I        POE IN DUST
Baltimore bones groan maliciously under sidewalk
Poe hides his hideous skeleton under church yard
Equinoctical worms peep thru his mummy ear
The slug rides his skull, black hair twisted in roots of threadbare grass
Blind mole at heart, caterpillars shudder in his ribcage,
Intestines wound with garter snakes
midst dry dust, snake eye & gut sifting thru his pelvis
Slimed moss green on his phosphor’d toenails, sole toeing black
            tombstone—
O prophet Poe well writ! your catacomb cranium chambered
eyeless, secret had to moonlight ev’n under corpse-rich ground
where tread priest, passerby, and poet
staring white-eyed thru barred spiked gates
at viaducts heavy-bound and manacled upon the city’s heart.
                                                                                                 January 10, 1977

II       HEARING “LENORE” READ ALOUD AT 203 AMITY STREET
The light still gleams reflected from the brazen fire-tongs
The spinet is now silent to the ears of silent throngs
For the Spirit of the Poet, who sang well of brides and ghouls
Still remains to haunt what children will obey his vision’s rules.

They who weep and burn in houses scattered thick on Jersey’s shore
Their eyes have seen his ghostly image, though the Prophet walks no
                                                                                more
Raven bright & cat of Night, and his wines of Death still run
In their veins who haunt his brains, hidden from the human sun.

Reading words aloud from books, till a century has passed
In his house his heirs carouse, till his woes are theirs at last:
So I saw a pale youth trembling, speaking rhymes Poe spoke before,
Till Poe’s light rose on the living, and His fire gleamed on the floor—

The sitting room lost its cold gloom, I saw these generations burn
With the Beauty he abandoned; in new bodies they return:
To inspire future children ’spite his Raven’s “Nevermore”
I have writ this ancient riddle in Poe’s house in Baltimore.
                                                                                              January 16, 1977


                                                               203 Amity Street, Baltimore