POEMS
from between the carrot rows.
Leafless white birches, their
empty tendrils swaying lazily in
the all but no breeze guard
behind the spiked monastery fence
the sacred statuary. But ranks
of brilliant car-tops row on row
give back in all his glory the
late November sun and hushed
attend, before that tumbled
ground, those sightless walls
and shovelled entrances where no
one but a lonesome cop swingirtg
his club gives sign, that agony
within where the wrapt machines
are praying
Kenneth Patchen
THE TEMPLE OF DIANA
0 an untemptable sentry
Walks around the balconies of heaven
And a lean vague dog roots in the dirt
Of the poor .•.
To commemorate thy beauty, 0 lady
Of a lost city, of a world now dead ...
Since it is little I do with judgment,
May I claim you pure and of a sin
Such as the angels have: for I am tired
Of these changes-so like stirrings of the dead;
And of the rich-whose greed places Christ
In the skull of the war; for I am tired
Of the poor-who own a world
And have eyes only for the boots of their betrayers.
I am tired of the lies , .. of the dirt
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