Age

Sometimes I want to freeze the world in ice

Like some immense Steve Rogers and exist

Forever in one moment. To throw dice

And never have them land; the morning mist

Still lingering, unburnt by coming day;

The puff of air exhaled before my face

Not yet dispeled; the sky the bluish-grey

Of early morning, when the clouds embrace

The rising sun, but are not yet outclassed.

I think, then, it would be a wondrous thing

If time stood still, and hours never passed

And you and I could couch a while and cling.

But if it had before, how would I see

The laugh lines from you laughing back at me?

Ignore

Pretend, if you would so much humor me,

That everything I tell you is a lie.

Imagine nothing that I've said, that I

Have whispered in the dark of night, to be

At all the truth. Declare the fallacy

Of all confessions I have made. Decry

The falsity of man, in me, and sigh

That nothing good is true. Please don't ask why.

I'd hate to lie again. Just let it go;

Believe this much of me, and think me so,

So we can free ourselves of what I've said.

It's better thus, and better you don't know 

The reasons. I won't jerk you to and fro:

Pretend, and let the past become the dead.

Calendar

There is a chicken on the wall

Shaped out of eggs and I believe

Life seeks for order after all

No matter if it wants to leave.

The plastic of a dinosaur

Was once the real thing, when alive,

Returned to what it was before

So life, it seems, will always strive

To find itself, and recreate 

The shapes and sights of what should be;

The eggs and chicken that we ate

Are joined beyond time's unity.

And so I think someday that I

Will be a person when I die.

Oh It Came O'er My Ear Like The Sweet Sound That Breathes Upon A Bank Of Violets

Long, long ago ago I read, from Harpo Marx,

Of how the Christians' music was so great

That, though their worship we don't celebrate,

We ought to listen--as to meadowlarks

Whose music fill the forest and the parks,

With meanings we don't recognize or rate.

I think he's right; once we disaggregate

The million Jesuses and thousand Harks

There still remain some songs (like Silent Night

His favorite) that speak so to the soul 

That in despite of all theology

They satisfy. A music of such might

It almost serves to elevate the whole

And make a truth out of a heresy.