32

I’m glad I don’t have fifty years
to see these limbs hung with this

snow: I feel for the bushes,
burdened; I feel for the birch trees

bowed: the heavy, dripping clusters
grow more with new snow than they

melt: it is ridiculous: nature
having poured it on pours it on: so

patient, so still, a test to the
limit: wait, wait for the slow

procedures, the long unloosening of
the branch tips from the ground:

maybe so that nothing tears, not that
snow won’t trample to tearing, not

that ice won’t hold the tips till the
tree tears away to rise, the little

twigs sticking up torn from the snow:
as I say, I say, whatever you say:

also as with a quill (or stylus) I
plink upon my machine outmoded as

hell (I hope hell’s outmoded) and
meanwhile a quiver of the flank in

Sumatra quivers a flank in Jersey
City, cellular love quickening half

a globe (you can’t get a globe away
from anyone, isn’t that fortunate)

away: love finds a way: European
clutter, those relics of decayed

aristocracies: here in the sweet
lap of a brawn-bred democracy, we

have fresh aristocracies of our own:
what will be their relics are now

expressive: altruism is somewhat
placid, it meets and engages into

ease: warm, soothing ministrations:
but the negative emotions—envy,

greed, aggression—are sharp drives:
devise an economy to engage and

express these, and the economy
bristles, the high polish of desire

used up in making: an economy is
the means by which the undesirable

is transformed into the desirable:
the nobel prize for nobility is

surely mine: I simply will not let
things go bad: I push tragedy aside

or try to to clear the way for a
touch more hope: I mount the hope

on the high, jeweled sway of elephants
and ride through the streets casting

gold coins about: people, I cry, O
people, I say, try to get over it;

check dawn out; put in a fall garden;
boil the water; keep your peter

clean; listen, it’s not over yet—
the fat lady had a bad cold, another

is besent for: things will change:
you may even learn to live with what

has already happened: that will be
a new start: oh, yes, if I rouse

the rabble they will cry me up till
I win a sizable nobility that will

sustain me in luxury as long as I live:
let’s be realistic