Читать книгу Introducing Irony: A Book of Poetic Short Stories and Poems - Maxwell Bodenheim - Страница 8

Table of Contents

CERTAIN favorite words of men have gathered in a vale made of sound-waves. These words, far removed from human tongues and impositions, enjoy an hour of freedom.

Emotion

Men believe that I can speak

Without the aid of thought.

True, I have murdered many kings,

Leaned upon many cheeks,

And sought the release of music,

But when I ride upon words

I am forced to steal them from the mind.

Forgive me, now, if a trace of thought

Invades my liquid purity!

Truth

You need not defend your argument

With meek verbosity,

As though you dreaded its possible subtleties.

We are not men, but words!

Men have made me a lofty acrobat

Entertaining each of their desires

With some old twist on the bars.

But let us leave the frantic tasks

Forced upon us by men.

This is our grove of rest.

Intellect

Emotion, we have often crept

From our separate palaces,

Asking each other for secret favors.

Emotion

We laughed because the men who made us

Could not see our desperate trading.

We will end our laugh

Upon the dust of the last man on earth

And taste a peaceful strangeness.

Art

And I, the tortured child of your love,

Will slip from the fringe of your grayness

Into the void from which I came.

Poetry

And I, the moment when your arms

Touched each other in the night,

Will no longer strive

To tell the happening to men.

Fantasy

And I, the glistening whim

Of your secret love,

Will change to a question lurking within your dust.

Suggestion

And I, the beckoning second

When you curved a world in the twist of your fingers—

I shall vanish into your completeness.

Intellect

The hope of this magic ending

Is our only consolation.

Emotion, a new philosopher

Is forging blades for your torture,

And a braggart poet

Invites me to his disdain.

Let us return to our burdens.