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Poetry of Eli Siegel

Have the Lily

It is a world of space and fritters,

Somehow with us all day long;

A world—mad—of softs and bitters,

With angles in a pretty song.

 

Dash along, world, hit the quartz beds,

Make paper fly in merriment;

Bring sullenness to sleepyheads,

Find bugs in the transcendent.

 

Hand gifts to jaguars moving lame,

Fill libraries with unseen smoke,

Make Thursdays have their clouds and shame,

Dash periodicals against the oak.

 

Being is a revelry,

Existence is a jumble,

The universe is crippled and free,

Overbearing, humble.

 

Slap time upon its curly pate,

Put years upon a background’s knee,

Cause pavane of early and late,

And let resentment have the lily.

Eli Siegel in The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, no. 1407
© 2001 by Aesthetic Realism Foundation

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