BURBANK WITH A BAEDEKER:
BLEISTEIN WITH A CIGAR.
Tra la la la la la laire—nil nisi divinum stabile est; cætera fumus—the gondola stopped the old palace was there How charming it’s grey & pink—Goats & monkeys, with such hair too!—so the Countess passed on until she came through the little park, where Niobe presented her with a cabinet, & so departed.
urbank crossed a little bridge
Descending at a small hotel;
Princess Volupine arrived,
They were together, and he fell.
Defunctive music under sea
Passed seaward with the passing bell
Slowly: the god Hercules
Had left him, that had loved him well.
The horses, under the axletree
Beat up the dawn from Istria
With even feet. Her shuttered barge
Burned on the water all the day.
But this or such was Bleistein’s way:
A saggy bending of the knees
And elbows, with the palms turned out,
Chicago Semite Viennese.
A lustreless protrusive eye
Stares from the protozoic slime
At a perspective of Canaletto.
The smoky candle end of time
Declines. On the Rialto once.
The rats are underneath the piles.
The jew is underneath the lot.
Money in furs. The boatman smiles,
Princess Volupine extends
A meagre, blue-nailed, phthisic hand
To climb the waterstair. Lights, lights,
She entertains Sir Ferdinand
Klein. Who clipped the lion’s wings
And flea’d his rump and pared his claws?
—Thought Burbank, meditating on
Time’s ruins, and the seven laws.