Robert Duncan

[from Robert Duncan's Selected Poems: Revised and Enlarged, ed. Robert J. Bertholf, New Directions, 1997]

The Song of the Borderguard

The man with his lion under the shed of wars

sheds his belief as if he shed tears.

The sound of words waits —

a barbarian host at the borderline of sense.

The enamord guards desert their posts

harkening to the lion-smell of a poem

that rings in their ears.

       — Dreams, a certain guard said —

            were never designd so

            to re-arrange an empire.

            Along about six o’clock I take out my guitar

            and sing to a lion

            who sleeps like a line of poetry

            in the shed of wars.

The man shedding his belief

knows that the lion is not asleep,

does not dream, is never asleep,

is a wide-awake poem

waiting like a lover for the disrobing of the guard;

the beautiful boundaries of the empire

naked, rapt round in the smell of a lion.

(The barbarians have passt over the significant phrase)

       — When I was asleep,

            a certain guard says,

       a man shed his clothes as if he shed tears

       and appeard as a lonely lion

       waiting for a song under the shed-roof of wars.

I sang the song that he waited to hear,

I, the Prize-Winner, the Poet-Acclaimed.

Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, I sang,

believe, believe, believe, believe.

The shed of wars is splendid as the sky,

houses our waiting like a pure song

housing in its words the lion-smell

         of the beloved disrobed.

I sang: believe, believe, believe.

          I the guard because of my guitar

believe. I am the certain guard,

certain of the Beloved, certain of the Lion,

certain of the Empire. I with my guitar.

Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, I sing.

I, the Prize-Winner, the Poet on Guard.

The borderlines of sense in the morning light

are naked as a line of poetry in a war.