YEATS AS PISCICULTURALIST

Autumn falls upon
wintered souls heated
from deceptive springs' child
summer. Aprils fool
is us;
in October, almost able
to see an end it is hard
to sense a beginning--though it frolics
on our soon numbed fingertips.

Liquid dreams,
seasonless wants
left aching in steel sun rays
breaking mirrors and nights warm
wetness. a woman
who's body torments me,
who's face eludes me, yet
I anxiously lower the lid
on something I wish to control,
but can't.
my second self
oozing
and fused
into tonights workshop.

I see fishermen
in dried-out streams
up to their thighs
in illusions
of being where the fish is
but isn't. they have not moved,
waiting for the fish' return,
refusing to believe that water
must preceed them.
my page is as naked
as a single word
and as painful
as a warm image
fading.
how we slide
into safetys structured pretense.
what's outside those black plaster-board walls?
(I don't care.
it's not safe.)
byzantium's daydream, inside
the razor resting bubble,
is somehow less real that still waters'
circles. we bathe in the scented oil
of fantasy in times cruel seconds hanging
on the edge of hourly panics.

Poor W.B.
looking at his limp ego
and jumping
into a one-paddle canoe
that had nothing cept leaks.
good poetry
does not make
a good woman,
eh?

Norman Savage
New York City, 1972