Best Famous Reveal Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Reveal poems. This is a select list of the best famous Reveal poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Reveal poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of reveal poems.

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• All Famous Reveal Poems

Written by James Tate | Dream On Some people go their whole lives without ever writing a single poem. Extraordinary people who don't hesitate to cut somebody's heart or skull open. They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease. and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing. These same people stroll into a church as if that were a natural part of life. Investing money is second nature to them. They contribute to political campaigns that have absolutely no poetry in them and promise none for the future. They sit around the dinner table at night and pretend as though nothing is missing. Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing. The family dog howls all night, lonely and starving for more poetry in his life. Why is it so difficult for them to see that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial. Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations, croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets, their cocktails on the balcony, dog races, and all that kissing and hugging, and don't forget the good deeds, the charity work, nursing the baby squirrels all through the night, filling the birdfeeders all winter, helping the stranger change her tire. Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent. They walk around erect like champions. They are smooth-spoken and witty. When alone, rare occasion, they stare into the mirror for hours, bewildered. There was something they meant to say, but didn't: "And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times, learn to yodel, shave our heads, call our ancestors back from the dead--" poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt. You haven't scribbled a syllable of it. You're a nowhere man misfiring the very essence of your life, flustering nothing from nothing and back again. The hereafter may not last all that long. Radiant childhood sweetheart, secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow, fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids: all day, all night meditation, knot of hope, kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life seeking, through poetry, a benediction or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal, explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor. And yet it's cruel to expect too much. It's a rare species of bird that refuses to be categorized. Its song is barely audible. It is like a dragonfly in a dream-- here, then there, then here again, low-flying amber-wing darting upward then out of sight. And the dream has a pain in its heart the wonders of which are manifold, or so the story is told.

Written by Maya Angelou | Million Man March Poem The night has been long, The wound has been deep, The pit has been dark, And the walls have been steep. Under a dead blue sky on a distant beach, I was dragged by my braids just beyond your reach. Your hands were tied, your mouth was bound, You couldn't even call out my name. You were helpless and so was I, But unfortunately throughout history You've worn a badge of shame. I say, the night has been long, The wound has been deep, The pit has been dark And the walls have been steep. But today, voices of old spirit sound Speak to us in words profound, Across the years, across the centuries, Across the oceans, and across the seas. They say, draw near to one another, Save your race. You have been paid for in a distant place, The old ones remind us that slavery's chains Have paid for our freedom again and again. The night has been long, The pit has been deep, The night has been dark, And the walls have been steep. The hells we have lived through and live through still, Have sharpened our senses and toughened our will. The night has been long. This morning I look through your anguish Right down to your soul. I know that with each other we can make ourselves whole. I look through the posture and past your disguise, And see your love for family in your big brown eyes. I say, clap hands and let's come together in this meeting ground, I say, clap hands and let's deal with each other with love, I say, clap hands and let us get from the low road of indifference, Clap hands, let us come together and reveal our hearts, Let us come together and revise our spirits, Let us come together and cleanse our souls, Clap hands, let's leave the preening And stop impostering our own history. Clap hands, call the spirits back from the ledge, Clap hands, let us invite joy into our conversation, Courtesy into our bedrooms, Gentleness into our kitchen, Care into our nursery. The ancestors remind us, despite the history of pain We are a going-on people who will rise again. And still we rise. Poem read at the Million Man March

Written by Edward Taylor | Dream On Some people go their whole lives without ever writing a single poem. Extraordinary people who don't hesitate to cut somebody's heart or skull open. They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease. and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing. These same people stroll into a church as if that were a natural part of life. Investing money is second nature to them. They contribute to political campaigns that have absolutely no poetry in them and promise none for the future. They sit around the dinner table at night and pretend as though nothing is missing. Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing. The family dog howls all night, lonely and starving for more poetry in his life. Why is it so difficult for them to see that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial. Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations, croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets, their cocktails on the balcony, dog races, and all that kissing and hugging, and don't forget the good deeds, the charity work, nursing the baby squirrels all through the night, filling the birdfeeders all winter, helping the stranger change her tire. Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent. They walk around erect like champions. They are smooth-spoken and witty. When alone, rare occasion, they stare into the mirror for hours, bewildered. There was something they meant to say, but didn't: "And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times, learn to yodel, shave our heads, call our ancestors back from the dead--" poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt. You haven't scribbled a syllable of it. You're a nowhere man misfiring the very essence of your life, flustering nothing from nothing and back again. The hereafter may not last all that long. Radiant childhood sweetheart, secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow, fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids: all day, all night meditation, knot of hope, kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life seeking, through poetry, a benediction or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal, explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor. And yet it's cruel to expect too much. It's a rare species of bird that refuses to be categorized. Its song is barely audible. It is like a dragonfly in a dream-- here, then there, then here again, low-flying amber-wing darting upward then out of sight. And the dream has a pain in its heart the wonders of which are manifold, or so the story is told.

Written by Tupac Shakur | Nothing Can Come Between Us Lets not talk of money let us 4 get the world 4 a moment lets just reveal in our eternal comadery in my heart i know there will never be a day that i don't remember the times we shared u were a friend when i was at my lowest and being a friend to me was not easy or fashionable regardless of how popular I became u remain my unconditional friend unconditional in it's truest sense did u think i would forget did u for 1 moment dream that I would ignore u if so remember this from here 2 forever nothing can come between us

Written by John Greenleaf Whittier | Burning Drift-Wood Before my drift-wood fire I sit, And see, with every waif I burn, Old dreams and fancies coloring it, And folly's unlaid ghosts return. O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft The enchanted sea on which they sailed, Are these poor fragments only left Of vain desires and hopes that failed? Did I not watch from them the light Of sunset on my towers in Spain, And see, far off, uploom in sight The Fortunate Isles I might not gain? Did sudden lift of fog reveal Arcadia's vales of song and spring, And did I pass, with grazing keel, The rocks whereon the sirens sing? Have I not drifted hard upon The unmapped regions lost to man, The cloud-pitched tents of Prester John, The palace domes of Kubla Khan? Did land winds blow from jasmine flowers, Where Youth the ageless Fountain fills? Did Love make sign from rose blown bowers, And gold from Eldorado's hills? Alas! the gallant ships, that sailed On blind Adventure's errand sent, Howe'er they laid their courses, failed To reach the haven of Content. And of my ventures, those alone Which Love had freighted, safely sped, Seeking a good beyond my own, By clear-eyed Duty piloted. O mariners, hoping still to meet The luck Arabian voyagers met, And find in Bagdad's moonlit street, Haroun al Raschid walking yet, Take with you, on your Sea of Dreams, The fair, fond fancies dear to youth. I turn from all that only seems, And seek the sober grounds of truth. What matter that it is not May, That birds have flown, and trees are bare, That darker grows the shortening day, And colder blows the wintry air! The wrecks of passion and desire, The castles I no more rebuild, May fitly feed my drift-wood fire, And warm the hands that age has chilled. Whatever perished with my ships, I only know the best remains; A song of praise is on my lips For losses which are now my gains. Heap high my hearth! No worth is lost; No wisdom with the folly dies. Burn on, poor shreds, your holocaust Shall be my evening sacrifice! Far more than all I dared to dream, Unsought before my door I see; On wings of fire and steeds of steam The world's great wonders come to me, And holier signs, unmarked before, Of Love to seek and Power to save,— The righting of the wronged and poor, The man evolving from the slave; And life, no longer chance or fate, Safe in the gracious Fatherhood. I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait, In full assurance of the good. And well the waiting time must be, Though brief or long its granted days, If Faith and Hope and Charity Sit by my evening hearth-fire's blaze. And with them, friends whom Heaven has spared, Whose love my heart has comforted, And, sharing all my joys, has shared My tender memories of the dead,— Dear souls who left us lonely here, Bound on their last, long voyage, to whom We, day by day, are drawing near, Where every bark has sailing room. I know the solemn monotone Of waters calling unto me; I know from whence the airs have blown That whisper of the Eternal Sea. As low my fires of drift-wood burn, I hear that sea's deep sounds increase, And, fair in sunset light, discern Its mirage-lifted Isles of Peace.

Written by Matthew Arnold | The Buried Life Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet, Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet! I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll. Yes, yes, we know that we can jest, We know, we know that we can smile! But there's a something in this breast, To which thy light words bring no rest, And thy gay smiles no anodyne. Give me thy hand, and hush awhile, And turn those limpid eyes on mine, And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul. Alas! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak? Are even lovers powerless to reveal To one another what indeed they feel? I knew the mass of men conceal'd Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd They would by other men be met With blank indifference, or with blame reproved; I knew they lived and moved Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest Of men, and alien to themselves--and yet The same heart beats in every human breast! But we, my love!--doth a like spell benumb Our hearts, our voices?--must we too be dumb? Ah! well for us, if even we, Even for a moment, can get free Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd; For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd! Fate, which foresaw How frivolous a baby man would be-- By what distractions he would be possess'd, How he would pour himself in every strife, And well-nigh change his own identity-- That it might keep from his capricious play His genuine self, and force him to obey Even in his own despite his being's law, Bade through the deep recesses of our breast The unregarded river of our life Pursue with indiscernible flow its way; And that we should not see The buried stream, and seem to be Eddying at large in blind uncertainty, Though driving on with it eternally. But often, in the world's most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us--to know Whence our lives come and where they go. And many a man in his own breast then delves, But deep enough, alas! none ever mines. And we have been on many thousand lines, And we have shown, on each, spirit and power; But hardly have we, for one little hour, Been on our own line, have we been ourselves-- Hardly had skill to utter one of all The nameless feelings that course through our breast, But they course on for ever unexpress'd. And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well--but 't#is not true! And then we will no more be rack'd With inward striving, and demand Of all the thousand nothings of the hour Their stupefying power; Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call! Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, From the soul's subterranean depth upborne As from an infinitely distant land, Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey A melancholy into all our day. Only--but this is rare-- When a belov{'e}d hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafen'd ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd-- A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur; and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. And there arrives a lull in the hot race Wherein he doth for ever chase That flying and elusive shadow, rest. An air of coolness plays upon his face, And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. And then he thinks he knows The hills where his life rose, And the sea where it goes.

Written by William Carlos (WCW) Williams | A Celebration A middle-northern March, now as always— gusts from the South broken against cold winds— but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide, it moves—not into April—into a second March, the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping upon the mold: this is the shadow projects the tree upward causing the sun to shine in his sphere. So we will put on our pink felt hat—new last year! —newer this by virtue of brown eyes turning back the seasons—and let us walk to the orchid-house, see the flowers will take the prize tomorrow at the Palace. Stop here, these are our oleanders. When they are in bloom— You would waste words It is clearer to me than if the pink were on the branch. It would be a searching in a colored cloud to reveal that which now, huskless, shows the very reason for their being. And these the orange-trees, in blossom—no need to tell with this weight of perfume in the air. If it were not so dark in this shed one could better see the white. It is that very perfume has drawn the darkness down among the leaves. Do I speak clearly enough? It is this darkness reveals that which darkness alone loosens and sets spinning on waxen wings— not the touch of a finger-tip, not the motion of a sigh. A too heavy sweetness proves its own caretaker. And here are the orchids! Never having seen such gaiety I will read these flowers for you: This is an odd January, died—in Villon's time. Snow, this is and this the stain of a violet grew in that place the spring that foresaw its own doom. And this, a certain July from Iceland: a young woman of that place breathed it toward the South. It took root there. The color ran true but the plant is small. This falling spray of snow-flakes is a handful of dead Februaries prayed into flower by Rafael Arevalo Martinez of Guatemala. Here's that old friend who went by my side so many years: this full, fragile head of veined lavender. Oh that April that we first went with our stiff lusts leaving the city behind, out to the green hill— May, they said she was. A hand for all of us: this branch of blue butterflies tied to this stem. June is a yellow cup I'll not name; August the over-heavy one. And here are— russet and shiny, all but March. And March? Ah, March— Flowers are a tiresome pastime. One has a wish to shake them from their pots root and stem, for the sun to gnaw. Walk out again into the cold and saunter home to the fire. This day has blossomed long enough. I have wiped out the red night and lit a blaze instead which will at least warm our hands and stir up the talk. I think we have kept fair time. Time is a green orchard.

Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Rain In Summer How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and heat, In the broad and fiery street, In the narrow lane, How beautiful is the rain! How it clatters along the roofs, Like the tramp of hoofs How it gushes and struggles out From the throat of the overflowing spout! Across the window-pane It pours and pours; And swift and wide, With a muddy tide, Like a river down the gutter roars The rain, the welcome rain! The sick man from his chamber looks At the twisted brooks; He can feel the cool Breath of each little pool; His fevered brain Grows calm again, And he breathes a blessing on the rain. From the neighboring school Come the boys, With more than their wonted noise And commotion; And down the wet streets Sail their mimic fleets, Till the treacherous pool Ingulfs them in its whirling And turbulent ocean. In the country, on every side, Where far and wide, Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide, Stretches the plain, To the dry grass and the drier grain How welcome is the rain! In the furrowed land The toilsome and patient oxen stand; Lifting the yoke encumbered head, With their dilated nostrils spread, They silently inhale The clover-scented gale, And the vapors that arise From the well-watered and smoking soil. For this rest in the furrow after toil Their large and lustrous eyes Seem to thank the Lord, More than man's spoken word. Near at hand, From under the sheltering trees, The farmer sees His pastures, and his fields of grain, As they bend their tops To the numberless beating drops Of the incessant rain. He counts it as no sin That he sees therein Only his own thrift and gain. These, and far more than these, The Poet sees! He can behold Aquarius old Walking the fenceless fields of air; And from each ample fold Of the clouds about him rolled Scattering everywhere The showery rain, As the farmer scatters his grain. He can behold Things manifold That have not yet been wholly told,-- Have not been wholly sung nor said. For his thought, that never stops, Follows the water-drops Down to the graves of the dead, Down through chasms and gulfs profound, To the dreary fountain-head Of lakes and rivers under ground; And sees them, when the rain is done, On the bridge of colors seven Climbing up once more to heaven, Opposite the setting sun. Thus the Seer, With vision clear, Sees forms appear and disappear, In the perpetual round of strange, Mysterious change From birth to death, from death to birth, From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth; Till glimpses more sublime Of things, unseen before, Unto his wondering eyes reveal The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel Turning forevermore In the rapid and rushing river of Time.

Written by Charlotte Bronte | Frances SHE will not sleep, for fear of dreams, But, rising, quits her restless bed, And walks where some beclouded beams Of moonlight through the hall are shed. Obedient to the goad of grief, Her steps, now fast, now lingering slow, In varying motion seek relief From the Eumenides of woe. Wringing her hands, at intervals­ But long as mute as phantom dim­ She glides along the dusky walls, Under the black oak rafters, grim. The close air of the grated tower Stifles a heart that scarce can beat, And, though so late and lone the hour, Forth pass her wandering, faltering feet; And on the pavement, spread before The long front of the mansion grey, Her steps imprint the night-frost hoar, Which pale on grass and granite lay. Not long she stayed where misty moon And shimmering stars could on her look, But through the garden arch-way, soon Her strange and gloomy path she took. Some firs, coeval with the tower, Their straight black boughs stretched o'er her head, Unseen, beneath this sable bower, Rustled her dress and rapid tread. There was an alcove in that shade, Screening a rustic-seat and stand; Weary she sat her down and laid Her hot brow on her burning hand. To solitude and to the night, Some words she now, in murmurs, said; And, trickling through her fingers white, Some tears of misery she shed. ' God help me, in my grievous need, God help me, in my inward pain; Which cannot ask for pity's meed, Which has no license to complain; Which must be borne, yet who can bear, Hours long, days long, a constant weight­ The yoke of absolute despair, A suffering wholly desolate ? Who can for ever crush the heart, Restrain its throbbing, curb its life ? Dissemble truth with ceaseless art, With outward calm, mask inward strife ?' She waited­as for some reply; The still and cloudy night gave none; Erelong, with deep-drawn, trembling sigh, Her heavy plaint again begun. ' Unloved­I love; unwept­I weep; Grief I restrain­hope I repress: Vain is this anguish­fixed and deep; Vainer, desires and dreams of bliss. My love awakes no love again, My tears collect, and fall unfelt; My sorrow touches none with pain, My humble hopes to nothing melt. For me the universe is dumb, Stone-deaf, and blank, and wholly blind; Life I must bound, existence sum In the strait limits of one mind; That mind my own. Oh ! narrow cell; Dark­imageless­a living tomb ! There must I sleep, there wake and dwell Content, with palsy, pain, and gloom.' Again she paused; a moan of pain, A stifled sob, alone was heard; Long silence followed­then again, Her voice the stagnant midnight stirred. ' Must it be so ? Is this my fate ? Can I nor struggle, nor contend ? And am I doomed for years to wait, Watching death's lingering axe descend ? And when it falls, and when I die, What follows ? Vacant nothingness ? The blank of lost identity ? Erasure both of pain and bliss ? I've heard of heaven­I would believe; For if this earth indeed be all, Who longest lives may deepest grieve, Most blest, whom sorrows soonest call. Oh ! leaving disappointment here, Will man find hope on yonder coast ? Hope, which, on earth, shines never clear, And oft in clouds is wholly lost. Will he hope's source of light behold, Fruition's spring, where doubts expire, And drink, in waves of living gold, Contentment, full, for long desire ? Will he find bliss, which here he dreamed ? Rest, which was weariness on earth ? Knowledge, which, if o'er life it beamed, Served but to prove it void of worth ? Will he find love without lust's leaven, Love fearless, tearless, perfect, pure, To all with equal bounty given, In all, unfeigned, unfailing, sure ? Will he, from penal sufferings free, Released from shroud and wormy clod, All calm and glorious, rise and see Creation's Sire­Existence' God ? Then, glancing back on Time's brief woes, Will he behold them, fading, fly; Swept from Eternity's repose, Like sullying cloud, from pure blue sky ? If so­endure, my weary frame; And when thy anguish strikes too deep, And when all troubled burns life's flame, Think of the quiet, final sleep; Think of the glorious waking-hour, Which will not dawn on grief and tears, But on a ransomed spirit's power, Certain, and free from mortal fears. Seek now thy couch, and lie till morn, Then from thy chamber, calm, descend, With mind nor tossed, nor anguish-torn, But tranquil, fixed, to wait the end. And when thy opening eyes shall see Mementos, on the chamber wall, Of one who has forgotten thee, Shed not the tear of acrid gall. The tear which, welling from the heart, Burns where its drop corrosive falls, And makes each nerve, in torture, start, At feelings it too well recalls: When the sweet hope of being loved, Threw Eden sunshine on life's way; When every sense and feeling proved Expectancy of brightest day. When the hand trembled to receive A thrilling clasp, which seemed so near, And the heart ventured to believe, Another heart esteemed it dear. When words, half love, all tenderness, Were hourly heard, as hourly spoken, When the long, sunny days of bliss, Only by moonlight nights were broken. Till drop by drop, the cup of joy Filled full, with purple light, was glowing, And Faith, which watched it, sparkling high, Still never dreamt the overflowing. It fell not with a sudden crashing, It poured not out like open sluice; No, sparkling still, and redly flashing, Drained, drop by drop, the generous juice. I saw it sink, and strove to taste it, My eager lips approached the brim; The movement only seemed to waste it, It sank to dregs, all harsh and dim. These I have drank, and they for ever Have poisoned life and love for me; A draught from Sodom's lake could never More fiery, salt, and bitter, be. Oh ! Love was all a thin illusion; Joy, but the desert's flying stream; And, glancing back on long delusion, My memory grasps a hollow dream. Yet, whence that wondrous change of feeling, I never knew, and cannot learn, Nor why my lover's eye, congealing, Grew cold, and clouded, proud, and stern. Nor wherefore, friendship's forms forgetting, He careless left, and cool withdrew; Nor spoke of grief, nor fond regretting, Nor even one glance of comfort threw. And neither word nor token sending, Of kindness, since the parting day, His course, for distant regions bending, Went, self-contained and calm, away. Oh, bitter, blighting, keen sensation, Which will not weaken, cannot die, Hasten thy work of desolation, And let my tortured spirit fly ! Vain as the passing gale, my crying; Though lightning-struck, I must live on; I know, at heart, there is no dying Of love, and ruined hope, alone. Still strong, and young, and warm with vigour, Though scathed, I long shall greenly grow, And many a storm of wildest rigour Shall yet break o'er my shivered bough. Rebellious now to blank inertion, My unused strength demands a task; Travel, and toil, and full exertion, Are the last, only boon I ask. Whence, then, this vain and barren dreaming Of death, and dubious life to come ? I see a nearer beacon gleaming Over dejection's sea of gloom. The very wildness of my sorrow Tells me I yet have innate force; My track of life has been too narrow, Effort shall trace a broader course. The world is not in yonder tower, Earth is not prisoned in that room, 'Mid whose dark pannels, hour by hour, I've sat, the slave and prey of gloom. One feeling­turned to utter anguish, Is not my being's only aim; When, lorn and loveless, life will languish, But courage can revive the flame. He, when he left me, went a roving To sunny climes, beyond the sea; And I, the weight of woe removing, Am free and fetterless as he. New scenes, new language, skies less clouded, May once more wake the wish to live; Strange, foreign towns, astir, and crowded, New pictures to the mind may give. New forms and faces, passing ever, May hide the one I still retain, Defined, and fixed, and fading never, Stamped deep on vision, heart, and brain. And we might meet­time may have changed him; Chance may reveal the mystery, The secret influence which estranged him; Love may restore him yet to me. False thought­false hope­in scorn be banished ! I am not loved­nor loved have been; Recall not, then, the dreams scarce vanished, Traitors ! mislead me not again ! To words like yours I bid defiance, 'Tis such my mental wreck have made; Of God alone, and self-reliance, I ask for solace­hope for aid. Morn comes­and ere meridian glory O'er these, my natal woods, shall smile, Both lonely wood and mansion hoary I'll leave behind, full many a mile.

Written by John Ashbery | Daffy Duck In Hollywood Something strange is creeping across me. La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland Fling Terrace. He promised he'd get me out of this one, That mean old cartoonist, but just look what he's Done to me now! I scarce dare approach me mug's attenuated Reflection in yon hubcap, so jaundiced, so déconfit Are its lineaments--fun, no doubt, for some quack phrenologist's Fern-clogged waiting room, but hardly what you'd call Companionable. But everything is getting choked to the point of Silence. Just now a magnetic storm hung in the swatch of sky Over the Fudds' garage, reducing it--drastically-- To the aura of a plumbago-blue log cabin on A Gadsden Purchase commemorative cover. Suddenly all is Loathing. I don't want to go back inside any more. You meet Enough vague people on this emerald traffic-island--no, Not people, comings and goings, more: mutterings, splatterings, The bizarrely but effectively equipped infantries of happy-go-nutty Vegetal jacqueries, plumed, pointed at the little White cardboard castle over the mill run. "Up The lazy river, how happy we could be?" How will it end? That geranium glow Over Anaheim's had the riot act read to it by the Etna-size firecracker that exploded last minute into A carte du Tendre in whose lower right-hand corner (Hard by the jock-itch sand-trap that skirts The asparagus patch of algolagnic nuits blanches) Amadis Is cozening the Princesse de Cleves into a midnight micturition spree On the Tamigi with the Wallets (Walt, Blossom, and little Sleezix) on a lamé barge "borrowed" from Ollie Of the Movies' dread mistress of the robes. Wait! I have an announcement! This wide, tepidly meandering, Civilized Lethe (one can barely make out the maypoles And châlets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore) leads to Tophet, that Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin Of a borborygmic giant who even now Is rolling over on us in his sleep. Farewell bocages, Tanneries, water-meadows. The allegory comes unsnarled Too soon; a shower of pecky acajou harpoons is About all there is to be noted between tornadoes. I have Only my intermittent life in your thoughts to live Which is like thinking in another language. Everything Depends on whether somebody reminds you of me. That this is a fabulation, and that those "other times" Are in fact the silences of the soul, picked out in Diamonds on stygian velvet, matters less than it should. Prodigies of timing may be arranged to convince them We live in one dimension, they in ours. While I Abroad through all the coasts of dark destruction seek Deliverance for us all, think in that language: its Grammar, though tortured, offers pavillions At each new parting of the ways. Pastel Ambulances scoop up the quick and hie them to hospitals. "It's all bits and pieces, spangles, patches, really; nothing Stands alone. What happened to creative evolution?" Sighed Aglavaine. Then to her Sélysette: "If his Achievement is only to end up less boring than the others, What's keeping us here? Why not leave at once? I have to stay here while they sit in there, Laugh, drink, have fine time. In my day One lay under the tough green leaves, Pretending not to notice how they bled into The sky's aqua, the wafted-away no-color of regions supposed Not to concern us. And so we too Came where the others came: nights of physical endurance, Or if, by day, our behavior was anarchically Correct, at least by New Brutalism standards, all then Grew taciturn by previous agreement. We were spirited Away en bateau, under cover of fudge dark. It's not the incomplete importunes, but the spookiness Of the finished product. True, to ask less were folly, yet If he is the result of himself, how much the better For him we ought to be! And how little, finally, We take this into account! Is the puckered garance satin Of a case that once held a brace of dueling pistols our Only acknowledging of that color? I like not this, Methinks, yet this disappointing sequel to ourselves Has been applauded in London and St. Petersburg. Somewhere Ravens pray for us." The storm finished brewing. And thus She questioned all who came in at the great gate, but none She found who ever heard of Amadis, Nor of stern Aureng-Zebe, his first love. Some They were to whom this mattered not a jot: since all By definition is completeness (so In utter darkness they reasoned), why not Accept it as it pleases to reveal itself? As when Low skyscrapers from lower-hanging clouds reveal A turret there, an art-deco escarpment here, and last perhaps The pattern that may carry the sense, but Stays hidden in the mysteries of pagination. Not what we see but how we see it matters; all's Alike, the same, and we greet him who announces The change as we would greet the change itself. All life is but a figment; conversely, the tiny Tome that slips from your hand is not perhaps the Missing link in this invisible picnic whose leverage Shrouds our sense of it. Therefore bivouac we On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up Over the horizon like a boy On a fishing expedition. No one really knows Or cares whether this is the whole of which parts Were vouchsafed--once--but to be ambling on's The tradition more than the safekeeping of it. This mulch for Play keeps them interested and busy while the big, Vaguer stuff can decide what it wants--what maps, what Model cities, how much waste space. Life, our Life anyway, is between. We don't mind Or notice any more that the sky is green, a parrot One, but have our earnest where it chances on us, Disingenuous, intrigued, inviting more, Always invoking the echo, a summer's day.