Стихи и эссе

     Ares at last has quit the field,
     The bloodstains on the bushes yield
        To seeping showers,
     And in their convalescent state
     The fractured towns associate
        With summer flowers.

     Encamped upon the college plain

     Raw veterans already train
        As freshman forces;
     Instructors with sarcastic tongue
     Shepherd the battle-weary young
        Through basic courses.

     Among bewildering appliances

     For mastering the arts and sciences
        They stroll or run,
     And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter
     Are shot to pieces by the shorter
        Poems of Donne.

     Professors back from secret missions

     Resume their proper eruditions,
        Though some regret it;
     They liked their dictaphones a lot,
     They met some big wheels, and do not
        Let you forget it.

     But Zeus' inscrutable decree

     Permits the will-to-disagree
        To be pandemic,
     Ordains that vaudeville shall preach
     And every commencement speech
        Be a polemic.

     Let Ares doze, that other war

     Is instantly declared once more
        'Twixt those who follow
     Precocious Hermes all the way
     And those who without qualms obey
        Pompous Apollo.

     Brutal like all Olympic games,

     Though fought with similes and Christian names
        And less dramatic,
     This dialectic strife between
     The civil gods is just as mean,
        And more fanatic.

     What high immortals do in mirth

     Is life and death on Middle Earth;
        Their a-historic
     Antipathy forever gripes
     All ages and somatic types,
        The sophomoric

     Who face the future's darkest hints

     With giggles or with prairie squints
        As stout as Cortez,
     And those who like myself turn pale
     As we approach with ragged sail
        The fattening forties.

     The sons of Hermes love to play,

     And only do their best when they
        Are told they oughtn't;
     Apollo's children never shrink
     From boring jobs but have to think
        Their work important.

     Related by antithesis,

     A compromise between us is
        Impossible;
     Respect perhaps but friendship never:
     Falstaff the fool confronts forever
        The prig Prince Hal.

     If he would leave the self alone,

     Apollo's welcome to the throne,
        Fasces and falcons;
     He loves to rule, has always done it;
     The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,
        Be like the Balkans.

     But jealous of our god of dreams,

     His common-sense in secret schemes
        To rule the heart;
     Unable to invent the lyre,
     Creates with simulated fire
        Official art.

     And when he occupies a college,

     Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;
        He pays particular
     Attention to Commercial Thought,
     Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,
        In his curricula.

     Athletic, extrovert and crude,

     For him, to work in solitude
        Is the offence,
     The goal a populous Nirvana:
     His shield bears this device: Mens sana
     Qui mal y pense.

     To-day his arms, we must confess,

     From Right to Left have met success,
        His banners wave
     From Yale to Princeton, and the news
     From Broadway to the Book Reviews
        Is very grave.

     His radio Homers all day long

     In over-Whitmanated song
        That does not scan,
     With adjectives laid end to end,
     Extol the doughnut and commend
        The Common Man.

     His, too, each homely lyric thing

     On sport or spousal love or spring
        Or dogs or dusters,
     Invented by some court-house bard
     For recitation by the yard
        In filibusters.

     To him ascend the prize orations

     And sets of fugal variations
        On some folk-ballad,
     While dietitians sacrifice
     A glass of prune-juice or a nice
        Marsh-mallow salad.

     Charged with his compound of sensational

     Sex plus some undenominational
        Religious matter,
     Enormous novels by co-eds
     Rain down on our defenceless heads
        Till our teeth chatter.

     In fake Hermetic uniforms

     Behind our battle-line, in swarms
        That keep alighting,
     His existentialists declare
     That they are in complete despair,
        Yet go on writing.

     No matter; He shall be defied;

     White Aphrodite is on our side:
        What though his threat
     To organize us grow more critical?
     Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical,
        Shall beat him yet.

     Lone scholars, sniping from the walls

     Of learned periodicals,
        Our facts defend,
     Our intellectual marines,
     Landing in little magazines,
        Capture a trend.

     By night our student Underground

     At cocktail parties whisper round
        From ear to ear;
     Fat figures in the public eye
     Collapse next morning, ambushed by
        Some witty sneer.

     In our morale must lie our strength:

     So, that we may behold at length
        Routed Apollo's
     Battalions melt away like fog,
     Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,
        Which runs as follows:-

     Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,

     Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis
        On education,
     Thou shalt not worship projects nor
     Shalt thou or thine bow down before
        Administration.

     Thou shalt not answer questionnaires

     Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
        Nor with compliance
     Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
     With statisticians nor commit
        A social science.

     Thou shalt not be on friendly terms

     With guys in advertising firms,
        Nor speak with such
     As read the Bible for its prose,
     Nor, above all, make love to those
        Who wash too much.

     Thou shalt not live within thy means

     Nor on plain water and raw greens.
        If thou must choose
     Between the chances, choose the odd;
     Read The New Yorker, trust in God;
        And take short views.