Smiling Through

All great art is praise.

John Ruskin

I

Then there's the parable of three wise men ~

(always three, as in a joke) who walk

in their fresh linen through the sweet morning

till they hear fat busy flies, see a dog,

stiff legs in the air, disintegrating.

"What a terrible sight!'' cries the first beard.

"What a terrible smell!" complains the second.

"What lovely white teeth," the third, rapturously.

il

The scandalous paradox of cripples

and slums in a world of colours.

Praise the white tooth.

The expensive bombs blessed with holy cries

falling on the screams of mothers.

Praise the white tooth?

ul

Meanwhile, sky in narrow streets;

yet turning the hands of a clock,

as one might do at bedtime

(though it is only afternoon),

something may fall away or arrive:

another place, a beautiful

virus-free clearing where, of course,

everybody is so happy,

not least the three up-market shepherds,

everything grassy and bird-song,

flower-pretty and river-sound,

the sky blue blue blue everywhere

over this landscape waiting for

a Poussin. But look-in the dark

green shadow of that light green tree

a human skull, teeth in its jaw

uttering, "I, too, am in Arcady."

IV

The famine babies with ponderous eyes

in a careless world of plenty.

Praise the white tooth?

The future with Chernobyl disease

in one year or in twenty?

Praise the white tooth.

Praise the white tooth.