Regarding Art

Sometimes,

I, too, tell the ah'sof my heart one by onelike the blood-red beadsof a ruby rosary strung
on strands of golden hair!

But mypoetry's musetakes to the airon wings made of steellike the I-beams
of my suspension bridges!

I don't pretend
the nightingale's lamentto the rose isn't easy on the ears…But the language
that really speaks to meare Beethoven sonatas playedon copper, iron, wood, bone, and catgut…You can "
have"
galloping offin a cloud of dust!

Me,

I wouldn't tradefor the purest-bred
Arabian steedthe sixth mph
of my iron horse
running on iron tracks!

Sometimes my eye is caught like a big dumb flyby the masterly spider webs in the corners of my room.

But I really look upto the seventy-seven-story, reinforced-concrete mountains
my blue-shirted builders create!

Were I to meetthe male beauty"
young Adonis, god of Byblos,"
on a bridge,

I'd probably never notice;
but I can't help staring into my philosopher's glassy eyesor my fireman's square face
red as a sweating sun!

Though I can smokethird-class cigarettes filledon my electric workbenches,

I can't roll tobacco - even the finest-in paper by hand and smoke it!

I didn't —
"
wouldn't" — trademy wife dressed in her leather cap and jacketfor Eve's nakedness!

Maybe I don't have a "
poetic soul"?

What can I do
when I love my own children
more
than mother Nature's!
Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)