Upon Reading William Empson

there is no end to Phoebus

she moons us everywhere, in the poems,

chased by wolves and readers hunting through notes, but she only appears twice

I think: the bullets fly overhead,

the Chinese crowds surge, still the rhymes,

Icome out like an English gentleman's umbrella,

on a hot sunny day, it rains you know sometimes,

then the hanshake, the nod, the cough,

the I say old chap, the let's not talk

rot anymore, the rotten apple, rotten to the core,

the Masaque: Classic Rome and Athens parade

their characters in the 1930's

some shot down by reference to a steak

and kidney pie, others sequestered into words,

we make ourselves at home in this world

with a sense of ambiguity overruled by the incongruity

of drinking a pint in the midst of Mineva,

now I think I'll have another...poem.