The Position of the Problem of Language

[Lanny Quarles]

The Position of the Problem of Language
in the Systems of Empiricism

[from withing the pleroma of plunt]

it is upon the eve of the lingua adamica
that a smeared and stylized bridge

(bricks of molecular taffy,
a thousand screaming horseheads for parapet
skaleidoscopic snakes made to sleep in pathic rows)

must make its sad ascension up the V,
up jacob's ladder
of bo(e)hme's intricate,
implicate dis-order

matter, wherever a simple veil
must discover what the unity of reason
finds in its constant lacking
by the separate and globular
installations of the mercurial infant
on the plain of reflection
these piles of suppurating symbols
where refugees of light feed
in compacted pods
each fang
a crumbling skyscraper
of rotting tomes
a dancing puppet
outside the accidental vestment
that blind and armory words suppose
remember they are blinded
in the great pollution of history's menace
they are as a tower of babel
whose language has become the same
but whose ideas have become
un-understandable
now the oceanic sadness of man
which stands up a pathetic card
for his ignorance
his darwinian ignorance
there was no darwin

the teacher has the children draw near
to the canvas to inspect the brushwork
(these husks are atoms, my insect seamists)

you can all see the marvelous detail
intricacy, and indeed beauty or horror
whatever useless word you choose
there is a fidelity of suchness,

which has nothing to do at all
with the bellowing of the frame
(urourop)
her tongue is replaced with a
yellow crystalline fern of radio idolatry

the children are fungal pustules
wearing hellowing masks of frozen leaves

the fine brine print of the exit sign reads:

'god has fashioned a great stupidity in men
and poetry, in its sleep-walking, must discover
a metabulary of all languages at once.'