A pity, when today we write our verse,
So often we withhold a formal shape,
As if when timeless revelation comes
It suffers if we brutally impose
The harmful mass of a containing crate.

Our fashion favors freer, sleeker lines,
So swiftly flying, soaring ever high,
Diminishing in distant altitude
The revelation it may well possess
Or else, should it fly low at such vitesse,
It should blur by too briefly for the touch
And for the savor and the sound and scent
Its mystery might artfully impart.

Let’s pray the globe of art once more be grand
And traveled only with great time and cost.
May airports be as stables, planes as mules,
And handheld black rectangles, envelopes–
With missives worthy of the time they’ve known.

The truly wise embrace the honored weight
Of measured burdens doled out by our days.
Let words and lines arrange themselves again.
Let forms defy caprice and indolence.
Let substance ground us to the clayey sphere,
And numbness yield to breathless elegance.