It’s the time of the year

And the time of the day.

Perhaps it’s the lunch that we had

Or the lunch that we should have had.

But I am, in any case,

A most inappropriate man

In a most unpropitious place.

Mon Dieu, hear the poet’s prayer.

The romantic should be here.

The romantic should be there.

It ought to be everywhere.

But the romantic must never remain,

Mon Dieu, and must never again return.

This heavy historical sail

Through the mustiest blue of the lake

In a really vertiginous boat

Is wholly the vapidest fake.…

It is least what one ever sees.

It is only the way one feels, to say

Where my spirit is I am,

To say the light wind worries the sail,

To say the water is swift today,

To expunge all people and be a pupil

Of the gorgeous wheel and so to give

That slight transcendence to the dirty sail,

By light, the way one feels, sharp white,

And then rush brightly through the summer air.

Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu

That would be waving and that would be crying,

Crying and shouting and meaning farewell,

Farewell in the eyes and farewell at the centre,

Just to stand still without moving a hand.

In a world without heaven to follow, the stops

Would be endings, more poignant than partings, profounder,

And that would be saying farewell, repeating farewell,

Just to be there and just to behold.

To be one’s singular self, to despise

The being that yielded so little, acquired

So little, too little to care, to turn

To the ever-jubilant weather, to sip

One’s cup and never to say a word,

Or to sleep or just to lie there still,

Just to be there, just to be beheld,

That would be bidding farewell, be bidding farewell.

One likes to practice the thing. They practice,

Enough, for heaven. Ever-jubilant,

What is there here but weather, what spirit

Have I except it comes from the sun?

The American Sublime

How does one stand

To behold the sublime,

To confront the mockers,

The mickey mockers

And plated pairs?

When General Jackson

Posed for his statue

He knew how one feels.

Shall a man go barefoot

Blinking and blank?

But how does one feel?

One grows used to the weather,

The landscape and that;

And the sublime comes down

To the spirit itself,

The spirit and space,

The empty spirit

In vacant space.

What wine does one drink?

What bread does one eat?

Mozart, 1935

Poet, be seated at the piano.

Play the present, its hoo-hoo-hoo,

Its shoo-shoo-shoo, its ric-a-nic,

Its envious cachinnation.

If they throw stones upon the roof

While you practice arpeggios,

It is because they carry down the stairs

A body in rags.

Be seated at the piano.

That lucid souvenir of the past,

The divertimento;

That airy dream of the future,

The unclouded concerto …

The snow is falling.

Strike the piercing chord.

Be thou the voice,

Not you. Be thou, be thou