  Agitated child, Listening to the words of clown, Charlatan, blackguard, clergyman, And vainly trying to follow their commands Simultaneously, with legs and arms Swinging like demented Jehovahs, The plastic shapelessness of mud Waits to receive your castigated fevers. And all the children whose inarticulate Hearts smashed together make your body— The burly, waggish rogue Paid to dance in your cabarets; The shoulder-shaking girl Who mistakes one shiver for immortality; The roughly earnest gunman Whose blundering insurrection Clutches a cool device; The man whose eyes are coins Encased in viscous white; The fox-like politician Leaping on small prizes in the dark; The farmer, lending his different costume To the ox-like patience of earth; With minds as minute and obscure as bricks, And softly prominent hearts; The factory-girls who try to scold The murmur of their souls With one hundred slang phrases— All of them will lose Their imaginary differences In the lenient refuge of mud. But their souls, ridiculously Ignorant of national boundary-lines, And amused at the physical promise Or ruin that men extract Tortuously from life— Their souls will instigate A more conspicuous conflict. |
|
