*Chaplinesque* by Hart Crane We make our meek adjustments, Contented with such random consolations As the wind deposits In slithered and too ample pockets. For we can still love the world, who find A famished kitten on the step, and know Recesses for it from the fury of the street, Or warm torn elbow coverts. We will sidestep, and to the final smirk Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us, Facing the dull squint of that innocence And what surprise! And yet these fine collapses are not lies More than pirouettes of any pliant cane: Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise. We can evade you, and all else but the heart: What blame to us if the heart lives on. The game enforces smirks; but we have seen The moon in lonely alleys make A grail of laughter of an empty ash can, And through all sound of gaiety and quest Have heard a kitten in the wilderness. _______ See _Chaplin, My Autobiography_, p. 266: "[Hart Crane and I] discussed the purpose of poetry. I said it was a love letter to the world. ‘A very small world,’ said Hart ruefully." ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html