Blind Ossian Addresses the Sun Again

Painting  by Jean Dominique Ingres

BLIND OSSIAN ADDRESSES THE SUN AGAIN

A day of snow on the Riviera, the burlesque queens
are mermaids, simple as the moon. Another New Year’s
Day in Havana, without discourse, they who cultivated
the dimensions of their bodies, like lizards
are regimented as our shadows. That’s bad news,
The natural gambler opined.
A traveller on the steps of Odessa
in distress & the going is hard & slow,
Enormous snowflakes stripped as the voice you know.

I should really be writing a letter to everybody
saying what I mean. I mean the bodies are blonde, brown
as sunshine, while my feet are cold. There is no news
in the world for us, only images grasped at, or fed us
like straws. The possible dimensions are what remind
Us that we were born once upon a time, & yelled like dawn.
The gamblers have moved south to oil & coffee country.
The television sets up north transmit pictures.
Snow is socialized. A rumor persists
that estimates of the life of the sun
have been wildly exaggerated.
In the thirties it was Egypt & the other Alexandria
You cannot know.

I will walk in the snow & get my feet wet. I will go
to the movies. I will hope. The bloody braille of the sun
is my tongue. The king was executed just because he thought
he could be happy. He enjoyed his job. He enjoyed
having his friends around. He enjoyed having money.
He enjoyed Marilyn Monroe, if such a thing was possible.
Degree by degree I went blind, thinking
of the sun in Havana,
thinking its eye was as narrow & wide as a pair of hips.

I will walk in Autumn. The Eiffel Tower will greet me, tell
me in Turkish the way to Afghanistan. Apollinaire & Vergil
will guide me, because I am blind, the way to the Far East
dimension of the world’s highway, O South
The way musicians named Ossian
have always been led by clarinets
& apprentice butchers since the world was young.


Frank Kuenstler

Posted over on Poems and Poetics