Poetry for Robert Duncan
达人
For Robert Duncan
We dance on the words
Of our ancestors, the script
The parquetry that floors
The palace of the canon
From the ancient Sanskrit
That announces our being
To the emoticons of today
We dance through meaning
Which is obvious to hieroglyphic
The punctuation our remit
We stop to the comma, and
Think more with the semi-colon,
We dance with Gods from Homer
In the night skies,
We dance in meadows
With the bucolic, we take refuge
With Wang Wei, we soar with the
Romantic, we waltz with Tennyson
We dance on the words
Of our ancestors, the script
The parquetry that floors
The palace of the canon
达人
For Robert Duncan
Robert Herrick
Took his pig for a pint
Hardly romantic
But then the fine print
Of the epic
Has some caveat
Not to be taken seriously
By those of a heavy heart
Which reminds one of Nathan
West, who did his level best
To beat Perelman at his game
But always the jolly was eclipsed
By Miss Lonely Hearts.