Oh, where is your inflammatory writ Your text that would incite a light, "Be lit" Our music deserving devotion unswerving Cry "Do I deserve her?" with unflagging fervor Well, no you do not, if you cannot get over it
But what's it mean when suddenly we're spent, tell me true Ambition came and reared its head, and went far from you Even mollusks have weddings, though solemn and leaden But you dirge for the dead, take no jam on your bread Just a supper of salt and a waltz through your empty bed
And all at once it came to me And I wrote and hunched 'till four-thirty But that vestal light It burns out with the night In spite of all the time that we spend on it On one bedraggled ghost of a sonnet
While outside, the wild boars root Without bending a bough underfoot Oh it breaks my heart I don't know how they do it So don't ask me
And as for my inflammatory writ Well, I wrote it an' I was not inflamed one bit Advice from the master derailed that disaster He said "Hand that pen over to me, poetaster!" While across the great plains, keening lovely and awful Ululate the last Great American Novels An unlawful lot, left to stutter and freeze, floodlit But at least they didn't run, to their undying credit