“I know nothing—and everyone.” —Julius Caesar
When your poem, or whatever you call it, intrudes
on reality with its reality, it’s like when modern art nudes
take over the galleries or politicians make disgrace
their benefit, until at last, we see it on their face.
It doesn’t do any good
in the last analysis, if your painting isn’t understood
for what it’s trying to do, immediately,
so that it doesn’t intrude, but is part of reality.
Poems rarely do this. Poetry which gives up its poetry
immediately lives in reality
but unfortunately disappears.
I never did that. I simply caused those tears.