Dear Minna, read the newspapers And gloat with me over death’s industry. Banker, Freudian, Socialist, Knocked from the shelves and changed To symbols that can lure conjecture. It is well that we are metaphysical. Death must not become A mere black frame surrounding The memorized reiterations. Death must remain an irresistible Beckoning to reckless speculations And continue to offer an amorous arm To the recalcitrant antics of words. VILLAGE CLERK Rabelais and Maeterlinck Have subsided to one grin Upon your sharply cumbersome face. Coarseness and a psychic hope Dominate your voice As you prattle to women Purchasing sugar and salt. Then your face and voice Alter to a serious fraud Eagerly learning the technique of deceptions, As you answer this dryly emasculated Grey-beard, discussing the tendencies in hogs. When the night replenishes Your store of morbid desires, You will try to piece together A cajoling violin From your sweet-heart’s syllables, Fumbling with hot hands for the unseen strings. REALISM Regard an American farm. That jaded collaborator, Daylight, has just arrived. Wavy signal of smoke From the wooden farm-house disappears Beneath the bluely ascetic lack of interest. Horses, pigs, and cows Assemble their discontent. The result is a Chinese orchestra Devoid of discipline and cohesion, With all of the players intoxicated. The animals do not realize That their voices should portray The farmer in the angular house; The hackneyed prose of his life; The expanding soul of his corn-fields. Turn from the absence of human wisdom And see the lights in the farm-house. Dimly circumscribed and steady, They symbolize future events. The farm-hand walks to the barn, With an ox-like dragging of feet. Black shirt, and overalls Whose color has been removed by dirt, Obscure the heavy knots of his body. His cork-screw nose ascends To the eyes of an unperturbed pig. Love and hate to him Are mouthfuls of coarse food hastily gulped During lulls in his muscular slavery. Beneath the slanting pungency Of the barn he vanishes, And with meaningless sounds He pays his meager tribute to life. Then the farmer persuades his age To indulge in an unwilling stumble Across the yard. His grey beard is the end of a rope That has gradually throttled his face. Within him, avarice Is awkwardly practising the rhythms Of weak emotions benignly, belatedly Preparing for celestial rewards. Within the cluttered farm-yard He stands, a figure of niggardly order. Earth, the men who scrape at your flanks Can never stop to examine The thin line of speech that goes adventuring Where your brown hills bite the sky.