enigma, a turn-of-the century professor returning as a ghost & wearing a silken mask over his face.
Like a tree that came out of its shell, he has lost his pince-nez at a halt.
Oh Beelzebub! The nature of this disease is uncertain: it began with inflamed eyes & inflammation
of the pharynx, then a bodice of green satin, a white petticoat,
oblique, dimmed, withheld
enigma, like the dreamland cruel as Vienna where rats are moving down the frontal lobe toward
the basal ganglia; this is
the dark gateway, the explosion of a nativity, the end of biologic medievalism which is now
sadomasochism, & a dungeon where the young man vexes skirts as if he's bullfighting in the
threshold of a door, is the floor of the ocean where mules resound like a riddle, or a crazy
lamp; but
the rats had another meaning; like a whirligig of speech, they were torn between pleasure & death
like very nasty poems forsaken by everyone; likewise
the young man was an opaque body with deep roots,
an enigma, he gave the impression of being a criminal genius, though at a loss what to do next. His
fiancée, Fraulein
R— , was an elementary organism. If she had on pajamas, she would be shared by him with the
pince-nez, the turn-of-the century professor, the maid-in-waiting &, in fact, himself
wearing a silken mask over his face. Can a man really be without feelings? It was ticklish work,
making a joke in the syllables of various prayers— is it
the soothed language of love-slavery, a whirligig of speech & Western logic bordering upon delirium
wearing pajamas in the threshold of the door between pleasure & death, is it the flute & the
stench with their terror & shock & breathtaking chaos entering dreamland, or inflammation of
the pharynx? The
maid-in-waiting was a riddle, was at a loss what to do, she falls asleep too quickly, like curtain rods,
she's impeccable, like the enamel of the basin, an old-fashioned heaven, but
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