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Fragment Of A Meditation

Not yet the thirtieth year, the

Station where time reverses his light

To rim both ways, and makes of forward back;

Whose long coordinates are birth and

And zero is the origin of breath:

Not yet the thirtieth year of gratitude,

Not yet suffering but a year's lack,

All thanks that mid-mortality is done,

That the new breath on the invisible

Winds anciently into my father's blood.

In the beginning the irresponsible

Connived with chaos whence I've seen it

Riddles in the head for the nervous

To count its beat on: all beginnings

Like water the easiest way or like

Fly on their cool imponderable flood.

Then suddenly the noon turns

And afternoon like an ill-written

Will fade, until the very stain of

Gathers in all the venom of the night-The equilibrium of the thirtieth age.

The thirtieth, not yet the thirtieth

Of wonders, revelations, whispers, signs:

Impartial dumb truths of sound and

Known beyond speech, immune to common fear.

Already the wind whistles the

Of the time, but I'll go back seventy

And more to the great Administrations:

Yet six had gone and all the public

Whom doctrine and an evil nature

Were only errand boys beaten by the

While Henry Adams fuddled in the shade.

I've heard what they said, in the running

Drawing water, their watery words,

Like a sad harlot's useless lucid pap(I've heard the lion of S Street get his cheer),

I understood it, the general

In a private ear, lost. . . .                                  For who can

What the goat calls to the heifer, or the

Even to the cock her love?

At thirty

The years of the Christ, one will perceive, know,

Report new verity with a certain pen.

In the decade from

Where was Calhoun whose bristled

Sumner the refined one did not admire?

I am convinced 'twas Calhoun who

How the great western star's last race would

Unbridled round our personal defect,

Grinding its ash with engines of its mind."Too Southern and too simple," his death's

Uttered a Dies Irae that last

When Senator Mason in a voice to

Read off his speech; then put Calhoun to bed.

They put him in his grave.

Does the worm

In the close senate of tempestuous

That his intellect makes too

The grave, as his enemies our life?

It's quiet there, for the worm's one

Is not discourtesy (give worms their dues)In case the guest hurried by mortal

Enter the house in muddy overshoes.

It was a time of tributes; let me

Tribute to a man grandfather knew well(Or so 'twas said, but one can never tell),

A stocky man but slight, no

Of face and eye, yet a

Of the poet against the world; he dreamed the

Of the wide world and prodigies to come;

Exemplar of dignity, a

Who raised the black flag of the lower mind;

Hated in life by all; in death praised;

I cannot yet begin to

Why we are proud that an ancestor

The crazy Poe, who was not of our kind-Bats in the belfry that round and round

In vapors not quite wholesome for the mind.

After Calhoun the local

Of nature, tempered to the

Of air and fire, blurred with the public sense,

Diffused, while the Black

Took a short memory to their hot desire,

And honor turned a common

Crying decisions from the evening news.

Yet in a year, at thirty, one shall

The wisdom of history, how she

Each epoch by the neck and, growling,

It like a rat while she faintly mews.

Perhaps at the age of thirty one shall

In the wide world the prodigies to come:

The long-gestating Christ, the

Of time, got in the belly of

By Ambition, a bull of pious use.

O Pasiphael mother of god, lest nature,

Peritonitis or morning sickness

The growth of god in an unwholesome juice,

Eat cannon and cornflakes, that the lamb,

Spaceless as snow, may spare the rational earth(Weary of prodigies and the Holy Runt)A second prodigious, two-legged birth.

The signs and portents screaming in the air,

The nativity in my thirtieth

Will glow in the heavens, the myriad

At the holy hour hovering round the

Will stream in the night like flaming hair,

And man will scurry with averted

Crouching, peering, silent, a drunken mouse.

The orange groves will blossom, the shining

Kindle all night far as Los Angeles;

With a noise, threatening, of wandering

Coining, angry with the air of their carouse,

The lamb through the sandpaper gates of life(Made rougher by the bull's intenser strife)Will leap, while the wild-eyed

By the inscrutable wrath of glory

Hears the Wise Men come swiftly from the sea.

The bull smoothly rolls his powerful tongue.

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Allen Tate

John Orley Allen Tate (November 19, 1899 – February 9, 1979), known professionally as Allen Tate, was an American poet, essayist, social comment…

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