Classic Poem

The field of vision yields a figure of pure fire
Edged with nocturnes and penumbrae, blue and black:

Poe,
Demon to the demon of himself, self-forking
Into a tolling groan and telling diabetic brief
As though from the underworld to America.

Retail merchandising made this country what it is.

Ours is a magnificent civilization and this our Golden Age,
Thanks in part
To Poe's having worked himself to death by forty.
After his miserable Baltimore October death,
It was twenty-six years before the filled hole
Bore any proper stone,

Whitman the diplomat with nothing to say,
And from polar Mallarme
A religious figure of speech

As though to accompany one on a short barge-ride to hell,
Perfunctory enigma.

The field of vision yields a figure of pure fire
Edged with nocturnes and penumbrae, blue and black:

Poe,
Demon to the demon of himself, self-forking
Into a tolling groan and telling diabetic brief
As though from the underworld to America.

Retail merchandising made this country what it is.

Ours is a magnificent civilization and this our Golden Age,
Thanks in part
To Poe's having worked himself to death by forty.
After his miserable Baltimore October death,
It was twenty-six years before the filled hole
Bore any proper stone,

Whitman the diplomat with nothing to say,
And from polar Mallarme
A religious figure of speech

As though to accompany one on a short barge-ride to hell,
Perfunctory enigma.