One of my favorite animals is a giraffe.
They're so awkward and lanky,
yet despite their strange appearance
there is a a grace in there gallivant;
there is a beauty to their mien.

They don't flaunt their attributes
or covet the patterns of their wildlife peers
because they have been graced with the privilege
to indulge in the secrets whispered by the leaves
amongst the tree tops.

Five March, Березень, пятый, these
clouds, butterflies, this old anger and
this rotten coffee ***. Mold and clouds.
The insufferable beauty of potholes, we walk Yulitsa Kikvidze
and note buildings blotched with satellite dishes
(mushroom sprouts from Soviet brick) concrete
proof that we exist. Yesterday, I say
I will not be a prime squared again
for seventy-two years: happy birthday, маленькая кошка! Snowlit
clouds, ice and broken asphalt, springtime in Kiev is all
disappointed dogs, life after love.

Before guns wore make-up,
We used to put pennies in our socks
So we’d always walk on the root of all evil.

Now Wall Street angels frolic through satellite clouds borrowed
from youths educated by universities of smoke and plastic bags.
                  
(The tears of a child are homage to the waning gods)
For in a day not far away,
Over the painted moon of the Morning Son,
The sun will rise wearing the finest war scars money can buy.

And the screams of humanity will be heard from Venus,
Forgetting that the reciprocal of   L-I-V-E   itself  is     E-V-I-L
And perhaps death is the life meant to be lived.

There was a man from York
Who ate his knife and fork
He swallowed a plate
At half past eight
And now he’s chewing a cork

A bored old codger from the East
One day ate a barrel of yeast
He began to perspire
The prelude to expire
But he rose quite well, at least!

There was the oddest bloke
Who had a bath in Coke
He licked himself dry
And with a little cry
He exploded in a cloud of smoke.

Awed by her splendor
stars near the lovely
moon cover their own
bright faces
when she
is roundest and lights
earth with her silver

Thrill with lissome lust of the light,
O man ! My man !
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan ! Io Pan .
Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady !
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and styrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ***, come over the sea
To me, to me,
Coem with Apollo in bridal dress
(Spheperdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beautiful God,
In the moon, of the woods, on the marble mount,
The dimpled dawn of of the amber fount !
Dip the purple of passionate prayer
In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,
The soul that startles in eyes of blue
To watch thy wantoness weeping through
The tangled grove, the gnarled bole
Of the living tree that is spirit and soul
And body and brain -come over the sea,
(Io Pan ! Io Pan !)
Devil or god, to me, to me,
My man ! my man !
Come with trumpets sounding shrill
Over the hill !
Come with drums low muttering
From the spring !
Come with flute and come with pipe !
Am I not ripe ?
I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp,
Strong as a lion, and sharp as an asp-
Come, O come !
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
****** the sword through the galling fetter,
All devourer, all begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye
And the token ***** of thorny thigh
And the word of madness and mystery,
O pan ! Io Pan !
Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Pan Pan ! Pan,
I am a man:
Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,
O Pan ! Io Pan !
Io pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Iam awake
In the grip of the snake.
The eagle slashes with beak and claw;
The gods withdraw:
The great beasts come, Io Pan ! I am borne
To death on the horn
Of the Unicorn.
I am Pan ! Io Pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Pan !
I am thy mate, I am thy man,
Goat of thy flock, I am gold , I am god,
Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
And I rave; and I **** and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end.
Mannikin, maiden, maenad, man,
In the might of Pan.
Io Pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Pan ! Io Pan !