The Double Dream of Spring Read Free

would just hang around
    Like sullen clouds over the sun.
    But—this was the point—it was real
    To her and to everyone.
    For spring had entered the capital
    Walking on gigantic feet.
    The smell of witch hazel indoors
    Changed to narcissus in the street.
    She thought she had seen all this before:
    Bundles of new, fresh flowers,
    All changing, pressing upward
    To the distant office towers.
    Until now nothing had been easy,
    Hemmed in by all that shit—
    Horseshit, dogshit, birdshit, manshit—
    Yes, she remembered having said it,
    Having spoken in that way, thinking
    There could be no road ahead,
    Sobbing into the intractable presence of it
    As one weeps alone in bed.
    Its chamber was narrower than a seed
    Yet when the doorbell rang
    It reduced all that living to air
    As “kyrie eleison” it sang.
    Hearing that music he had once known
    But now forgotten, the man,
    The one who had waited casually in the dark
    Turned to smile at the door’s span.
    He smiled and shrugged—a lesson
    In the newspaper no longer
    But fed by the ink and paper
    Into a sign of something stronger
    Who reads the news and takes the bus
    Going to work each day
    But who was never born of woman
    Nor formed of the earth’s clay.
    Then what unholy bridegroom
    Did the Aquarian foretell?
    Or was such lively intelligence
    Only the breath of hell?
    It scarcely mattered at the moment
    And it shall never matter at all
    Since the moment will not be replaced
    But stand, poised for its fall,
    Forever. “This is what my learning
    Teaches,” the Aquarian said,
    “To absorb life through the pores
    For the life around you is dead.”
    The sun came out in the capital
    Just before it set.
    The lovely death’s head shone in the sky
    As though these two had never met.

Variations, Calypso and Fugue
on a Theme of Ella Wheeler Wilcox
    “For the pleasures of the many
    May be ofttimes traced to one
    As the hand that plants an acorn
    Shelters armies from the sun.”
    And in places where the annual rainfall is .0071 inches
    What a pleasure to lie under the tree, to sit, stand, and get up under the tree!
    Im wunderschonen Monat Mai
    The feeling is of never wanting to leave the tree,
    Of predominantly peace and relaxation.
    Do you step out from under the shade a moment,
    It is only to return with renewed expectation, of expectation fulfilled.
    Insecurity be damned! There is something to all this, that will not elude us:
    Growing up under the shade of friendly trees, with our brothers all around.
    And truly, young adulthood was never like this:
    Such delight, such consideration, such affirmation in the way the day goes ’round together.
    Yes, the world goes ’round a good deal faster
    When there are highlights on the lips, unspoken and true words in the heart,
    And the hand keeps brushing away a strand of chestnut hair, only to have it fall back into place again.
    But all good things must come to an end, and so one must move forward
    Into the space left by one’s conclusions. Is this growing old?
    Well, it is a good experience, to divest oneself of some tested ideals, some old standbys,
    And even finding nothing to put in their place is a good experience,
    Preparing one, as it does, for the consternation that is to come.
    But—and this is the gist of it—what if I dreamed it all,
    The branches, the late afternoon sun,
    The trusting camaraderie, the love that watered all,
    Disappearing promptly down into the roots as it should?
    For later in the vast gloom of cities, only there you learn
    How the ideas were good only because they had to die,
    Leaving you alone and skinless, a drawing by Vesalius.
    This is what was meant, and toward which everything directs:
    That the tree should shrivel in 120-degree heat, the acorns
    Lie around on the worn earth like eyeballs, and the lead soldiers shrug and slink off.
    So my youth was spent, underneath the trees
    I always moved around with perfect ease
    I voyaged to Paris at the age of ten
    And met many prominent literary men
    Gazing at