Is it possible to compose the dirge of renunciation
To forswear cleverness and adopt
The brutality the mere aegis of fact
And how deeply must our askesis plummet
To the word the syllable the phonetic twilight
The wolflike Assyrian rode a horse
Unmentioned in the text until the cold foam of death
The moon that the cow jumped over
Was in reality some stolid distance away
And is there no reality in a hundred
Golden Books and what of the images
In the minds of the children who heard those gingery lyrics sung
And what of the feelings unabashedly evoked
By a buoyant diphthong a digraph a melody
Played sweetly or sourly in tune or out

Thou beloved art like a faery chant
That beguiles the wide-eyed child
To forsake the nursery tread into the unkempt undergrowth
And name Adamlike the kingdoms and duchies
Of the creatures frisky lacy fierce slender gooey slithery or straight
The quick brown fox
The willow abandoned to tears
The nymphs and larvae
The molds and fungi
The predators parasites and prey
The animals that suckle
The animals that fend for themselves
The watery moon clothed in variability
The untempered sun naked in terrible majesty