When justice, not sweet charity, confers on all,
few will become Mozart, Chaucer, or Saint Paul;
still there will be the simple general good
and I can leave off writing poster-crude.
Far away from loud firing line of crisis,
happy in hush-circling hypotheses:
If you are not in the forest; does the tree truly fall?
Is it the slum or the drunken father causes the criminal?
did Nietzsche predict Hitler or comic-strip Superman’s course?
Why do we never dream in technicolor;
when you reread the classics, do they always seem duller?
Was Einstein right about a fourth dimension,
or is all time another man-made invention?
Though you can swear it’s the first you’ve seen that door,
that maddening feeling “I have been here before …”
How the personal past fades into history,
all one recalls of that Everest mystery
is the crying Mama doll, the childish sailor suit,
the trip to the beach, the cracker-jack loot.
Are we really intended to love only one;
was it hen or egg first in the chicken-run?
Absent Without Leave. Conscience reminds me
back to black and white, to billboard-crude;
to the midget plans for the major good
and the moment’s monster immediacy.
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