Can you lament the loss Of art With me? That all this-- Every part, Has to be Broken Deconstructed Probed For its ichorus juice
And mixed up into a poultice Of parlor trick mirrored upon our asphalt As oil slick
Lament this loss of art When the meter ***** off To the picture of rhyme And the Earth is a ball Floating backwards in time As brute animals stare in constellation At a star-sketched sky.
It was enough for artists to have to constrain Themselves to knowledge of the natural grain Of syntax and measure In which we design Our lives, And passed ourselves on To the grief of our daughters
With such failure of art Even they would not bother.
No hope for this, This is but the status of dead poets
And yet we do not weep.
No need, we are inspired by the sickly The eminent decay She is the muse of our words The sadist of all our play
Just as when our fathers sought to rebuild their dreams, Our kin are excited, delighted by obscene Obscurity, and isolation of the penitent mind, To commit societal acts Of the dastardly kind
I am but a Reed, a float on the stream I am but delicate-phrased Scaffolding - -
And even me, With all my tender lonely Body, Cannot in good conscience save Anybody.
Our world of dreams is but a bunch of rows, With even the picket posts Torn from their ancient holes--
This is the fate of the ants of the earth The dust of the stuff, The fit of this pit,
Those that have no hope for the metere Above The senseless rhyme Of the lost divine