Nov. 29 03

Hold onto that thought awhile, you may lose it.
And management asserts we can’t be bothered
With your prima donna complaints, consider
Yourself lucky. Were there jack-hammers
The rent would be worth it.
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The windstorm and the banging of the pipes,
The galestorm cooling the surface of the earth,
And the pipes heating the rooms against the storm,
The stormclouds dispersed but then reappearing.
The rhythm of the pipes unpredictable, a whim
Music has a pause you can anticipate, not this

The pipes banging, as if someone hammered them
A valve admitting the steam into the plates
Of the radiator, banging, while piano works
Play on the stereo, Satie’s special instructions
To the pianist to play with gusto and vehemence

Cannot stop the wind from whistling or the pipes
From whistling while the steam is admitted
When the galestorm doesn’t whistle it howls
Or it clears the storm formation, cooling
The earth as it whistles, but the medium
Of spaces between alleys is required for this

You should hear them, the pipes that bang
As if metal parts shifted and unlocked, the howl
Of the wind requiring the surface of earth be close
Enough to be on the verge of being torn apart
The pressure of the steam as it enters the radiator

How much time, what language would it take
To classify the varieties of shapes and clouds
And the space between them, exactly how rays
Fall from them and from what slant

They’re playing tricks with faces, not midwinter yet,
Not fall anymore. They’d rather wait and rain
Above the sea toward which they seem to blow.
Nothing meanwhile is battened down enough
Not to howl or to whistle, a noise prior to music,

Prior to chants and invocations for rain to fall
Or for clouds to disperse so what we need to grow
Can grow again, prior to that first of syllables,
Ma, a howl prior to the calls of the beasts
In a forest crowded with pines as cities with towers

Or moralized landscape with high-tension wires,
Whistling from the wind that strikes the strings,
From the messages than hum inside the wires
They are refusing to yield to me a message.