The Funny Mountain
Here “upper class” is. The slopes
are coy, through their trees,
with the results of something like affairs
or successful therapies
with architects. Yet from their window-nook
each couple and its children look
down towards the city without
ego. The flat-roofed schools,
arts centers, parks,
and smaller homes participate
as much in the wealth up there
as the tasteful offices
beside the sea, downtown; they share
its overflow and its concerns
for trees and justice,
wolves, and the whales one sees
in spring on the horizon.
The road up seems
less winding than sculpted. The sky
above the jagged crest
one glimpses from the higher turns
is like a flag; not that
of the rednecks of the far slope
and the eastern half of the state.
Like Frank O’Hara, I don’t know
the people who will feed me,
only that I love their type;
I’ll sing for my supper and breakfast,
like him, like D’Annunzio.
As it grows late
and the brilliant children politely sleep,
I’ll talk about what’s on my mind
more frankly than I should;
it’s part of my appeal.
How irony, although
the default position of my work,
as of my hostess’s and host’s, no doubt,
corresponds neither subjectively
nor otherwise to what’s real.
How the mountain we’re on
after a thousand years is overdue
for self-expression, sending
seaward its dreadful glue,
consuming a large portion of the good.
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