  First Clown We gaze upon a negro shoveling coal. His muscles fuse into a poem Stifled and sinister, Censuring the happy rhetoric of morning air. Some day he will pitch the stretched simplicity Of his tent upon the contented ruins Of a civilization, Playing with documents and bottles of perfume Found in deserted, broken corridors. Second Clown The barbarous comedy Lost in profuse confessions And often described as life, Lends an attitude of conviction To the mechanical retreat of time. First Clown Do you hear beneath the irregular strut Of this city an imperceptible groan? Time is turning the jail-house key. They build larger jails for time; Endlessly he emerges From complicated delusions of freedom. Second Clown That desperately grotesque Wanton known as imagination Can plunge beyond both men and time. Imagination slips down Upon the last edges of thought and feeling And teaches them to transcend The forlorn bravado of swinging legs and arms. First Clown We are two psychic clowns Brandishing the poverty of words Into insolent oddities of sound. Come, men are waiting to nail us Upon the crucifix of their little logics! |
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