They gave you strait-jackets to bore you. Like an unwilling promise Your legs were tied together. But people can only violate Their own conception of reality, And your actual curves Preserved their sculptural liberty. Leaving their semblance on your flesh Your lines sped inward till they gained The center where emotion changes To a speck of quivering clarity.
Within you phantoms of reality Danced with plausibilities of mind, Seeking to be consumed By the oblivion which is understanding. You feared that your return to motion Would mean a succession of disappointments-- Tamely grazing arrows Changed to wounds by the desiring heart Take my hand and move. Only two statues can stride together In a manner invisible Save to certain unreasonable adjustments Of eyesight and of hearing.
Truly, this age will be known As one of minute extremes Courting an elderly shape In a violent bar-room scene. An Amazon made filthy by centuries, And fuming pygmies, own the stage. Thin furies of emotion Name every color in the rainbow Without its skillful assent, And little mental skeletons Stamp with clumsy weirdness On effigies of the heart. The pygmies often sneak To the prancing Amazon And the ensuing love-scene produces Small memories of Walt Whitman.
This age is not metaphysical. Followers of Dada, Weary of electron-soliloquies And fleshly ecstasies with flat feet, Sit in the gallery And throw loose malice at the display, Evading their motives with an eager creed.
The insurrection of a flea Compared to driving tusks Of elephants, is just as strong. Stupidity need not be long.
The insurrection of a flea Attains philosophy and spice. Fleas salt their eating with a creed That warms the monotone of greed.
The insurrection of a flea Will leave with tense insistence till The suburbs of eternity. O small fanatic on a spree.
The flea is poet in a land That does not understand his lunge. He makes his own immaculate laws And awaits forever threatening claws.
The souls of negroes, thrown into a shout, Roll their hallelujahs out To the flashing blandness of the sky. The sky does not divide their cries Into meanings foolish and wise: To the sky all men have but one cry. Still, amusement has often thrown Separate shades upon the monotone, Playing with the sleep of firm beliefs. Amused, we give these negroes forms Distinct and bounding under storms Of sounds that catapult their joys and griefs. A negro with his bald despair Seduced by remnants of silver hair, Converses with an old King known as God. He longs to have his tortured stare Rewarded with a golden chair While other negroes thump the sod With heavy echoes of his request. With a cold, castrated zest He pleads for rest, and he is bold, While scientists and troubadours Cling more closely to their floors.