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✦ 72 ✦ The Flies of the Moochkap Tearoom If an eyebrow carves a furrow Across a sweating brow, Does that imply a thief? And out the door by dusk? But here in this tearoom, where cherries Stare blackly from sockets and plates At a feathery bevy of branches, That’s cause indeed to be amazed! The sun, like blood from off a knife, He washed away—and grew all strange, As if he’d quench with blackest tea The embers of a crime. A dusty poppy like a mangy cur Droops in a greedy thirst for day, Still seething in its soul, Some savage, bitter dregs of God. You label me a holy fool, You find me strange and wild— But what about the mass of blooms Upon the clock and china? No one knows upon which page Of earth’s revolving sphere The flood of printed words relates The barking sheepdogs and this heat, ✦ 73 ✦ That oak, and the enameled sign That did not hold, but fell From willows in a headlong flight Down to the swirling, jaspered pond. But even in the nights flies swarm From dozens, pairs and portions, Out of a twisted trumpet vine, Out of a poet’s muddy lines. This must be a madness of the pen That, losing all control, Blackens all the windowpanes And spatters locusts on the wall. The hour must have come at last For all the coiled springs to burst— For now the buzzing spiral wraps The trembling poplar in the wind. What place is this? What kind of strange And savagely envisaged hell? I only know: in thunder and the dry, Before a storm, and in July. ...

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