Sunset Gun/Verses in the Night
VERSES IN THE NIGHT
(After an Evening Spent in Reading the Big Boys)
Honeymoon
“ponder, darling, these busted statues
of yon moth-eaten forum be aware.”
—E. E. Cummings.
PONDER, darling, these busted statues,
Be aware of the forum, sweet;
Feel the centuries tearing at youse—
Don’t keep asking me when we eat!
Look, my love, where the hills hang drowsy;
Cæsar watched them, a-wondering, here.
Get yon goddesses, chipped and lousy—
Don’t be trying to bite my ear!
Child, consider the clouds above you,
Soft and silly, like baby goats—
Don’t keep asking me don’t I love you!
Judas! When will you know your oats?
Triolet
“Her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad drill.”
—T. S. Eliot.
HER teeth were accidental stars
With a talent for squad drill;
The Pleiades, Orion, Mars—
Her teeth were accidental stars,
Assured celestial corporal’s bars,
So straight they stood, and still.
Her teeth were accidental stars
With a talent for squad drill.
Mélange for the Unknown George
“George is a lion. . . .
There is no pope.”
—Gertrude Stein.
GEORGE is a lion;
There is no pope;
Death is the scion
Of the house of Hope.
George is a gazelle;
There is no Freud;
Charles Parnell
Looked like Ernest Boyd.
George is a llama;
There is no stork;
Papa loves Mama
Like Jews love pork.
There’s no Frances Newman—
In a pig’s right eye!
Death is as human
As a mandrake’s cry.
George is a racoon; he
Insists there is art.
Little Annie Rooney
Is my sweetheart.