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Ode
ОглавлениеAn idea of justice may be precious,
one vital gregarious amusement . . .
What are you amused by? a crisis
like a cow being put on the payroll
with the concomitant investigations and divinings?
Have you swept the dung from the tracks?
Am I a door?
If millions criticize you for drinking too much,
the cow is going to look like Venus and you'll make a pass
yes, you and your friend from High School,
the basketball player whose black eyes exceed yours
as he picks up the ball with one hand.
But doesn't he doubt, too?
To be equal? it's the worst!
Are we just muddy instants?
No, you must treat me like a fox; or, being a child,
kill the oriole though it reminds you of me.
Thus you become the author of all being. Women
unite against you.
It's as if I were carrying a horse on my shoulders
and I couldn't see his face. His iron legs
hang down to the earth on either side of me
like the arch of triumph in Washington Square.
I would like to beat someone with him
but I can't get him off my shoulders, he's like evening.
Evening! your breeze is an obstacle,
it changes me, I am being arrested,
and if I mock you into a face
and, disgusted, throw down the horse-ah! there's his face!
and I am, sobbing, walking on my heart.
I want to take your hand off my hips
and put them on a statue's hips;
then I can thoughtfully regard the justice of your feelings
for me, and, changing, regard my own love for you
as beautiful. I'd never cheat you and say "It's inevitable!"
It's just barely natural.
But we do course together
like two battleships maneuvering away from the fleet.
I am moved by the multitudes of your intelligence
and sometimes, returning, I become the sea-
in love with your speed, your heaviness and breath.
