I.

Few of us seek for any of those keys
Of which graduation orators speak
Nor would most bother with the battery
In that old lamp of which they’ve never heard

They do not push against a golden door
They expect all doors to be opened for them
They read no books, they do not read, they feel
They only feel, they do not write, they stare

So emptily away, then back again
An empty stare into, within the self
The empty chatter of the ceaseless self
Each self in pain from arrogant self-pity

Each centers himself in a universe
His universe of the eternal now
His universe of the eternal me
And thinks not of beyond himself at all

But, still –

II.

There are those few who seek for eternal Truth
Not for some shabby metaphorical keys;
They light the lamp, they lift the lamp, and look
Not at themselves but at the light, the Light

They shyly, slowly open the wardrobe door
They peek inside, they look, they see, they see
A world beyond their own; they step into
And through, and so they are given themselves

They seek for something else, and find themselves
A world of words and music and magic and light
And the Light is not them but upon them
The Light is the center, and gives them light

They give away themselves and so gain crowns
Unasked and so more happily received
They read and write and sing the happiness
Unasked and thus given, among the stars

III.

Forever

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

The Tempest III.ii.129-130


Be not
Afraid
Iambs
Are just
The way
We speak
They are
Our natch
Ural
Rhythm

Or:

Be not afraid; iambs are just the way
We speak; they are our natural rhythm 1

Sometimes they must be squashed a bit, and then
(Hear “natural” as two syllables, a pair

Othertimes “natural” is read as three) –
Be a skilled artist in your poetry!

1 “Rhythm” is a trochee, not an iamb
   But let it stay, that poor, little lost lamb

The merry banter of the waitress flirting
With her old men the negotiations
For a coffee refill the rattle of flatware
And the clatter-clat of the breakfast plates

The buzz of conversation and over there
A Bible verse and a head bowed in thanks
“Then Grandpa shot Billy” and too the hum
Of how’s-the-weather going to be later on

The usual beginning to another work day…
But wait…but what…what did that old man say?

How attractive he is, and how beset
By those stuffy boots on a Roman hill
How progressive, how forward, how brilliant
And how attached to the bubbly How Now

How fashionable with all his little books
So happenin’, so 1928
“Beyond these symbols” he writes the fashions
About some bones (so conveniently lost)

In the Gobi Desert he dug a tooth
And then upon this molar built his
                                                                     truth?

In the work cart I find a luna moth
And is it dead?  With gentle hands I lift…
And off it flies! into the sunlit leaves
Breeze-wavy in the pale September sun

          Among the apple and cherry and oak

I labor away at summer’s excess
And clear the paths and glades of weatherfall
Sorting out litter to a merry fire
And billets to store for the winter hearth

          Sweet gifts of apple and cherry and oak

The bees seem to wonder what I’m about
Sitting awhile, and thinking the summer out

          Beneath the apple and cherry and oak

The evil that men do lives after them

                                -Julius Caesar III.iii.80-81

The eulogist speaks of the childhood roots
Of a preacher into poverty born
Amusing stories of the Good Ol’ Days
And of the hometown girl he came to love

The eulogist speaks of the ministry
To which the preacher and his wife were called
Their souls twinned in service to God and man
And of the catalogue of sinners saved

The eulogist speaks of the preacher’s soul -
But not of that dear family’s home he stole

“So Tell me, Judas;
            Where do You See Yourself Ten Years from Now?”

Judas is an apostle on the go
Building his resume’, a better gig
Always part of his strategic focus
Going places, a young man on the move

Proactive for the Second Century
His paradigm shift of transparency
A next-generation strategy plan
In today’s competitive marketplace

Thirty Tyrian shekels; that’s the amount -
Laundered through a secret offshore account