Poem to Robert Graves Perhaps
The moon not o be named
Going over, clear of all poetry,
The exhauster of the poetical
Faculties of our race, surrendering nothing
Of her fourth day rights, ignores distance, deeds of property,
Hurtling on a leash of small permission, like a yo—yo,
A subjective Nirvana for the aggressor,
Ignorant of everything, being straightforward rock—
Haulage of gravities on it amount to no more
Than its curves do, as a responsive nervous system.
A calamity to be there, where there might as well be nothing!
And so ignorant, that to itself it might as well not be there.
Tomorrow the world will be back, hurrying you on into old age.
So why be disturbed, as if that were some bomb in orbit,
Precariously passing and passing, the juggling of no—brain.
Why lie awake, trying to focus that thing’s helpless indifference
With your blood become phosphorous, your heart pounding its
morse wastefully
Into the Universe in general
And your head in stone silence, listening for an echo.
