Within an office whose exterior Resembles an ultra-conservative mind You battle with the avaricious words Of a meager, petrified man. Your face is brown stagnation Sometimes astounded by a thrust Of chattering wistfulness. Bravery is fear Effectively sneering at itself, And you are forever wavering Upon the edge of this condition. Yet your obscurity Is an important atom In the mysterious march of time. CONCERNING EMOTIONS And if I say that pain is but A circus barker whose loud cries Seek to reward a trivial show, Will you confess that I am wise? “Must it be emotional?” you asked, After I had thrown Words into a carnival-scope. Sobriety and merriment Borrowed the sixteenth century Within your voice, and sought The identity of sternness-- Mental sternness pretending to ignore The confetti thrown by emotion In a carnival unique. Emotions can be prancing curves Fashioned by relaxing thoughts. Should I kiss you, Questioner, The delicate anti-climax Of a mental caper Might perish on crimson vapor! Tired of frenzies and satiations Emotions often wander to poets And ask for more fantastic decisions For fire that glows but does not burn. METAPHYSICAL ELIZABETH They gave you strait-jackets to bore you. Like an unwilling promise Your legs were tied together. But people can only violate Their own conception of reality, And your actual curves Preserved their sculptural liberty. Leaving their semblance on your flesh Your lines sped inward till they gained The center where emotion changes To a speck of quivering clarity. Within you phantoms of reality Danced with plausibilities of mind, Seeking to be consumed By the oblivion which is understanding. You feared that your return to motion Would mean a succession of disappointments-- Tamely grazing arrows Changed to wounds by the desiring heart Take my hand and move. Only two statues can stride together In a manner invisible Save to certain unreasonable adjustments Of eyesight and of hearing. DESCRIPTION AND EXHORTATION Truly, this age will be known As one of minute extremes Courting an elderly shape In a violent bar-room scene. An Amazon made filthy by centuries, And fuming pygmies, own the stage. Thin furies of emotion Name every color in the rainbow Without its skillful assent, And little mental skeletons Stamp with clumsy weirdness On effigies of the heart. The pygmies often sneak To the prancing Amazon And the ensuing love-scene produces Small memories of Walt Whitman.