Contrary Theses (Ii)

One chemical afternoon in mid-autumn, When the grand mechanics of earth and sky were near; Even the leaves of the locust were yellow then, He walked with his year-old boy on his shoulder. The sun shone and the dog barked and the baby slept. The leaves, even of the locust, the green locust. He wanted and looked for a final refuge, From the bombastic intimations of winter And the martyrs a la mode. He walked toward An abstract, of which the sun, the dog, the boy Were contours. Cold was chilling the wide-moving swans. The leaves were falling like notes from a piano. The abstract was suddenly there and gone again. The negroes were playing football in the park. The abstract that he saw, like the locust-leaves, plainly: The premiss from which all things were conclusions, The noble, Alexandrine verve. The flies And the bees still sought the chrysanthemums’ odor.