I
It is almost unbearably harmonious-
the purple petunias and stalks of lavender
with a blue couch pillow behind them.
The pillow fastens itself to the flowers
as if there were no space between but blue.
Let beauty fill in spaces where there is no good man.
But if there is a good man, let him put his head
on the blue pillow, and his yellowish face
will interfere with the flowers, and the natural
will become, in an instant, historical, and the historical
will become, in a little while, dramatic.
II
The dog chews up rye bread and spits it out.
He will do it ten times. It is his humanity.
On the stained and whiskery skin of the world
we walk, bumping shins and knees on Things,
but live in our heads, in the sugar and gall
of language, bumping our heads on each other.
If a bird flies down from a tree and lights
on his finger, the good man is surprised.
That is not his forte. He moves words,
and his knees and elbows move to the meaning
of words, through the high stubble of Things.
III
How do you know a fish doesn’t suffer
as much as you do?” the biochemist asked
with anguish. But he was not the good man.
And I too am sickened sometimes by the heaviness
of things to be done. Little roadbuilders, like ants,
swarming to carry away a mountain.
Taking care of a house—to reach the top,
to lift and wash its parts and partitions.
On rainy days my hair gains weight
as if somebody’s tears hung in the follicles,
somebody treated unjustly, unthinkingly,
somebody called by the wrong name.
For the good man, to move a mountain one grain
of dust at a time is to move a mountain.
For him the act is laid in the idea
like honey in a honeycomb. We are here for that.
He eats honey without compunction.
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