5410. ROTOMONTAGE

ROTOMONTAGE (O'Hara)

People talk. Tendentious claptrap nonsense

as they walk. The entire rampway is theirs. 

God of the Mountain, King of the Walk,

bantam cock rooster making his own ton of

noise. Fire on the same mountain  -  long 

brought, folded and forgotten on the fiery bush 

those stone tablets crashing to the ground. The

last landslide is up : over the pathetic hills and dales

of what is seen and what is lived. Cacophony rages  - 

fierce the storm of noise and all the letters come

jumbling down. Together. Down. 'The huge rocks

are like twin beds and the cove tide is a rug slipping

out from under us. When I am in your presence I

feel life is strong and will defeat all its enemies and

all of mine and all of yours and yours in you and

mine in me sick logic and feeble reasoning are

cured by the perfect symmetry of your arms and

lags spread out making an eternal circle together.' 

The words are written to Man-Gods of the deep;

the ones who know it all, the ones who speak.

Oh tongues of fire carry me from meanings to places

and back again : I wish to have what I wish to be.

The fifteen people embedded in this clock  are only

helping the artworld to move : MOMA in reality is

seeking its place. Five new stories, not a trace. The

men are moving Water Lilies, burned in the fire, and

singed, George Washington Crossing the Delaware,

in the fire of Spring, 1958. 'A dream of immense sadness

peers through me as if I were an action poem that

couldn't write and I am leaving for another continent

which is the same as this one goodbye.'