Poems should be heard, especially cryptic ones like this one, so now you have this to try. I couldn’t get the regular audio embedding to work, so I had to set up a Substack “podcast”. This was a hard poem to recite and so some of my pronunciation sounds strange and not quite like me — I think I must have been channeling the way John Ashbery reads his poems — but I couldn’t get it any better after more attempts. If it feels like I’m mumbling, you might want to have the words in front of you while you listen. Hope it finds you well,
— AR
Zombie Days
I You who wake sullen and aching as you always did, Whose body knows no time when fluid acid irritant upset unrest didn’t hinder and inflame, Whose thesaurus’s sleep is a book on a nightstanded morning’s memory of a dream’s after-effected residuum, Who archetypal as all lightning-shimmer on a garment you once made yourself, wearable as waterfall, now go naked and unknowing, You who once called angel, demon, daemon, shadow, guardian, sentinel, seer, same, Who amidst grateful riches adrift stand upstaged, Who once cloistered himself to hide, You who faked it, who changed lines, lived in disguise, You yourself won’t now know the news of your sleep, You who sleep and wake when you dream, You who are being remade. II Time’s hatred on an album’s affixed Affirmative hand hadn't had so many Vanitied mentionings of mirror's mien Since departing because Time Had been given up -- You now live on the other side -- Which Is, Let Us Remind You, What You Wanted -- And now peace before leaving this place Is threshold you can't place, Match the foreheaded wall's closed face. This whole set of walls is in difficulty, and violence, And of the hand reaching on its way after under A thrashing tree -- we say too that it is thrashed Because wind, because starry story is leaving. III As if Ever possible to write Amiss for prince Whose essence Since evinced My unknowing. The wind Now plead the rock, Take this, take And let rock break, As when the eyes are crying. Let break for all love.
Zombie Days