Classic Poem

Della Primavera Trasportata al Morale

the beginning — or
what you will:
the dress
in which the veritable winter
walks in Spring —

Loose it!
Let it fall (where it will)
— again

A live thing
the buds are upon it
the green shoot come between
the red flowerets
curled back

Under whose green veil
strain trunk and limbs of
the supporting trees —

Yellow! the arched stick
pinning the fragile foil
— in abundance
or
the bush before the rose
pointed with green

bent into form
upon the iron frame

wild onion
swifter than the grass

the grass thick
at the post's base

iris blades unsheathed —

BUY THIS PROPERTY

— the complexion of the impossible
(you'll say)

never realized —
At a desk in a hotel in front of a

machine a year
later — for a day or two —

(Quite so — )
Whereas the reality trembles


frankly
in that though it was like this

in part
it was deformed

even when at its utmost to
touch — as it did

and fill and give and take
— a kind

of rough drawing of flowers
and April

STOP : GO

— she
opened the door! nearly
six feet tall, and I . . .
wanted to found a new country —

For the rest, virgin negress
at the glass
in blue-glass Venetian beads —

a green truck
dragging a concrete mixer
passes
in the street —
the clatter and true sound
of verse —

— the wind is howling
the river, shining mud —

Moral
it looses me

Moral
it supports me

Moral
it has never ceased
to flow

Moral
the faded evergreen

Moral
I can laugh

Moral
the redhead sat
in bed with her legs
crossed and talked
rough stuff

Moral
the door is open

Moral
the tree moving diversely
in all parts —

— the moral is love, bred of
the mind and eyes and hands —

But in the cross-current
between what the hands reach
and the mind desires

and the eyes see
and see starvation, it is

useless to have it thought
that we are full —

But April is a thing
comes just the same —

and in it we see now
what then we did not know —

STOP : STOP

I believe
in the sound patriotic and
progressive Mulish policies
and if elected —

I believe
in a continuance of the pro-
tective tariff because —

I believe
that the country can't do
too much —

I believe
in honest law enforcement —
and I also believe —

I believe
in giving the farmer and
land owner adequate protection

I believe

I believe

I believe
in equality for the negro —

THIS IS MY PLATFORM

I believe in your love
the first dandelion
flower at the edge of —

taraaaaaaa! taraaaaaaa!

— the fishman's bugle announces
the warm wind —

reminiscent of the sea
the plumtree flaunts
its blossom-encrusted
branches —

I believe
Moving to three doors
above — May 1st.

I believe
ICE — and warehouse site

No parking between tree and corner

You would " kill me with kindness "
I love you too, but I love you
too —

Thus, in that light and in that
light only can I say —

Winter : Spring
abandoned to you. The world lost —
in you

Is not that devastating enough
for one century?

I believe
Spumoni $1.00
French Vanilla .70
Chocolate .70
Strawberry .70
Maple Walnut .70
Coffee .70
Tutti Frutti .70
Pistachio .70
Cherry Special .70
Orange Ice .70
Biscuit Tortoni
25c per portion

trees — seeming dead:
the long years —

tactus eruditus

Maple, I see you have
a squirrel in your crotch —

And you have a woodpecker
in your hole, Sycamore

— a fat blonde, in purple (no trucking
on this street)

POISON!

I believe

WOMAN'S WARD

PRIVATE

The soul, my God, shall rise up
— a tree
But who are You?
in this mortal wind
that I at least can understand
having sinned willingly

The forms
of the emotions are crystalline,
geometric-faceted. So we recognize
only in the white heat of
understanding, when a flame
runs through the gap made
by learning, the shapes of things —
the ovoid sun, the pointed trees

lashing branches

The wind is fierce, lashing

the long-limbed trees whose
branches
wildly toss —