POEMS
He saw the hero stir
Patented headache powders in a cup;
In the Green Room he saw
The woman who was once Eurydice,
Naked as Eve with Adam at her side,
Kiss
the .reflection of her lips within a mirror.
It was then he noticed that the house was empty,
That the galleries were dark and all the faces gone.
He gave five dollars to a night watchman
Who unlocked an exit, who hailed a cab
And took him home.
Another v1ctrm
Said that the lens viewed nothing but history:
Torn volumes of civil law and economics,
Rocks among blackened stumps of trees,
Foreshortened deserts and a broken cornice
Where someone carved:
'Voice of the people is the Voice of God-Hail Caesar!'
Another said
That the glasses had been given to a child
Who hoped to see a ball field in the park
Green as a billiard table, but grew impatient,
Lifted the lens at bedside to the moon
And through a window saw concentric circles
Wheel into a gray sphere with night unrolled behind it;
The boy cried, 'That thing is the face of death,'
Nor could he find his own elusive star.
It was decided
That the glasses had betrayed the universe,
That the view within the lens was both too near, too far:
If
the glasses were 'a work of art'
They should be destroyed, but if 'scientific'
The valuable lenses could be brought
Almost to perfection, refined, repolished for expert use
Among ourselves, among our friends and enemies
In restless peace and all-pervading war."
57
HoRACE GREGORY
