Warren Falcon (04/23/52 - xxxx / Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA)

For Workers everywhere, bricks, straw, verse.

The breast naturally of Woman is bread before
there was bread, the child the loaf swelling in
Her arms to farm & from such frame a world.

Thus Labor. Bread is History.

Child's toil, unspoiled, forms a culture beast,
he crawls forth, makes bread of soil native &
other, a Mother culture all & still, everywhere.

- Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, from 'Immigrants Exile, Labor, Drive Or Will, And The Lady Mother - A Malafiction'

1

History before was brunch ever in the world.
Sunday. St. Marks & 1st Avenue. Red, red Simone,
doors open to sun and saunter, the wander, now
'arm in arm they goes' just past the corner where
was found Berryman abandoned, run over, bleeding
ink into the avenue's black page, a then-new copy,
heavy, of Zukofsky ('Z') 'A' already lost, me, in the
reading but gladly Berryman on my lap, no, knee/
kneel, rather, while reading 'Z' evoke old ward Jews,
Italians, horse-drawn venders, runners about with
carts heaving, vegetable griefs returned to church
to synagogue dark alley dead ends where what is
left out of grief is carved into bricks with knives

(O what is the name, lost perhaps, of
he who once sharpened all our knives?) :

THIS OUR LIFE
SOME FEW RETURN
TO HEAR/SEE
EVIDENCE OF

THE NATURE OF A CITY
IS TO CONTINUALLY
ERASE ITSELF


2

Zuke** saw said feigned
old tongue which is an
old seeing, shaping art
or 'newed it up' out with
forth- for hind- or other-
see heat lightning
sunder into new sight
some his this rendering
into each individual eye
ear whatever century's
year:

'...words earth-saving history
not to deny the gifts
of time where those who
never met together may hear
this other time sound one.'

'Tuning
to sounding stringe.. Won by
his song: O framar of
the starry circle, Who, lening
to the last grounstone..the
great heauen gidest..stable erthe
do steady..As stured sea
turnes up..ye hardnid snowy
ball by cold By feruent
heate of sonne resolues..sees,
What wer, what be, what
shall bifall..how found knowe
Suche forme..wiche knowes not
shape? As oft the running
stile In sea paper leue,
Some printed lettars..marke haue
none at all..But a
passion..sturs The myndz forse
while body liues, What light
the yees..bit, Or sound
in ear...strike.'

'The sestina, then, the repeated end words
Of the lines' winding around themselves,
Since continuous in the Head, whatever has been read,
whatever is heard,
whatever is seen

Perhaps goes back cropping up again with
Inevitable recurrence again in the blood
Where the spaces of verse are not visual
But a movement,
With vision in the lines merely a movement...'

'Strange
To reach that age,
remember
a tide
And full
for a time
be young.'



**'Zuke' for Zukofsky