Meaning beyond the pink shadow it
Husbands in my saddening thought
That the moon again is some reflection
Of the thing that misleads us,
Which is another stupid mistake
■
Hate to go out on the street you’re such
A smarty always coy and disgraceful and
Pointing out events our horoscope misplaces
The girl sitting there with red shoes on
Wearing a flower dress, thumbs past the
Greatest 20th Cent. painters like a snob
She very well could be Some men like these
Effects in a woman like drinking bad wine
Has a mystique or keeping your overcoat on
In usually placid houses tempting Satan
Listening to music annoyance odors
There is something persistent about you
You are always blaming me for it
How can I prove I am not Modigliani
But simply and trustingly another
Person who falls ill to the breeze
Coming over the marsh to the city
How can I prove that I have no intention
Of asking you to go on a diet or wear
The autumn’s foolish clothes, trust
Me there is nothing that far away as
The museum where we chat and pretend
We see each other and our beauty
Exits like summer grass into danger
We may run into people as charming as we are
And start a flame in their heart
Consume their error as judgment
Treat them as lovers yet be unaware
Of seeing in them, not beauty but
That plainness in them makes them lovely
In our eyes they are more beautiful
Than what is truly beautiful and travels
With nothing insignificant as beauty.
GREAT LOVE DUETS
The sensation created by the human voice
Surrounds the bare lightbulb and makes
It a radio bringing down the cultivated
Air of this room and the slum section
Of the city the soul seeks its order
Amid the disorder of tenement streets
So strange that in these poor neighborhoods
So many women named Mimi are singing to him
The voice in the hand of our imprecision
New York language which forms its cold
Beauty around a steel heart like flowers
Crystals. Is it in spite of the Earth’s
Heart uh some miracle speaks to the people
Wrapped in the sounds of their hesitation
These are the children of immigrant legends
The art students sit drinking 98¢ chianti
The words? Even a child’s grammar cd explain it
To him, although most children wouldn’t believe
And seek other justifications in the time literature
Their parents “make believe” and the art students
Who gather at their soda shoppes
And discuss in front the radio
Sonatas they are now so fond of
They play one dull station all
The time it is playing the same pretty
Sonata about a beautiful young girl
Living in sin with a mad violinist
Somewhere in the awful slums of NYC
And of all the people she thought
She would not mind being in love
Only one was not there, who she loved
Thinking won’t it be charming when
We decide to draw the purple covers
All the art students were thinking
“She framed me” and they all desire
One who goes up the stairs and stops
By the window in the light of another
Sonata the deep background the backyard
Presents, people sit on their stoops
Drinking from beercans and pleading
“Cut it out” to the voice that insists
On the news
Across from this island of stone
Smoke rising up in the still air
The voice which will recline on the flat air
The heavy barges on the river headed
For Belgium taking the concentration
Of the lazy youngsters sprawled
Derelicts of the sunlight on the
Grassy hillsides. On the graying divan
Lessons in English grammar are inter-
With the languor of a deliberate kind
Of romance with its blue 35mm pictures
Ringing down the curtain on the sonata:
The words? There are no words
Still the singing is heard
Why are we so foolishly engaged our environs
Why are we allowing crime to insist
On describing our form everything even
Our gray gloves become suspect, even!
Said the students illustrating their English
THE CLAUSE
Let its dreams carry like echoes
Across the distances another song
To seize her in her lovely trance
Another night in New York City it’s snowing
And still they insist on studying yoga
Oh wretched one, why have you driven my time
Away into this forest of stone the wind
Laughs at Oh wretched one you have made
Me the fool of the unfaithful seasons and
This discipline you reveal in my dis- sd the students.
Where in this street an art student
Is seen with his clumsy portfolio
Lights a du Maurier and meets his
Girl