Classic Poem

Sarder's farm fades
into scenery at half a mile; a cer-
tain quantity of tin cans
and dead bedding that defilades
down into the brook mer-
cifully blotted at this distance;

and it, abstract — a sleep-
ing castle with silo towers —
flat, monumental as
some weathering Norman keep
a hundred years of hours
broke on like arrows of glass

and couldn't change. (Sarder's
not moved to the Town yet
nor the Town spread to him.)
Likewise geographers,
reading our green planet
from Mars or the moon's rim,

must make our holocaust-
ic continents mere blurs
of their bombed selves: silent
gryphons, sphinxes embossed
on the immovable waters. . . .
Philosophy also — bent

on generalities:
They're all that saves the world
from its details — its sunk
sheds, rotting Chevrolets,
its Beatle bathos hurled
at stripped fields bright with junk.











By permission of the author.