Eshleman's Homage to Césaire
AIME CESAIRE OUT
Facing the tidal wall of world revolution roaring with evaporation
Humankind does not change, we only break more stolid
Sinister dove with its sprig of belladonna
Humankind on the shore whipped by the bony foam of the Milky Way
What’s our secret? We adore violence like a jaguar drunk on rusted nails
Orgastic potent killers / impotent decent people
The mother table loaded with bliss at the head of which eyeless Death
Starvation for the child born on an autumnal leaf
Ink caterpillar stymied before the chrysalis of graves
Waterspout of the inseparable interlocking of matter with its spiritual grist
Skeletal trumpet through which coils the lamprey labia of your natal elation.
Clayton Eshleman

Poasis II: Selected Poems 2000-2024
“Todesguge/Deathfugue”
“Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021)”
“Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello”
“Conversations in the Pyrenees”
“A Voice Full of Cities: The Collected Essays of Robert Kelly.” Edited by Pierre Joris & Peter Cockelbergh
“An American Suite” (Poems) —Inpatient Press
“Arabia (not so) Deserta” : Essays on Maghrebi & Mashreqi Writing & Culture
“Barzakh” (Poems 2000-2012)
“Fox-trails, -tales & -trots”
“The Agony of I.B.” — A play. Editions PHI & TNL 2016
“The Book of U / Le livre des cormorans”
“Memory Rose Into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan”
“Paul Celan, Microliths They Are, Little Stones”
“Paul Celan: Breathturn into Timestead-The Collected Later Poetry.” Translated & with commentary by Pierre Joris. Farrar, Straus & Giroux
I like you blog. It’s on my milk run. But Eshleman’s poem is about as far away from a true praise poem as you can get. The last line is a real howler.