They said, my saints, my slogan-sayers sang,
Be good, my child, in spite of all alarm.
They stood, my fathers, tall in a row and said,

After we fled away from the shuddering dock,
The sea upheld us, would not let us go
Nor drown us, and we danced all night in the dark,

Where did you go to, when you went away?
It is as if you step by step were going
Someplace elsewhere into some other range

The good man went his way in personal freedom;
His body shone as if by his consent;
He had no king, and was himself his kingdom;

At the charmed pool swarming with the lower forms of life, 
The flying, the crawling, the swimming, and the stationary, 
Prince Charming looked around and wondered 

When Archie told me the incredible story
of Lady Margaret’s piano, an Obermeier plucked
from a forgotten warehouse in bombed-out Berlin,
then secretly carted off, scarfed up by the Allies
and loaded onto a plane, delivered to Ireland

Knowledge is huge and generous. Here she sits,

bracing her legs like pillars so they'll hold

the book she opens, peeking at Peace's old

We wrote for Miss Price. We made voices
that weren't ours for three full pages:
the old, the immigrants, Negroes, Jews.

For public appearances, for the crowds
Who expected perfection, he managed,
Take after take, to mimic the sound

The surgeon Celsus, at the time of Christ,
Said the right hand should operate
On the left eye, the left hand should invade