22
PARTISAN REVIEW
"The blade of this tool, useless for digging, chopping,
Shearing, they used against each other with such zeal
They all but accomplished their own extermination.
Then-they abandoned speech!
They retained cries expressive of emotion,
As rage, or love. That was all.
That was eons ago.
Consider this thing," said the stream, in six languages.
"They have never seen any cause to repent their decision."
I dreamed then, of a tide in the lake.
It rose over us where we slept
And flooded southward into the settled country.
My consternation was that of a poet, whose love
If
not his living was gravely endangered.
I awoke, and the lake was in place.
Perhaps that was a pity. A purification ... ?
Perhaps if one rose now and bathed in the water?
Mary Barnard
SUNDAY AFTERNOON:
Avenue A Considered as a Grave
-Therefore we live: though such a-life we have
As but so many
Mandrakes
on his grave.
-Elegie on Prince Henry.
Afternoon silent as glass
In the bright Pax Americana.
'Pigeons on the grass, alas!'
And in the rotogravure
John D., the little eidolon
(Hero without imperium)
Blinks withered in the winsome sun
Of Ormond, its Elysium.
