Classic Poem

Another poem about another poem
About another . . . on and on, until
The bottom poem of the pyramid —
Old low man on the tone-poem totem pole —
Makes contact with a fundamental Weh :

Woe like a stone unto your pedal toe
That is a tongue to add up taste and touch
In telling selfsame tales twice-told again,
Ten nails skin's home-grown finitude and joy
Housed in equiprimordiality.

The toe of my shoe looks just like a chin,
My chin just like the toe of someone's shoe.

O stones among the bones among the stones
Among the lairs of homicidal Gods
And Goddesses homicidal even more,
Whose homes are mountains sprung out of the sea:

The tongue of my boot looks somewhat tonguelike.

If it could talk, it would say, " Walk. " That's all.
June's midmost birdbath concrete as its moon,
Rhymed wave form of rock bumped into by blind men
Who scatter the water and the birds alike
Away with their immense poem ending " way. "

Than any Chinese wall, it is a Wall
Of China, more mural, more Chinese, even
More Kafkaesque in its mad genesis.

Where it touches the ground, we all touch ground.