My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer

A BOOK OF MUSIC (1958)

A BOOK OF MUSIC (1958) With words by Jack Spicer Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 169 This page intentionally left blank Improvisations on a Sentence by Poe “Indefiniteness is an element of the true music.” The grand concord of what Does not stoop to definition. The seagull Alone on the pier cawing its head off Over no fish, no other seagull, No ocean. As absolutely devoid of meaning As a French horn. It is not even an orchestra. Concord Alone on a pier. The grand concord of what Does not stoop to definition. No fish No other seagull, no ocean—the true Music. A Valentine Useless Valentines Are better Than all others. Like something implicit In a poem. Take all your Valentines And I’ll take mine. What is left is better Than any image. Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 171 171 Cantata Ridiculous How the space between three violins Can threaten all of our poetry. We bunch together like Cub Scouts at a picnic. There is a high scream. Rain threatens. That moment of terror. Strange how all our beliefs Disappear. Orfeo Sharp as an arrow Orpheus Points his music downward. Hell is there At the bottom of the seacliff. Heal Nothing by this music. Eurydice Is a frigate bird or a rock or some seaweed. Hail nothing The infernal Is a slippering wetness out at the horizon. Hell is this: The lack of anything but the eternal to look at The expansiveness of salt The lack of any bed but one’s Music to sleep in. Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 172 172 Song of a Prisoner Nothing in my body escapes me. The sound of an eagle diving Upon some black bird Or the sorrow of an owl. Nothing in my body escapes me. Each branch is closed I Echo each song from its throat Bellow each sound. Jungle Warfare The town wasn’t much A few mud-huts and a church steeple. They were the same leaves And the same grass And the same birds deep in the edge of the thicket. We waited around for someone to come out and surrender But they rang their church bells And we We were not afraid of death or any manner of dying But the same muddy bullets, the same horrible Love. Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 173 173 Good Friday: For Lack of an Orchestra I saw a headless she-mule Running through the rain She had the hide of a chessboard And withers that were lank and dark “Tell me,” I asked “Where Is Babylon?” “No,” she bellowed “Babylon is a few baked bricks With some symbols on them. You could not hear them. I am running To the end of the world.” She ran Like a green and purple parrot, screaming Through the sand. Mummer The word is imitative From the sound mum or mom Used by nurses to frighten or amuse children At the same time pretending To cover their faces. Understanding is not enough The old seagull died. There is a whole army of seagulls Waiting in the wings A whole army of seagulls. Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 174 174 The Cardplayers The moon is tied to a few strings They hold in their hands. The cardplayers Sit there stiff, hieratic Moving their hands only for the sake of Playing the cards. No trick of metaphor Each finger is a real finger Each card real pasteboard, each liberty Unaware of attachment. The moon is tied to a few strings. Those cardplayers Stiff, utterly Unmoving. Ghost Song The in ability to love The inability to love In love (like all the small animals went up the hill into the underbrush to escape from the goat and the bad tiger) The inability Inability (tell me why no white flame comes up from the earth when lightning strikes the twigs and the dry branches) Spicer: My Vocabulary Did This to Me page 175 175 In love. In love. In love. The Inability (as if there were nothing left on the mountains but what nobody wanted to escape from) Army Beach With Trumpets Rather than our bodies the sand Proclaims that we...