It is important that you don’t exclude water
from your imaginative domain.
You cannot go back. And your citizens will be in pain.
Once you have decided clouds in poetry
cannot be tolerated, they will not be;
the overwhelming interest in art is always:
what can we remove to more easily make the landscape seem more real?
And strength is important. A manifesto says
for the sake of its followers, “use the finest steel”
and that’s it: chapbooks will flourish; modern
times, like trains, full of calendars, will come;
this is comfortable; hurry into the interim;
smiles flash; finish playing the steel drum.
You’ll be surprised at how many sounds are possible!
Who said a cacophony
couldn’t celebrate a poetry?
But a warning: once you decide on a course,
the canals will forever be dry.
Keats will simply perish. And you cannot say goodbye.