CANTO 20 Soft now and swelling

 

Soft now and swelling, this pillow of verbal ecstasy

feather-fleet and wondrous down!

Circling wide the furry spheres mellow out

on a Proustian ride. Mass arrests of recollections

tidy up the bridal path. Happiness of the void

vomits quite conventional incongruities:

shock value, only 7.95 a pair.

I’ve gone in for metaphysical therapy:

appointment at the eleventh hour.

So I wander in numerical calculations about

all the things I can do nothing about, e.g.:

Many Millions of Billionaire marinate maliciously

in a super-rich sauce served in suede tureens.

The bar wuz solid gold what the Damosel leaned over

and they wuz plutonium spittoons.

All around the pool you could hear the clunk of heavy water

and they wuz detoxification experts instead of lifeguards.

But the Seine changes rapidly

a new kind of compass where a wooden spoon points east.

True north having gone the way of the west

(Spengler in the grass)—they went thataway, Hopalong,

down the trail of supply-side food stamps, where a

rope bridge sways across a chasm of yawning clowns.

Hope we make it to the Tokay Chorale,

where the trumpet plays a mute question of morality

while we argue abortion for all we’re north.

The would compass points true worth,

but this has gone on long enough, I can see where

long lines curve if you keep them straight.

A sign reads, "We Straighten Arrows."

Another says, "We Widen Narrows."