Who was this homely man?
So ugly, so beautiful.
His arms were so long,
and strong. Wasn’t he an ape?.
His jokes, abiding as they were,
had the metal
of science.
He was the saddest
and funniest sage
ever looked on
as a father.
Those lines and caverns in his face
and hollows of his eyes,
were everyone’s sorrows.

A cigar under the night sky
is a friend who listens,
and knows.
The power of a cigar
is its company.
When the smoke is finished
the essence remains
as life does.
If smoking a cigar does not inspire,
then the cigar is not a cigar.

How do I begin
to speak when words alone
cannot,
as noise comes from
lips accustomed to common lies,
to leap from my experience
to yours.
Our lives are foreign lands
and we are full strangers.
But I watch your eyes
and every gesture
to detect a clue
that I might take the risk
of speaking the truth to you.

I saw a feather lying on the snow
more incongruous
than a Picasso.
A delicate wind made its down ripple  
lightly.
There was a universe in its shaft
and fluffy plume,
too powerful,
for a poem.

The higher mind
is a highway to everywhere at once
to all beauty and truth
where peace and joy are constant
and everything is good.

It’s hidden in the lower mind
full of noisy obsessions
that slide along its syllogisms
like lazy snakes,
blind and fearful,
and thinks up a crazy world.

We hover in the dark between,
waiting for pain to cease
and time to end,
desiring a higher mind
or some compromise for less.

Like commiteemen on stick legs
they run about together
as if there were some issue,
some important question of the day.
They run up the beach
and down the beach.
They’re always just ahead of
some controversial wave.
One flies off
and the others follow.
But they land again on another issue,
pecking away at the sand,
their stick legs playing fast notes
to continue the meeting
as another wave comes in.

We first met at coffee and dessert:
“He is a fine poet, and an engineer by trade.”
In this morning’s paper I read one of his poems,
autobiographical, and one to remember.
I can see him in it, and also the rest of men
but for this:
He was the quiet one at the table,
yet his quietness had presence.
Attentiveness inclined his eyes and posture,
not necessarily as a learner.
He noted all that was said
but he didn’t often comment
and never intruded.
When he spoke, he was reserved, deliberate.
Here was authority
in his silence and his speech.
It comes out in his poem.
His are not the soft thoughts
of the speculative metaphysician.
They are irrelevantly relevant,
much as the metaphor is,
the unessential figure that becomes essential
resting finally on granite,
and as sturdy as a pyramid.