Dawn?--no, the hunted transparency of dawn Curving from the white throat of a child And shaken in the still cup of his face. Then a sudden dispersal of swerving light Carrying away the defeated Wisdom of a smile. Thought?--no, the persistent shudder Of emotion that is almost thought. The invisible recklessness of perfume Enveloping the beginning of a question. Sadness?--no, the growth of a dim inclination To delve into the rancid importance of flesh: Then weeping, to wash away The ritual of disappointment. PSYCHIC CLOWNS _First Clown_ We gaze upon a negro shoveling coal. His muscles fuse into a poem Stifled and sinister, Censuring the happy rhetoric of morning air. Some day he will pitch the stretched simplicity Of his tent upon the contented ruins Of a civilization, Playing with documents and bottles of perfume Found in deserted, broken corridors. _Second Clown_ The barbarous comedy Lost in profuse confessions And often described as life, Lends an attitude of conviction To the mechanical retreat of time. _First Clown_ Do you hear beneath the irregular strut Of this city an imperceptible groan? Time is turning the jail-house key. They build larger jails for time; He makes larger keys of blood-stained iron. Endlessly he emerges From complicated delusions of freedom. _Second Clown_ That desperately grotesque Wanton known as imagination Can plunge beyond both men and time. Imagination slips down Upon the last edges of thought and feeling And teaches them to transcend The forlorn bravado of swinging legs and arms. _First Clown_ We are two psychic clowns Brandishing the poverty of words Into insolent oddities of sound. Come, men are waiting to nail us Upon the crucifix of their little logics! DEAR MINNA Catastrophe in a bric-a-brac shop. The proprietor lies murdered. Pieces of cups, jars, and vases Have attained the disorderly freedom So obnoxious to bankrupt fanatics. Once the cups, jars, and vases Were symmetrical and empty, And immersed in the task of holding nothing. Now they have snatched a voice from fragments; Spell many an accidental sentence; Renounce the hollow lie. Death, you take the stiffly obvious shapes Of objects and crack them with your fingers-- A shattered invitation To curiosity and anticipation-- And I am grateful to you for that. My eyes grow weary scanning the living array. Each man takes his inch upon the shelves And will not move, until your paw Robs him of microscopical convictions.