'I give the yawp barbaric <br />Of piety and pelf <br />(Who now reads Herrick?) <br /> <br />'And contradict myself <br />No matter, the verse is large. <br />My five-and-ten cent shelf <br /> <br />'The continent is: my targe <br />Bigger than Greece. The shock <br />Of Me exceeds its marge <br /> <br />'Myself the old cock <br />With wind and water wild <br />(Hell with the privy lock): <br /> <br />'I have no woman child; <br />Onan-Amurikee <br />My son, alone, beguiled <br /> <br />'By my complacency <br />In priggery to slay <br />My blind posterity . . .' <br /> <br />-These words, at dawn of day <br />In the sleep-awakened mind, <br />I made Walt Whitman say: <br /> <br />Wherefore I and my kind <br />Wear meekly in the face <br />A pale honeydew rind <br /> <br />Of rotten-sweet grace; <br />Ungracefully doating <br />Great-aunts hanged in lace <br /> <br />We are: mildly gloating <br />Dog bones in a trunk <br />Saved in the attic. . . . <br /> <br />Floating <br />Hating king and monk, <br />The classes and the mass, <br />We chartered an old junk <br /> <br />(Like Jesus on his ass) <br />Unto the smutty corn <br />And smirking sassafras. <br /> <br />In bulled Europa's morn <br />We love our land because <br />All night we raped her-torn, <br /> <br />Blue grass and glade. Jackdaws, <br />Buzzards and crows the land <br />Love with prurient claws; <br /> <br />So may I cunning my hand <br />To clip the increment <br />From the land or quicksand; <br /> <br />For unto us God sent <br />To gloze with iron bonds <br />The dozing continent- <br /> <br />The fallow graves, ponds <br />Full of limp fish, tall <br />Terrains, fields and fronds <br />Through which we crawl, and call.<br /><br />Allen Tate<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/false-nightmare/
