To My Soft Song,"
"The King and Queen Surrounded By
Swift Nudes."
We see what we want to see when
we aren't looking.
Elegant angels in dinner jackets dance
with nudes wearing
Red slippers, and clouds sail in
through open windows.
Process is everything- the process
of assimilation
(A freshly-made bed with giant-sized
toiletries on it),
The process of elimination (the bather
emerges on the shore,
His forehead a blank). These are
the instructions and these
The warnings you will hear: eliminate
the model and she
Will have her revenge; eliminate the sky
but save the stars;
Enlarge the rose to fill the canvas;
eliminate yellow.
Then put it all back in and see what
happens. Eliminate the model:
Look at her look at herself in the mirror
before it cracks
Into a cobwebbed windshield, and the car
radio's still playing
As the children walk away from the wreck.
Suddenly the viewer
Is going to die, and knows it. The thought
occurs to him at least
Once a day. Then come the boyhood flashes
and the fear of having left
Something undone, but never knowing what.
"This is the world I want
To live in: a place where the man who thinks
he has no illusions has
