I walk upon a street Where trite deceptions glide Ceaselessly. Upon this street the spasmodic revolt Of color refuses to join The orderly, substantial lie. Scattered anarchists of color, Thin and incorrupt, Contend against the ponderous devices Of lust for flesh and gold. With a spiritual savageness Colors bring their lucid treason To ancient, shrouded tyrannies. The knitted green of this girl’s sweater Is a badge releasing A cool republic of desire Unrelated to earth. Her famished opaque face Feeds on sleek anticipations-- Unconscious incongruity. Color alone is real, Waving perpetually Over the graves of thought and emotion. From the vaster shapes of color Small and involved broods of thought and emotion Are born to scorn their distant mothers. The ruffian dream recedes Over a span of twenty thousand years, And color, awake and supreme, Waits to be once more divided By another nightmare dream. If men could see this they might kneel Upon this sidewalk and observe The importance of apple-peelings Testing their spirals of red Against the thick, brown stream. THE INCURABLE MYSTIC ANSWERS WESTERN AMBITIONS Western men, Your life is a minor rhapsody For flute and violin. With sounds, now shrill, now suave, You steal your hymns and frolics From the surface dirt of realism And the curves of sensuality. Your feeble mysticism Strains at the task of lifting tables And placing naïve retorts Into the mouths of spirits. Your erudition is the vain Gesture of your repentance Grown over-thin and complex. Western men, you are beggars Devouring bits of guile Tossed from a violent mirage. The contours of a rose Bribing the quiet madness of evening With cunning promises of red, Are more important than your sweating love And the rushing dreads of your market-places. The contours of a rose Will still arrange their subtle dream When your clever schemes of mud Win the drifting pension of dust. Your charts and diagrams Are merely a ragamuffin’s initials Cut into an ancient gateway That guards the invisible meaning of life. PLATONIC NARRATIVE