20
PARTISAN REVIEW
The spinster who's never attended a seance
As well as this year's Conference quarter,
The crystal-gazer in an Arkansas tent
Spells it in dreams to the great reporter;
While you're eating peanuts or loving Aquinas
It sticks to you like the hack of your head;
The hill's presented before you're horn,
Marked
Payment Still Deferred
when you're dead;
I could call it Love-hut whoever liked it?
A Star-it's enlightened no one yet;
The puzzle that you and I and the cat
Are the answers to-and wrong at that;
The riddle that no one has even posed,
That you were never made for solving;
That you slash or finger until you feel
Your wits, your wife, and your world dissolving;
So say what you like, do what you please,
It's not important except to you-
The ones who can satisfy the conditions
Are other and odder and after you.
THE REFUGEES
In
the shabby train no seat is vacant.
The child
in
the ripped mask
Sprawls undisturbed in the waste
Of the smashed compartment. Is their calm extravagant?
They had faces and lives like you. What was it they possessed
That they were willing to trade for this?
The dried blood sparkles along the mask
Of the child who yesterday possessed
A country welcomer than this.
Did he? All night through the waste
