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ON A SENTENCE BY PASCAL
"True eloquence mocks eloquence."
Did that Frenchman mean
That heroes are hilarious
And orators obscene?
Eloquence laughs at rhetoric,
Being anxious in Zion,
And imitates the lucid lamb,
And snickers at the lion,
And smiles, being meticulous,
Because truth is ridiculous.
PART I SAN REVIE W
DUSK SHOWS US WHAT WE ARE
AND HARDLY MEAN
o
evening like a frieze, late light serene,
The city fades beneath your passing poise,
The heavy huddled buildings look like toys,
The silence murmurs
in
the trees' thick green.
The Square-Georgian fa<$ade, or that late French
Baroque dear to the victors in the Civil War–
Thins to a postcard's picayune decor,
As the racked traffic lurches in a trench.
This transience shall instruct us like a gift.
Secret and strong beneath the city lights
(Scattered like rice in evening's growth and drift),
Our being's sources like a myth arise
From depths like mothers or the starlight's heights,
Whence we shall sing beyond the city's lies.
