Too brief to be called
A song, yet so distinctive:
What bird can it be?

The       Joyful Feelings       met you as
Yesterday emerged from        the tiny windows
outside Tiffany’s        My rough

Two sharp eminences with a valley between
Through which the erratic witness of a loosened tongue
Flows to the sea: Mount M__________. Mark it well.

This will be your office, Mr. Blank,
While you remain attached to the Poetry .
Division of the Department of Mediocrity.

All summer long
while other trees
reached for more

Rectangularity controls the setting
Of tables, the organization of paint
On canvas, and the sport of ping-pong.

It's like heaven: you've got to die
To get there. And you can't be sure.
The publisher might go out of business.

I have a feeling that I will not die
For quite some time. Only poets with a kind
Of supererogatory strength of mind,

The raison d’etre of much
Aestheticism, as of
the entire hermetic tradition

One moment the sky is its usual dark,
Dimensionless self, and the next, with a double burst—
Two spreading spheres of radiance, phosphor