1897

I would like to live in 1897 for a while:
to spiral up through its considerable
purple heaven of a style: art nouveau
was fresh in its first mesh of anarchy
and line – must just have seemed
too fine and sharp to tolerate. I pass
an 1897 building in Manhattan everyday
whose ornamental sway and swoop

and volupté in tightly organized array
betray the grand illicit passion in
the human soul for an exquisite rapture
wherein devils slaver – craving God –
consume Him whole, like the constricting
boa swallows prey and holds it
there, at bay, a billow in the gorge –
in graceful pregnant outline – captured

and enlarged – inscribed: tumescence
deliquescing and digesting breath
to death. I would like to live in 1897’s odd
perseverance – assess firsthand
its dark ambivalent embrace – its ardent
arabesques – unblessed subjections to
the flesh – like Oscar Wilde in free-fall,
desperately attempting to ingest it all.

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