30 (of 73 unpublished poems)

e.e.cummings


one winter afternoon

(at the magical hour
when is becomes if)

a bespangled clown
standing on eighth street
handed me a flower.

Nobody,it's safe to say,
observed him,but

myself;and why?because

without any doubt he was
whatever(first and last)

mostpeople fear most:
a mystery for which i've
no word except alive

--that is,completely alert and
miraculously whole;

with not merely a mind and heart

but unquestionably a soul--
by no means funereally hilarious

(or otherwise democratic)
but essentially poetic
or ethereally serious:

a fine not a course clown
(no mob,but a person)

and while never saying a word

who was anything but dumb;
since the silence of him

self sang like a bird.
Mostpeople have been heard
screaming for international

measures that render hell rational
--i thank heaven somebody's crazy

enough to give me a daisy

A Green Sportscar

Brian Patten


for Mal Doft, racedriver

...And later, to come across
those couples in gleaming green sportscars,
riveted with steel and sprinkling with dawn;
and, still shaking in tarpaulin hoods, the rain
spills onto their faces
as the daylight exposes their E-type deaths.

...And later still, to discover
inside him, something has been moved:
She stretched out across him, breasts
pointing toward dawn, who found her last kick
in the sound of the skid on tarmac
of the green-steel coffin in its quiet field.

...And finally, to understand them,
they who have been switched off permanently;
are so very still. You would think them asleep,
not dead, if not for the evidence, their expressions
caught at dawn, and held tight beneath
this accidental incident.

The Human Abstract

William Blake


Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody Poor;
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings peace,
Till the selfish loves increase:
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the grounds with tears;
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpiller and Fly
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceipt,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea
Sought thro' Nature to find this tree;
But their search was all in vain:
There goes one in the Human Brain.