atlantic,
the second one of those wars we have.
H.D. driven by this equation:
World War and therefore World War
and then as long as we are extrapolating from the Romans
their numerals, why not the Greeks their ancient
mathematics of tragedy.
Thirty Bibles must mean something. All lined up
like apples on a shelf: a catalog of gravity.
One wants to open every one to the same page. Call
William Carlos Willliams into the room and see how the
font changes scripture. One wants to read aloud Leviticus
and then blow the kazoo.
One wants one to stand for I.
To allow that Newton was looking for a footnote
in history. Mars fancying Venus
led to a net cast by Vulcan
over their bodies. A net of metal. An equation of desire
that Newton read with verve. Met with like fire and
created something that is not gold.
Too much too soon. But reinforcements sometimes come
like the spear shafts of the eucalyptus. With a rustle
and scent of something akin to wind.
There is a science in the names we give our myths.
Newton fancied that Venus and Mars and Vulcan were code
for metals that would make a match. They weren’t.
At least not the fire he wanted. They were Ohio Blue Tips.
Strike anywheres. Like lightning. Like war. Beauty.
Newton fancied rich.
And all of us are out
toward the horizon like some great overwrought warship.
How much later can we go
before we sag under the weight. Fall from our net to the
bottom of the sea. Vulcan fastened them to the ceiling. Gods
like naked everythings pressed on a glass coffee table. Us gaping
from below at their embrace. Heavenly Bodies indeed.
One wonders at it. One well-meaning eye looks away.

Elizabyth Hiscox