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What the Sea Muttered
with a variation on a theme of Goya
You haven’t kept the reader busy enough. I know, I know — it comes of my long affair With the clear and ordinary; all my care May fail to hold the intensity in the stuff. Too many off-rhymes, rhythms strained and rough, You crash the delicate old barrier Between octave and sestet. I declare My shame before the masters. You sheer off From the whole truth: not even writing of That day you found you’d fallen out of love With running down here, much less of harder themes. — The reason sleeps, and monsters shape the dreams Which are the things we’re doing in broad day, The monstrous half-done.… Nolo contendere.
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