The Literate Eye

by Willi Brown


Observe, Observe

We, all, standing around

With wine and frowns (tools of the trade)

All standing our ground

Dressed in our Sunday best,

Intellectual black, and in the back of

Every black back pocket a

Popular poet paperback, thumbed and quoted with

Practiced indifference.

Jibbering and Jabbering over

Our shiny Xmas ornament

Revelations, awed by the truth of the day,

Happy in our flaky fellowship.

 

Oh rank conspiracy!

Would that I had never

Breathed your black garbed plague.

We are like initiates in some

Esoteric magic. Wizards of word

Grinding out poetic potions,

(They may dispel us yet),

Entrancing ourselves with our

Words, allegorical treasures,

Sweet triumphant finds after long

Impressive labor.

We preach the dream of the

Freedom serpent to the ears of the

Converted. No wonders there's this

Tradition of eccentricity to contend with.

The outside world sees us as a huddled

Pack involved in some strange, self-important task.

 

There is no purity in deliberate

Weirdness. And Man does not live by

Poetry alone. (There must also by prose

and work, and bread.)

Service to the Common Wealth.

We should just drop this

Fascistic emphasis on

Furious insight. The

Natural elements of the

"Mystic" remain untouched by "words".

 

I don't wish to enlighten in the

Usual "wow" sense of the word.

If you laugh you are more "lightened"

Than by all the lectures you have heard.

 

I don't want to be discussed and

argued about over tea.

To be sung while weeding the

Garden is high enough for me.		

next



tuesday...