Zachary Erickson
Amarillito
…siendo tan buen observador de las leyes, tan buen católico y tan acérrimo protector de la religión…
I. The roses were no longer new
With the February late summer,
And the dusty field was no longer exciting.
My MO is to imitate
The insufferable Caligula of the Plate
And to be alive.
The clock in the English tower stopped,
Stopped with the ice war and the interstellar hounds.
Wholly it’s 666th St.
II. I did not buy those earrings in Luján:
At night they look like Byron.
I am a fool, too, unbearably
Ugly: as astonishing
As a diamond. Is this
The way that Byron looked at himself?
The walking flag has died.
I shall be content without the sea.
III. As thou hast promised, draw us close to thee.
Other people have beautiful lives, too.
Stone water and swallows, swallows
Have no stake in singing. Even
The unquenchable fire,
The glory of her virginity.
If this is the false excitement,
Leave one’s shoes by the door,
And be separate from the false excitement.
The humid land and the snow empty plain.
L’action française
The immeasurable water. I have
Not rebelled me, I have not turned my back
In the commerce of the unimportant
Moon. He was a thorn in the flesh, he was
An angel of Satan. The enormous
Plants care so. There was silence in heaven
And the quiet light by the quiet sea.
I feel family with the octopus
For I, I must use my arms for music
And for nothing else. The innocent sleep.
What does one do when one’s father is not
In hell? (A profusion of bright colors.)
Which for him is the leaven of the world.
An old plaything in the bilious hands.
Music like water. So he returned to
The Church of his fathers, the literal
Beatitude. Whose body was not, there,
One’s uncontemplative temple. Wooden
Maurras, the Hero and messianic:
None is, but the woman’s foot on some dance.
His father the lecher and his mother
The harlot. Under the epiphanies
Of one day coming to face the moon
To all those who with head heart and hand toiled,
Really excellent poetry. The world’s public
Famousest cheesecake of New York
Service monument to, this is inscribed.
A clothed Greek dancer is the sweat of here.
The slight delay before the next moment.
The castrated voices moving through me
Like wine through water, through and through and through.
So much energies, gathered in the bright
Lady next to a delicate seaside
Of nothing quite so geometrically
Inclined as the breadth of the wider world.
Eating which is not thought. How dare you be
Alive. My filial piety knows
No bounds, no bounds. I hope you die soon. I’ll
Be waiting for you to die. The streets are
Geometric, in which can be no dust.
Paul lifted up his holy hands, because
He had been told to do so: that is thought.
Tota pulchra es
In a schoolroom, with schoolchildren
I am not detained. Neither am I delayed by brilliance;
No redder algae detaining the desert or child quiet
In towers. This is an atmosphere in which one can be
A philosopher:
Look,
The meat and the dirtied breast of the Temple
Sparrows.
It is not night yet, nor is the sea marked
By honey. Be calm, and calmer.
Like eggs uneaten.
See,
They are born and live;
See,
They are born and live, but not
Coterminous. Because there is no end
To the philosophers.
This is not a colloquy; but look,
The night, the white emptiness.
Like the elephants of rich color and imaginary geography
Of God;
Which is like the Mother of God.
About the Author
Zachary Erickson is originally from Quincy, Massachusetts, and he graduated from Fordham University in May 2020. His concentration here at Columbia is Poetry. He would like to extend a special thank-you to his family for their support.