POEMS
The informer was impressed with Marx,
Not
Capital.
On the picnics
Those Sundays, no one mentioned politics.
They lived, they died. "I am what I am,"
Someone heard Swift stammer: he was crazy.
Beethoven, dying, learned to multiply.
What does it mean? Why, nothing.
Nothing? ... How well we all die!
SCHERZO
To sit on a chair, to eat from a table,
Is right,
is
polite, is comfortable-
Or so they say;
I say so too, I suppose I know it,
If
I didn't, still, I suppose I'd do it-
It's a way.
:rhe errors one's acquaintances call life,
The drab habitual disasters
Of paupers dropped from marchen into Europe–
The woodman frozen with both feet in air
As
stiff as compasses beneath the bomber
The banker sent as succor to his winter:
I read about them sitting in my chair.
And am them; we are all corrupted.
Each year I talk more -like the other fools,
Like less, lie more, am almost liked-
What does it matter? All that I love dies,
Even my wishes perish in the winter
That darkens for our tiiilje above the lands.
The snow falls on the unjust and unjust.
If
I wish for a life, if I wish for my death,
In the cells where I am dying,
Does it matter? Why care?
Does anyone care? Get up from your chair–
Is anything better? Who cares?
It is over.
RANDALL jARRELL
99
