Myth and Actual

Mother of God, this moment is so odd:

Here's noon, the pearly corn of light, and cracked

Wide on the city street. Here is the crowd

Each solid to himself, and full of blood,

Yet so unreal, so gone to zero, wrecked

On his own corner of belief: each with

His personal mouth rounding the common breath,

An all, a nothing in the throng.

And here

A window saying hamburger and beer.

Four ways to go, and every way is noise,

The traffic brims the curbs. The latest crime-

Three cents-makes business better for small boys,

While bells, while brakes, while horns affirm

The distance at the heart of space and time.

Not mystical, but glass and cellophane,

Not vision, but the sewers out of sight:

Not prayer for excellence, but Five and Ten!

Not pioneers and ardors, but the right

Hand side, push please, for banks have heavy doors

And guard a people's best from wind and rain

Or scriptural moth. And who could ask for more?

Mother of God, I said at Fourth and Main,

The radio and its supernal voice!

For KHJ is lifting up to sing

And Aimée burns upon the southern air.

It is reality, we are a place,

Not dream undone under delirious hair.

This is and is. Take now. For what avails

The timid heart that tries to temper choice,

Hearing the words of Jesus Christ our King,

The price of hogs, Stravinsky's nightingales?