Megastore Translation

I leapt from the rooftop where
I gazed down upon the scenery and passionately grasped for the beauty
And music in its virginal purity.

I entered onto a long dark alleyway
Where figures leapt at me with eyes like daggers
And I kept on pushing and tearing until long last lit up a speckled, light shining street
Called Rue Ferriol.

I came upon the name blaring:
“Megastore” and I entered in.

Down the mirrored hallways
Through the looking glass at teatime;

Megastores like picture puzzles
Megastores dreams drifting
Images of sounds of memories
Soaking the air around my head
Megastores in old banks
Vault of treasury.

Megastores like little holidays in the center of streets
Walking in
To check out from the serious gaze---
Now I am transparent, floating,
You are gazing through me
As to a speckled trout
In a cold, country stream.
What does anyone know of the mind of a fish?
Little more than hateful guesses…

Afternoon dreams:
Dreams while sleeping and transparent waking dreams.
I take you and transform you
Turn you wherever my watermind spins.
Old heroes on shelves and on the screens:
Once I glimpsed your powerwaking
While listening to jazz headphones
My heart twisted and leaped
And threw me to the ground floor,
And the police escorted me into the light of the day.

Megastores---hidden management---
The miracle of good business.
“It’s all in the name ‘Virgin’.”

Shadows of shadows of shadows there.
Mirrors on multilevels turn back and shift your stare.
Down hallways and corridors of marble ice

Passengers and laborers’
Drift colorful and still.

I was sifting and spinning
tossing images and words and sounds flew me by.
And I grew dizzy and fainted and dreamed:

“In a pure land of pure water
pure people make pure music
on true instruments and live in total joy.
The books there are written in truth
And readers comprehend it all.”

When I awoke I found it rather funny
Looking around at the streets of Marseille
With the crying, and singing and trash
Mondays bells sound noon
recalling God
To the pissed and polluted city streets.
I am stranded now
Having abandoned
All that I have loved or held near;
I have won refuge
For all that is sacred
Wearing no swaddling clothes
I wriggle alone in the dewy grass
And count my firstbreath 1, 2, 3!

Why does the earth heave and pull
To greet us with a new dawn
Filtering the mist in lightstrands;
To paint a fresh horizon?

I have won my only place
Above, below and before me
No obstacles, no flesh to meet my gaze.

Awake, O new world!
I am your gift; lift me up, carry me ‘round,
Dearer is the day.

Words to my lips jumbled rose and fell
Jagged earth to receive
Like melting mushrooms

Nature stood against me as I forged my will
Silent to the earth’s ear
Swallowed in the sear of the sun.
I struck my plan:
To forge an endless highway
And flee into the day
To the farthest surface of thing.

Midday on the stony edge
Precise in my movement
To carve a course to the distant sea
past walls
past dry surfaces.

Such a dream I dreamt
Of gypsyfires, and dancing, music ringing.
There and then found her spell over me
And recalled her name:
Who has come and feasted here
And taken my bed away?