Looking at an old poem from decades ago. Trying to see if it still holds up. Some poets, like Yeats, revised even published works, changing new editions of their collections over time.
This isn’t really like that. But it is a return to some dark cove, some ancient lough, for reassessment and advice:
Clever Autumns With Parochial Zephers
Blindness and cacophony
Like time underwater
The yews tremble for their
Lovers on the mountain tops
Four beats to every heart
And roses for the poor
I believe the groans
Of doctors if
They’re out of work
Scrounging in the meadow
For sustenance and rhubarb
If the play’s the thing
Why is the audience sleeping?
Give us reasons in the mist
To talk about the mail
Give us songs to sing
When supper is thrown to wolves and
Surveyors
Like twenty annual events
Some epiphany among the clowns
Before they taste their red makeup
Before they fall off their red tricycles
Notch just one more scream
Along the highway
Along the road to verdant
Paranoia
Aren’t bitter marvels always fighting
Always shoving off spectacular ennui?
—by Douglas Pinson