Weldon Kees

 

        photograph by Dan Gwynn, 1953.

Statement with Rhymes

Plurality is all. I walk among the restaurants, 
the theatres, the grocery stores; I ride the cars 
and hear of Mrs. Bedford’s teeth and Albuquerque, 
strikes unsettled, someone’s simply marvelous date, 
news of the German Jews, the baseball scores, 
storetalk and whoretalk, talk of wars. I turn 
the pages of a thousand books to read 
the names of Buddha, Malthus, Walker Evans, Stendhal, André Gide, 
Ouspenski; note the terms: obscurantism, 
factorize, fagaceous, endocarp; descend 
the nervous stairs to hear the broken ends 
of songs that float through city air. 
In Osnabrück and Ogden, on the Passamaquoddy Bay, 
in Ahmednagar, Waco (Neb.), in Santa Fé, 
propelled by zeros, zinc, and zephyrs, always I’m pursued 
by thoughts of what I am, authority, remembrance, food, 
the letter on the mezzanine, the unemployed, dogs’ lonely faces, pianos and decay. 


Plurality is all. I sympathize, but cannot grieve 
too long for those who wear their dialectics on their sleeves. 
The pattern’s one I sometimes rather like; there’s really nothing wrong 
with it for some. But I should add: It doesn’t wear for long, 
before I push the elevator bell and quickly leave.