Dates unknown
THE BIRTH OF CHRIST
To find heaven in a cattle stall —
No, to find something stranger still,
To find heaven’s vault has been unroofed
By an infant in a feeding trough.
TO PRIAPUS
It’s to you, great God of gardens, that Potamon
Leaves his billhook, bush-harrow, threshing-sledge,
A sickle for harvesting artichokes, the thread
Bare coat that held off both the wind and rain,
His suntanned, oxhide, weatherproof boots, a wood-nibbed
Dibble for setting sprouts, and the mattock
That in the dog days he’d keep ready to unblock
The rocked-in sluice and irrigate the beds.
INVITATION TO OBLIVION
Why was I born? Where did I come from?
How do I happen to be where I am?
Knowing nothing, how can I learn anything?
I was nothing, and yet I was born.
And before too long I’ll be nothing again,
Nothing at all, of no value whatever,
And such is the lot of everyone. And so,
I say, brim the mixing bowls with wine,
For only in oblivion is oblivion braved.
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