Like other men you fly from adjectives. The plain terseness that lives in verbs and nouns Creates a panorama where you know That men are not a cloud of romping clowns. You greet the wideness of eternal curves Where beauty, death and silence give their height To those rare men who do not play with thought. But this fruit-peddler decorates his fright And polishes his peaches and his grapes Insanely. If his mercenary hopes Were bolder he would be a nimble poet. Slight in her bridal gown, his mind elopes With adjectives that find her incomplete: Your mind is hard and massively parades Across the earth with Homer and Villon. Since each of you with common sense evades Monotony, I join you and refuse To call you dwarf or giant. Let the fools Who criticise you bind you with these names And separate your dead bones with their rules! VIII Dead men sit down beside the telephones Within your brain and carefully relate Decisions and discretions of the past, Convinced that they will not deteriorate. But you have not their certainty: you try A question now and then that cautiously Assaults their whispered indolence until Their sharp words once more force you to agree. Then you insist that certain living men Whose tones are half-discreet may be allowed To greet their masters through the telephones, Provided that their words are not too loud. The new men imperceptibly entice Their elders, and a compromise is made, Both sides discovering that two or three Excluded men must be correctly flayed. And so the matter ends; conservative And radical revise their family-tree, While you report this happening with relief To liberals and victorious cups of tea. IMAGINARY PEOPLE I POET You have escaped the comedy Of swift, pretentious praise and blame, And smashed a tavern where they sell The harlots’ wine that men call fame. Heralds of reckless solitude Have offered you another voice, But men are still a tempting jest. You roam and cannot make a choice. When you have played distractedly With a humility, you tire And change the pastime to a pride. These are but moods of one desire. You throw an imitating gleam Upon the dwarfs that line your road, Then with a worn hostility You tramp along beneath your load. II WOMAN