HOW AWFUL WHEN POETRY AGES AS IT IS READ

Three dots: And there was a city behind the blue curtains
Which Saturday, this the how-manyth pack, men would come
from the bazaars
I was going to think up a street with sailboats, poppies in white caps
Some guy would drop his cigarette into the water
Gulls into the water, women proudly into the bazaars
I was going to write a poem, I was stifling, fed up with old things
Eat, my mother says, but they’re all things I’ve grown accustomed to, in the end.
Like Camus and—I don’t know—people like that, I'm cracking up
Everything will begin when it untangles itself from your hair

Is the truth of table-cloths to be spread? How awful always to take refuge in known words
A person should let himself go. —But what kind of color is this—
Evenings come, as though contemplating poetry, from a place close to inspiration
Quinces sweet and soft…
Later exaggerating the ache in my belly, I would be frightened
At that tubercular child's how-manyth deception they will come
Everything spills into a colorless void
Writing poems is perhaps the loveliest deception
Later they'll make a picture or something, then go and drink wine

I'd make me into a brand new sailor if I were God
Maybe there were new things over there
It comes from within me to write as though rabid, I'm hungry, do you understand
Let the doctors call it what they will
Who can know anything best of all
What does it mean to know anything best
Which religion doesn't grow old

My hands and my wrists and my eyes are tingling with desire
I don’t ever want to see your wearied faces again
Within me is a dynamite of boredom and I'll die if it doesn't explode
I want to write poetry, I'm bored, disgusted by my habits
If I stop thinking and put my hands down perhaps I will have much to say
I'm scurrying to the attic like a solitary bug
Before you become old and ugly, I must kiss you on the nose