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Power andLitJht ... only connect. .. -E. M. Forster I may even be A man, I tell my wife: all day I climb myself Bowlegged up those damned poles rooster-heeled in all Kinds ofweather and what is there when I get Home? Yes, woman trailing ground-oil Like a snail, home is where I climb down, And this is the house I pass through on my way To power and light. Going into the basement is slow, but the built-on smell ofhome Beneath home gets better with age the ground fermenting And spilling through the barrel-cracks ofplaster the dark Lying on the floor, ready for use as I crack The seal on the bottle like I tell you it takes A man to pour whiskey in the dark and CLOSE THE DOOR between The children and me. The heads ofnails drift deeper through their boards And disappear. Years in the family dark have made me good At this nothing else is so good pure fires ofthe Self Rise crooning in lively blackness and the silence around them, Like the silence inside a mouth, squirms with colors, The marvellous worms ofthe eye float out into the real World sunspots Dancing as though existence were One huge closed eye and I feel the wires running Like the life-force along the limed rafters and all connections With poles with the tarred naked belly-buckled black Trees I hook to my heels with the shrill phone calls leaping Long distance long distances through my hands all connections Even the one With my wife, turn good turn better than good turn good Not quite, but in the deep sway ofunderground among the roots That bend like branches all things connect and stream Toward light and speech tingle rock like a powerline in wind, Like a man working, drunk on pine-moves the sun in the socket Ofhis shoulder and on his neck dancing like dice-dots, Falling) May Day Sermon) and Other Poems / 260 And I laugh Like my own fate watching over me night and day at home Underground or flung up on towers walking Over mountains my charged hair standing on end crossing The sickled, slaughtered alleys oftimber Where the lines loop and crackle on their gallows. Far under the grass ofmy grave, I drink like a man The night before Resurrection Day. My watch glows with the time to rise And shine. Never think I don't know my profession Will lift me: why, all over hell the lights burn in your eyes, People are calling each other weeping with a hundred thousand Volts making deals pleading laughing like fate, Far off, invulnerable or with the right word pierced To the heart By wires I held, shooting offtheir ghostly mouths, In my gloves. The house spins I strap crampons to my shoes To climb the basement stairs, sinking my heels in the treelife ofthe boards. Thorns! Thorns! I am bursting Into the kitchen, into the sad way-station Ofmy home, holding a double handful ofwires Spitting like sparklers On the Fourth ofJuly. Woman, I know the secret ofsitting In light ofeating a limp piece ofbread under The red-veined eyeball ofa bulb. It is all in how you are Grounded. To bread I can see, I say, as it disappears and agrees With me the dark is drunk and I am a man Who turns on. I am a man. The Flash Something far off buried deep and free In the country can always strike you dead Center ofthe brain. There is never anything It could be but you go dazzled Dazzled and all the air in that Direction swarms waits The Flash / 26I ...

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