The African (a Zairian man) spoke, sang, recited, wept, laughed, talked with amazing rapidity. He was performing for a large audience, but specially in honor of me and a few other visitors to Zaire, a work he had created about the politics, excitements, anguishes and ironies of World War II and the years just after. He took all the roles himself.
Julie, there was the time
You went on the De Grasse with E.E. Coulihan
Unknowing. He, a student, and you, met
I needed to find you and, once having found you, to keep you
You who could make me a physical Larousse
Of everyday living, you who would present me to Gilberte
I can’t imagine your not existing; but on the other hand
I could have lived and died without knowing you at all.
What Mayans you had in you! what stinging Aztecs!
You separated my hometown from Kentucky
And south of us you deftly touched Indiana. Ohioans drove back over you
If half the poets in the world stopped writing, there would still be the same amount of poetry.
If ninety-nine percent of the poets in the world stopped writing poetry, there would still be the same amount of poetry.Put one hand
Next to a light-switch
With the other hand
Feeling for the wall.
Monna Vanna stares out—disdainfully? no, actually she is very young,
Beautiful, following the style of the time, and that is a certain stylish look; she has on a lot of clothes.
And Benjamin Franklin with a stamp pasted over his features
One may wish to slaughter or to save the bull—but first one must master the cape. With the politics I differ; for the man I feel nothing but love. Without him I might never have been a poet. His esthetic discoveries were powerful enough to enable me to dispute with him to the death in an arena where the combat is eternal: the arena of poetry.
Juan Garcia
*
The face of the gypsy watching the bird gun firing into the colony of seals; but it was filled with blanks;
The face of the old knoll watching his hills grow up before him;
The face of the New England fruit juice proprietor watching his whole supplies being overturned by a herd of wild bulls;
Another ribald tale of the good times at Madame Lipsky’s.
Giorgio Finogle bad come in with an imitation of the latest Russian poet,
The one who wrote the great “Complaint About the Peanut Farm” which I read to you last year at Mrs. Riley’s,
Your poetry is all “culture poetry”
Said Frogs. You don’t know the
Meaning of crap.
La mia mamma
Nel tempo in cui ero bambino
Fu una donna
The thing
to do
Is organize
The Schubert is flying
O no crazy Alaska
Scene 1. Ted and Sally on a porch overlooking the water in Nice or some other resort. The scene is all yellow and green.
You are my Sweetheart;
Sang the tin can
I was sitting on a truck