The Islands of Africa

to Rimbaud

Two pages to a grape fable

dangles the swan of samite blood

shaping sand from thistle covered fog

Over sacred lakes of fever

(polished mouths of the vegetable frog

rolling to my iron venus)

I drop the chiseled pear

Standing in smoke filled valleys

(great domains of wingless flight

and the angel’s fleshy gun)

I stamp the houses of withering wax

Bells of siren-teeth (singing to our tomb

refusal’s last becoming)

await the approach of the incendiary children

lighting the moon-shaped beast

Every twisted river pulls down my torn-out hair

to ratless columns by the pyramid’s ghost

(watered basin of the temple stink)

and all the mud clocks in haste

draw their mermaid-feather swords

(wrapped by Dust) to nail them

into the tears of the sea-gull child

The winter web minute

flutters beneath the spider’s goblet

and the whores of all the fathers

bleed for my delight

Copyright Credit: Philip Lamantia, “The Islands of Africa” from The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia. Copyright © 2013 by Philip Lamantia. Reprinted by permission of University of California Press.

Source: The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia (University of California Press, 2013)