POEMS
but an ewe knows. Yet obviously no one
could 'harm seriously or curse at' so in–
nocent a
virgin-much less 'seethe, butcher, and
so forth and so forth', as poor Couperin
wrote strongly:
meaning tenors. One thinks all three
his mother and uncertainly
prances to each in his jointless gracelel's
ungainly knock-kneed stagger, as if fac–
ing nothing
but joy: the maturing half-wit
perfecting in these scrupulous scales its
cadenza,
the overwhelming responses
of the horned ram. The other raises
his head an inch and lets it drop with a
conclusiveness familiar to the ewes graz–
ing by the
barn and to the understanding
farmer as birth, but not yet as hackneyed
·
tq
the lamb,
who would perhaps not recognize
birth either. 'Just as advertised'
by the champion of O:xford and other
lost causes such as the classics, as the
man who 'saw
life steadily and saw it whole',
Sophocles got 'about twenty' firsts, still
thought: Better
to be dead than alive but best
of all not to have been born. Test
this response with the dead lamb and it rings
like a bell: iron. The live lamb's sprawling
bright gait is
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