Some There Are Fearless

In streets where pleasure grins

and the bowing waiter

turns double somersaults to the table for two

and the music of the violin is a splinter

pricking the poultice of flesh; where glinting glass

shakes with falsetto laughter,

Fear, the habitué, ignores the menu

and plays with the finger bowl at his permanent table.

Tune in the ear; in tub, in tube, in cloister,

he is the villain; underneath the bed,

bare-shanked and shaking; drunken in pubs; or teaching

geography to half a world of children.

In times like these, in streets like these, in alleys,

he is the master and they run for shelter

like ants to ant hills when he lifts his rattle.

While dreaming wishful dreams that will be real,

some there are fearless, touching a distant thing:

the ferreting sun, the enveloping shade, the attainable spring

and the wonderful soil, nameless beneath their feet.