-- Knowledge of things unspeakable --

-- Pull a few hairs out of your nose poised before the mirror.

-- Talked to Happy on the telephone saw the seven oclock news did not wash the dishes want to clean up some of this mess?

-- Asparagus too.

-- Well how come they didnt bring us no ring of roses with a purple silk sash with gold lettering on that mother? How come that?

-- Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.

-- But on the whole, the monster says, I feel fine. Then he says, Gimme that corn flake back. I say, What? He says, Gimme that corn flake back. I say, You gave me that corn flake its my corn flake. He says, Gimme that corn flake back or Ill claw you to thread. I say, I cant man you gave it to me I already ate it. He says, Cmon man gimme the corn flake back did you butter it first? I say, Cmon man be reasonable, you dont butter a corn flake --

-- Being clean.

-- How could we lose? How could we? We!

-- I remember the hours we spent. Banging away at our lutes.

-- We can deal with that.

-- Ive seen it. Extraordinarily rich.

-- Ah, my bawcock, what a fine fellow thou art.

-- Orange Blossoms.

-- Where is succor?

-- In the one about the amphitheater, an eight-day dramatization of Eckermanns Conversations with Goethe.

-- You could even cry, she wouldnt come.

-- Got to go away fore you can get back, thats fundamental.

-- Cried my little eyes out. The sheet was sopping.

-- Shed lugged the old rocking chair all that way. In a mauve mood.

-- In the new music.

-- Im taking you to Pool, city of new life.

-- Like when she played Scrabble. She played to kill. Used the filthiest words insisting on their legitimacy. I was shocked.

-- Momma didnt low clavier.

-- I tipped my hat. She did not return the greeting.

-- The south lawn.

-- Ive traveled a bit.

-- Ive seen it. Rich fare, extraordinarily rich, makes you want to cry.

-- Tossed him a little bombita now and then just to keep him on his toes.

-- One film is worth a thousand words. At least a thousand.

-- Cuba Libres.

-- Yes, I remember Momma, jerking the old nervous system about with her electric diktats.

-- Id just like to rest and laze around.

-- Lunch, I remember that, there was lunch, slept with Susie after lunch, then your nap, woke up, right?, went Xeroxing, right?, read a book not a whole book but part of a book --

-- The only thing old there is the monastery, dates from 1720 or thereabouts. Has the Dark Virgin, the Virgin is black, as is the Child. Dates from 1720 or around in there.

-- Have you traveled much? Have you traveled enough?

-- Im taking you to Pool.

-- Said my discourse was sickening. That was the word she used. Said it repeatedly.

-- The rest of the trip presents no real difficulties. The thing to keep your eye on is less time, more exciting. Remember that.

-- I remember. You still see her?

-- And is quoted in the very superior Pool production which is enlustering the perception of Pool worldwide.

-- She never cared. Didnt give pig shit.

-- And in the field to your left?

-- That lonesome road. It ends in Pool.

-- I got three different shower heads. Different degrees of sting.

-- A slightly old young man.

-- Went to the grocery store and Xeroxed a box of English muffins, two pounds of ground veal and an apple. In flagrant violation of the Copyright Act.

-- Not one t九*九*藏*書o withhold comment, Momma.

-- Can open graves, properly played.

-- Naturally.

-- I remember the old days when we almost automatically --

-- She did.

-- I forgot.

-- Youre just a little down, man, down, thats what they call it, down.

-- Dreams next.

-- I have not the heart.

-- You wanted a little grease, like to buy a damn comic book or something, you had to go to Momma.

-- Momma was outside.

-- In the one about the new barracks we see Squadron A at morning roll call, tense and efficient. "Mattingly!" calls the sergeant. "Yo!" says Mattingly. "Morgan!" calls the sergeant. "Yo!" says Morgan.

-- And in the fall the circus comes. Plays the red rock gardens where the carved red asters, carved red phlox, are set off by borders of yellow beryl.

-- She gave you that "the bird is our friend and we never touch the bird because it hurts the bird" number.

-- Yes Ive been there.

-- One can only conjecture.

-- Persephone herself appearing, hovering. Accepting offerings, balls of salt, solid gold serpents, fig branches, figs.

-- Into the gutter.

-- Out for a long walk one early evening I noticed in the bare brown cut fields to the right of me and to the left of me the following items of interest: in the field to the right of me, couple copulating in the shade of a car, tan Studebaker as I remember, a thing I had seen previously only in old sepia-toned photographs taken from the air by playful barnstormers capable of flying with their knees, I dont know if thats difficult or not --

-- Lime Rickeys.

-- Beautifully engraved, with dates.

-- And your clavier.

-- Think youre the mules eyebrows dont you?

-- Momma wouldnt have lowed it. But Mommas gone.

-- Its not escaped me. Your cleanness.

-- Maybe tomorrow or another day.

-- No its closer to the Great Lyceum. The Great Lyceum glowing like an ember against the hubris of the city.

-- Brandy Alexanders and Bronxes. How could she drink that stuff?

-- She saw you and whipped you.

-- Momma lowed lute.

-- I mean theyve seen it all, felt it all. Spilled their damn blood and then spooned out buckets of mushy squash meanwhile telling the old husband that he wasnt number three on the scale of all husbands. . .

-- Some of these people arent clean. People you meet.

-- Sitting there lowing and not-lowing. In her old rocking chair.

-- Momma. Youd ask her how she was and shed say, "Fine." Like a little kid.

-- The new, down-to-earth, think-Im-gonna-kill-myself music, which unwraps the sky.

-- I can get us a plane or a train, theyve cut all the fares.

-- Ive been there.

-- Feel like I dont like this!

-- Seeking the ecstatic vision. That which would lift people four feet off the floor.

-- No one has asked them. But they could hardly. . . I mean its new.

-- Killed a few flowers and put them in pots under the faces, everybody does that.

-- I called the number for help and they said there was no more help.

-- She had her up days and her down days. Like most.

-- I did.

-- Pool, the revivifier.

-- Who could practice?

-- She was pondering. "The goddess Demeters anguish for all her childrens mortality."

-- Yeah?

-- Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Her variously colored moods.

-- I know the guy who plays washboard. Wears thimbles on all his fingers.

-- What did you do today?

-- And there ihttps://read.99csw.coms a film chronicling the fabulous Pool garage sales, where one finds solid-silver plates in neglected bags.

-- I got one of these Finnish pads that slip over the hand.

-- Luckily we have the new music now. To give us aid and comfort.

-- I couldnt do it.

-- Concealed weapons. Well, what can you do?

-- Weve avoided it.

-- The body aint dumb.

-- Pool. Have you seen the new barracks? For the State Police? They used that red rock they have around there, quite a handsome structure, dim and red.

-- Remembering that the new music will be there tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

-- Tied to the bed with beige cloths.

-- Then shed grade your paper.

-- Six feet.

-- We were standing tall. Ready to hand them their asses, clean their clocks. Yet maybe --

-- It doesnt end.

-- Yes, it isnt often you hear a disco version of Un Coup de Dés. Its strengthening.

-- To the curious: A man who was a Communist heard the new music, and now is not. Fernando the fish-seller was taught to read and write by the new music, and is now a leper, white as snow. William Friend was caught trying to sneak into the new music with a set of bongos concealed under his cloak, but was garroted with his own bicycle chain, just in time. Propp the philosopher, having dinner with the Holy Ghost, was told of the coming of the new music but also informed that he would not live to hear it.

-- Something keeps drawing you back like a magnet.

-- And on another corner, a man spinning a goat into gold.

-- Blackberries, buttercups, and wild red clover. I find the latest music terrific, although I dont generally speaking care much for the new, qua new. But this new music! It has won from our group the steadiest attention.

-- Beautifully engraved, with dates. That was then.

-- I had my nap.

-- Hallucinatory dancing. All the women drunk.

-- We said we werent going to do Daddy.

-- Didnt low oboe.

-- She had a lot on her mind. The chants. And Daddy, of course.

-- Rich, very rich.

-- Yes.

-- How does it end?

-- Sometimes I hear them howling from the hospital.

-- Staring into the thermostat.

-- Thats what they say, "Fine."

-- Pool. The idea was that it be one of those new towns. Where everyone would be happier. The regulations are quite strict. They dont let people have cars.

-- Pool projects positive images of itself through the great medium of film.

-- Person.

-- Cup of tea before retiring.

-- Fending you off. Similarly, Momma.

-- She dyed my beard blue, on the eve of my seventh marriage. I was sleeping on the sun porch.

-- Good. Excellent.

-- Her dark side. They all have them, mommas.

-- So far.

-- Goethe said that?

-- A slightly old young man still advertising in the trees and rivers for a mate.

-- Our passion.

-- Dunno baby. Maybe we lost?

-- True.

-- Lets not do Daddy today.

-- Cleaner than most.

-- The joy of return is my joy. Satisfied by a walk around the block.

-- Where does one go to complain? Where does one go to complain, when fiends have worsened your life?

-- Momma could do it.

-- Thank God.

-- Where one can taste the essences, get swindled into health.

-- Right. Come in, Commander. Put it right there, anywhere will do, let me move that for you. Just put that sucker down right there. An eleven-foot-high silver cup!

-- Get my ocarina tuned, sew a button on my shirt.

-- An iron gut. And divinity, of read.99csw.comcourse.

-- Rock over your damn foot and bust it, you didnt pop to when she was lowing and not-lowing.

-- Momma was very outside.

-- Theres a film about the new barracks, and a film about the new amphitheater.

-- Cup of tea before retiring.

-- I was never good. Never really good.

-- See if I have any benefits left under the G.I. Bill.

-- Real films. Sent everywhere.

-- She just didnt give a hang. She didnt care.

-- Momma didnt low no clarinet played in here. Made me sad.

-- Momma. Rocking.

-- I thought she cared. There were moments.

-- Feel like a busted-up car by the side of the road stripped of value.

-- People sighing and leaning against one another, holding their silver plates.

-- Our darling.

-- Four feet or six feet off the floor. Persephone herself appearing.

-- Momma.

-- Is there bluegrass in heaven? Make inquiries. I saw the streets of Pool, a few curs broiling on spits.

-- Numero uno.

-- Each house has its grand lawns and grounds, brass candlesticks, thrice-daily mail delivery. Elegant widowed women living alone in large houses, watering lawns with whirling yellow sprinklers, studying the patterns of the grass, searching out brown patches to be sprinkled. Sometimes there is a grown child in the house, or an almost-grown one, working for a school or hospital in a teaching or counseling position. Frequently there are family photographs on the walls of the house, about which you are encouraged to ask questions. At dusk medals are awarded those who have made it through the day, the Cross of St. Jaime, the Cross of St. Em.

-- What can you do?

-- Momma.

-- Words cant say what the body knows.

-- Set an example. Be clean.

-- Do the cops like it?

-- And Susie.

-- The new music burns things together, like a welder. The new music says, life becomes more and more exciting as there is less and less time.

-- Drop by the shoe store, pick up a pair of shoes.

-- Carried a .357 daytimes and a .22 for evenings. Well, what can you do?

-- Yes, I was in on the beginning. I remember the charette, I was asked to prepare a paper. But I couldnt think of anything. I stood there wearing this blue smock stenciled with the Pool emblem, looked rather like a maternity gown. I couldnt think of anything to say. Finally I said I would go along with the group.

-- Soundtracks in Burmese, Italian, Twi, and other tongues.

-- Give you eight when she knew it was ten.

-- I got things to do.

-- Momma wouldnt have lowed it.

-- This bird that fell into the back yard?

-- Then she threw the bird away.

-- So you just want to stay here? Stay here and be yourself?

-- She did.

-- There is always a new music.

-- You had your nap, I remember that --

-- People sighing and leaning against each other, holding their silver plates. Think Ill just whittle a bit, whittle and spit.

-- Or how it compares to the new music of this time?

-- The back yard. I wanted to give it a Frito?

-- A fine bunch of men. Nervous, but fine.

-- Momma sitting there rocking away. Dosing herself with strange intoxicants.

-- Yes.

-- Cinemas filled with industrious product.

-- Got to chop a little cotton, go by the drugstore.

-- And they play a tape of the guy or woman talking, right next to his or her --

-- Lowing this, not-lowing that.

-- I have to tell you something. Susies been reading the Hite Report. She says other women have more orgasms 九_九_藏_書than she does. Wanted to know why.

-- Some monster with claws, maybe velvet-covered claws or Teflon-covered claws, inhabits my dreams. Whistling, whistling. I say, Monster, how goes it with you? And he says, Quite happily, dreammate, there are certain criticisms, the Curator of Archetypes thinks I dont quite cut it, thinks Im shuckin and jivin when what I should be doing is attacking, attacking, attacking --

-- No. I feel like Insufficient Funds.

-- How did that feel?

-- Serenity. Peace. The dead are shown in art galleries, framed. Or sometimes, put on pedestals. Not much different from the practice elsewhere except that in Pool they display the actual --

-- But perhaps one ought not to complain, when fiends have worsened your life. But rather, emulating the great Stoics, Epictetus and so on, just zip into a bar and lift a few, whilst listening to the new, incorrigible, great-white-shark, knife, music.

-- The body knows.

-- Yeah Ive seen it thats over by the train station right?

-- The new music is drumless, which is brave. To make up for the absence of drums the musicians pray nightly to the Virgin, kneeling in their suits of lights in damp chapels provided for the purpose off the corridors of the great arenas --

-- Thats all you can get out of em. "Fine"

-- Dynamite.

-- Ever been to Pool?

-- Is there help coming?

-- Got to air my sleeping bag, scrub up my canteen.

-- Momma didnt let nobody work her over, nobody.

-- As with much else. Momma didnt low Patrice.

-- Pedicare. Thats another thing.

-- Our pride.

-- And the Pool buffalo herd. Six thousand beasts. All still alive.

-- Thought it might be hungry. Sumbitch couldnt fly you understand. It had crashed. Couldnt fly. So I went into the house to get it a Frito. So I was trying to get it to eat the Frito. I had the damn bird in one hand, and in the other, the Frito.

-- Dig it, dig it.

-- Yes, I still think of myself as a young man.

-- Yes.

-- Goethe says: "I have devoted my whole life to the people and their improvement."

-- Thats not unusual.

-- She was often underly generous.

-- Knock wood.

-- Yes. She had a thing for lute.

-- Once in a way. Saw her Saturday. I hugged her and her body leaped. That was odd.

-- So even if one does not go there, one may assimilate the meaning of Pool.

-- Lots of accommodations in Pool, all of the hotels are empty.

-- Momma was not to be swayed. Unswayable.

-- The rest of the trip presents no real difficulties.

-- I handed the tall cool Shirley Temple to the silent priest. The new music, I said, is not specifically anticlerical. Only in its deepest effects.

-- Thought it would unleash in her impulses better leashed? I dont know.

-- Youre very clean.

-- Right. Course, she had all the grease.

-- Anticipating no doubt handling of the matter by the proper authorities.

-- Oh man Im not up for it.

-- I called that number and they said whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.

-- The detox ward.

-- Rob Roys.

-- Lost as she was in the Eleusinian mysteries and the art of love.

-- Still, all I wanted to do was a little krummhorn. A little krummhorn once in a while.

-- Well. Is there help coming?

-- If one does nothing but listen to the new music, everything else drifts, goes away, frays. Did Odysseus feel this way when he and Diomedes decided to steal Athenes statue from the Trojans, so that th九*九*藏*書ey would become dejected and lose the war? I dont think so, but who is to know what effect the new music of that remote time had on its hearers?

-- Could Christ have performed the work of the Redemption had He come into the world in the shape of a pea? That was one shed drop on you.

-- Meant to be one of those new towns where everyone would be happier, much happier, that was the idea.

-- Didnt low gitfiddle. Vibes.

-- Not much for nuzzling, now. I mostly kneel at their feet, knit for them or parse for them --

-- I told her about the Great Septuagesimal Orgasm, implying she could have one, if she was good. But it is growing late, very late indeed, for such as we.

-- I got a C, once.

-- He was always on his toes, spent his whole life on his toes, the poor fuck. Piling up the grease.

-- Frame or pedestal.

-- Momma didnt low no clarinet played in here. Unfortunately.

-- Pool, city of new hope.

-- Well. Want to clean up some of this mess?

-- I tried that, I remember. Cried and cried. Didnt do a damn bit of good.

-- Shocked white faces talking.

-- So its settled, well go to Pool, therell be routs and revels, maybe a sock hop, maybe a nuzzle or two on the terrace with one of the dazzling Pool beauties --

-- The body is perspicacious.

-- Ah well. I was talking to a girl, talking to her mother actually but the daughter was very much present, on the street. The daughter was absolutely someone youd like to take to bed and hug and kiss, if you werent too old. If she werent too young. She was a wonderful-looking young woman and she was looking at me quite seductively, very seductively, smoldering a bit, and I was thinking quite well of myself, very well indeed, thinking myself quite the -- Until I realized she was just practicing.

-- As if it were late, late, and we were ready to pull on our red-and-gold-striped nightshirts.

-- Mauve. Warm gold. Citizens blue.

-- Dancing with jugs on their heads, mixtures of barley, water, mint --

-- Have you seen the new amphitheater? Made out of red rock. They play all the tragedies.

-- In her robes of deep purple.

-- Boy or girl, dont make a pennys worth of difference. "Fine."

-- Well, its a bitch.

-- What does Goethe say?

-- I could certainly use some home fries long about now. Home fries and ketchup.

-- I couldnt do it.

-- I asked myself: Do I give a bag of beans?

-- Got pretty damned tired of that old woman, pretty damned tired of that old woman. Gangs of ecstatics hanging about beating on pots and pans, trash-can lids --

-- Film is the great medium of this century -- hearty, giggling film.

-- The chanting in the darkened telesterion.

-- Routine maintenance, nothing to write home about.

-- Prerecorded.

-- You wanted a little grease, like to go to the brothel or something, you had to say, Momma can I have a little grease to go to the brothel?

-- Well, its not easy, conducting the mysteries. Its not easy, making the corn grow.

-- Watching the buffalo graze. It cant be this that Ive waited for, Ive waited too long. I find it intolerable, all this putter. Yet in the end, wouldnt mind doing a little grazing myself, it would look a little funny.

-- Pool is new, can make you new too.

-- Yes. Almost without effort --

-- Odd. Wonderful.

-- Trying for a ticket to the mysteries.

-- Our Susie.

-- Old Momma.

-- Mauve mood that got her thrown in the jug that time.