Let not my little Muse
Deceive you or confuse.
Not in the pose of art
Do I disclose my heart;
Nor do I use to pray with
The poems that I play with.
Rhyme is my little toy
To make-believe with and enjoy.
Not listening in shells
For the booming of beaches
No tide ever swells,
No ship ever reaches,
Do I pretend to find
Foundation for my mind.
I loathe the aesthetic attitude,
The literary languish,
The anguish after anguish,
The hunger for hunger, not for food, —
The joy that is not jolly,
The making tears a trade,
The professional melancholy,
The fear of being afraid.
I hide my whole head under
The sheets when I hear thunder.
Things and not theories
Frighten and make me freeze.
And, by the way,
Speaking of how to pray,
Dogmas come first, not liturgies.
The dilettante hand
That took art seriously,
That outlawed fairyland
And stripped the Christmas tree,
Now tries another trick
And has revived Our Lord
To go with the candle-stick
It has so long adored.
Of Faith it finds a clue
In hyphenated points of view,
Whose novelty is never new,
And whose waste-land has got
A penny watering-pot
Filled up with drops of dew.
A doubt is still a doubt,
Even turned inside out.
Truer tonight to me
Is one small factual flea,
Whose stinging certainty
Impressed upon my nose
Is not a poem, or a pose.
— From Boundaries
